The script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, takes a few vague pokes at Wall Street and the financial elite but mainly revives the ponderous psychodrama of the first movie.

How long do you have to be gone to make a triumphant return to the screen, and how triumphant can your return be when all three movies are duds?

Cohen probably thinks he's Charlie Chaplin lampooning Hitler, but of course Hitler was still on top of the world when "The Great Dictator" came out in 1940; Cohen is actually Chaplin's antithesis, a first-world bully content to target the Other.

Of the star-studded cast, only Mark Ruffalo (playing Bruce Banner) and Robert Downey Jr. (as Iron Man) bring any personality to the place-holder dialogue. Overlong, monotonous, violent, and simple-minded, this is like one of those "World's Biggest Gang Bang" videos, except that no one onscreen appears to be enjoying himself.

Initially this struck me as something you'd take your grandmother to see, but by the end it seemed more like something your grandmother would take her grandmother to see.

Screenwriters Keith Merryman and David A. Newman interweave four asinine, underdeveloped plot lines, and Tim Story's prosaic direction reduces their script to a shambolic nightmare.

January Jones shoulders the thankless part of Cage's often imperiled wife.

Several graphically violent scenes of women and children in jeopardy make this, ultimately, beneath contempt.

Almost competent but not quite watchable.

Even with the bar lowered, this seems appallingly bad, a lazy assortment of weak punch lines, sentimental music cues, and trite situations.

As with many R-rated studio comedies, the transgressive humor isn't nearly as offensive as the phony sentiment that's supposed to redeem it, supplied here in stale scenes of the sitter bonding with his little charges.

Most of the film feels recycled from sexually explicit art movies dating back at least to "Last Tango in Paris" (1972) and continuing with movies like Patrice Chéreau's "Intimacy" (2001) or Götz Spielmann's "Antares" (2004). With nothing new in its characters, settings, or themes, Shame has little to offer except McQueen's style, which does little to elucidate anything around it.

This never rises above the level of a plodding sword-and-sandal adventure, peopled with chiseled young beauties and bored industry hacks. Singh is a talented and eccentric visual artist with no creative future in the movie business.

This one is overblown, over-dressed, and grandiosely dopey, packed with gargantuan sets and ludicrous action scenes and shot in unusually dark and dingy 3-D.

The story unfolds briskly in the polished mode of a classic horror movie, then tanks after a plot twist at the midpoint alters the mood and slows the pace. Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father) directed an ill-conceived screenplay that could have worked only as camp.

Grating romantic comedy.

The young sweethearts amuse themselves by donning steampunk outfits and crashing the funerals of dead children, which may seem quirky and sweet if you can disregard the awful grief of such gatherings; the problem is that, once you manage this, the main characters' grief doesn't register either.

Pure punishment, this rote action flick from Australia.

Equally as offensive as the movie's smorgasbord of smut and violence is the lingering whiff of colonial-era orientalism, a Western predilection for regarding Eastern cultures as innately idle, lascivious, and irrational, and thus ripe for intervention.

The best thing I can say about this sleep-inducing kiddie comedy is that the need to bring in a PG rating must have precluded the endless series of giant-turd gags promised by the title.

Indie moviemaking reaches some kind of awful zenith of self-indulgence in this scriptless drama, entirely improvised and shot on cellphones.

Writer-director Michel Leclerc keeps stressing how political all this is (the heroine labels almost everyone a "fascist"), but the movie never really decides what it's about, and its odd-couple romance is stale and unpersuasive.

A rare dud from Pixar.

Smug and unconvincing.

There's some cute stuff involving Hanks and some teenagers who tool around campus on scooters, but an utter lack of chemistry between him and Roberts dooms the movie.

If you're curious about the whole-foods movement, try Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food," which addresses the subject from a wider variety of perspectives and does so in a far less insulting manner than this extended infomercial, with its muzak score, entire sequences lifted from network TV news, and bar graphs illustrating every other scene.

The resulting mix of hagiography and war epic is so muddled that characters keep addressing each other by their first names, the better to tell them apart.

Unwatchable-and, thanks to its high-decibel action sequences, barely listenable-this misbegotten medieval fantasy/stoner comedy marks a new low for David Gordon Green.

This movie is too pedestrian for camp, and too scattershot for an action comedy.

Aesthetically, Insidious operates at the level of a decent high school video project.

Packed with gung ho war-movie clichés and subpar shock-and-awe visual effects, this terminally stupid sci-fi adventure pits an army of tentacled aliens piloting "Transformer"-style robots against a platoon of stoic warriors from the Fifth Marines' Second Battalion.

Like an idiot, I came to this movie hoping that director Catherine Hardwicke-who made her debut with the bad-girl shocker "Thirteen" (2003)-might engage in a feminist interrogation of the old fairy tale, just as French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has with "Blue Beard" (2009) and "The Sleeping Beauty" (2010). Instead this is a muddle-headed horror flick.

Loosely adapted from Alex Flinn's young-adult novel, this "Beauty and the Beast" update is a pallid, formulaic teen romance that might have benefited from a little snark.

This story line turns out to be a put-on, and the latter half of the movie is a tedious mockumentary exercise.

Christian E. Christiansen directed this stinker, which lacks even unintentional humor.

As usual, Cage alternates between leaden line readings and thunderous outbursts, making his accomplished costars Ulrich Thomsen and Stephen Campbell Moore look even better.

Director Ry Russo-Young, who cowrote the script with Schnabel, is gunning for a big generational statement, but her ordnance is strictly small bore.

For a filmmaker like Julie Taymor, Shakespeare's language isn't nearly as enticing as Prospero's violent manipulation of the elements, and this screen adaptation of the play-like her egregious Beatles movie "Across the Universe" (2007)-is primarily an exercise in eccentric (and, I would argue, empty) spectacle.

A watered-down satire of the pharmaceutical industry.

This is the art-house equivalent of a Clive Barker splatterfest, punctuated by mildly amusing stabs at Lynchian absurdity and compromised by an incoherent plot twist that would leave M. Night Shyamalan rolling his eyes.

Unfortunately, this is one of those movies with a twist ending that turns a character inside out, revealing earlier scenes to be essentially fraudulent and more or less invalidating one's emotional investment in the story. No one ever walked out of a Hitchcock movie feeling as cheated as this made me feel.

Unfortunately, as the opening title might suggest, the filmmakers have punted on the hard cinematic work of making the incredible seem credible; instead they've turned Russell's story into a broad farce with one wocka-wocka gag after another.

Visual-effects wizards Greg and Colin Strause directed, showing more affinity for the city's steel and glass than for any of the characters.

The paltry theme is that we can't predict the future, but I spent part of the time calculating how many more feeble movies Allen will make, based on his productivity rate (one per year), his batting average (four duds for every success), his current age (74), and his father's longevity (Martin Konigsberg lived to be 100). Are you ready for 20 more remakes of "Manhattan"?

As a drama this is rote, as a musical it's uninspired, and as a comedy it's adolescent; ultimately it's a mess, unsure what it wants to be.

To judge from this agonizing documentary, sniveling man-child Joaquin Phoenix was put on earth to make us appreciate Crispin Glover for the level-headed fellow he is.

Rodriguez retreats into gruesome violence and flaccid comedy, grasping feebly for topical relevance by referencing the current immigration fracas.

The scenes in which Charlie plays catch with the ghost of his Red Sox-happy brother are only the most mawkish in a movie whose every element is calculated to set a 12-year-old girl's heart thumping.

Based on a novel by Jonathan Ames, this drearily quirky mess wants to be "Secretary" for submissive males, but it's just a sitcom in a powdered wig and size 17 pumps.

As it turns out, what's going on is yet another cinematic rip-off, this time of “The Exorcist.” Apparently rec stands not for record but for recycle

The current national priorities should be as follows: reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan.

Director Taylor Hackford ("Ray") seems to be aiming for a big "Boogie Nights" social canvas, though the movie's risible prize-fight sequence is more reminiscent of the later "Rocky" sequels.

Cruise and Diaz have worked together before (in Vanilla Sky), but this is their first summer-movie pairing, and their star qualities are so similar--dazzling looks, good comedic chops, complete emotional vacuity--that together, instead of romantic chemistry they generate a sort of giddy, blinding falseness.

The result, messily directed by Jimmy Hayward, begins affably enough as a random slew of Leone-style squint-a-thons and shoot-outs but then loses it way in a dopey, anachronism-happy sci-fi plot.

Bob DeRosa and Ted Griffin wrote the script, whose plummeting one-liners leave no actor unscathed.

The drama is torpid, the astronomy lessons pedantic, and the spear-and-sandal production values flat-out cheesy. The whole thing is also historically ludicrous.

Thanks to writer-director Michael Patrick King, I now have a fair idea how it might feel to be stoned to death with scented candles.

Using blasts of shrill, high-decibel noise in place of actual scares has become a common horror-movie tactic, the cinematic equivalent of botox, silicone, and penile-enhancement surgery. Producer Michael Bay and director Samuel Bayer deploy the tactic so regularly in this remake of Wes Craven's 1984 classic that after a while I just plugged my ears.

Written and directed by Tom Six--who doesn't seem to realize that movie theaters rely on popcorn sales--this nasty stuff plays like a cross between "Saw," "Naked Lunch," and "Bride of the Monster."

As romantic comedies go, this is the worst drivel I've seen since Nia Vardalos's "I Hate Valentine's Day."

By the end of this 124-minute drama I'd have settled for ANYONE else, but like most visits with irritating people, the movie lingers, sharpening one's judgment.

This remake is interesting mainly for the chance to see top-flight acting talent labor over dialogue so leaden you could cast bullets from it.

Years on the Hannah Montana TV series have not adequately prepared Miley Cyrus for screen acting.

Inexplicably, Butler continues to get work in romantic comedies despite his limited range and boorish persona.

Has exactly the same premise (Repo! The Genetic Opera).

Allen Coulter (Hollywoodland) directed this morose and sluggish drama, which gets more mileage from Pattinson's anguished profile than from Will Fetters's thunderously overwritten screenplay.

Nothing to see here, keep moving.

Valueless as entertainment, it’s still useful as a disambiguation tool for those who confuse Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel, or Taylor Dayne and Taylor Swift.

Josh Duhamel plays the smitten sports reporter who helps her mount her big art show, "Pain"--a fitting title, given the agony induced by this godawful comedy.

This feature debut by writer-director Scott Stewart may sound like an enjoyably goofy theo-horror romp, but it's a serious penance.

In middle age Jackie Chan can't keep coasting on boyish charm, as evidenced by this dreadful family comedy that does him no favors with its opening title sequence.

The very idea of handing him over to professional lad Guy Ritchie (who directed Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), to be played as a punch-throwing quipster by Robert Downey Jr., is so profoundly stupid one can only step back in dismay.

Soporific comedy.

Maybe the self-consciously stoopid humor works better in microbursts, but at 75 minutes it's a total drag.

Even Herzog loyalists will have to concede that this fact-based 2009 hostage drama is a serious dud.

The current vogue for all things vampiric is ripe for a satirical drubbing, but this repulsive comedy is part of the problem, not the solution.

Overwrought indie crime drama.

Soulless, hyperbolic actioner.

A total train wreck.

Osunsanmi's big formal innovation tunrs out to be the split-screen pairing of patently bogus "archival" black-and-white video that shows alleged abductees undergoing hypnosis and color "reenactments" of same. Ultimately it's up to you, the viewer, to decide which is more boring.

A witless whack at sci-fi fanboys.

After nine years, Duffy has coughed up a sequel, and like the first movie it's energetic, proudly juvenile, and reverently derivative.

There are fascinating moments... but these are overshadowed by an endless stream of sound bites and pep talks to volunteers.

With any luck this biopic of Amelia Earhart will also vanish without a trace. Hilary Swank is sorely miscast as the legendary aviator.

Generally I don’t mind a little recreational fascism as long as it’s deep-fried in savory violent vengeance, but this overwrought mess gives vigilantism a bad name.

A more helpful title for this date movie would have been Couples, Retreat!

The film reveals its true colors at the end, with a plug for the New Age dude ranch the entrepreneurial couple has since established in Texas.

The high school is so sanitized that there are no drugs, cutthroat competition, or--inconceivably for a theatrical milieu--no gay students.

The premise for this sci-fi actioner makes sense for about four seconds, after which you begin to wonder why everyone on the planet would willingly become a shut-in.

The sort of thing that makes you wish you were playing a video game instead.

By the end, when Moore presents himself as a lone crusader for justice and wraps yellow crime-scene tape around the AIG building, his reasoning is so muddled that he can’t distinguish an economic system (corporate capitalism) from a political one (representative democracy).

The dialogue is often grating, and some of the situations are distastefully cute, although John Carroll Lynch (Fargo) has a strong supporting turn as a grief workshop client.

Overall, though, the flashes of competence just emphasize the extent to which the film has no idea what it's doing.

The boring, humorless pair do nothing to refute the image of eco-worriers as preening, puritanical douchebags addicted to symbolic gesture and allergic to cost-benefit analysis.

Contrived, sentimental, tonally bipolar, and as predictable as clockwork.

Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor were responsible for the delirious "Crank" and "Crank 2" but left the magic behind when they threw together this tedious mash-up of "Tron," "Rollerball," "The Matrix," etc.

Packaged as a romantic comedy but devoid of comedy or romance, this baffling train wreck stars Sandra Bullock as a tediously kooky constructor of crossword puzzles for a Sacramento newspaper.

The Rube Goldberg variations are repetitive and devoid of the visual snap that helped distinguish James Wong’s "Final Destination" (2000).