The Green Inferno offers up extreme gore, unlikable characters and seriously confused themes (is it a pro-environment film, an ode to imperialism, a satire of social-justice warriors or a poorly sketched combination of all three?).

If the viewer squirms with embarrassment, it's not over how Petrie has directed his camera or his excellent young cast - it's his heavy-handed material that's beyond redemption, and since he co-wrote that material he has a lot to answer for. [26 Apr 1991]

There is one egregious misstep: the photographs of mutilated Vietnamese bodies which appear on the screen during the song, Time Is On My Side, which is grotesque and fundamentally dishonest. No major band has been less interested in politics than The Rolling Stones, and that's what makes Let's Spend The Night Together so infuriating. It purports to be about something momentous, but has absolutely nothing to say. In that, at least, Ashby's film captures perfectly the spirit of the Stones' 1981 tour. [11 March 1993]

Characters already too wicked to be credible start doing stuff simply too stupid to be believed, with no help from a cast way too overmatched to be useful.

Obviously a great respecter of rules, John Badham directs with a metronome, here some glossy action, there some witless banter, dispensing the two like different colored Smarties popped from the box. The bird in Bird On A Wire is a turkey. [19 May 1990]

Most of The Fog will seem drearily perfunctory even to those viewers who don't know Carpenter's version, which itself emulated the elegant gloom of Val Lewton's horror pics of the 1940s.

Fitzgerald gives a strong performance, especially considering the lack of depth her character is afforded, but her impact is drowned out by the film’s truly rancid attempt at upending the gendered inferences that Mollner has staged her character within.

While the pale skin tones (bronzer is selectively applied) and haphazard mix of American and British accents is distracting, it barely scratches the surface of Exodus’s ungainly artificiality.

A slice of advice, then: Take the film’s 102 minutes to visit the actual Little Italy and enjoy a leisurely meal. Or make your own pie at home. Or stay home and do nothing. Basta!

It transforms that bottom line into a saccharine border, framing the picture with enough faux inspiration to keep Hallmark in cards for a month of Mother's Days. [03 Jun 1994]

With the performers given zilch to perform, the result is a picture that's all chassis and no engine, or, in the parlance of the genre, a bunch of pointy hats in search of a transporting broomstick.

It's possible to insult even a teenager's intelligence.

A View to a Kill is much too long (nearly 2 1/4 hours); it cheats (a subplot involving the KGB comes and goes at leisure); and it has yet another extended section full of dumb cops and smashed cars. [24 May 1985]

The problem is that director Wayne Wang seems deaf to the tonal differences between coming-of-age, magic realism and children's comedy.

The film might be pretty to look at, but narratively speaking, it is a disaster.

ROB REINER'S debut as a feature film director with the mock "rockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap was as invigorating as his second film, The Sure Thing, is depressing: not since Michael Cimino followed The Deer Hunter with Heaven's Gate has there been such a dramatic comedown. [1 Mar 1985]

An exercise in miserablism that, although clocking in at an ostensibly tight pace, feels never-ending.

Empire is just too intent on living up to its imperial name -- colonizing other defenceless movies, plundering their rich natural resources, and leaving us all to feel rather cruelly violated. A postscript: Somebody here -- I'm not saying who -- dies. And still keeps on talking.

Gudegast, a first-time director who wrote the script to Den of Thieves (and who has probably watched Michael Mann's "Heat" more than once) attempts to comment on humanity's complexities. But all he does with his soulless, hollow characters is make a solid case that men are violent sleazes.

In lieu of a movie, we get a series of car chases rudely interrupted by the occasional smattering of dialogue.

Smith and Lawrence enjoyed some amusing chemistry in the '95 original, but their molecules sure aren't jibing here. It's a full hour into this behemoth before there's anything resembling a belly laugh.

This briefly inspired bit of surreality quickly descends into gratuitous bondage, mayhem and dumb humour, marking the usual progression from mildly absurd premise to gratingly idiotic conclusion.

If it weren't for Mo'Nique's fresh, appealing screen presence, Phat Girlz would fall flat.

100% Wolf will leave you howling – not with laughter or delight but in despair for some semblance of a plot in its mercifully short run time.

A crashing bore.

In its neediness to be liked, the new Shaft – the third of five films in the series to be titled, simply, Shaft – says everything and nothing.

There are small spurts of creativity ... but everything else about the production feels more watered down than the landscape our four interchangeable leads find themselves flailing about in.

For all its high-speed car chases and extravagant stunts, director Camille Delamarre’s reboot of the Transporter franchise is as punctilious as Frank himself – glossy in finish but a little uptight.