The basics of the story remain unchanged, but it’s the wanna-be-blockbuster additions that rankle, be it the incoherent direction of first-time feature director Carl Rinsch or the copious CGI beasties who look like rejected "Lord of the Rings" villains.

It’s a complex geometry that’s mined for some interesting perspectives on romantic fulfillment, but the film’s comic sense (exemplified by a drunken Harden acting inappropriately) is slack and its dramatic conclusion unfulfilling.

Ultimately, the silly material overwhelms the style, particularly in a final act involving magical hillbillies living in them thar hills — during which the movie attempts to make a serious point about the importance of faith in the midst of a lot of bad teeth, worse wigs and cheap jolts. Right.

Lambert is as uncharismatic as ever, while Van Peebles is as frightening as a wrestler in mock angry mood, and just as ridiculous. To Morahan's credit, however, he smoothly continues the series' tradition of flashy images, showy sfx, aerial landscape shots and driving rock tunes.

Abysmally uninteresting scenes of rival youth gangs hanging around on a pseudo-post-apocalyptic beach, intercut with apparently unconnected (and uninteresting) surfing footage, and occasional soft-core fumblings. Neither the 'female vengeance' nor the racial tension motifs succeed in raising even a glimmer of interest. Utter horse-shit.

Inane dialogue, extraneous scenes and wooden performances make for an experience that's less edge-of-your-seat than one very long, amateur hour and a half.

Every move is a misstep.

Unintentionally true to its title, The Divide first goes for a similar bleakness (it barely registers as entertainment), then lurches into a rousing, vengeful finale; both sides of the equation add up to less than zero.

This is hackwork of the highest order, lacking in all poetry and barely comprehensible aurally or visually.

Cloyingly crude and dispiritingly typical ensemble Hollywood farce.

Fellini used to get away with such slender crises, but he had Marcello Mastrioanni behind the shades, as well as a more vivid penchant for psychosexual fantasy. Coppola and Swan are stuck in their obsessions with dorky album art and old-man cocktails at Musso & Frank. A precious, arid thing, Glimpse arrives pinned to Styrofoam like a prize arthropod.

Campy but never dull, this first of three installments ends on a fiery cliffhanger. The completion of parts two and three would represent a victory for irrationality.

It's "Centurion Deux" without the second-coming-of-Carpenter pretense, though you still wish the trashiness were more distinctive.

It’s unfair to blame Hess solely for condescension comedy’s bad aftertaste--he’s not the only perpetrator--but his particular brand is the most graceless.

Director Max Mayer doesn’t find a way to make the ritual traumas of adolescence feel new again.

For an especially egregious bit of miscasting, look no further than Mena Suvari, star of this tony adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's posthumously published novel about a disintegrating marriage.

A plummeting lift, seances, a spontaneous combustion set-piece and prophetic-of-doom photos are timed to keep us engaged, but never coalesce into a joined-up plot.

The film is a string of dawdling sitcom scenarios and saccharine messages, cobbled together with star wipes pulled straight out of a Walmart commercial.

The truly mystifying thing about the movie is how desperately it caters to Gen-X junk nostalgia without bothering to think that maybe those Reagan-era kids have grown up a bit.

Only Wilson acquits himself, finding a few insightful layers in his black-sheep stereotype and working up a sweet chemistry with Taraji P. Henson as his sassily devoted lady-friend.

It barely tries to offer insight into its much-debated subject, content to rip the scab off an ever-fresh wound for the sake of controversy. The most fitting punishment is to simply ignore its existence.

What De Palma delivers is merely a mediocre yuppy nightmare movie, stylistically flashy but with little pace, bite or pathos.

Stuffed with lifeless gags, this cringeworthy puppet provocation is too pleased with its own naughtiness.

Harsh-voiced Sarah Butler lends zero personality to her avenging antiheroine, and the retributive torture sequences approach "Saw" levels of unlikelihood.

Mostly, it's hackneyed horror devices uneasily mixed with softball dramatics of atonement, to increasingly plodding effect. Somebody get a defibrillator in here, stat.

One wrongheaded jaw-dropper follows another.

While the movie isn't "Witness," you know that comic scenes of target practice are going to make sense around the bend.

Crank’s Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor direct with their usual flashy brio, and basso profundo Keith David has a sublime cameo as a cop indignant at the thought of a pistachio peanut butter sandwich. It’s that kind of movie, folks.