Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars is an embarrassing combination of kitsch and boredom.

A virtual remake of the 1972 original, without that film's mounting suspense and excitement.

This overlong tale spends most of its nearly two hours as a somewhat draggy, talky mystery before finally deciding to be a thriller, with credibility lacking throughout.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will attract some grown-up flower children of the 1960s who will soon find the Michael Schultz film to be a totally bubblegum and cotton candy melange of garish fantasy and narcissism.

Production features arch scripting by Richard Sale (from his novel), stilted acting by the cast and forced direction by J. Lee Thompson.

Blake Edward’s obsession with the slapstick comedy genre has produced some all-time comedy classics and some best-forgotten clinkers. A Fine Mess belongs in the latter category.

As it goes on, this all becomes a marketing hook for an increasingly flaked-out fantasy.

Lipstick has pretensions of being an intelligent treatment of the tragedy of female rape. But by the time it's over, the film has shown its true colors as just another cynical violence exploitationer.

The more you start to nitpick this movie, the more innumerable its plot holes appear, until the whole thing collapses in on itself.

Return to the Blue Lagoon is a pointless spinoff of the 1980 hit, which was itself a remake of a 1949 British pic.

It’s a good bet a film is in trouble when the highlight comes from seeing John Candy in drag.

The result is yet another wearisome tale that inelegantly depicts themes like acceptance, understanding and diversity within a saga that has always been rather clumsy with its messaging around such weighty topics.

Meteor really combines several disasters in one continuous cinematic bummer.

Neither emotional enough to pay proper tribute to the true story it captures, nor hokey enough to qualify as “so bad, it’s good,” this is a flaccid, failed attempt at heart-tugging poignancy.

It’s a badly shot one-joke movie that sits there and goes thud.

Arguably, the most exciting turn goes to a foxy, blue vintage Dodge Challenger. A small knot of cattle comes in a close second, scampering away from roar of the car chase. Because, yes, there’s got to be one of those, too.

It’s filled with risible dialogue, a visual style more suited to a Côte d’Azur fashion video (the slow motion, the tasteful, slightly obscured sex scenes), and plastered with an undistinguished score by Brian Byrne (“Albert Nobbs”).

Nothing gels, as the film careens from cartoonishness to violent peril to attempted satire to sentimentality and so forth, all of it hyperbolic and inorganic.

The “raunchy” set-pieces feel like road bumps en route to a too obvious and disappointingly tidy conclusion. Do yourself a favor and spend five minutes — and as many dollars — researching something else to watch instead.

If you are in need of more reminders of the most extreme of the potential evils of internet interaction than you get every time you fire up an app, by all means, smash the like button on “Spree.” For the rest of us, the best advice might be to mute, block, vote down, unfollow or simply log off and go look at a tree.

Played with a satirical edge, this update on the pulpy 1956 thriller about a murderous social climber might have been good for a chill and a hoot, but played straight it's a real clunker.

Fans of the original will no doubt tune expecting more high-grade guilty-pleasure fun, only to get way too much of a no-longer-very-good thing instead.

This is the kind of movie where the most dynamic thing in every scene is the art direction, followed by the natty retro costumes (which Jean must have used the cash to buy, since she didn’t have time to pack), and only then comes the people.

Gitai’s latest is a murky, largely po-faced affair, in which no character’s story urgently distinguishes itself from, or even within, a general morass of discontent.

A movie like this would be a good start, if this were 1980. A decade and a half after “Brokeback Mountain,” however, it feels like a huge step backward.

Daisy Miller is a dud. Cybill Shepherd is miscast in the title role. Frederic Raphael's adaptation of the Henry James story doesn't play. The period production by Peter Bogdanovich is handsome. But his direction and concept seem uncertain and fumbled.

It’s a slick film that’s forgettable at best, annoyingly broad and unfunny at worst.

Its last half is largely static, and the film never revives much interest.

It’s a softheaded piece of morbid romantic treacle — two parallel cloying love stories for the price of one.

Overall, pic’s conception of the future isn’t terribly original or inventive, and viewers not into the head trip of bigscreen computer graphics will want to download a lot sooner than Johnny does.

A decent cast and fast pace make Pixie easy enough to take as disposable entertainment. Yet it also has that annoying edge unique to films that strike an attitude of rakish sophistication while actually serving up lowbrow quips about prison rape, fat people and menstruation.

More an imitation than a parody, this would-be comedy is very short on laughs.

Some viewers will surely be moved. To me, though, The Midnight Sky just proves that a movie that reaches for the stars can still come up empty-handed.

Ultimately, the only respectable thing that remains consistent throughout The Stand In is the beguiling appeal Barrymore brings to both of the personalities, even though neither of them is particularly likable.

Kaminski takes a similarly dour, no-nonsense approach to what could be a cheerfully all-nonsense story — as if stripping junk food of its fat — and this “American Dream” dies somewhere in the impasse.

Robin and Marian is a disappointing and embarrassing film: disappointing, because Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, the brilliant Robert Shaw, Richard Harris and a screenplay by James Goldman ought to add up to something even in the face of Richard Lester's flat direction; embarrassing, because the incompatible blend of tongue-in-cheek comedy, adventure and romance gives the Robin Hood-revisited film the grace and energy of a geriatrics' discotheque.

Cuba is a hollow, pointless non-drama.

If Redemption Day were any more generic, the first thing you’d see on screen would be a bar code in place of the opening credits.

An indelicate attempt to create some African Queen-style magic while curing cancer and saving the rainforests in the bargain, this jumbo-budget two-character piece suffers from a very weak script and a lethal job of miscasting.

An attempt at an intimate personal drama that just doesn't come off, Five Days One Summer is so slow that it seems more like Five Summers One Day.

Sir Billi lacks the looks or charm of even the most rudimentary CG offerings being made today, as if not only the animation but also the plot and characters were spat out by off-the-shelf software.

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

A dopey, almost poignantly bad actioner about two legends-in-their-own-minds, who bungle their way through a bank robbery on behalf of a friend, stands out only for big stars Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson.

Cahill gets so bogged down in hair-splitting rules and exposition that he loses track of the bigger themes.

Don’t Look Up plays like the leftie answer to “Armageddon” — which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved.

This one didn't get the bugs worked out before release. It's another in the Hollywood cycle of films based on every kind of creature enlarged by radiation.

A gonzo mashup of gothic melodrama, Wild West survival story, and voodoo-flavored supernaturalism, with a side order of slasher-movie tropes and a sprinkling of kinky sex insinuations.

More concerned with paying homage to ’90s-era Quentin Tarantino than telling a contemporary coming-of-age tale with believable stakes, co-helmers Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s debut feature First Date saddles a young couple not with a romantic night out, but with a haphazard all-nighter crime-comedy that’s mostly unfunny and free of convincing suspense.

Action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme takes a career step backward in Nowhere to Run, a relentlessly corny and shamelessly derivative vehicle.

If anything, the film’s cross-pollination with faith-based cinema is detrimental to its already minimal tension.

Will Wernick’s film not only fails to use that format in clever or suspenseful ways, it blows the basics of maintaining plausibility and viewer interest.

A klutzy would-be comedy about a girls' soccer team, Ladybugs is sexist, homophobic and woefully unfunny to boot. Paramount apparently thought it was ordering up another Bad News Bears, but the garish Ladybugs has the look of a third-rate TV movie.

As directed by Nick Moran in obvious imitation of executive producer Danny Boyle’s most hyperbolic style, scripted by Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh, this apparently loose interpretation of the subject’s memoir becomes a hyperventilating “Behind the Music” caricature, all familiar flash and precious little substance.

Despite a fine Continental cast and gleaming production values, Czech helmer Julius Ševčík has made a muddled, maudlin hash of what ought to have been a sure thing.

Aiming for a darkly humorous portrait of marital bliss — and the difficulties of maintaining it — the film comes off as a half-formed “Twilight Zone” joke minus the punchline.

Split Second is an extremely stupid monster film, boasting enough violence and special effects to satisfy less-discriminating vid fans.

Millennium tries hard to combine sci-fi special effects and a love story, but unfortunately neither are convincing and the pic ends up looking like a failed pilot for a TV series. Veteran science-fiction director Michael Anderson does the best he can with a mediocre script.

Hutton is totally unbelievable with her Germanic accent and evil habits. As the girlfriend, Jane Seymour is wasted. Her role is basically to stand by as Selleck races about trying to grab the diamonds and run.

In any decade, the film’s bevy of unexplained details, dropped subplots, paper-thin characterizations and fright-free mayhem would disappoint.

At one point, a character in a coma is referred to as having Locked-In Syndrome, which means that she’s still aware of her surroundings but is totally unable to move. By the end of Demonic, you’ll know just how she feels.

Davis Steve Martin Universal's HouseSitter, a tediously unfunny screwball comedy, is a career misstep for both Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. Hawn is grating as the kind of giggly flake she played two decades ago on "Laugh-In," and Martin is more obnoxious than endearing as the New England architect whose life she invades. This looks like a B.O. dud.

Seance proves a disappointingly boilerplate retro slasher that’s pedestrian on every level from concept to execution.

A heavy-handed, by-the-numbers fantasy about an ordinary Joe who thinks his life would have been different if he'd connected with that all-important pitch in a high school baseball game.

Fuzzily conceived and indecisively executed, Harry & Son represents a deeply disappointing return to the director's chair for Paul Newman. Cowritten and coproduced by the star as well, pic [suggested by the novel A Lost King by Raymond DeCapite] never makes up its mind who or what it wants to be about and, to compound the problem, never finds a proper style in which to convey the tragicomic events that transpire.

This mangy, dimwitted gender switch on "The Last Detail" won't even have the benefit of trial before being sentenced to the video brig, since it's virtually there already.

Carol Reed’s “Oliver!,” now 53 years old, feels more authentically youthful and vibrant than this try-hard “how do you do, fellow kids” exercise.

Whatever the truth, there’s nothing in Jacquot’s vision of Charpillon to inspire devotion. There have been other unlikely Casanovas, yet the best of them conveyed not just the man’s charm but a depth of intelligence. Lindon’s downturned eyes have always exuded a world-weariness that fits with his characters, but there’s no spark here, no understanding of the man’s aura.

Worse things have happened to Oscar winners, but it’s still unfortunate to see both Richard Dreyfuss and Mira Sorvino flailing in the inept muddle of Crime Story.

With low stakes and even lower energy, writer-director Maria Bissell’s feature debut isn’t sure if it’s a thriller with amusing elements or a comedy of criminal absurdity. What it winds up being, therefore, is neither, stuck in a dull middle ground that will please no one.

Filmmakers, including first-time theatrical director Dick Lowry, have wisely returned to the non-stop car-chasing destruction derby of the first movie. But the sense of fun in that original is missing and the countless smashups and near-misses are orchestrated randomly.

A ghastly concoction of razzle-dazzle circus maximalism, poorly CG’d supernatural whimsy and sentimentality so cloyingly sweet you can feel it in your fillings, “Freaks Out” is, however, almost admirably unaware that its over-egged, unironically “Springtime for Hitler” production design, and its lazy invocation of the Holocaust as a narrative shortcut to high emotional stakes, might be in questionable taste. Instead, this is a sincere, if deeply misguided attempt to fabricate weepy wonderment amid the ruination of World War II.

Instead of persuasive verisimilitude and compelling character development, we get scene after scene of Jesse waiting for something, anything.

A shockingly dull look at a fascinating disorder affecting humans who believe they were born into the wrong species.

Ropert’s understanding of how children furtively watch the adults around them, soaking up the friction, is well-observed and the best thing in this otherwise insipid film that perversely discards any shred of naturalism for an outdated and phony ingenuousness. Even the performances are airless, and consequently there’s no emotional investment in a family whose rapport is so clunkily established.

The dark-side-of-the-L.A.-club-scene premise has potential, but the movie turns out to be a cut-and-paste thriller without any night-world bloom to it.

Timlin bears a good-enough resemblance, and gives as much of a rounded performance as she can. But this conception provides no insight into any real HRC, past or present, and seems trite even as a fictionalized act of hostility toward whatever she represents to the filmmakers. Which is, in a word, murky.

Obvious and derivative in borderline-shameless fashion, it’s a B-movie knock-off with little originality and even less flair.

Damnation Alley is dull, stirred only occasionally by prods of special effects that only seem exciting compared to the dreariness that proceeded it. What's worse, it's dumb, depending on its stereotyped characters to do the most stupid things under the circumstances in order to keep the story moving.

Ambitious but tediously precious, sincerely conceived but derivatively realized, The Blazing World throws an ornate heap of production design at an anemically scripted psychological metaphor, and counts on a combination of fairy dust and sheer determined nerve to make the whole contraption fly.

This shapeless doc feels overlong at just over 90 minutes, because it’s unclear what, exactly, Carr and collaborator Jenny Eliscu want to say about Spears.

Dangerous is a bits-and-pieces action thriller with a fluky premise and a lead actor good enough to embody it. Made in the slipshod, overlit style of a straight-to-streaming potboiler, it’s not a rip-off so much as a film built out of spare parts from other movies, to the point that it never fully becomes itself.

Director Tom Gries and the entire cast perform as though they all had better things to do.

Ambulance is simply too much of a not-so-good thing. It never stops huffing and puffing to entertain you, but it’s joyless: a tale of escape that’s far from a great escape, because for all its motion it’s going through the motions.

[An] aggravatingly wispy and precious film.

The portrait of Palestinian identity it finally presents is so superficial and regressive that its saving grace is that it’s also very difficult to believe.

While there are certain shots that provoke an emotional pull, whether that be fear, sadness or wonderment, there’s a synthetic quality to them. It leaves us yearning for a full immersion into this world of make-believe. Environments lack depth and dimension, coming across flat and uninteresting.

A talky and lethargic home-invasion thriller, The Commando amounts to an inept crime drama stuffed with banal dialogue and irrelevant supporting characters to pad its feature-length running time.

Kevin James is at once the film’s most obvious brand signifier and its most surprising asset: As a heavily fictionalized Payton, his surly hangdog energy gives this corndog of a movie what flavor it has.

It would be generous to call the film a continuation of the “Chainsaw” saga. It’s more like a blood-soaked but unscary footnote.

Designed for maximum corniness, The Tiger Rising peppers its action with enough references to God, upturned-to-the-heavens gazes and warm enveloping light to make clear its function as a homily.

Everything and everyone lurches about in a desperate bid to be hilariously weird, and the effect is to make the proceedings feel hopelessly strained, as if they know that there’s nothing funny going on and thus must compensate via out-there quirkiness and constant mugging.

In execution (and there are precious few of those), Asking for It is too much like its cardboard heroines: edgy on the outside, empty within. It’s the “Charlie’s Angels” freeze-pose of rape-revenge movies.

As difficult as it can be to tell what’s real and what’s not here, it’s even more difficult to care: “Coma” seems to have poured out of Bonello stream-of-consciousness style, and analyzing it is about as rewarding as trying to make sense of the half-remembered dream your friend won’t stop talking about.

One thing leads to another, at a pace that somehow feels frenetic and ponderous all at once.

Like “Soul Surfer” before it, On a Wing and a Prayer clearly aims to appeal to audiences seeking faith-based entertainment; but just because its story is based on events that are technically true, that doesn’t mean that ticket buyers should be subjected to a version of them that’s executed too predictably to believe.

While there have been worse-crafted, even more routinely formulaic Netflix horror efforts, this one takes the cake for sheer whateverness of barely-there plot, concept, character detailing and so on.

A one-joke sketch that doesn't work as a feature, Castle Rock's Amos & Andrew raises the question: "How did this film ever get made?" Few audience members will sit through its entirety to ponder that issue.

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.