There are a few ingenious zig zags in its otherwise by-the-numbers plot...but what keeps you interested... is the sheer movie-star presence of the actors in the lead roles.

Running Scared has some camp value as the kind of midnight movie you can laugh at (not with), but it isn't so much imitation Tarantino as it is imitation imitation Tarantino.

So Arnold Schwarzenegger has reached the shaky-cam-and-hoodies stage of his career. But it’s a bit late in the day for Arnold to try to get all indie and complicated.

Thanks to an unexpected twist and a clever motivation lurking in the back story of the super-villain, G-Force has enough going on to more or less maintain grown-up interest, and there's plenty to please the kiddies.

Lurches so wildly and meaninglessly between genres and time frames that all it creates is motion sickness.

You'd be better off renting Demi Moore's "Striptease."

A pointless, wincingly snide exercise.

Overall, Miss Bala is a misfire — but its leading lady is No. 1 with a bullet. And that’s a beautiful sight to see.

Unfortunately, the film turns out to be not quite as twisty as promised: it’s less a pretzel than it is a Cheez Curl. And I do mean cheez: The resolution, when it comes, is wholly lacking in nutritional value.

The movie boasts five Oscar winners. That figure exceeds by five the number of times I laughed at this cheap collection of icky jokes.

Ultimately, though, the lack of story and relentless suffering make Raze appealing for hard-core genre fans only.

Williams appears to be having trouble keeping his eyes open, and the audience will, too.

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.

A movie that won’t knock you out with originality but may charm you with its wit.

Mojave is a movie-length standoff between two detestable villains. One is a serial killer. The other is a filmmaker.

They resort too often to infantile flatulence jokes and fairly obvious gags about errant G-strings, with the anorexic plot culminating in the brothers having - yawn - learned to respect women's feelings.

“Short Circuit” meets “RoboCop” — with asides to “WALL-E,” “E.T.,” “The Road Warrior” and many other better movies — in Chappie, an interminable, violent, incoherent and wearying R-rated sci-fi action comedy.

Hop gives us . . . a bunny who poops jelly beans. That idea doesn't fill you with seasonal joy? Neither will the rest of the movie.

Italian director Carlo Carlei has a background in TV movies, and this film, plodding and earnest, seems meant for the small screen, too.

An eccentric little comic thriller filled with enough laughs that I was mostly willing to overlook the fact that it makes virtually no sense as a thriller.

Veteran screenwriter John Pogue, in his second directorial outing, tries repeatedly and mostly unsuccessfully to jolt his audience by amping up the abundant sound effects to ear-shattering levels.

While it's not a disaster like Kasdan's last film, "Dreamcatcher'' (2003), Darling Companion doesn't amount to much more than a fairly painless way for the AARP set to spend an hour and a half watching a movie with stars their own age.

Treats us to some feverish decapitating, juicy stabbing and non-anesthetized fingertip removal.

The real mystery here is why this slapdash semi-effort didn't go straight to video.

A particularly gross exploitation of the Holocaust for financial gain.

Ignore the furiously overplotted, headache-inducing story -- derived from a series of comic books -- and focus on the exquisitely drawn Japanese animation.

The only prize this shamelessly derivative schlock is likely to be in the running for is the year's dullest thriller.

Visually stunning.