Undisciplined and overstuffed with enough surplus plot twists to make your neck ache, The Mexican affects the tousled look of a self-conscious indie.

Director Uwe Boll (House of the Dead) pulls off a nicely staged fistfight in an open-air market at the start, but soon loses his way amid mind-glazing exposition and endless gunfire aimed at bulletproof giant lizards.

Honoré never gets beneath these characters' sunburned skins, and well before the end, the film tips irretrievably over into the realm of absurdity.

Both character and metaphor have gone to the dogs, leaving a slew of fart and burp jokes and laying bare Dreamcatcher's driving purpose, which is to make multiplexes full of little boys yuk it up, then gross them out, creep them out.

Sienna Miller captures much of Edie’s physical manner and some of her voice (though she’s nowhere near deep enough), but there’s nothing she can do with material that requires her to mope and pout for the bulk of her screen time.

Chai's structure and pacing are disconcertingly slack. Missing the loose ends and ambiguities of actual conversation, the dialogue makes characters sound like they're delivering speeches rather than interacting.

This is a shameless mélange of plot elements from already generic Disney knockoffs.

The slathered-on visual textures aren’t quite enough, however, to distract us from the glib, leftie posturing, the lazy writing and the drug-deep existential platitudes.

Isn’t as obnoxiously awful as, say, "Epic Movie"; it’s simply not funny in the least.

Insipid embarrassment.

Stay Alive is death porn without the porn: Director William Brent Bell's pre-gore cutaways should enrage even those horror buffs for whom suspense is irrelevant, to say nothing of the fact that the movie's only real scare tactic is playing what sounds like a reverbed electric razor on the soundtrack.

A toxic combination of obvious bromides and talentless filmmaking, writer-director Ted Fukuda's schmaltzy, tone-deaf romantic drama sets your teeth on edge from the outset and doesn't let up for 103 minutes.

After a zippy first hour, the wackos wear out their welcome and the director, perversely, fails to show the big concert.

Bruckheimer's latest is in some crucial respects worse than those earlier blockbuster bids ("Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Coyote Ugly") -- certainly it's more fraudulent -- because unlike those films, which don't claim to be about anything other than thrills and tits, Remember the Titans means to be about race.

If only the whole thing were as funny as an Albert Brooks movie.

No doubt, Levinson thought he was making this generation's "Dr. Strangelove." What he's actually made is a desperate, ponderous sop to progressives that caters to all of the left's worst fears about voter fraud, corporate malfeasance and the impossibility of effecting real change.

Lazily directed by Charles Stone III (the man behind Budweiser's "Whassup?!" campaign) from a leaden script by Matthew Cirulnick and novelist Thulani Davis.

The Duffs don't even fully commit to their characters here -- they’'e seemingly undecided about whether they can get away with being shallow and bratty without ruining their family-friendly images.

As a calling card for the stylistic talents of a new filmmaker, writer-director Anna Chi's first feature is a success. As drama, it's a dud.

Like "Life Is Beautiful" before it, Imagining Argentina juxtaposes horrific images of torture and humiliation against gooey optimism and thinks it's saying something profound about human resilience in the process.

To help Prinze sail past the eventually unbearable clichés of Kevin Falls and John Gatins' script, director Mike Tollin has assembled an impressive supporting cast.

Flat-footed.

Director Jay Chandrasekhar (Super Troopers, Club Dread) does a fine job with the car jumps. Just try to wake up whenever you hear "Yee-haw."

Feels like a movie made by men whose world views were shaped, primarily, by "Porky's" and "American Pie."

This brittle little confection from director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) may drive you up the wall -- unless you're willing to settle for great frocks, stylish production design and wicked opening credits.

Hardcore fans will appreciate the handful of genuinely gnarly aerial sequences, but these gravity-defying stunts, which can be thrilling as part of a five-minute James Bond pre-credit sequence, grow very tedious when repeated over almost two hours.

This is a decidedly bizarre movie, nicely photographed and designed -- someone spent some money -- but built entirely around dialogue so stilted and unrevealing that it’s little wonder poor LaVorgna screams it.

Harold’s glum overplotting squashes the sick humor and the innate fear of hospitals that gives the premise what kick it has; not even Craig McKay’s clever editing can defibrillate the preposterous ending.

Where "Amores Perros" was a feast of energy, wit and imagination, 21 Grams is like a starvation diet -- a movie that wallows so profoundly in its own misery that watching it is like atoning for some sin you didn't commit.

Callahan's feature debut is a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

This Hannibal is a stick-in-the-mud altogether lacking in the wit, gourmet appetites and romantic flair required of any surrogate for Sir Anthony Hopkins. By the end of two full hours, it's only Harris' head you long to see on a plate.

Blakeson's feature-length calling card has storyboarded austerity and sadomasochistic promise but in the end lets the game play out in a familiar flurry of double-crossings, two-timings and false deaths, content to only fetishize itself.

Doggedly refusing artifice as if cinematic beauty were a filthy capitalist plot, Yedaya drowns her characters in realist grit, a colorless screenplay and no score to speak of, rendering this open book of a movie alienating in all the wrong ways.

Nepotism can't account for the movie's stylistic horrors. Writer-director Arjun Sablok, a TV veteran with visual ADD, has pitched the candy-colored cuteness at a frenzy that verges on hysteria.

Meant to take the scrappy and often ingeniously choreographed dance sequences to the next level, the result is stalled between floors: Some sick moves get even sicker; some become distorted and freakishly distracting.

The result is a soulless piece of product, an ungainly hybrid of sketchy hand-drawn characters in blocky CGI environments, derivative at just about every level.

Remarkably unfunny.

The clammy eccentricity on display -- is like a wet blanket, while Colin Friesen's lazy screenplay has all the wit of a slushball. "March of the Penguins" was funnier and edgier.

Even when the film does strike some genuinely heart-tugging notes, they’re invariably shattered by such ham-fisted lines as “You really are blind.” At times, it’s enough to make you wish you were deaf.

As dull to listen to as it is gorgeous to look at.

It's amazing that anyone still thinks this kind of shit can fly.

This is "Crash" with gun violence substituted for racism, although the tone of director–co-writer Aric Avelino's debut feature may be closer to one of those pious public-safety films that used to be shown to schoolchildren in order to frighten them out of potential bad behavior.

The film portrays a family undone by grief over the death of a loved one; that, in any event, is its plot synopsis. More accurately, the film is a wallow of authorial narcissism, and a tedious, unrelenting, uninteresting wallow at that.

Anne Heche is just another neo-noir minx on the make, while Vince Vaughn, grinning and leering as Norman Bates, sinks the movie.

Country Strong is sillier - and more tone-deaf - than Paltrow's advice website, GOOP.

Not quite aptly titled, but close, writer-director Ryan Schifrin's cheapo horror opus pits everyone's favorite hirsute hominoid against the denizens of a remote town nestled at the base of a mountain called Suicide Peak. It's not much of a contest.

Despite the film's aspirations to soul healing, its uplift remains mechanical, like an escalator's.

Never quite deciding if it wants to parody or uphold the ongoing cultural romance with the Pimp, Pootie Tang mostly feels like a sad retread.

About the only good thing to say about this mess is that it's rotten enough that even Altman cultists may be forced to reconsider their devotion.

Directed lifelessly by sitcom vet David Kendall (Growing Pains), Dirty Deeds never shows real curiosity about its characters' pubescent world.

V for Vendetta is a dud - far too long at nearly two and a half hours, with flat, grungy visuals, choppy editing and no sense of urgency. But as a political work, it's something else - heavy-handed, reactionary and flat-out stupid. (For the record, Moore has publicly distanced himself from the film, saying it bears precious little resemblance to his original creation.)

Long-shelved 2001 clunker.

In the end it's only "The Chanukah Song, Part 3," playing over the closing credits, that manages to capture the joy of the season.

This movie's already been entertaining (or boring) airline passengers for months.

FX whiz John Bruno (Terminator 2, True Lies) makes a dubious directorial debut here, juggling monsters that are icky but not scary; an out-of-control Donald Sutherland as the tug’s Ahabesque captain.

Cheap, shoddy, crass and depressing fun for the whole family -- by which I mean 8-year-old boys.

While Gens can splatter gore with the best of them -- early in the film, a human body packed with C4 goes off in graphic detail -- he fails to stage so much as a single rousing action scene, even when he has four double-fisted swordsmen facing off inside an abandoned subway car. Game over. The audience loses.

This anemic genre parody from two of the six writers of "Scary Movie" strives for the goofball precision of the brothers Zucker and, long before it reaches the end of its 70-odd minutes, gives you newfound respect for the comic genius of the brothers Wayans (two of the other writers of "Scary Movie").

Overblown melodrama, as muddle-headed as it is palpably sincere.

It's one of those rare movie failures that truly warrants being called ambitious.

Some will see this as a movie about how we're all God’s children. I saw only the misanthropic fulminations of Jensen's runaway ego.

Too much of a mess to say anything with assurance, pieced together as it is from mismatched institutional movies such as "Cool Hand Luke" and "Shock Corridor" -- with "Lord of the Flies" thrown in for good measure -- and turning on plot points that simply don't wash.

Strictly Urban Comedy 101, as if the filmmakers had neither the inclination nor the chops to move the genre past timeworn stereotypes.

Drawn from two Earhart bios, Mira Nair’s dull hagiography comes in about 111 minutes too long.

Increasingly, reviewing the latest Woody Allen movie has taken on the feel of a dreaded ritual, an annual excursion into careless filmmaking, desperate shtick, and vainglorious misanthropy disguised as cuddly neurosis.

The director and her capable cast appear to be caught in a heady whirl of New Age–inspired good intentions, but the spell they cast isn't the least bit mesmerizing.

As the cop who finds himself in way over his head, kickboxer-turned-actor Conrad Pla turns in a performance of such staggering ineptitude that it almost (key word: almost) reaches a so-bad-it's-good, Plan 9 From Outer Space brilliance.

Try as they might, the two central performers can never overcome the film's underdeveloped core, and are left flailing about amid Nutley's listless, glacial pacing.

It's a dud. To be fair, the source material (to which the film is unfortunately faithful) is itself a wan assemblage of creaky one-liners, overly familiar gay ghetto types and sitcom-inspired shenanigans.

A terrific premise is mangled to a pulp, then beaten to death in this forced mockumentary.

A little bit "pi," a little bit "julien donkey-boy," a little bit "Eraserhead," Buddy Boy doesn't equal these, but offers bizarre pleasures of its own.

The director gives us not just a pop Holocaust but a prettified, palatable Holocaust.

What they don't do often enough is battle anacondas. It's all tease and no payoff.

The direction is lazy and the script thoroughly witless, from its token Bergman references to dialogue that suggests a night in borscht-belt hell.

Of course, it's terrible -- but did it have to be this bad?

Call me the sarcastic sister, but the only things screaming in any convincing way here are the cheap look, epileptic direction and off-key, “edgy” humor. It’s all so ‘80s, I could die.

In forced, quirky tedium, it drags us through love triangles, mommy issues and crying jags that make you want to shake this chick.

He (Berlanti) shoots for bland entertainment and scores.

Monumentally terrible but far too bizarre to be boring.

As Bomb snakes its way toward tragedy, it grates rather than entices. The actors come off more as poseurs than as characters, and the film's political and cultural insights are superficial and old hat.

Traub does her plucky best, coming off as part Judy Blume heroine, part post-WB hipster, and she provides the film with its few and infrequent moments of emotional truth.

An embarrassment of a vanity project, Living the Dream is a film written, directed and starring a real corporate headhunter.

Screenwriters Melissa Carter and Erica Bell (Sleepover) have given Murphy -- perhaps the twitchiest actor of her generation --cutesy quirks to play in lieu of a character.

Making a gay film only slightly less intolerable than its straight counterparts isn't much to be proud of.

Has there ever been a more inept trio of big-city caseworkers? Go ahead, Lilith. Unleash the hounds.

What would a Christian Apocalypse movie look like with a big budget, a talented director, and star power of higher wattage than a discount Baldwin brother? Here comes the answer: like a glum hybrid of the "Final Destination" movies, an Irwin Allen disaster bash, and the kitschiest parts of Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain."

Cry Wolf is one of those movies that's rated PG-13 not because the producers wanted to get the broadest audience possible, but because no one 17 or older would be sucker enough to fall for it.

Even most chemistry majors could probably assemble a more entertaining 76-minute picture than Underdahl's flimsy and dated story.

As the characters mix and mingle, pouring out their tales of woe online and fumbling real-life connections, Weintrob leaves no cliché unturned in getting to root causes of behavior.

Every gag is smothered by the prevailing tone of labored zaniness and generic, plucky "mischief music" alerting discerning viewers to abandon all hope of laughter.

Thai director Kaos (a.k.a. Wych Kaosayananda), making his inauspicious Hollywood debut, still can't breathe any life into it. You'll just want to get back to your Game Boy.

The idiocy and sheer laziness of the whole concept ought to be the sort of thing director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea) could make into glorious cinematic cheese, and occasionally he cuts loose with a swarm of CGI spiders or a final battle that resembles nothing more than a live action game of "Street Fighter II." But he's hamstrung by the PG-13 rating and the budget.

Director Jessy Terrero's spasmodically funny air-travel parody unfailingly counters every one of its genuinely uproarious gags with at least two or three others rooted in retrograde racial panic.

Half a notch above a vanity project, this chipper little number by French director Steve Suissa offers a deadly combination of shamelessness, narcissism and schoolboy comedy.

This hypersleek film is surprisingly lax for its first half... The ending is dumb.

While Kaminski understands that movie terror comes in at the eyes, he has little skill for connecting sensation to hearts and minds.

All might be good for a flask-to-the-theater laugh, if not for the unconscionable price gouging.

After a first hour that plays like a bad TV show, Sommers hits his groove with an over-the-top Paris chase sequence that, in turn, leads to an underwater finale that’s absurdly overproduced, momentarily diverting, and then instantly forgettable.