John Barry's score, with its reiterated 'autistic kid' theme, would have sounded corny to Ivor Novello, though it's in keeping with the general principle of patronising the audience.

This Nickelodeon production may be designed for short attention spans, but must the characters have them as well?

A standout in smaller parts in films like "Kaboom" and "Atonement," this frizzy blond actor has the air of a star-in-training in search of the right opportunity. This isn't it, unfortunately, but Temple does turn what's essentially a magical-hussy role into something more grounded and human.

No one expects a Samuel L. Jackson thriller to be Shakespeare, but David Weaver's wanna-be '70s-grindhouse cheapie doesn't even achieve serviceability.

A marvelous thought, credited to Orson Welles: You can handle shit with velvet gloves, but the gloves only get shittier; the shit doesn't get glovier. As wondrous as the regal Helen Mirren can be, it's a sad day when her queenly demeanor gets dunked in doo-doo.

Ceaselessly upbeat and just short of zany, Let My People Go! will bring smiles of recognition to anyone who hasn't seen early Woody Allen in a while.

Pitched at cartoon level, with a bizarre collection of speed enthusiasts crudely taking care of the comedy, it relies almost exclusively on the exceptional stunt work, the plot only occasionally dropping into first gear for some boring and irrelevant dramatic stuff.

As Wisdom (the name represents the single feeble attempt at irony), Estevez demonstrates an undeniable charisma, but in the roles of writer and director he is less successful. What initiative there is in this retread gets swamped by silliness, slackness and sentiment.

Fess up: You want to see Los Angeles get blowed up real good, and it's a measure of this movie's incompetence that it can't even deliver that vicarious thrill properly.

Since the gaff has long been blown (we know Chucky is alive from the outset), the original's menacing tension is entirely absent. Lafia attempts to compensate by relying heavily on Kevin Yagher's advanced doll animations, but articulated facial features, however clever, are no substitute for thrills.

What, exactly, is the payoff for suffering through such painfully bad filmmaking for 93 minutes? Forget about getting "A Few Good Men"–style military melodramatics; this movie quickly proves that even a few good performances, lines of dialogue or music cues are a pipe dream. Your loyalty will not be rewarded.

Treasure of the Sierra Madness.

Like a "Training Day" for spy thrillers, The Double provocatively pairs Gere and Grace as a gray-green odd couple, only to unravel as the double-crossed absurdities pile up and the duo start trading bad Russian accents in a private Mexican standoff. Oh nyet you didn't!

No stranger to controversy, Fifth Generation Chinese filmmaker Chen Kaige (Farewell, My Concubine) has always taken his country to task over bureaucratic and social issues; here, the director goes after both old-media exploitation and new-media omnipresence, and the result is less than cutting.

Crushingly, the dependably perverse art-action director Nicolas Winding Refn has finally made a boring movie.

In failing to reveal the model's persona as the materialisation (maintained at some cost to herself) of collective male fantasy, the script underlines its teleplay blandness.

It’s not deep but it’s made with love and it hits the spot.

Riseborough's acting offers total commitment in the face of lunacy, but it's a shame she's flapping around in an egotistical film with such a terribly warped sense of purpose.

Disaster movie in which a converted luxury airliner laden with guests and art treasures is hijacked by terrorists and crashes into the sea near an oil-rig. The survivors then spend their time trying to overact their way out of the claustrophobic script, which threatens a death even more slow and painful than suffocation or drowning.

A couple of vaguely amusing monologues apart, this lame, tame variation on the buddy-buddy comic cop thriller is flaccid, predictable, and as sickeningly anthropomorphic as one might fear.

This is one case where there’s more life in the morgue than out.

Hollow as a cavity.

The original film, for all its zaniness, existed in a recognizable Koch-era metropolis, one that paradoxically added to our hero's likable haze of denial. This time, the town is far shinier (what recession?).

Within the first half-hour, we've met the baddies (led by a taciturn Carradine), heard Rick and Marianne's teasing banter, and experienced the thrills of a shootout and car chase. As for what follows, this drearily repetitious film offers more of the same with variations in backdrop, all directed in perfunctory fashion by Badham. It does have a nice '60s soundtrack; shame about the rest.

Though there are some small, beautiful moments in Nettelbeck’s drama, Last Love as a whole feels like it’s been dosed with Xanax.

When Gonzo divulges his classmates' darkest secrets, we're meant to disapprove of his transformation from swaggering New Journalist to WikiLeaks extremist. In the real world, we've still haven't decided which ethical version we prefer.

Shot in black-and-white in an attempt to evoke the sophisticated burr of '40s films, its intent is hamstrung by over-familiar gags, though the script comes more to life when Prince and Benton lapse into black street talk during their pursuit of moneyed women.

She (Lohan) isn’t the best thing about this awful, lounged-out drama — it has no best thing — but in her defense, Lohan has been atrociously directed, allowed to get away with the worst aspects of her vocal-fry laziness, and trotted out like a symbolic objet d’art.

Perhaps the director is trying to show her socialites’ path to finding themselves, but her point ends up as lost as the film’s aimless hedonists; like its characters, Lotus Eaters is a visual treat—and emotionally vapid.

Only Gaby Hoffmann makes a lasting impression, as the thick-skinned pariah of the bunch. Somehow she’s able to give the ring of truth to even the hoariest of Hennelly and cowriter Sarah Adina Smith’s conceits (notably a rally-the-troops speech cribbed from founding father George Washington). The rest makes you long for Armageddon.

When great actors meet a misguided script, the results can be hilarious. And so it proves with Criminal, a nutso mash-up of The Bourne Identity and The Man with Two Brains which, despite a laughable plot and ridiculous dialogue, somehow managed to attract Kevin Costner to the lead role, with support from Ryan Reynolds, Tommy Lee Jones, new Wonder Woman Gal Gadot and even Gary Oldman (who really needs to have a word with his agent after this and Child 44).

By the time The Son of No One reaches its wanna-be-tragic finale, you'd like nothing more than to kick this bastard child to the curb.

Ugh! For a movie devoted to an alleged geek-rebel underdog, this coming-of-age flick couldn't be more conformist, from its familiar faux quirk to the interchangeable emo-pop songs peppering each sugary montage.

Joanou, later to find greater exposure with the concert picture U2 Rattle and Hum and the Oldman/Penn crime movie State of Grace, directs with a lot of energy, but the material just isn't there.

Ultimately, for all its running around in the middle of the night, Sex Tape plays it remarkably coy, reaffirming love, not lust. It’s the cinematic equivalent of sleeping in the wet spot.

The one cop (Bentley) who buys Jill's story looks like the most likely suspect (or at least the most likely red herring) - and then he vanishes for the entire third act to, supposedly, make his mother some soup. Wait, what?

A misfire.

Disconcerting in its kaleidoscopic shifts in tone, it's nevertheless too absorbing simply to dismiss.

The film's secret weapon proves to be Freddy Krueger–fingernailed witch Marique, whom Rose McGowan plays with the kind of fuck-it-all brio - imagine a cross between Madeline Kahn in "History of the World: Part I" and Lady Gaga - that should garner her a Razzie and an Oscar.

After suffering endless abuse, Daniel wins with just a few well placed whacks: those expecting standard wish-fulfilment fantasy will be disappointed that (in tune with the philosophy, of course) he didn't give the punk a pasting.

Harper proves she can sing, O'Brien proves he can't act, and Sharman films inventively, but fringe theatre material does not a big screen musical make. Rocky Horror succeeded in its spot-on sense of style, but here the style, like the whole concept of rock musicals, seems a decade out of date, bypassed by films like Quadrophenia which integrate music and story in a different way.

This is little more than an expensive-looking celebrity vacation video—more evidence in support of the notion that the Hollywood house always wins.

Utter rubbish, and badly dressed at that.

Sometime stunt co-ordinator Baxley directs this feebly-scripted, sporadically exciting crime pic like a showpiece for his former speciality.

Never do you sense an overriding intelligence; Cortés once found laughs and shocks within the coffin-confined Buried, but here's he's got too much room to wander into realms of the ridiculous.

While it’s based on the bizarre 2007 story of the female astronaut who drove 900 miles in adult diapers to confront an ex-boyfriend, Lucy in the Sky doesn’t include that intimate detail. Then again, the movie shits the bed in so many other ways, it may have been overkill. Director Noah Hawley (TV’s Fargo) omits the headline-making undergarment, instead stocking up on paper-thin observations about workplace misogyny and mental health in a cloying feature debut that begs to be scorned.

There's a secret weapon embedded within The Watch, however, and his name is Richard Ayoade.

A dog in wolf's clothing, Lionsgate's drab, anthropomorphic animal saga does little more than reconfirm the preeminence of Pixar.

Has neither enough bite nor enough heart to sustain it as a female-revenge-fantasy-cum-romantic-comedy; even its “shocking” switcheroo and faux-edgy moments seem remarkably frivolous and flavorless.

Amazing, though, what a competent director, cameraman and cast can do to help out a soggy plot. Tolerably watchable by comparison with the average Halloween rip-off.

Dumb and Dumber To may not be quite as funny as the first one, but it’s the funniest thing the Farrellys have made since.

His unauthorised investigation, with partner Jo Christman (Parker), is a routine affair, the film's familial and professional tensions sunk by a script that's all development and no pay-off.

This rom-com certainly has something old, something borrowed and something blue-the something new, however, is MIA.

Spacey is ever the pro, shilling Axle's absurd redemption and countenancing the likes of Johnny Knoxville and John Stamos as if a third Oscar were in the offing. Yet his female costars fare worse, forming an unfortunate collection of dismal, man-dependent stereotypes, from Belle's perma-pouting idealist to Heather Graham's breast-obsessed, sapphic-by-choice ballbuster.

Directing his first feature, artist Longo seems dazzled, like a rabbit, by sheer visual overload.

Martin zips from boyhood to manhood in a ridiculously short period, and in no time at all is getting it together with Beth Logan (Zuniga), who doesn't know about his dad being a creepy-crawly. But when Martin's skin starts falling off, she begins to suspect that it's more than just a case for Clearasil, and resolves to help her loved one sort out his confused chromosomes - too late to avoid the onslaught of latex and squishy special effects for which we've all been waiting, and which is indeed the movie's only interesting commodity. Other than that, it's standard directionless fare.

The performances, especially from the bed partners, are complex; even if you weren’t wanting for an exposé of adult-entertainment violence, here it is.

Nothing - script, performances, comedy, drama - works in the slightest. To answer the title: Where do we start?

The film does offer some revealing anecdotes about his infamous Monroe sessions, but mostly, it simply slouches from one sensationalistic, salacious bit to the next, sans any historical context. Worse, filmmaker Shannah Laumeister continually rhapsodizes on-camera about her own “soul mate” relationship with the subject—leaving viewers feeling mad as hell.

A severely flawed but not unamusing venture from a director who should know better.

Truth or Dare ultimately plays like soap-opera trash.

Sorely contrived.

The Entity doesn't emerge quite as one-dimensionally nasty as its synopsis suggests. The film's men are so uniformly creepy, and its heroine so strong and sympathetic, that apart from a couple of unpleasant moments the story often seems less like horror than feminist parable, especially when Hershey (giving a fine performance) is reduced to a laboratory object with her home recreated in the psychology department.

Despite the ingredients for a rousing shoot-’em-up (two-timing hit men, a slo-mo shoot-out, chartreuse-filtered scenes in Mexico) it’s hard to buy the leads’ mastery of this world of fist-pumps and violence.

Even by low standards, Grudge Match is astonishingly undercooked.

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, but let's not get carried away here.

All the solemnity is deadly: Not one of these superhuman gang members registers in memory, and you feel stiffed on gory giggles. Talk about having your chain yanked.

Entertainingly, Hardy lets himself get jerked around, Evil Dead–style, but he’s never enough of a jerk—so much for that journo-snoop backstory—and Venom isn’t vicious enough to justify its own existence.

Mostly laugh-free black comedy, which gathers an impressive cast - Marisa Tomei, Jennifer Connelly and Ciarán Hinds round out the ensemble - for bad sitcom-level shenanigans.

Seriously missing the memo in a cringe-inducing way, The Hustle takes a perfectly fine premise from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—two predatory men get played by a savvier woman—and obliterates it by swapping genders and ultimately selling out its feminist credibility.

An uneven blend of crime thriller and rural romance, this aims for an adult complexity but misses the target by a mile.

An "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" retread told from a postoccupation vantage point, this adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s YA romance novel unfolds in a dystopian future when alien parasites have nearly won the battle for Earth.

Zombie is still committed to showing how violence perverts all touched by it, yet his carnivalesque approach undercuts his empathy. He panders to the cheap seats whenever he’s not being scary.

Their brotherly bickering may be a useful time killer until the new Arrested Development episodes drop, but it's ultimately foamy filler added to a frustratingly frothy film that says nothing about its subject.

When featherweight Domhnall Gleeson, as an intense angel of death, is your feminist Irish mob movie’s most interesting asset, you need to find Hollywood’s witness-protection program immediately.

Timing’s everything in comedy, so perhaps Post Grad would have seemed peppier prior to the Great Recession; circa now, this comedy feels like a cynical stroll through the unemployment lines awaiting today’s class of seniors.

Estevez and Nelson are as unappealing here as in The Breakfast Club, though in fairness they're hampered by a script that seems to despise its characters. So, by the end, will you.

Cowriter Branch isn’t much of a dramatist either, as this hoary midlife-crisis tale is watchable solely for its reliable cast.

This confounding, overwrought mockumentary abruptly devolves into sitcom silliness.

Yes, designer David L Snyder has done wonders with the set; yes, there's decent photography and effects; yes, the giant Goombas are splendid. But the whole is not a dinosaur, it's a dog. It will baffle kids, bore adolescents, and depress adults.

No matter how may times Identity Thief switches tracks, nothing works — it fails as a star vehicle, a recession-era satire, a WTF white-collar-grunt revenge tale, a "Midnight Run"–style buddy flick, a gross-out laughfest and a bathetic tale of broken souls. No amount of stolen guises can fix it.

Compelling characters are the lifeblood of a good superhero story, so it’s tragic that a film about two warring vampires in the Marvel universe is utterly bereft of them.

Still coasting on once being the director of the first The Fast and the Furious a full 17 years ago, Rob Cohen is unable to muster true engagement with the banal plot and characters, or deliver the kind of inspired ridiculousness that makes for a guilty pleasure.

Scott manages the shift from tremulous romance to violent retribution very well, but his efficient handling of some surprisingly tough action scenes is compromised by a surfeit of pop promo clichés: billowing net curtains, clouds of fluttering doves, an excessive use of coloured filters.

Neither blue teeth nor virgins make appearances, but Russell Brown’s torpid indie does deliver plenty of ponderous chitchat about truth, deception, criticism and artists’ motivations.

The movie's twitchy, diabolical monster is neither persuasive nor historically tenable, and unlike Arendt's Eichmann, he's far too easy to dismiss.

The bulk of the film inspires little more than eye-rolling and impatient finger-tapping.

Helnwein's elaborate vision bumps up against practical concerns and meets with resistance - a conflict that this superficial portrait glosses over almost as much as it reduces Helnwein to simply being a determined, intransigent creative type.

Against the novelty of the canine stunts one has to balance some terribly variable acting, poor lighting, and spotty photography. Attendant adults will probably find it a long haul.

Worst of all, there's a charmless brat prince for Sonja to take under her wing. Pap, and Fleischer - who at least brought a touch of humour to Conan the Destroyer - should know better.

The gory, censor-hacked murders (all of women) and the revelation of the nut's identity (he's gone on to kidnap a virgin as substitute for his dead daughter) are all out of the way inside half-an-hour, leaving a lot of dead time to establish this awful movie's single original gimmick: the novelty encounter of two psychos, who end up at each other's throats.

Less a nightmare than a case of bad indigestion, this ’80s horror reboot is a primer in the humorless recycling of potent pop culture.

Director Michael Corrente has delivered decent petty-criminal movies before - see 1994's "Federal Hill" - but every aspect here smacks of faux-street toughness at its worst.

Cannonball lacks its predecessor's dramatic tension, and by the middle of the film Bartel's disregard for narrative in favour of a series of jokes leaves no dramatic resolution.

More of a formulaic Katherine Heigl joint than a femcentric "High Fidelity," this breezy challenge to post-Cosmopolitan gender politics boasts little in the way of surprises but plenty of offbeat charm from its daffy lead.

Even on the level of unintentional humour this fails to entertain: the mark of a truly dreadful movie.

And that’s the major problem here. When the first Scream hit, it had a ball deconstructing ’80s and ’90s horror movie tropes. Six movies and three decades on, it’s become the very thing it was built to deconstruct, trapped in its own lore and fumbling about for its old smarts. The genre has moved on. Scream needs to get with the times.

This film will make you cry tears. They won’t be happy ones.