The Disappointments Room lives (and dies) up to its name.

It’s not a complete disaster, but even the appearance of Gabriel Byrne, as Lissa’s uncle Victor, fails to make much of a dent in the slapdash proceedings.

The acting is terrible,with Connery, at his lowest common denominator, stealing the show. For those of you who worry that MTV video art will destroy cinema, the ineptitudes of this film vividly detail the radical difference in forms. It sucks. But it would have made a great comic book.

Little more than a cluttered, noisy, and unsatisfying thrill ride to nowhere.

Green and Henson make an inspired comic team, Sawa has the befuddled stoner thing down pat, and Alba is, in a word, yummy.

For those who haven’t read the Mark Helprin novel on which Akiva Goldsman’s film is based, prepare to be confused, annoyed, bewildered, and yet more annoyed by the director’s inability to construct even the most basic of narrative fantasy romances.

A lame, unoriginal comedy.

There’s no pacing to the narrative, and the images are perfunctory. I’m Not Ashamed will draw the same audience that has turned Rachel’s journals into popular reading matter, but the film is not likely to lure any converts.

A listless family comedy and bland morality primer.

The whole thing reeks of a spooky Halloween episode of Law & Order that will have your parents shaking their heads in acknowledgment, and you dear reader, shaking your head in disbelief.

Director Munroe (TMNT) is clearly a fan and attempted his best on an admittedly limited budget, but some things just don't translate that well. Throw this dog a bone? No need, he's already got a closetful.

This rambunctious swords ’n’ sorcerers fantasy flick has grubby, pseudo-medieval CGI style to burn, but precious little in the way of anything new to add to this sort of genre storytelling.

Its narrative conceit will entertain for a while, but eventually you will long to disappear with the rest of the Mexicans.

Bonuses all around, but a double one for Perabo, the only cast member to survive this dull-as-dirt Cave with her actorly integrity intact.

It's a courageous but misguided move on Perry's part; he has none of Freeman's soulful, nuanced subtlety, and watching him display the gamut of emotions called for in Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson's script is like watching the Hulk attempt Swan Lake.

As mesmerizing as watching bread toast. Death, be not proud, indeed.

The blood and gore quotients of Punisher: War Zone are extremely high and are sure to sop the appetites of the series' fans and virtual bloodlusters.

With way too many tonal shifts and a narrative that trades cohesion for caprice, the film feels like riding shotgun with a toddler attempting to drive a manual transmission.

The most expensive South Korean film ever made is also one of the most realistic (read: gory) depictions of the horrors of war, specifically World War II, global cinema has ever produced.

Badland's only commercial potential lies in the possibility that people may confuse it for Terrence Malick's incomparable "Badlands."

Ultimately, it's a long, incoherent mess of a film, enlivened only by the sure knowledge that the great Will Eisner's original is available to one and all at your nearest comic-book shop.

Indeed, the biggest acting coup here comes by way of Courtney Love, whose cameo as an obliging waitress is the best thing the film has going for it.

For fans, however, Saw VI is, pardon the pun, a cut above the rest but not, sadly, by much.

Dickerson's newest film is an embarrassment of near epic proportions.

Where Over Her Dead Body should soar with blistering verbal gymnastics, it limps with empty sass about weight gain and skin blemishes; where it should race with inventive comic set-pieces, it slogs with extended flatulence sequences and gags about lifting overweight dogs.

This is in fact the end – it is what is. We’ve had some good laughs. Let’s part amicably.

Is it funny? Not for a minute.

Simply put, it’s too much of a good thing, this unreined tumult of chaos.

It comes off like so much poppycock -– to use the vernacular of the day.

For all its unsubtle sentimentality (including a you-can-see-it-from-a-mile-away plot twist), it remains unclear whether Little Boy intends to celebrate the conviction of belief or to mock it. It’s an unfortunate confusion that permanently stunts its growth.

While Lopez carries off the overdone damsel-in-distress schtick somewhat credibly, Guzman fails to step up to the trickier role of her seducer and stalker.

The Art of War must ultimately be chalked up as a strategic defeat.

The whole film suffers from a serious case of overplotting, perhaps inevitable when trying to cram two largish novels into one smallish film.

Never aims higher than the urinal.

We may live in a golden era of action steamers and stunt choreographers-turned-filmmakers, but Expend4bles never learns to embrace its own limitations. It strains for spectacle and only intermittently delivers on its actual strengths.

There's not much more to this poorly scripted thriller than exactly one well-done shock moment and Michael Keaton's eyebrows, but, to be fair, Keaton's brows have carried three Tim Burton films nearly on their own, so don't let this dissuade you from seeing the film.

Sloppy, confusing, and dull as a dented crucifix.

Only good old Leatherface literally mirrors the festering cultural and political corruption of the era, and to the film's vast discredit, this hideous echo is never even noted.

The film is chockablock with terrible actors (including Tyga, in a bizarro cameo rapping at a frat party), and the jokes he gives his inferior cast to work with are stinkers.

It's an intermittently amusing parable about an outcast's ascension, as performed by a pack of digitally manipulated dogs. Next.

Although it's great fun for the under-8 set and for those of us monitoring the chaos theory that is Nolte's career of late, this film is otherwise mediocre and features some of the most uninvolving 3-D CGI since "Clash of the Titans" earlier this year.

Portals feels like a first pass at a bigger idea, and a framing mechanism that takes a wild series of closing turns sets up a much bigger – and darkly interesting – universe. In that way, Portals promises more in future than it delivers here.

It's hard to imagine how anyone could remain dry-eyed while watching the scene in which John Q. tries to cram in a lifetime of fatherhood advice in a goodbye speech to his son.

Grown Ups is exactly, beat for beat, what the previews would have you believe: a depressingly predictable, two-chuckle deconstruction of what Sandler sees as the modern American male.

Calling The Unborn a dull, plodding, exposition-crammed slog through a twilight of barely maintained tedium is like calling "Valkyrie" a yawn. It's too easy.

Maybe Stonewall will have more value to younger viewers for whom the riots and gay marginalization in general are distant history and might be vivified by watching the film. Yet even though the film’s heart seems genuine, its structure is buttressed by falsies.

Even though everything about this project probably looked good on paper, upon completion The House comes up snake eyes.

Mitchell's film would be another example of why former SNL cast members should choose their scripts wisely, except that Schneider wrote this one.

Eager to please, but it’s so lacking in real-world skate politics that it more resembles the chugging PG-13 mediocrity of Top 40 pop-punk-lite than the hard-core Black Flagisms of Peralta’s scathingly real doc.

My advice? Grab Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and recast with Jimmy Dean.

What the kids at my screening seemed to like best was the wizard's cat, whose mouth is computer-manipulated to utter pithy asides.

Daltry Calhoun's saving grace comes in the form of a snappy compilation soundtrack that spans from Johnny Cash to Serge Gainsbourg, a feat of all-inclusiveness that renders the film a moot point at best.

I, Frankenstein is nowhere near as garishly, ghoulishly awful as "Van Helsing," Universal’s last attempt to resurrect its classic monsters. It’s a grimly fiendish slog nonetheless, and hardly worth getting up out of the grave for.

Considering that the whole point of the Slender Man mythos is that it is so adaptable and mutable, to pour it into the most generic of formats is just lazy. Compared to the thematically linked and superior "The Mothman Prophecies" (where Richard Gere chases a pre-digital urban myth), it's the most generic choice imaginable, and stinks of focus group thinking.

Despite flashes of originality, is a formulaic quagmire that traps bits and pieces from all these genres without really satisfying any of their true aims.

Incoherent mashup of previous demonized tyke films and unfailingly inept pseudo-science and the result is about as devoid of suspense, much less genuine horror, as this specific sub-genre can be.

King Knight is a weird delight, the kind of unlikely low-budget pleasure in which Ray Wise turns up as everybody’s favorite f*cking magician and delivers dancing lessons.

Not to harp on petty details, but this film is so colossally tone-deaf and off-key in every way that its collection of jarring missteps almost carries it into the arms of perverse comedy.

Most indicative of The Tuxedo's mediocrity, however, is the absence of the always entertaining action outtakes that traditionally roll under the end credits of Chan films; here it's all dialogue flubs barely fit for Dick Clark.

Home may be where the heart is, but I kept wishing this poor silly girl would up and move.

As obvious as they get, and it wears its message on its bloodied jersey.

Dude, your movie sucks.

The Gallows offers exactly none of the frisson or pleasure of a found-footage film done right.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat this: Movies don't have to be this bad.

Meet Bill is a typical storyline given new life by an overabundance of antic energy.

The politest way to assess Spike Lee's latest polemic is to call it too ambitious. "An unholy mess" might come closer to the truth.

The viable chemistry between these two leads keeps the ball in the air, even when the balls land elsewhere in strained homophobic gags.

Tries hard but never makes the leap.

While past parodies like Airplane! and the marginally worthwhile Hot Shots filled out down time with slapstick visuals and spastic throwaway gags, Loaded Weapon is content to lumber along at its own boring pace: you end up checking your watch between jokes, and there's nothing funny about that.

Sad, sorry remake.

Still, "The Haunting" these films are not.

With all the violence in the world lately, it seems perverse to insert so much male aggression into what is supposed to be a fun holiday movie. When Roger (Cena) roars onto the scene in his very large truck, it’s testosterone overload.

Linda Blair finds herself locked-up in this women-in-prison cheez fest. The warden has a hot tub in his office and Stella Stevens cracks the whip.

Aiming to be this year's Basic Instinct, Body of Evidence never raises a discernible pulse.

Director Brill makes no stylistic advances from his recent work with Adam Sandler (Little Nicky, Mr. Deeds), and shows no signs of seeking growth or improvement.

If only Bullock could have foreseen how bad Premonition would turn out to be, she would have spared herself (and us) a lot of agony.

Perhaps with a more adventurous creature design – or stakes that rose above the film’s mild ‘PG’ rating – A.X.L might have referenced better films while still finding its own voice.

There's not much spunk here.

It's likely there's going to be some “viewer disturbance” going on after audiences catch a whiff of this routine and thrill-less suspenser.

As arduous to watch as your neighbor’s poorly focused vacation slides.

One might expect that with such low goals the film might have at least hit its target more often than it does. Schneider's mugging is relentless and his constant need to suddenly transpose himself into another character undermines the story's continuity and progression.

The Collector feels like the final, welcome nail in the bizarrely popular torture-porn coffin.

The only thing saving Lake City from total ridiculousness is Spacek.

The last thing Peppermint could afford to be was a mediocre action movie, and yet, here we are, and here it is.

New in Town might have better played on the less demanding stage of, say, a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.

As Timeline so adequately proves, not every bestseller will render a good film.

Sitting through the film was an exercise in confusion.

It's not quite as bad as "Cutthroat Island," I'll grant you, but it's woefully close.

It doesn’t work, however, and the end result is one long yawn of mediocrity, devoid of any genuine suspense, hobbled by incoherent plotting, and ending on a note of goofy what-the-fuckery.

Some things are best left undiscovered.

Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace is a bad movie, wrongheaded in its concept and empty in its execution.

Few characters are well-drawn, rivalries substitute for real group dynamics, and the dancing is chaotic, showy, and confusing.

Oh, for a time machine that would give me back the hour and a half I spent watching this movie.

An orgy of mindless violence, a random collection of bloody bodies, alien misanthropy, and slobbering carnage designed to bore straight into the pleasure centers of 13-year-old boys and leave the rest of us wondering when the movies got so damn loud.

This space invaders stuff is, like, so 1981.

Promises thrills galore but delivers only limp non-frights and predictable yawns.

A paint-by-numbers romantic comedy, but without the heart or laughs to make it work.

Meets the required minimum dosage of feature-film attributes, and then nods out when it comes to going any further.