Predicting that we might soon weary of downhill action, this virtually plotless ski picture is decorated with hot tub frolics and a wet T-shirt contest.

Part vigilante movie, part sitcom, part tearjerker, part cracker melodrama, it's redeemed by yet another of Garner's graceful, effortless performances.

The film's unlikely trump card is Richard Widmark as a credibly sceptical supernatural investigator, who romps through the proceedings with a disarming stoicism, but regrettably faces his devilish opponent Lee only in the closing sequence. It's a good deal more interesting than the rest of the possession cycle, but still a disappointment.

Terminally boring.

If Vincent Wants to Sea proves nothing else, it's that a moronically quirky take on mental illness is no more palatable when it's subtitled.

Platt’s fluid, emotional tenor voice is as beautiful as ever, and it’s easy to understand the desire to preserve his original performance. But the very mannerisms that were well scaled to a 1,000-seat house – the hunched posture, the tics, the blurts of speech – are off-putting in cinematic close-up.

No one expected this long-delayed piece of Michael Jackson pop-aganda to lay bare the man behind the myths and myriad controversies in forensic style. And yet… this soft-ball character study of the King of Pop only doubles down on the former, while completely ignoring the latter, hitting all the usual dreary biopic beats along the way.

Apprenticed under Corman, Wynorski is well-versed in double-bluffing his audience, denying them the chance of balking at dreadful special effects by implying that the ineptitude is deliberate. He opts for cheap nostalgic laughs and camp '50s sci-fi scenery; depending on whether you find this funny, you'll either smile knowingly or gasp in disbelief.

Neither the film’s main players nor its random period spoofery has any personality.

Also missing: the series' reliable camp heavies, Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen, and most of the so-called Lycans who, their appearance in a few respectable action sequences notwithstanding, are now nearly extinct. So is this franchise.

Flashes of genuine intelligence and wit in the writing only render the moral nihilism of the whole high-tack enterprise all the more inexcusable.

The characters may soar, but viewers’ spirits stay grounded.

Question: What's the only thing worse than doing an unfaithful film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel? Answer: Doing a completely faithful one.

This ineptly combines lamebrain comedy and sci-fi adventure, two of Hollywood's most popular genres of the last decade.

Big on emotional highs but skimpy on details, Dressed rallies behind the orphan but fails to reveal the artist.

The scripting is unimaginative, derivative, and desperately predictable as the film limps through its jokily cautionary tales.

Is this family movie just an excuse for the star to romp around wearing not an awful lot? Very probably.

The script, for which Chapman and Cook must bear some responsibility, is a three-minute Python skit bloated out to feature length, involving buried treasure, revenge, and machinations close to the throne. Depressing stuff.

Sex sequences are disappointingly non-specific: blurred nipples and vaguely flickering tongues, set to That Disco Beat and invariably followed by post-coital blubbing.

Bouncy musical numbers and plenty of social concern, but the star, regrettably, is on autopilot.

It doesn’t all work: the religious iconography is too obvious, and the more lurid horror elements – like the obsessive fans who literally haunt Cam during his training – can be so heavy-handed they’re more silly than scary. What never falters, though, is Tipping’s avid commitment to his concept.

Confuses hostility for characterization, and cheap nihilism for dramatic depth.

Aside from an uncomfortable-looking Carlos Mencia, who seems to actively cower before the camera, the cast is robotically efficient--though that’s not the same thing as coming out of this lifeless mess unscathed.

No matter how sensitive the orchestral-string score gets, the film can't locate the bone-deep sense of tragedy of Leslie Schwartz's novel - it just keeps belching out empty, grief-stricken histrionics devoid of insight.

Entourage can’t muster enough conflict for a podcast, let alone a feature.

Fans hoping to watch Schwarzenegger growl his catchphrases with a slight edge of shtick are underestimating the patience involved in sitting through a two-hour slog. As for those who want a little apocalyptic tension or (dare to dream) romance, this new model is not for you. It’s the Skynet cut.

Perhaps the film might have survived the tortuous plotting, sub-sitcom jokes and drab direction if it wasn’t for Barnard’s woefully misjudged, wet blanket performance, but it’s highly doubtful.

To be fair, pulling off complex action sequences in such unforgivingly high definition is a ballsy move—it’s much harder to hide the joins between what was captured in camera and what was added later. But as impressive as the action is—and a Smith-vs.-Smith motorcycle chase in Colombia is a superb sequence worthy of peak Bond—the high-definition format just doesn’t work.

Forget the story, 'cause there isn't one, but see it for the gory bits and marvellous gutsy make-up. Yech!

The premise of Capricorn One is so intrinsically arresting that it almost saves the film from the sheer incompetence of its script...Pretty soon the project gets bogged down in innumerable difficulties, not helped by the awfulness of most of the dialogue. The climactic introduction of Telly Savalas in a crop-dusting plane must rank as one of the most desperate measures to save a thriller since William Castle hung luminous skeletons from the cinema roof.

Syrupy schlock from perhaps the most sentimental of all Italian directors, a pointless update of King Vidor's '30s weepie about a former champion boxer's attempts to hang on to his doting son when his estranged wife reappears on the scene.

A narcotizing movie filled with endless anti-banter (come on, Kumail Nanjiani, you’re better than alien comic relief), it works only as a safe space away from the rain.

Endless and doggedly in earnest.

It says a lot that the grossest moment involves a character flossing—no gag, just flossing. Likewise, the candy stuck in your teeth will be the only thing that lingers after the credits roll.

No Escape takes pains to pause for some unconvincing speechifying about Western meddling abroad, but its showbiz racism gets an infuriating pass.

Farmiga persuades as a kooky monster of a matriarch, while Javier is an ideal vessel for Duchovny's laconic line readings (he's grown into an even more deadpan Bill Murray). Goats may cover an all-too-familiar terrain, but at least it grazes it well.

Lay the Favorite is frenzied without being funny. Like Judy Holliday on a particularly manic day, Hall tears from scene to scene with a bubbly effervescence that is technically impressive yet increasingly exhausting.

Hollywood's hocus-pocus machine has turned out swill like this before, but even ultra-observant Catholics will find their interest waning. Hammy acting should make nonbelievers of the rest.

Once upon a time, the star would have added both gravity and a manic edge to this wronged everyman. At this juncture, Cage is less believable as an average Joe than he is as, say, a cursed trick rider with a flaming skull for a head.

Mainly it lacks director Terry Zwigoff who, as he did with "Ghost World" and "Crumb," suggested a vital, original voice.

Despite a schmaltzy original score and some clunky direction, the film's well-portrayed characters and spot-on depiction of the scene make this a pleasant enough romp.

Stone looks distinctly ordinary in this glossy, glassy sex-thriller.

Lacking a single serious scare or sly idea, the movie dies in ways that merely mediocre horror films can't even dream of.

The film feels more stale than timeless. Ditto the movie's rapid-fire dialogue, a stream of self-conscious patter that largely misses its targets and repeatedly takes the zing out of Tambor's zesty line readings.

Writer, director and star Fuller posits a dichotomy between belief and scientific rationality, only to gull us into accepting the former.

To call this a turkey would be an insult to poultry.

The keenest irony is that Imogene’s fake suicide note is the most convincing thing she’s ever written — which makes perverse sense since Girl Most Likely is DOA.

They've taken an intriguing story about female neuroses with gothic overtones and turned it into a graceless, butt-ugly attempt at Twilight-lite.

Adapted from Thorne Smith's fantasy about sexual role reversal, this probably seemed daring once, but hasn't worn well.

Only Kinnear manages to give his role some shades beyond the broadly farcical, though even he ultimately succumbs to his leading lady's toothy grin and Oprah-sanctioned bromides.

Teague, meanwhile, is far too busy orchestrating the large-scale action sequences to make anything of the cardboard characters, episodic plotting, or clunking dialogue.

Primarily a TV director, Torres lacks the chops to delineate Dorff's claustrophobic quarters, and the actor spends most of the movie confusing tough-guy stoicism with simple inertness, despite the occasional Jack Bauer–style yell.

It’s crushing, then, that the movie’s big reveal is the kind of narrative do-over that could only spring from the mind of an almighty writer in love with playing God — or with himself.

The first Reitman film to make the 36-year-old director seem about 400 years old.

A shamelessly artless horror movie whose senseless story - a girl inherits a spooky, seedy hotel which just happens to have one of the Seven Doors of Hell in its cellar - is merely an excuse for a poorly connected series of sadistic tableaux of torture and gore.

Despite the neat comic inversion of its central premise (this time it's the spacemen who are taken in by Welles' classic hoax), the film soon comes a cropper as the chaotic script descends into a mêlée of limp and disjointed knockabout gags.

Taking the worst of it on the chin is star Jack Huston, whose Jewish prince turned galley slave, Judah Ben-Hur, suffers from a distinct lack of personality—he’s like a boulder that someone forgot to chisel into a statue.

Leads Thorne and Schwarzenegger are mildly charming in a TV-soap way, but it’s all so desperately clean and savoury (even her XP is photogenic – unlike in reality).

It’s to the 1993 original what The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was to Raiders.

Hall's puppy-dog charisma holds up under the strain, but it isn't nearly enough to keep this messy midlife-crisis dramedy afloat. A little of this Bliss goes a long way.

All of this touching and feeling makes I Am a so-awful-it's-mesmerizing mash-up of Hollywood entitlement and earnest goodwill. There's no questioning Shadyac's googly-eyed sincerity, but the film has all the depth of a late-night dorm-room exchange.

You can barely stifle a laugh, and the way Wright and Watts deliver rote, morally searching dialogue with deer-in-the-headlights stoicism (“We’ve crossed a line,” Lil blankly notes) doesn’t help matters.

The connections among the film's various plot strands are painfully obvious; by the time a grizzled Jeremy Irons saunters in, ready to dole out a comeuppance, perceptive viewers will have mentally flipped to the last page.

But this is a Grade A stop-me-if-you've-heard-this-one-before plot.

There’s nothing more boring than a life embalmed with halfhearted Hollywood bombast, which only makes the film’s fleeting pleasures stand out all the more.

Fine performers can’t salvage a toxically precious script, though Stone (Zombieland), with her disarming poise, makes a go of it.

The kind of comedy thriller which cancels itself out, this is pitched too close to caricature to engender suspense, but lacks the crisp, acerbic wit which distinguishes Hiaasen's prose.

You never lose the nagging sense that you're simply watching a high-school drama club's production of '40s fatalism chic.

Trespass is assembly-line product through and through - unabashedly mediocre and instantly forgettable. A Joel Schumacher joint, in other words.

The Black Tulip is noteworthy for its existence alone - and not, unfortunately, for much else.

This twist doesn’t so much probe the situation’s ambiguities as reflect the filmmaker’s uncertainty about how to properly portray a major historical figure in all her troubling complexity.

The early scenes of Gabe Ibáñez’s impressively mounted but uneven thriller do some terrific dystopian world-building.

The actors are what save it. Not only does Johnson build on his subversive 
persona of hulking, dim-witted likability, 
but he’s joined by Neighbors’ Zac Efron, today’s reigning king of the hazy one-liner.

Things begin well, with Fisher adding some atmospheric touches and Cushing suggesting a man undermined by his excessive rationality. Unfortunately the script, which treads a wavering line between jerky comedy and seriousness, soon dissipates anyone else's better intentions.

Wilson and Raphael have been a comedy team for years, and they riff off each other expertly; too often, however, that’s all they do.

It isn't long, however, before the film's caricatured bad-guy shtick starts to wear gossamer thin, and an overabundance of "clever" twists-no one is [Yawn] who they seem to be! - begins to sap whatever little goodwill has been built up.

Students of minimal acting techniques can compare Marvin and Norris: impassivity versus vacancy. Students of the disaster film should write a short thesis on why George Kennedy is ubiquitous. Everyone else might wonder why the film is so virulently anti-Arab.

The star and co-director appears hopelessly out of place, trapped in a variety of awkward-fitting uniforms while forced to offer up laughably obvious battlefield advice ("Avoid gunfire!").

Waiting for Inescapable to finally reach its unearned, sentimental conclusion is a tiresome experience, but seeing Tomei submit to its badness is several measures worse.

If you loved the first one, you’ll happily sit through this one. It’s just not quite as good.

The ideas here aren't nearly up to the scratch that writers Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris established in Trading Places.

Anderson makes often-inspiring use of the 3-D effects.

The books' ingenious wunderkind is MIA here, replaced instead by a generic eye-rolling, motormouthed preteen bopping around rote set pieces.

There’s a way to make this kind of trashy noir work beautifully—was Wild Things director John McNaughton somehow not available?—but Serenity is too blandly generic to stick its snout in the muck and luxuriate, barring the occasional jail-baity line of dialogue from Hathaway (“You said I was finally old enough,” Karen whispers, reminiscing).

The movie dies onscreen; it might be the best advertisement for avoiding the glories of Italy ever released by a Hollywood distributor.

Sol Tryon’s dark, irrepressibly hilarious fable offers highbrow absurdism and low-budget filmmaking at their most clever and outlandish.

She never figures out what, exactly, the deal is regarding our short attention spans, but her ADD-afflicted film definitely provides evidence that they exist.

All of them slog through countless boring sword-and-sandal skirmishes, none of which feel remotely suspenseful, until the hugeness of it all becomes a mildly passable joke.

It's all too much and not enough—a succession of disparate, can-you-top-this episodes inelegantly piling up like skidding cars on a freeway. And that's not even taking into account the action scenes. Lord, those action scenes: Monotonous, loud and relentless, they're a punishing example of the self-satisfied, digitally augmented ephemera that typifies modern Hollywood moviemaking, and House Bruckheimer in particular.

Director Matt Russell shamelessly pitches woo to the already converted with an unholy barrage of heavy-handed flashbacks and phony Christian uplift. If any film ever needed a mulligan….

Cue those weepy violins. Indeed, you get everything you'd expect from this mostly saccharine melodrama.

Centrally, the title character remains an impressive piece of propwork, and Leonetti's restraint in never animating it (à la Chucky) is the only thing worth appreciating here.

As the screws turn, and the double crosses begin, the film sinks under the weight of its own ridiculousness. (The ever-reliable Cranston’s thick Euro-villain accent actually turns out to be one of the least ludicrous elements.)

The intensity of the melodrama here is undermined by a camp-ish turn from Robert Downey Jr as Morgan's leathered friend and by risible musical outbursts from Spader and Kim Richards.

Even by the broad standards of children's flicks, the film's prank-prone next-gen tween spy Rebecca (Blanchard) is one monstrous brat.

Impossible not to admire the total withholding of irony in Claxton's approach to this kamikaze project.

The problem, however, lies squarely with Portman herself, who (Oscar nod or no) seems unlikely to ever achieve a tone between histrionic and affectless.

[A] lamentable half-hour sit-com masquerading as a movie...No unexpected twists; very few jokes; not much talent. After the glory that was "Wayne's World", director Spheeris should be ashamed of herself.