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

Hard-core chick shlock, weakened by odd shifts in tone and a slack pace, but elevated by a luminous performance by Natalie Portman.

Even by the modest standards of the genre, the ending is jaw-droppingly ridiculous.

Zookeeper barely avoids a zero-star rating because of James.

A messy -- but uproarious, timely and provocative -- farce.

The only truly lethal weapons in the criminally unfunny action comedy Let’s Be Cops are the lame script, putrid direction and pair of sitcom stars mugging nonstop in frantic pursuit of laughs that have fled over the state line.

The entire movie seems to have about the same budget as a 30-second sneaker commercial. I'm not talking Nike, either. I'm talking a commercial for Steve's Second-Hand Sneaker World and Falafel Emporium that you'd see on NY1 News at 3:08 a.m.

Director Bolton could easily have exploited the film's unsettling issues, but he takes a nonsensationalized approach that leaves viewers to decide the moral questions for themselves.

What follows is very gruesome indeed, though the footage of people being chased by hideous ghosts soon becomes rather dull.

An impressive supporting cast can't save this painfully unfunny, ham-fisted mockumentary poking fun at reality TV shows.

Rookie director Sean Kirkpatrick keeps stomping on the drama pedal while blowing the cliché horn, yielding scene after tired scene of predictable developments as the principals keep shoving guns into mouths and screaming obscenities.

A soggy cannoli of a domestic dramedy.

A likable trio of actors struggles valiantly but ultimately fails to keep this dopey buddy comedy afloat.

Excruciatingly maudlin.

When you awake, it may all seem like a bad dream - but why is your wallet missing $11? Scary.

Epic waste of celluloid.

I haven't laughed harder at anything this year, but I would have a hard time recommending this gender-bending gut-buster to anyone who doesn't have a high threshold for crude sexual humor and stereotypes.

A refreshingly unpretentious little thriller.

While the original was an art-house success, this English-language redo, now getting a one-week run after sitting on the shelf for a year and a half, doesn't measure up.

Rates an "E" for effort -- and a "B" for boring.

There are times when the urban dialect is so thick, you wish the film came with subtitles.

One of those Deep Dark Secret movies, the dull indie Lake City combines a wholly uninteresting family mystery with a wholly unconvincing crime drama.

In Vehicle 19, Paul Walker is back behind the wheel again, but this time it’s a rented minivan and the plot is brainless even for a Paul Walker movie. Get ready for “The Slow and the Spurious.”

Excruciatingly unfunny.

It reeks of contempt for the audience. This is not just a "B-movie" -- it's a B-movie that fails to entertain on any level.

Aside from an additional 30 minutes or so of plot, Trade of Innocents offers no more than a middling episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

Shooting in South Africa and Botswana, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee never lacks for atmosphere, but his film is painfully awkward in execution, from the stiff dialogue to the time-padding slo-mo sequences and glaring CGI.

The cast includes rappers Da Brat, Mos Def and MC Lyte. Their fans might get some pleasure from Civil Brand. Everybody else best stay away.

Embarrassingly bad - the kind of slapdash exercise that gives even Hollywood formula a bad name, while doing little justice to the sport.

Boasts one of the most ludicrous plots ever committed to digital video.

Watchable even when what's going on makes no sense whatsoever.

It isn't a really good movie, but there's real talent in it.

A root canal seems a more pleasurable way to pass two hours than this interminable vanity knockoff of "Traffic" about troubled Angelenos.

The one highlight is Julia Nickson, who breathes life into the role of Ethan's evil stepmom.

Most damning of all, the dark mystery hinted at throughout is revealed so lazily it lands with zero impact. It’s long been clear that Cage has opted for quantity in his movie roles, but maybe a little quality control wouldn’t hurt.

At the risk of sounding 100, I think it’s regrettable this film had to be shot in digital 3-D. Both those formats actually do a frustrating disservice to the depiction of the action, making them look choppier, more flickery and occasionally blurrier than they would otherwise.

Within five minutes you’ll guess why John Cusack, not overly encumbered with big film roles these days, didn’t return for the sequel: The script is monotonous, meandering and witless.

This mess was directed with no skill whatsoever by Jesse Dylan, whose father, Bob, once urged us all to get stoned.

About two-thirds of the way through, a stupid, hyperbolic sensibility takes control of the project, running it screaming off the rails.

Calling Boys and Girls the year's worst movie makes it sound more entertaining than it actually is.

It’s often hard to figure out who’s winning, much less care about it. One thing is certain: Nobody is going to be demanding a rematch.

If there is anything positive in The Girl Next Door, it is the brave performance by Auffarth, who is in her early 20s. Other than that, there's little reason to see the movie. Unless, of course, you get off on watching the sexual exploitation of underage girls.

The considerable comic talents of Alison Brie (“Community”) are squandered by this exhaustingly quirky indie romance.

The movie takes us on a journey to an ugly, contentious period in our misty, ancient past - all the way back to four months ago, when "Apocalypto" came out.

A repugnant little indie black comedy, poorly acted in hideous-looking digital video, guaranteed to send audiences fleeing for the nearest shower.

Small fry will learn an important lesson taking in the recycled storylines of Ratchet & Clank: Like nearly all recycling, it’s garbage.

Desperately unfunny.

Excruciatingly lame and laughless romantic comedy.

Features some good acting, but most of it doesn't ring true.

The pretentious and unrelievedly glum first feature from music-video and advertising director Nenad Cicin-Sain, The Time Being looks sharp, but it’s about as dramatically satisfying as watching paint dry.

Pretty and pleasing, but no more. A bon-bon, not a meal.

I have no idea how to blow up a two-page fairy tale into 100 minutes of blockbuster, but frankly I was hoping for more backstory about the titular cape in Red Riding Hood. Thread count? Machine washability?

A slapdash, sporadically funny cross between the infamous “Ishtar’’ and the mercifully forgotten “American Dreamz.’’

Even with appearances by such dependable performers as Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgård, Christopher Plummer and Jean Reno, the interminable Hector and the Search for Happiness will most likely inspire audiences to search for the exit door.

An appallingly unfunny and unromantic romantic comedy.

As for Gooding, he's sadly gone to the dogs -- Snow Dogs has got to be his most humiliating role since "Lightning Jack."

This must be one of the worst movies ever to get a big-screen release. If it weren't so boring, this unbelievably bad indie sex comedy would be worth going to for five minutes of laughs at its sheer incompetence.

Pulse bears more than a slight resemblance to a 1994 American horror called "Ghost in the Machine." They didn't screen that stinker in advance for critics, either.

Like the artificially sweetened junk food it is, this all goes down pretty easily.

This is less a documentary than a wholly uncritical celebration.

Ranks high on the squirm meter. But, unlike in most of her earlier work, there's no emotional payoff.

No "Schindler's List," to put it mildly.

You Again could be taught at film schools as an example of how not to make a movie. And how not to humiliate veteran actors.

Androgynous Clea DuVall's performance shines through a foggily told, vaguely acted coming-of-age tale.

Penn makes us take the leap required by Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson's screenplay -- you end up deeply caring about Sam and Lucy.

What a bloody disappointment Stigmata is!

The script is obvious and cliched and the action is more disgusting than frightening.

It’s all as pointless as the asthma inhaler with which one character treats his advanced lung cancer.

Can’t somebody come up with a monster that does something more interesting than run at you screaming, “Yeeaaaarrrrgh”?

It’s clear why this indie was shelved for so long: It’s a mess.

Extremely cool-looking in the manner of "Sin City,'' but clumsily staged, slackly acted and mind-numbingly dull, Israeli director Guy Moshe's English-language fantasy is set in a future when guns, and apparently coherent conversations, have been outlawed.

Actually, Bruce, what stinks is the script — which is woefully lacking the kind of one-liners and memorable bad guys that helped make working-class hero McClane so iconic he’s still around after 25 years. Even the action sequences are pretty much by the numbers this time.

Even an appearance by Alec Baldwin as Moretz's eventual - if highly unlikely - savior isn't enough to keep Hick from leaving a bad taste.

A big, incoherent bore, interesting only as an example of assembly-line movie-making gone awry.

Love and Honor may be politically clueless, but Hemsworth and the student journalist he hooks up with (fellow Aussie Teresa Palmer of “Warm Bodies’’) do make an undeniably attractive couple.

Director Christian Charles gets some comic mileage from the inimitable Walsh and Rae, but it’s ultimately hard to care too much about a caddish protagonist like Norman — or, for that matter, about the clichéd “women are crazy!” sentiment that hums nastily under the antics of Dori’s unorthodox family gathering.

Rickman has fun playing a lecherous old bastard of a professor in Nobel Son, a pulpy would-be comic thriller, but the movie doesn't deserve him.

The latter is played by Parker Posey, who looks baffled throughout. As well she should.

There’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.

Lifelines is a tiny movie, made for $385,000, but it strikes enough strange chords to make it resonate.

If I Were You has more than its share of laughs, but director Joan Carr-Wiggin needed to cut half an hour to make this fly without interest flagging. She had the exact same problem with her last movie, “A Previous Engagement.’’

Racist, stupid and boasting cheesy effects.

Marlene Rhein has directed 40 music videos, including ones for Tupac Shakur and Amy Winehouse. Judging by this, her feature debut, she should stick with the music.

A preposterous supernatural thriller that inexplicably managed to sign up Julianne Moore to star.

The acting, camera work and writing are all crude and amateurish, even by the standards of student films.

A shallow, stilted romantic thriller.

Sitcomish, stereotypical and sporadically funny romantic comedy.

Not only is Adored amateurish and mawkish even by the standards of American "gaysploitation" cinema, it's weirdly shy about showing nudity and sex.

Not only isn't the new effort up to the standards of the anime, it's bloody awful by any standard.

May be predictable and silly, but it's never dull.

The film’s mix of elements of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “Bad Santa” is amusing.

There isn't enough plot in this amateurish mope-athon to fill up a half-hour TV show.

A labored romantic farce whose only asset is Carlos Leon, best known as the father of Madonna's daughter Lourdes.

The only possible relief from director Xavier Gens' abusively bleak survivalist scenario is how implausible it is.

“I’d rather gouge my eyes out with hot spoons!’’ De Niro exclaims at one point. I’m not sure exactly what he was talking about, but I’d like to think it referred to the prospect of being forced to watch The Big Wedding.

Even duller than the original, but will fulfill its function as a feature-length commercial for Pokemon merchandise.

The Hitcher is the Jessica Simpson of psycho killer flicks - cheerfully in touch with its own brainlessness.

An ugly, unfunny, headache-inducing fairy-tale spoof.