Their '50s-style comedy mugging not only don't come across to Americans, it's hard to believe even New Zealanders would care.

Cop Car is an instance of what happens when an airy indie filmmaker tries to “do genre” and winds up being as convincing as John Kerry putting down his demitasse and dressing up in hunting gear.

A brightly colored but terminally dull cartoon.

For connoisseurs of the “Grudge” series, the brief prelude of this fourth installation links it to the ones that came before. Everybody else, good luck making that connection.

Matthew Broderick graduates from "boyish" and lurches straight into "curmudgeonly" in the would-be indie heartwarmer Wonderful World.

One sequence is amusing: a number called “Fairytale Life (After the Spell)” in which panini grills and espresso machines sing along like they live in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. You struggle to care about the rest.

A good cast equipped with cute names is forced to muddle through terminal whimsy in this less-than-magical adaptation of Aimee Bender's adult fairy tale, sluggishly directed by Marilyn Agrelo, who more successfully helmed the delightful documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom."

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."

A kid unversed in other name-brand fantasy movies might go for The Seeker, but in 2007 it's redundant, a puttering Potter without wit and whimsy.

"Precious" worked partly because it did not wrap its sordid tale in Christian uplift and dime-store psychology -- elements that have made Tyler Perry a rich filmmaker but have turned For Colored Girls shrill and manipulative.

In the clumsy hands of director Rob Marshall, this tacky, all-star botch more closely resembles a video catalog for Victoria’s Secret.

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.

Suffers from terminal hoof-in-mouth disease.

Ralph Fiennes as Gun’s eventual lawyer, however, is totally forgettable, as is much of the standard-issue, self-important docudrama. So much of Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood’s screenplay arrives with a thud that it might’ve been written with clenched fists. Knightley’s overwrought performance doesn’t help either.

So unremittingly vulgar and inept it makes "The Best Man" and "Runaway Bride" look like masterpieces by comparison.

A cheap exploitation picture wrapped in miles and miles of stale would-be Oscar scenes.

Do your kids a favor - and take them to see something more worthwhile than the relentlessly vulgar and stupid See Spot Run.

Alas, the laughs - courtesy of screenwriters J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress and director David R. Ellis - are unintentional.

Give director Paul Borghese credit for daring in giving his movie a title that evokes Sergio Leone’s two most famous epics. The trouble with doing that, of course, is that you better be prepared to deliver a movie on the same level.

Basically a deadly dull rehash of "Resident Evil," which in turn was a third-generation clone of "Aliens."

Not every movie can come from the heart: This one is from the crotch. But what’s left for the sequel? Maybe it’ll feature Mark and Denzel sporting matching leather codpieces or giving each other bikini waxes. We can only hope.

Director Gabe Torres lobs a twist you'll likely see coming, and another you may not - neither satisfying enough to justify an hour and a half of Dorff-in-a-box.

Violent and unoriginal actioner.

A well-intentioned, semi-autobiographical pastiche, is trapped in a straitjacket of political correctness, self-conscious acting and spurts of try-hard dialogue that come off as precious.

Remarkably dull thriller.

Has the aroma of an autobiographical confession by someone for whom life hasn’t been overly difficult.

The preachy movie is hardly worth the hassle and money required to see it in a theater. Better to download it or wait for it to pop up on TV.

The kind of movie that cries out for the fast-forward button.