Acquits itself well enough. Gratuitously gory and derivative to the core, Venom manages to deliver some effective frights in between large swaths of voodoo gibberish.

The numerous sex scenes are good and steamy.

This dumb, derivative teen slasher movie would be uninspiring coming from any writer-director, let alone one with several genre classics under his belt.

Further proof that titular antagonist Jason Voorhes is ready for retirement -- to videostore shelves.

Costner's earnest performance is a major plus for Dragonfly, keeping the picture grounded in some semblance of reality even as it becomes progressively more fantastical.

The stellar cast can do little to paper over the cracks in an awkward, unevenly-paced script that is composed of a series of sometimes-attractive scenes with little emotional undertow.

The movie, which will be lucky to eke out a weekend’s worth of business, isn’t scary, it isn’t awesome, and it doesn’t nudge you to think of technology in a new way. But it does make you wish that you could rewind those two hours, or maybe just erase them.

The disarray is baffling for the audience, and downright punishing for Hart, whose lead character is forced to shape-shift between scenes, veering from milquetoast to petty to tyrannical to pushed-around.

Encino Man is a mindless would-be comedy aimed at the younger set. Low-budget quickie is insulting even within its own no-effort parameters.

By-the-numbers slasher picture Smiley starts by borrowing the key concept of "Candyman," ends with a denouement heavily indebted to "Scream," and stuffs its middle with a dismayingly high quotient of lazy false scares.

A monstrously unfunny “Police Academy”/“Reno 911” knockoff directed with just enough winking self-awareness to seem both insipid and pretentious.

Weak script, poor acting and miscasting aside, it's the power of the subject that makes this an enjoyable ride. Writer/director Richard Brooks thoroughly researched the Territory of the compulsive gambler and captures the obsession with almost a documentary eye.

A well-intentioned misfire featuring 3-D CGI animation that recalls lesser vidgames of the mid-1990s.

A B movie that somehow won the lottery and got an A-movie cast and director.

Ultimately there’s an intriguing arc here that rewards patience.

Guy Ritchie shoots a blank with Revolver, which replays the low-life criminal shtick from his first two features with an ill-advised overlay of pretension. The action, attitude and wise-guy talk all feel moldy this time around.

Impossibly vulgar, tawdry and coarse, this much-touted major studio splash into NC-17 waters is akin to being keelhauled through a cesspool, with sharks swimming alongside.

It's doubtful that anyone, even executors of Greene's literary estate, will be able to discern much of the source material in this frenetic trifle.

A thoroughly derivative and unengaging fantasy.

The fact that none of this usually-surefire mindless stimulus is remotely inspired — let alone that the plot feels like a barely-there afterthought — turns so much cheerful sound and fury into near-senseless din.

Aside from such dutiful fan service, the film is a haggardly slapdash "Bourne Identity" knockoff, never rising above the level of basic competence.

Although helmer Curt Hahn champions the causes of racial justice and crusading journalism, he can't seem to find a tone that's consistent or that befits the gravity of his subject matter.

As thrillers go, Shut In is conspicuously short of thrills. It’s an undistinguished and predictable hodgepodge, so blandly generic as to suggest that it was cobbled together by filmmakers referencing a how-to handbook who picked spare parts from other, better thrillers.

This scrappy, draggy study in soul-crushing failure and disappointment is noteworthy primarily as a showcase for its lead actor’s most quintessentially Keanu performance in years.

The latest model in the recent spate of underwhelming female star vehicles, Enough, a thriller detailing how a good wife gets back at an evil, possessive husband, is never provocative enough to generate strong emotional response.

Watching the redoubtable Elizabeth Banks try to breathe life into the stillborn farce Walk of Shame is like watching a team of paramedics perform CPR on the corpse of Ulysses S. Grant.

Despite an effective Jim Caviezel, this anecdotal drama never rises above the level of lightly likable.

Almost painfuly modest in its ambition and accomplishment, this slow-pitch offering might tolerably amuse the under-10 crowd, but will prove borderline intolerable for everyone else.

This is by any measure a dreadful movie, a chintzy, CG-encrusted eyesore that oozes stupidity and self-indulgence from every pore. Yet damned if Proyas doesn’t put it all out there with a lunatic conviction you can’t help but admire.

There doesn’t appear to be any purpose at all to the random exchanges and interactions that pass for a plot.

Despite stretches of skillfully sustained suspense, Apollo 18 ultimately comes across as little more than a modestly clever stunt.

Not a bad picture, just utterly banal.

A flagrantly derivative but modestly diverting drama.

Suffers from severe problems of tone, a surfeit of undeveloped plot points and characters, and bland direction.

While the sheer novelty of a feature about lacrosse may be enough to generate some audience curiosity about A Warrior's Heart, this respectably crafted but thoroughly predictable indie rarely deviates from the gameplan followed by countless other dramas about self-absorbed young hotheads who get a shot at redemption on the playing field.

This endless romp through the jungle, lacking any focus, fun or excitement (sexual or otherwise), seems to exist merely as a reason for husband John to find another 1001 ways to photograph wife Bo in varying stages of undress.

Overall aroma of movie junk food.

The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.

For those who enjoy fashion-model-looking twentysomethings yelling at each other in bathrooms while doing too much cocaine, voila! Heaven is a place called London.

A mediocre ensemble comedy-drama that's not particularly funny, involving or even nostalgic.

Playing with Fire . . . is a barely glorified sitcom made in the overlit and benignly smart-mouth Nickelodeon house style.

The earlier films in the series were far from perfect, but at their best they had some flair and agreeable humor, qualities this one sorely lacks. Hackman gets a few laughs, but has less to work with than before, and everyone else seems to be just going through the motions and having less fun doing so.

A clunky and cheesy disaster.

A demolition derby starring some of the most expensive cars on Earth, Redline portrays a world so drenched in wealth it gives off a stench.

Without the technical nastiness and fatal realism that made the initial film so compelling, the remake feels like a hollow excuse to present the myriad ways in which a bullet can pierce a cranium, rather than an edgy portrait of Third World violence.

The strain needed to extend The Whole Ten Yards a yard -- and to feature length -- is so painfully evident it breaks new pic's comedy spirit, making it a particularly dubious member of the Sequel Hall of Shame.

Without the songs, the underdeveloped bisexual triangle would seem shapeless. Even with the music, the film is a poorly crafted grab-bag of ideas barely elaborated upon enough to sustain a 20-minute short.

A promising concept is gradually run into the ground in Sex and Death 101, a would-be black comedy that lacks both laughs and gravity.

An average slasher picture that meanders indecisively between gore and gags.

Eating Out: All You Can Eat somewhat departs from the series' gay spin on the raunchy teen sex comedy in favor of semi-sincere romantic comedy -- after a crass and abysmal first stretch, that is.

Suffers greatly from both a visibly constrained budget and an extraordinarily dated feeling.

A silly, hackneyed college suspenser put across with all the contrived banality of a bad '70s TV movie.

It's certainly an unusual movie, aiming more often than not for pathos rather than pratfalls while nonetheless maintaining a slapstick tone, but it remains resolutely unmemorable.

Underacted, overheated and uses a pair of purloined, high-end sneakers as a 400-pound allegory for getting your priorities straight.

Despite its infotainment look, Burzynski ultimately proves convincing.

Without fully fleshed-out generic or social contexts, left-wing documentarian Philippe Diaz's preachy mix of graphic free love and polemical diatribe fails to mesh as fiction, though it does make for superior porn.

Ups the self-parody so much that it's practically a Wayans Brothers spoof, albeit with fewer jokes.

Valerie Harper essays a Catholic twist on her yakkety yenta "Rhoda" persona, while Giancarlo Esposito, as the wise, hip priest heading the retreat, is called upon to bring believability to a film low in that commodity.

Most of what Stevens has concocted here is hard to take, notably the characters' curious relationship with the rain that threatens to drown Missouri, and serves as a soggy metaphor. Sometimes it only rains in half the frame; sometimes people coming out of downpours are wet, sometimes they're not; sometimes they're wet and it's not raining.

The movies by their very nature require a certain suspension of disbelief, but Mission Park requires more suspension than a two-ton crane could provide.

French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody.

Christmas Eve isn’t likely to make anyone feel exceptionally merry. Still, it remains modestly diverting from scene to scene.

Too often the pic feels as if it’s killing time to pad itself out into feature length.

Master manipulator Stephen King, making his directoral debut from his own script, fails to create a convincing enough environment to make the kind of nonsense he's offering here believable or fun.

Zelker’s three-ring circus of digital and social-media content needs a compelling main event, and this movie seems unlikely to inspire many to check out the supplementary materials.

The weapons look fake, the stiff action sequences play like poor re-enactments, and you frequently wonder how anyone managed to keep a straight face while firing off some embarrassingly simple-minded lines of dialogue. Even the bright red, corn-syrupy blood splattered around looks like it’s from a different decade of cinema.

“Mr. Dundee” is saved from total catastrophe by Hogan’s natural-born appeal.

The main fault lies with the writing. Lacking both a realistic grounding and compelling internal momentum, pic wastes its handsome mounting and capable cast on a plodding tale that eludes either psychological or allegorical sense.

[Travolta's] performance ain’t lousy, but the movie that surrounds it is, and it’s almost laughable to see this iconic star trying so hard on behalf of a project that is so compromised in its intentions.

Whatever John Patrick Shanley's script may have tried to do in adapting Crichton's book, it clearly feels as if the picture were edited to leave the action sequences in while removing any connecting material that might have helped them make sense.

A useless remake of Mike Hodges' 1971 British gangland cult classic.

A perfectly dreadful film.

Surprisingly funny and expectedly rude, this first starring vehicle by vilified standup comic Andrew Dice Clay has a decidedly lowbrow humor that is a sort of modern equivalent of that of the Three Stooges.

A shrill, mechanical comedy.

Dull and tamped down throughout, Scott convinces well enough as a guy who wants be put out of his misery, and there isn’t an actor here who doesn’t look ready to join him.

The strongest dimensions of this self-conscious but centerless film are four sexy actresses parading in colorful costumes and Amy Vincent's radiant lensing, which makes the picture seem hipper than it is.

Correctly ascertaining that auds will be less interested in the outcome than in the obstacles along the way, Levasseur plants and executes the pic’s exclamation-point scares with grinning, squelching gusto.

Highly reminiscent of Kingpin in its willingness to try anything for a laugh, Dirty Work is a shameless and sporadically hilarious comedy about two thirtysomething underachievers who start a revenge for hire business.

This decent if derivative scare machine should benefit from a lack of genre competition.

Destined to be better remembered for its grisly billboard imagery than for its relatively tame torture-porn tropes, Captivity is a thoroughly nasty piece of work that nonetheless earns credit for generating modest suspense after a predictable but effective plot twist around the 50-minute mark.

Bringing absolutely no fresh angles to a time-tested formula that's seemed particularly overworked of late.

Lightning fails to strike twice -- an underwhelming follow-up to one of the career-stalled action star's better efforts.

It’s a good movie: tense, bold, angry, empathetic, provocative, observant, morally engaged. And also, to be honest, a trifle gimmicky.

Knucklehead has a professional slickness about it, flawless shooting by d.p. Kenneth Zunder, and Johnston's perfectly cloying score. The acting leaves a bit to be desired: Malick is hilarious; Wight is endearing; Rebecca Creskoff ("Hung"), who plays Mary's friend and fellow ex-"dancer," is refreshingly natural.

Gruff and downright smelly, especially when star David Arquette is forced at one point to flop around in a pile of doggy doo.

With its uneven mix of comedy, melodrama and action, pic will need all the help Shaq's name and a rap soundtrack can provide.

Sherman's personal wounds feel fresh, which makes for a superficially beautiful but otherwise bitter story.

Writer-executive producer John Hughes conjurs up a romance between Candy’s teenage son (Chris Young) and a local girl (Lucy Deakins), but that proves the film’s biggest letdown. Last third of the film is a real mess, as filmmakers try to whip up a crisis that will unite the family, with the redheaded twins getting lost in a mineshaft during a wild rainstorm. Despite all this, the Aykroyd-Candy pairing is charmed. Stephanie Faracy is excellent as Candy’s sweet, happy wife, and Bening is also savvy in her role.

The trouble is, Sherlock Holmes exists so large in audiences’ minds already that the pair’s uninspired take feels neither definitive nor an especially fresh take, but just an off-brand, garden-variety parody.

Lacking the manipulative structure of "Speed," which shrewdly interspersed rousing set pieces throughout the story, Speed 2 is vastly uneven, trying in its second hour to recoup energy and compensate the audience for all the exposition of the initial reels.

Director Russell Mulcahy can’t seem to decide from one scene to the next whether he’s making a sci-fi, thriller, horror, music video or romance – end result is a mishmash.

The bottom line is that Staying Alive is nowhere as good as its 1977 predecessor, "Saturday Night Fever."

Despite some hackneyed qualities, helmer William Brent Bell's good-looking if undistinguished cast and the seemingly fresh twist on an old tale should lure the usual fans of mayhem, murder and the medieval.

Solid performances, handsome production values and a few genuinely creepy scenes are not enough to save Godsend.

Pic's future as a cult item is a sure bet.

That Saw 3D is relentlessly repugnant will delight the franchise's fans and surprise almost no one. The best that can be said for the picture, gamely directed by longtime "Saw" cutter Kevin Greutert, is that it offers little in between the traps, which are more creatively vicious than they've ever been.

Vaxxed comes across as a grab-bag of charts, theories and anecdotal evidence that would never pass muster by the editors of any major scientific journal (like, say, the Lancet), and too often resembles the kind of one-sided, paranoia-stoking agitprop that political activists construct to sanctify true believers and assault infidels.

He’s a mystery writer, she’s a mystery; and it’s also a mystery how TV fodder like this manages to get the high-gloss, top-talent treatment at studios.