If you are expecting a pleasant evening of escapism, you will be cruelly fooled. The editor responsible for the trailer is clearly a genius.

So far as I can remember, no such film has ever asked its audience to experience the level of excruciating discomfort an actual fish must feel when it is gored by a sharp hook, yanked into the air, and left to flail in desperation before succumbing to an agonizing death... Until now.

All that's missing are the laughs. In their place, we get wall-to-wall predictability. [13 Aug 1983]

The most gratifying thing about xXx: State of the Union is that nobody wastes much time on character, motivation, plausibility, dialogue or sex -- all that slow stuff that drags down ordinary movies.

American Underdog is a film so disjointed, so boring and so deeply uninspiring that it is difficult to root for anyone, or even think of Warner as a genuine underdog.

This sadly derivative film has one too many screenings of "All the President’s Men" written all over it.

In the battle for the hearts, minds and fat wallets of North American teens, College fights dirtier and sinks lower than most gross-out screen comedies.

A notice at the end of the movie assures audiences that the animals in the movie were not mistreated, but what about the animals in the theatre? Even connoisseurs of bloodletting and random violence will find Out of Bounds a poor excuse for escaping the summer heat. [29 July 1986, p.C8]

It don't mean nothin'. [28 Aug 1987]

THE PRESIDIO is a formula flick that can't even manage its own simple arithmetic. This is meant to be an action-thriller with comic overtones, the kind where a pair of mismatched cops corral the heavy-duty nasties while treating us to a steady stream of lightweight banter. Because it's a TV premise, brought to half-life by a forgettable script and bland direction, the poor thing seems mighty uncomfortable on the big screen, washed out and embarrassed, eager to abandon the pretense and rush to its rightful home in the movie-of-the-week margins. [10 June 1988]

Imagine, if you dare, the outtakes from all those merely bad romantic comedies. Now further imagine that these discarded bits, the stuff that failed to make even the failures, found their way out of the waste bin and into a splicing machine and onto a projector. Do that and you're inching toward a full appreciation of this particular barrel, and the bottom it so brazenly scrapes.

This quirky dramedy promises little and delivers even less.

A lurid thriller that marks a new career low for both director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Mission) and co-screenwriter Larry Cohen (Phone Booth, It's Alive).

What can you say about a film the comic high point of which is Dan Aykroyd standing half-naked in a bathroom while extracting hairs from his nostrils with manicure scissors? For starters you can say it's bad, as bad as a film can be that looks to National Lampoon's Vacation for creative inspiration. [17 June 1988]

Of the movie’s dozen musical numbers, only three are relatively unmangled versions of their predecessors.

Grade Underclassman an "Unacceptable effort," and "D" for derivative.

For all its shocks and wannabe-disturbing imagery (trapped Bible-thumpers being mauled by rats etc.), nothing in Sinister 2 comes across as believably scary.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer must be stopped. For the last two years, this filmmaking team has created a series of spoof movies so feeble, shoddy and unfunny that they may be part of a diabolical, "Manchurian Candidate"-like plot to stunt the intellectual development of American adolescents.

Dumb and Dumber 'n the hood.

So intent are the Strausses on showing off their visual chops, they leave the film's story, dialogue and acting in shambles.

As coy sleaze goes, the new Olsen twins' movie doesn't match Britney Spears's "Crossroads," but it comes close.

Think of a really bad, uncensored Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. Then make it worse – make it longer.

Fear strikes out in slasher flick This movie is laced with enough gratuitous bloodshed and reactionary zeal to warm the heart of a Montana militiaman. [12 Apr 1996]

Perfectly passable kiddie escapism. It has a thrill or two, and a chill or three, but it has no poetry, little sense of wonder, no resonant subtext (Jungian or otherwise), no art... When it's over, it's gone. Extinct.

What makes it downright offensive are all the romance-novel flourishes that Leonard and the melodramatically inclined director James Foley, also new to the franchise, bring to glittering three-dimensional life in Fifty Shades Darker.

Label this one a howler, and add a postscipt to the sequel: shoo Fly II, go forth and don't multiply. [11 Feb 1989]

So, romance-novel boilerplate that sounded clichéd on the page becomes outright laughable as it's transferred to the screen.

The movie is so relentlessly self-congratulatory, you can't help becoming thoroughly sick of it.

The obvious question about Repo Men: Why bother?

It would be easy to spend hours trashing The Galllows if it just wasn’t so disposable.

A film so dull, flat, and totally joyless that, in the absence of anything compelling unfolding on screen, one’s mind may be forgiven for turning to the corporate machinations grinding behind it.

There is, buried deep somewhere in Linklater’s film or however many edits it may have undergone – the thing reeks of indecision – an insightful, even invigorating story about what happens to a creative genius once they stop creating. But the actual work presents a good argument that, for some artists, it might be best to quit while you’re ahead.

His first visit was bad, this is worse. [09 Nov 1990]

The latest iteration of Sylvester Stallone’s aging warrior franchise, The Expendables 3, is proof that sometimes even your low expectations can be far too high.

Film encyclopedias may beg to differ, the Cahiers du Cinéma might correct me, but, as far as your humble correspondent knows, Wanderlust is the first mainstream movie ever to star a Floppy Prosthetic Penis.

There is little here for parents, and not much for the kids. [17 Feb 1997, p.C3]

How many Oscar winners does it take to save the world? Red 2 gathers together a collection of lauded thespians – from A(nthony Hopkins) to (Catherine) Z(eta-Jones) – and leaves them to float on a sea of action-flick clichés.

The plot is cursory, the dialogue is repetitive and the psychology is cheap. Hanging in for the wanton violence may prove too much for anyone not seriously addicted to the guilty pleasures of cheesy sci-fi.

The Villain is itself an extended cartoon, a cartoon with live actors as its director Hal Needham redundantly describes it. The result: while we still guffaw once or twice, our suffering increases proportionately as we are made to sit through a full 80 minutes of numbing mindlessness. [25 July 1979]

There is no getting these boys down. They are just like Lloyd and Harry in the Farrelly brothers' breakthrough 1994 hit, "Dumb & Dumber." Except that they are never, ever funny.

Hired hand Lester made one of the worst films of the decade, Firestarter, and he's still getting his jollies by incinerating people on the screen. Last time it was supposed to be scary and this time it's supposed to be funny; both times it's been simply boring and somewhat offensive. [20 Aug 1986, p.C5]

A promising premise simply devolves into just another "Definitely, Maybe" or "The Proposal."

As the new Ben-Hur unspools into insignificance and sentimentality, there are fleeting moments that suggest someone behind this $100-million movie was actually thinking hard about how to replay a schlocky biblical epic for a secular audience in 2016.

The film lacks the moronic consistency that graces the Sandlerian oeuvre at its most pristine.

There may be a universe in which I feel the barest thread of emotional connection to even one thing that happens during the 126 minutes of loud, smeary nonsense that is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But I doubt it.

Like the recent Adam Sandler dud "Jack and Jill," a sizable chunk of Chip-Wrecked was shot on the newest ship in the fleet of a major cruise company – the ultimate in movie product placement!

While the film is awful, Jarecki’s approach to filmmaking is still paint-by-numbers watchable, solely because the genre is familiar. The director has clearly watched enough movies to understand that pool halls and dive bars are good places for gangsters to hang out, that seedy deals happen in motel rooms and that a mother’s love is stronger than any other earthly force.

Benigni as a Pinocchio with 5-o'clock shadow and tufts of arm hair poking out from under the sleeves of his puppet costume, it borders on creepy.

The Choice’s best attractions are the talented Benjamin Walker and the watery, small-town North Carolina scenery.

Unfortunately, because filmmaker Miele also places value in discretion, his snazzy documentary is celebrative – not investigative.

The creators of Flyboys know no image too clichéd, no narrative convention too exhausted and no psychological motivation too pat that it can't do service.

A sickly sweet family drama.

There are a couple of minutes of unscheduled surgery to put this in the sadistic fantasy genre of "Saw" and "Hostel," but mostly the movie plays out like a cheap survivalist copy of the television series "Lost."

What Boll gives us is a boring beating over the head.

Sean Penn smokes, glowers and shows off his knotty naked torso in this vain, risible misfire of a thriller about a reformed killer, from "Taken" director Pierre Morel.

Fool's Gold starts flat and then deflates because of torpid pacing and flailing performances.

Every actor and actress involved seems to have been instructed to act as guilty as possible and, in this at least, they're entirely convincing. Not guilty of murder, perhaps, but of a really unfortunate career choice.

In short, there are an awful lot of subplots and comic characters but none of the actors in this star-studded cast is allowed to build his laughs and the Coens just abandon several of these vivid personalities along the way.

Howard the Duck is the end of the line: any more infantile than this, and the filmmakers are going to vanish into the nearest womb. As a comedy, Howard the Duck is less humorous than that well- known Lucas laugh riot, Return of the Jedi, but it is good at one thing - wasting money. [02 Aug 1986, p.D9]

Says the audience: "Howcum they make movies like this?" [9 Nov 1985]

Unlike Sacha Baron Cohen's rude semi-documentary satires (Borat, Bruno), I'm Still Here never finds a satiric justification for all this grotesque behaviour.

Sure ain't a movie. Nope, it's a product, pure and very simple and carefully tested to sell to the widest possible market.

Steve Miner is no Carpenter. A directing veteran of the Friday the 13th saga (parts II and III, in case you care), he's a plodder who favours long, dull buildups to short, dull climaxes -- it's slaughter by the numbers.

The one thing that’s briefly enjoyable about From Paris with Love is John Travolta’s appearance. In a black leather jacket, with a shaved bald head and a goatee and a perpetual scarf to hide his jowls, he looks like a well-fed pimp or a gay bear.

Here's the kind of movie thriller that can make you scream (in annoyance) and bite your nails (to pass the time) and sit on the edge of your seat (ready to bolt the theatre).

Without Spielberg's technical pizazz, and with a gummy mixture of homage and spoof, Congo chokes on its own tongue in cheek.

The Art of Getting By is distinguished by a dullness that's almost akin to being in high school again.

There's are nagging problems with the script, which feels like it has lost a few pages during its rewrites. Instead of an orderly, inexorable pressure of events, we get a surfeit of red herrings, followed by the rather uninteresting killer simply stepping out of hiding.

Imagine the worst night of two-hander theatre that you were ever subjected to in the Before Times. Then add in 12 too many scenes of (accurate but annoying) glitchy Zoom calls featuring other famous actors. And then multiply that by the number of minutes you’d be better served scrolling through the back catalogue of your streaming service of choice.

It is hard to say what is more despicable about The Condemned: the overtly racist portrayal of Brekel-Goldman as Jewish-media bloodsuckers, or the film's sleazeball attempt to pass off lovingly attentive sequences of ritual torture - often scenes of incredible hulks bashing cowering women - as a critique of media violence.

The scriptwriters did Perry no favours. Lengthy swaths of dialogue are consumed by tedious exposition on vampire types and the ways they can be killed.

American Heist, I want my 94 minutes back.

There are people who find treasures in celebrities' garbage cans so it's a reasonable gamble they might want to buy tickets to watch their throwaway home-movie projects as well.

A hypnotic, black hole of a movie that sucks reputations, careers and goodwill down its vortex. Rarely has a movie that doesn't star Madonna achieved such a skin-crawling mixture of deluded preening and bungled humour.

A painfully contrived romantic comedy/thriller that may (or may not) have brought Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston together as a real-life couple.

Wisdom lies in taking a pass on Hall Pass, but bravery demands something else, something far more instructive: Watch it, every vacuous frame, if only to measure the precise aesthetic distance from blessing to curse.

So what's Hanson exploring this time? His boring side, apparently.

This one's just painful.

What Cruising does have, then, is a claim to narrow truth and limited verisimilitude. What it does not have is a mind. [15 Feb 1980]

It’s the kind of film that can’t even bother to commit to its own cynicism, which makes it the most deeply cynical kind of film there is.

In the life-is-too-short category, file Kangaroo Jack as a sub-Farrelly Brothers, dumb-plus-dumber buddy picture.

Given Part II's quality, the final sequence, a series of clips from next summer's Part III, may be a major miscalculation. "To be concluded," reads the final title. Sounds more like a threat than a promise. [22 Nov 1989, p.C9]

Although rich in cast, the bad-boy-chef dramedy Burnt is unremarkable otherwise.

No less laughable is the ending, where Ritchie neatly reflects today's prevailing attitude -- that audiences can't be trusted to handle a hint of ambiguity, but can live happily with flat-out stupidity.

The same covey of kids assemble at a summer camp to meet their predictable fate. Once again, their thespian talents defy assessment, since most hang around just long enough to take off the limited clothes of the American teen-ager and take on the limited role of the bloody victim - both acts performed just once, always in that order. [04 May 1981]

Not merely a bore, it’s excruciating.

Apparently pitched somewhere between a farce and a fable, this flick is neither. Just foolish. And frustrating. And, mostly, damned annoying.

Growing-up films are bad enough without a shameless all-girl rip off of Stand By Me. [20 Oct 1995]

Predator 2, an alien-monster movie that is racist and violent, not to mention atrociously acted and ham-handedly directed, has everything going for it a bad movie needs to be dismissed with a quip. But this is too ugly to be funny about. [23 Nov 1990]

Hart’s irritating character desperately seeks approval, but his idiocy is too much. The comedian makes Jerry Lewis look like Benedict Cumberbum – and if you think that line is funny, Ride Along 2 is your kind of jam.

At least Adams and Goode are always watchable, even when you occasionally feel embarrassed for them.

Lazy, perfunctory and free of tension, the new version will satisfy neither the admirers of the original nor anyone looking for a gory respite from seasonal good cheer.

Condescending, self-righteous and sloppy, Truth is simply a bad film for which there are no excuses.

The problem with Sucka is that the film is more clumsy and lifeless as a comedy than most of those blaxploitation pictures were as drama. Sucka instead is so awkward as to take two steps back for every one step forward: the film uses black women, for example, as rudely as did the movies it sends up. [17 Feb 1989, p.C3]

To be fair, the movie is nothing if not consistent -- the idea is every bit as dumb as the execution.

The sisterhood is already grumbling about a movie that suggests women will happily choose a mate over friendship, but actually it's the stereotypes of good behaviour rather than bad that bring this rom com crashing down.

Farrah Fawcett offers to this corrupt "entertainment" a small measure of the fresh innocence Marilyn Monroe used to bring to her movies; watching her work under these circumstances is like watching a maiden being thrown to Moloch. [22 June 1981]

The flames sure look real, but everything else in Backdraft, director Ron Howard's inflatable ode to firefighters, seems about as genuine as a plastic log in an electric hearth. Howard's particular type of schmaltz works well enough in small dabs on comic canvases (Splash, Cocoon, even Parenthood), but pumped up to heroic proportions, the sentimentality is just plain silly - in this case, cheap melodrama on a two-hour jag.