The real thrills consist of one monologue brilliantly delivered by Manuel Tadros as a bar owner, and most of Gabriel Yared’s old-school orchestral score.

Kids should see Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. It'll help prepare them for a lifetime of mediocre entertainment ahead.

The feel-bad movie of the holiday season, Spike Lee’s often-repellent Americanized reimagining of Korean director Chan-Wook Park’s twisty 2004 revenge thriller Oldboy is relentlessly gruesome, self-consciously shocking and pretty much pointless.

Armie Hammer has given several of the worst performances in recent years — see, or rather don’t, “Mirror Mirror” and “J. Edgar.” The big surprise in The Man from U.N.C.L.E is that Henry Cavill is even worse.

A dismal, low-energy affair.

There are some bright one-liners in the beginning, but the comedy/drama mix is an uneasy one, especially considering the shabby way the film treats McKenna, as a tart who’s just there to improve some yuppie sex lives.

A movie steeped in sin that squats awkwardly in a cinematic purgatory between tawdry and talky.

Next, which makes "National Treasure" look like a model of narrative logic, is almost beyond criticism.

Jeremy Piven's infamous "sushi defense" for skipping out on a Broadway role is easier to swallow than his performance as a scuzzy auto liquidator who sees the light in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.

Can that achingly abstract thing called love be captured in a beaker or dissected like a frog splayed on a slab? That's the belabored premise of this dorky, clinically structured romance cooked up in the Sundance Institute's screenwriter and filmmaker labs.

It's the audience that gets punk'd in this crass and sloppy comic recycling.

Hoot peaks during its wordless opening credits sequence, which swoops delightfully around Florida scenery. That, the cute owls and the easygoing songs by Jimmy Buffett, who also plays one of Roy's teachers, are the only things worth your trouble.

There is hardly a moment during this overlong, stunningly smug exercise in moral self-satisfaction when you actually care about a character, real or invented.

The year's most beautiful movie -- and surely one of the dullest.

It's not much fun to watch people go to raves. And it's even less fun to listen to people talk about how much fun it is to go to raves.

The shallow, derivative and contrived British heist thriller Wasteland lives down to its unfortunate name.

Bel Ami is handsome enough, although the directorial skill runs mostly to careful framing of magnificent bosoms, Pattinson's included.

The movie’s strength is, surprisingly, the narration, spoken with gentle gravity by Moni Moshonov.

Sir, no, sir.

Lucky “Day Shift” has an Oscar winner in Foxx, who’s appealingly heroic, and gags about a burning sensation on characters’ privates.

Most of this film is humorless and with not so much of a score as a subwoofer.

If you go to the movies to ogle topless young women, Simon is definitely for you. If, on the other hand, you want something more cerebral with your $10 ticket and overpriced snacks, stay clear of this Dutch melodrama.

A dull, dumb and derivative horror film.

Boring movie.

Aloft is less like a story than a dream, populated with gorgeous people and symbolism you can interpret any way you like.

A test of endurance, and not just because you need a rather stronger word than "explicit" to describe this long-unreleased, self-consciously provocative film.

Despite some genuinely funny scenes, American Desi turns out to be inferior to the as yet unreleased "ABCD" and even last year's "Chutney Popcorn."

It proves once again that it doesn't matter if the camera is dancing a jig on the ceiling if the storytelling is no good.

This relentlessly mediocre romantic comedy is basically a pretty arthritic third-generation Xerox of "Annie Hall," with Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci in the old Allen and Keaton parts in a probably quixotic attempt to court the youth market.

"The Waterboy" was funny because Sandler doesn't look like a football player. When he swaggers around The Longest Yard starting fights and taking beatings without flinching, he only reminds us how little Steve McQueen and how much Woody Allen there is in him.

As misconceived as it is corny and predictable.

The demands of formula eventually stifle anything that even looks like inspiration or honesty.

The only darkness here — besides the dingy-looking images dimmed by 3-D glasses — is the murky plot, which is as silly as it is arbitrary.

There are a few chuckles here and there, and there are odd wisps of cleverness in the script by Steve Adams, but for the most part, Envy is a film that doesn't know where it's going.

Has little to offer beyond titillation and pretty landscapes.

Devil, make a better movie.

Adams and the school's students and teachers deserve an A-plus, although the film rates a much lower grade. It unfolds lifelessly, as Binzer parades a contingent of talking heads before the camera in what could pass for an infomercial.

By far, the highlight of Minions is hearing The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life” over the closing credits — the first time I think I’ve ever heard it used in a movie. Otherwise, the prequel to “Despicable Me” is like trying to form a rock band out of three Ringos.

This Sundance dud is a turgid gay soap opera with a limp twist, showcasing Robin Williams at his maudlin worst.

Its script isn't worth the papyrus it's inscribed on.

Self/less is a celluloid smoothie blended from dozens of familiar elements, but it’s neither tasty nor nutritious.

The dramatic history of the Soviet space program deserves a far more competent documentary than this amateurish Dutch production.

Any one episode of "The Sopranos" would send this ill-conceived folly to sleep with the fishes.

A forgettable — and occasionally borderline offensive — animated tale of turkeys trying to take back Thanksgiving.

With its starkly contrasted visuals (fierce blacks, Clorox whites, a dash of unholy crimson), The Spirit may resemble a comic book more than any live-action film yet made, but it makes "Max Payne" look like a gleaming jewel of storytelling by comparison.

Consistently stale but not altogether unpleasant.

The sometimes painfully sincere and slow-moving For Greater Glory clearly aspires to be inspirational, but history won't cooperate. The Cristeros triumphed not because of their faith, but because the United States exerted diplomatic pressure to protect its oil interests in Mexico.

It's easy to spot a failed tearjerker, though: All the characters are sobbing all over each other while the people in the audience check their watches.

This is the time of the year movie studios traditionally dump their mistakes into theaters -- and boy, did Disney make a whopper with The Count of Monte Cristo.

A movie more interested in shocking than in entertaining.

Ryan spends much of the grubby-looking boxing drama Against the Ropes with her face screwed up in distaste, as if a dirty sock is being waved under her nose. Perhaps it's because the movie she's in stinks.

A shame that this indie's willingness to trade in stereotype leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

The Lost Kingdom isn’t well done, but it isn’t miserable either.

Sort of "The Da Vinci Code for Dummies."

So tedious it's almost worth watching to see just how bad acting, inadequate direction and most important, a criminally crass and unimaginative screenplay can make so little out of a proven idea.

One of those "Lifetime"-esque horror stories of evil husbands in the suburbs.

Schmaltzy and contrived.

Good-natured but mostly unfunny.

Bidding to be the “Terms of Endearment” of zombie movies, Maggie sucks all the life out of an idea that just won’t die.

It's no funnier than your average grade-school biology lesson and less pedagogically useful than your typical Farrelly brothers comedy.

Some solid performances and pretty scenery don't do much to conceal that there's a whole heap of nothing at the core of this slight coming-of-age/coming-out tale.

Large chunks of the film seem like a record played at the wrong speed: The tempo of the dialogue as delivered doesn't match the lines as written, and the filmmakers are too lazy or too inept to make their convoluted premise jibe with any recognizable idea of human nature.

The film is light on those kitschy musical numbers that make Bollywood movies fun to watch.

I tried squinting. Didn’t work. I turned my head slightly to the side. Uh-uh. No matter what I tried, I could not, cannot and never will be able to see Ewan McGregor as Jesus Christ.

Nestled inside that warm setup is cloying dialogue, condescending voice work and confusing story tangents.

Repeatedly shoots for laughs -- but ends up mostly firing blanks.

Ron Howard's bio-pic is an Oscar-baiting fairy tale that manipulates the audience at every turn of the clich.

The real unflinching truth is that an average newspaper reporter can do a more artful, compassionate job with a drug-war story than this movie does.

Aside from the very occasional stab with a dagger, John prefers to shoot people at point-blank range. It gets old fast.

Boasts exceptionally attractive locations, but its painfully amateurish plotting, dialogue and acting -- combined with slack pacing -- make this Beijing-set indie romance something of a trial.

Christopher Plummer confronts Nazi horrors again in Atom Egoyan’s preposterous thriller, which squanders a terrific performance by the Oscar-winning actor.

Has precious little to add to the canon -- and does so in a highly melodramatic manner.

This maudlin, fact-inspired and anti-feminist dramedy is no "Far From Heaven" or "The Hours."

Fine for fans? Sure. This stuff is crack for fans. Crack is really bad!

This lame teenage James Bond will leave audiences neither shaken nor stirred.

The movie is about a situation, not a story — there’s little narrative momentum — and as is often the case with movies about journalists, the mood of smug sanctimony becomes unbearable.

Five minutes before The Golden Compass started, I was wondering when it was going to start. Forty minutes into it, I was wondering exactly the same thing.

It's a simple-minded celebration of speed that pretends to be nothing else, even throwing in the occasional wink to acknowledge its own silliness.

First-time feature director Jeff Preiss has a top-notch duo in John Hawkes, as the affable but troubled Joe, and Elle Fanning as his teen daughter, Amy, but neither can really get out from under the film’s heavy-handed tone, a one-note trip down a bleak memory lane.

It's a worthy idea, but the uninspired scripts, acting and direction never rise above the level of an after-school TV special.

There is also something surgically sterile. The movie sounds as though it was recorded in a padded chamber instead of a bustling school, and it looks like it came from some alternate world, one that basks in the eternal sunshine of the spotless skin.

Snoozy and unconvincing.

As a comedy, The Brothers Grimsby is weak and scattershot, but it’s useful as an unintended self-indictment of the chattering classes’ disgust and disdain for white working folk.

So consistently silly and overwrought that it flirts with the elusive so-bad-it's-entertaining category.

Grunting and boarlike, Gérard Depardieu supplies a one-note rendition of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Abel Ferrara’s peculiarly unilluminating Welcome to New York.

The origins story Dracula Untold is Dracula unbold — unoriginal, unimaginative and utterly non-unprecedented. This Vlad the Impaler has all the edge of Vlasic the pickle.

This one is a “different kind of superhero movie,” meaning even more fiercely attached to the mode of artistic expression known as “puberty.”

The Chaperone squanders nice locations and an expert comic performance by Yeardley Smith (the voice of Lisa Simpson) as the teacher trying to supervise the trip.

Note to Greek chorus of execs: Turning a space psychodrama into a “He went to Jared” commercial is pretty low, even for you.

I Saw the Light is as vital as a two-hour shrug.

Shankman's staging of the numbers - especially the leaden choreography and hackneyed locations such as the Hollywood sign - was far sloppier and less creative than for his last musical, the vastly superior "Hairspray."

Deadly dull.

The material in this spy spoof is, pardon the pun, awfully frayed.

This Canadian-South African labor of love has its heart in the right place, even if the leads seem to have been cast more for their hunky looks than their stiff acting.

Much of this footage might have been illuminating, even fascinating, in 2003. But seven years on, it's ancient history lacking insight, hindsight or a fresh take.

Why make a documentary about these marginal historical figures? Wouldn't one about their famous dad, author of "Death in Venice," etc., be more valuable?

A glacially paced, extremely moist, terminally gloomy and cliché-laden romantic drama with a supernatural twist.

Needlessly violent? No, Rambo is needfully violent. Johnny R. is a man constructed of violence.