The only thing this second-rate scarefest truly succeeds in doing, however, is giving Sweeney a hell of a showcase.

It gives me no pleasure to report that Aloha is still a mess, a handful of stories struggling for a unifying tone.

In the end, it’s not just that you’re watching a satire sans teeth — it’s more like you’re sitting through a version of Shattered Glass where Stephen Glass feels kind of bad about all those stories he made up.

The chance for delicious satire melts away quickly in Butter, a spoof without oomph.

Even sex can't save a film that produces instant narcolepsy.

Hoff-man and Broderick manage an affecting reconciliation, and Connery remains a peerless charmer. Still, there’s no telling what drew these three to such trite material. It’s like hiring the Rolling Stones and forcing them to sing Barry Manilow.

Between a diabolically funny start and a surprise climax, Scream 4 offers nothing more than a series of gory deaths that grow tiresome with repetition. The rating is a hard R, but Craven and Williamson keep it soft at its core. "Scream 1" is still the only keeper.

Graham, back in the porn territory she aced in “Boogie Nights,” steals the show. In the winter doldrums, you don't kick at a movie that puts a smile on your face.

It's Dead! It's Dead! By which I mean, It's Finished! It's Finished! Five movies have been squeezed out of four Stephenie Meyer Twilight books. All of them redefining cinematic tedium for a new century. And now, It's Over! It's Over! No more Twilight movies EVER! I'm so joyful that I might be overrating The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 by saying it's not half bad.

The snotty rich bastard? That role goes to Eugenio Derbez, Mexico's biggest star, who's allowed to speak a big chunk of his dialogue in Spanish, complete with subtitles. It's the one original idea that this retrofitted Overboard has to offer. The rest of the movie wears out its welcome muy rapido.

There's a killer idea circling this tricked-up teen thriller, which is more than you can say for most summer movies. But the idea never lands because Nerve lacks the, well, nerve to follow through on its convictions.

You can feel the narrative hitting predictable beats like it was upshifting an ATV’s gears, from infatuations with the outlaw life to blowing off good influences, getting sucked into the game to bad decisions leading to bodies dropping.

If "Pulp Fiction" impregnated "The Usual Suspects," the spawn would look a lot like Lucky Number Slevin. Great genes, but you keep wondering when the kid is going to grow up and find an identity of his own.

By the end of the film, the cliché of everybody getting along is reduced to both sides working together in the ultimate monument to capitalism: a mall. Some message.

Luna and Garai struggle to look like they're having the time of their life. But the movie, more wan than wicked, proves you can't go home again.

Reynolds is like a puppy dog who moonlights as a male model, or maybe vice versa. He’s the only reason to see Free Guy, but you already know this going in.

It's wickedly amusing for a little bit -- Robbins and Hurt really get into it -- but ultimately the film becomes what it's fighting: just noise.

It still feels like you’ve wandered into a Mob-themed animatronic presentation at some amusement park — the Disney Hall of Famous Mafia Bosses — and dutifully watch as landmark moments in crime history are checked off and re-enacted. Take away the De Niro Con: The Movie bona fides, and you’ve got nothing but a fancy Discovery special.

Looks and flows great, dripping with the 1940s crime-thriller atmosphere that James Ellroy described in his 1987 novel. On other levels -- plot (overstuffed), suspense (muted), acting (Hilary Swank as a femme fatale? Please!), posing (Scarlett Johansson plays dress-up as a mini Lana Turner), sex (it's all before and after) -- the movie is a bust.

Quick and the Dead plays like a crazed compilation of highlights from famous westerns. Raimi finds the right look but misses the heartbeat. You leave the film dazed instead of dazzled, as if an expert marksman had drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot.

It's the stunning location photography of camera ace Elliot Davis that provides what the movie itself lacks: authenticity.

It’s the sort true-story premise would be a fascinating starting point for a movie … if said film had more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth.

Wyatt keeps the action coming at a fast clip, but watching Jim repeatedly pursue a path of self-destruction for reasons never made clear grows wearying.

There is the slightly conspiratorial sense that the team behind this trip down movie-memory lane simply fed the scripts of various canonized sci-fi epics into an AI program and waited to see what sort of composite it spit out.

Missing is a sense of the interior life behind the smiling face that Selena showed the world.

No denying the relevance of the tale.

The gifted Myers lets his once and (I hope) future shag king get lost in an elephantine Hollywood franchise. The first time was the charm, baby.

It’s something closer to an amusement-park attraction named Generic Blockbuster Cruise, where you slowly glide past a bunch of prefab set-ups — over there you’ll see some thrills, look out on your right for some spills and chills — and the whole thing moves inexorably forward on a track, while a skipper cracks the same corny jokes.