Though Verow attended the American Film Institute and has made more than a dozen shorts and features since 1994, his low-budget gay-themed films are characterized by phenomenal indifference to framing, sound quality and performance. If his relentless amateurishness is deliberate, it's self-defeating; if not, it's inexplicable: Most people who do anything for more than a decade get better at it.

This live-action cartoon tries to walk the line between pleasing the faithful and appealing to a broad-based action audience. It fails on both fronts: It's too lifeless and watered-down to stand on its own high heels, but commits the cardinal sin of messing with the original.

In what can only be described as a throwback to the awkward "gay" farces of the 1970s and '80s -- think "The Ritz" and "Partners -- this painfully uncomfortable buddy comedy trips all over itself to say something positive while still managing to offend. Worse still, it's just not funny.

The major irritant is the hyperactive direction by Joe Pytka, a near-legendary helmer of TV commercials who films each scene as if it were the last, with everybody in the frame strenuously choreographed and overly busy.

Though less offensive than its predecessor, Rambo III -- which is dedicated to "the gallant people of Afghanistan" -- is still a mindless and uninspired effort.

Horror of the glossiest, safest kind. It's a boring bubblegum shocker that loses its flavor faster than Fruit Stripes.

The film's major draws are R-rated gore and some nice physical effects, proof that a man in a top-of-the-line monster suit can still be more effective than CGI.

Forgetting that French New Wave directors often turned to Hollywood for inspiration, cinema snobs will doubtless be outraged that Hollywood would dare remake such a beloved Rohmer masterpiece, when in fact, tone aside, "Chloe In The Afternoon" isn't all that different from "The Seven Year Itch."

With nothing in the way of performance to cling to, the audience is left to marvel at the mounting inanity of each scene.

For all the sex and slicing, the most shocking thing about it is how dreary it is.

Ironically, Faris' Samantha is the most convincing personality in the mix: She's a grotesque caricature of Courtney Love by way of Nancy Spungen, a vulgar, selfish monster of unbridled id, but you always know where she's coming from.

An ugly, unfunny frat comedy.

The loose, rambling conversations that substitute for action might be more interesting if any of the characters were capable of real introspection. But they're so shallow and distracted they can't even manage sustained navel-gazing, which makes their so-called relationships profoundly uninteresting.

A film that pays lip service to some interesting ideas, but is far too concerned with pleasing a large crowd to be anything more than another instantly forgettable fright flick.

Bill Forsyth's films are always idiosyncratic, but Being Human is so steeped in the director's interior dialogue with himself as to be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't happen to be Bill Forsyth

Marvel-man Mark Steven Johnson, who wrote and directed "Daredevil" (2003) and scripted "Elektra" (2005), continues to demonstrate the wrong way to make comic book movies: Make sure special effects overwhelm the characters, let campy mannerisms go unchecked and be sure dialogue is declaimed rather than spoken.

A ludicrous mishmash undermined by ghastly performances and a hopelessly convoluted screenplay.

It's hard to pinpoint what's most insulting about this obvious propaganda piece.

It's a one-gag film that rises or falls on how funny you find the sight of fat, grease-slicked Jack Black crammed into spandex pants and capering like an epileptic lamb.

It goes without saying that the humor is vulgar and juvenile.

Just know there's a whole lot more great stuff out there than just what Evolution has in store for you -- namely, the anime that it was based on.

Thinly conceived and thoroughly shallow.

The whole film is plagued by a sense of false, desperate cheerfulness.

Pride and Glory would be a pretty cool movie if it were made in 1982.

Spin it however they like, the troubled but talented Lohan isn't what's wrong with this misbegotten mess.

Pays backhanded homage to Woody Allen via the travails of college loser Max (Gary Lundy), who fears that years of wallowing in "Annie Hall" have permanently poisoned his love life.

If anyone is to blame for this bomb it's Forte: He wrote the thing, and one would assume he's the one responsible for those uncomfortable silences where jokes are supposed to be.

Noisy, derivative and thoroughly preposterous even by the standards of 21st-century action movies.