Many diehards, in their slavish, zombie-like subservience to the MCU gods, will tell you that Sam Raimi (brilliant on the 2002 “Spider-Man”) has directed a horror movie. Lies! It’s as scary and visually arresting as “Van Helsing,” “Underworld” and “Hellboy 2.”

Almost without exception, the men are either sickening deviants or wise mentors while the ladies tend to be kickboxing hipsters or victims of sexual abuse (many are both).

The only hint of professionalism comes from Cheech Marin as Cannon's boss, who at times seems to be acting in a different movie.

The Lord works in mysterious ways but Persecuted works in blundering, obvious ways, straining a Christianity-under-attack theme through a dopey thriller.

A depressing and tedious movie.

“Secrets,” somehow the third of a planned five, really puts the “dumb” in Dumbledore.

The real disappointment is Danny DeVito as a creepy coroner.

With so many worthy movies being made in Europe, it's a crime that something as mediocre as Erotic Tales gets a release here.

Toothless, unbelievable and not particularly funny, New Suit is no threat to "The Player," "Swimming With Sharks" or "The Big Picture," to name but three more interesting pictures in this inside-baseball genre.

A very belated and very silly follow-up to "Death Wish."

Makes little attempt to be credible or original. And the acting is poor.

Tired? This series is as exhausted as Shrek after a day of baby wrangling and diaper changing.

Wind power plus solar power equals hot air in the propaganda piece Carbon Nation, a documentary so disconnected from reality it could have been produced by President Obama's speechwriters.

Charles Busch's spoof of beach-party movies and psychological thrillers, an off-Broadway hit 13 years ago, stubbornly refuses to entertain in this unrelentingly dull film version.

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.

A good cast can't save The Lodger, the utterly wrongheaded fourth movie version of a 1910 novel inspired by Jack the Ripper.

In “Mistress of Evil,” everything is a notch less fun, romantic and engaging.

A movie about bisexuals sounds fresh and fun on paper, but a sensitive acoustic song under the opening credits shows exactly where The Happy Sad is going. Deadly earnestness and sex don’t mix well at the movies.

A miracle of badness, a kind of art- house "Showgirls" -- which actually exceeds "Showgirls" in its self-indulgence, shallowness and sheer stupidity.

While the film is a modicum better than the actress’ “Falling For Christmas” last year — such a punishing world, this is — the improvement is also a knock against it. This high-fructose-corn-syrup movie remains air-headed, that’s for sure, but it’s far less campy and therefore a drag.

Nesting is a sitcom, but a really slow and dull one that barely grinds out 22 minutes' worth of plot to fill a 90-minute hole.

Holmes, with Alice Cooper hair and crazy Jim Carrey eyes, looks terrible and acts worse, unless this movie is unintentionally a lobotomy documentary. Whatever could have happened to her in the last couple of years to zap the talent out of her like this?

Repo Men is a rare film where Toronto plays itself. It's also the first I've ever seen where a typewriter is used as a lethal weapon.

A weird mash-up of disaster, horror and dystopia genre pictures, Aftershock fails to make the Earth move.

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

Even for a mumblecore film, Computer Chess is weak stuff, a punitively dull chunk of quirk that is about, and feels like, being stuck in a motel with a gaggle of programming nerds for a weekend.

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

A twist ending does nothing to make the previous 85 minutes interesting.