Admittedly, this is the stuff of lurid adolescent distraction, not great cinema. Jennifer's Body is strictly a niche item but provides a goofy, campy bookend to "Drag Me to Hell" on the B-movie shelf. Watch it, forget it, move on.

Peckinpah is a filmmaking heavyweight, but in Convoy all he's doing is fighting off the boredom and frustration that grow out of coping with stupid material. [28 June 1978, p.E4]

This fitfully funny but mostly dull misfire defines exactly where the line can be drawn between truly subversive humor and lazy cynicism.

Berry’s performance, although less campy and histrionic than the trailer makes it look, is still outsize in proportion to the material, which feels slight and insubstantial despite its basis in a true story.

But for all its passion and topical currency, the movie plays too often like a college colloquium. And it ends on an unsatisfying note, with each character's choice, whether fateful or fatal, hanging in a confounding limbo of indeterminacy.

As a cinematic mutt, it possesses a certain scruffy charm, as long as you’re in the mood to forgive its lapses.

You don't have to be a Phishead to enjoy Bittersweet Motel.

Flops where it should zing, trotting out cringe-worthy cliches and hoary plot contrivances and depicting femininity through a drag queen's funhouse mirror.

Trust me, you'll want to leave these people to get on with their tedious scams alone.

This is high-carb filmmaking at its finest. When it's all over, you'll have a knot in your stomach.

The firefighting equivalent of an Army recruitment commercial.

Burlesque delivers eyeful after eyeful of rapid-fire opulence and spectacle. But its most memorable sight is the indelible image of one star taking flight, and another triumphantly staying put.

The bitchery may be funny for its own sake, but it causes the film to lose touch with its real heroine and genre. Moreover, the Christie plot ends up so drastically foreshortened that you'd swear a reel must have been misplaced, although the sluggish direction of Guy Hamilton doesn't make one anxious to see it restored.

When the climax does come, it arrives with a bra­cing blast of campy absurdity so flamboyantly deviant that it glows with a kind of perverse brilliance. But the setup is starved of logic, the film’s vital oxygen.

Restless is saved from movie-of-the-week soppiness by its plucky lead actors; by now we assume (correctly) that Wasikowska will infuse her character with lucid, clear-eyed warmth.

Of course, action movies don’t have to be believable or poignant. They just have to get your adrenaline pumping. But the movie lacks inspiration in that department, too, owing to action sequences you’ve seen before, familiar music and dialogue so predictable you could make a game out of guessing the next line.

While the music slops and churns and the ground-level bathos rises, the aerial stuff is occasionally stirring.

Overplotted, undercooked and extremely well-dressed, The Dressmaker has style to burn, but it has a mean streak as wide as the Outback.

The Razor's Edge gives us the quintessential '80s sensibility, Bill Murray, indulging a nostalgia for the '60s masquerading as the '20s. An adaptation of the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, this longtime pet project of Murray's will only disappoint his many fans.

A fast-paced, twisty-turny, high-fiving, but ultimately spiraling disaster of a movie about air traffic controllers, gets lost in this hyperbolic cloud cover, never to be found again.

The film's not nearly as idiotic as its trailer made it seem, because it's not really about voting, or politics.

A singularly vulgar piece of work.

In one scene, I could have sworn I saw a QR code peeking out from a character’s spiral notebook. But maybe it was just the props trying to escape from a crass, obnoxious, woefully misbegotten movie. To which hapless viewers can only respond: Take us with you.

At times, the film feels less like an homage to a beloved legacy than a 1 1/2-hour piece of advertainment.

Coming to America isn't as aggressively awful as the "Cop" films or "The Golden Child," but at least in those films there was something to react to. In making Coming to America, Murphy seems to have set his sights on the lowest prize imaginable. He aspires to blandness.

To director Scott and screenwriter Roselyne Bosch, the atrocities against the natives came about not as a product of evil but through Columbus's ineptitude as a political leader. Still, this failure -- and his frustration over never actually reaching mainland America -- renders him a tragic figure. Though he was the dreamer and pioneer who first set foot in the New World and brought treasures and territory to Spain, he died all but forgotten. The movie, alas, for all its wondrous beauty, is destined to suffer a similar fate.

A thoroughly credible hybrid of the prison film and the supernatural, it has plenty of shocks, of course, but also an actual story. What makes it work here is the skill and energy of a young director, Renny Harlin, and a surprisingly decent ensemble.

A talky European Grand Prix thriller/romantic potboiler. [14 Sep 2007, p.WE38]

Canadian director Atom Egoyan delivers a rare misfire with Where the Truth Lies, a shockingly fatuous murder mystery with pseudo-intellectual pretensions.

Awash in hackneyed old-time secrets and hydrophobic metaphor, never consumes us as it should.

A slight, disingenuous script that robs the characters of their histories.

Allegations of governmental double-talk and cover-ups are, unfortunately, boooring.

There are some very funny passing lines, but the movie's too uneven to enjoy.

It's just unfortunate that a movie about such a daring man ultimately takes few risks.

Occasionally charming but ultimately forgettable bit of fox-trot fluff.

Cryer, a talented comedic actor, struggles mightily but can't wring laughs from the lowbrow humor. The screenplay, written by Jeff Rothberg and Joe Menosky, is statically directed by Bob Giraldi, a maker of Michael Jackson videos and Pepsi-Cola ads, in his faint feature debut.

A film that contains dialogue so nasty and stupid, you'd swear (right along with the characters) that the booker for "Jerry Springer" wrote it (Zombie did).

In ways both large and small, Midway may be the most realistic war movie you’ve ever seen, as those involved in the production of this World War II action film, including Naval historians, have touted it to be. That’s not to say it’s as real as “Saving Private Ryan.”

A roundup of tired cliches and tired acting -- except for Sutherland and Petersen -- Young Guns II is dull as beans and lazy as tumbleweed.

Moviedom is littered with the wreckage of ill-conceived small-to-big-screen adaptations, but Reno 911!: Miami is not the disaster it could have been. Fans of the TV show need not shudder. You will not see sacrilege.

Some of the tropes of The Lost City are ineffective. What does work is the sense of loss. The late Cuban novelist and screenwriter G. Cabrera Infante finds a brilliant device in the love affair between Fico and Aurora (Ines Sastre), his sister-in-law, in that Aurora in some way becomes Cuba.

I Saw the Light isn’t just incohesive, but ultimately — and far more frustratingly — incoherent.

Despite all the mayhem, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a surprisingly bland dish.

Adult humor in kiddie films -- of which there is plenty in The Wild -- is not only welcome but, for many adult viewers, essential.

To call Poltergeist laughable is not the same thing as saying it’s bad (although it is that, too.) It’s just that it seems less interested in scaring you than in making you chuckle. At least on that score it succeeds.

The special twist-which Paramount Pictures has implored critics not to divulge-redefines the story completely. It also ruins everything.

Utterly shatters the illusion with a trite plot, banal dialogue, clunky sentimentality and, worst of all, a sort of narrative arbitrariness.

This outing does not suffer the epic badness one associates with films that aren’t screened early for critics, and in fact it offers moments of actual entertainment. It simply fails to exploit its assets: an amusing, revisionist take on the mythological strongman, and the charisma of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The movie's heart is in the right place, but good intentions can't overcome dialogue that alternates between melodramatic and cliched.

At best, Rambo: First Blood Part II is a crudely effective right-wing rabble-rouser, the artistic equivalent of carpet bombing -- you don't know whether to cheer or run for cover. At worst, it's a tribute to Sylvester Stallone, by Sylvester Stallone, starring Sylvester Stallone. [22 May 1985, p.F1]

Pitiful.

Writer-director Neil Jordan shows no knack for comedy, nor is he as kinky as he was on Mona Lisa, and kinky is what is called for.

Stallone is to humor what John Goodman is to ballet.

What a waste of talent, time and money. And guess what else? Not only is The Legend of Zorro stupid and boring but -- ta-da! -- it's also really long!

Despite the overplaying, Max gets its job done, which is to celebrate the sacrifices of military dogs, while warming the cockles of your heart.

A political farce that ultimately feels like a letdown, coming from one of the sharpest yet most compassionate satirical minds of today.

Katherine Heigl makes an official bid for America's Sweetheart in her sophomore effort, 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy that -- despite her undeniable, apple-cheeked appeal -- sags like a day-old bouquet.

Boy Kills World, a cheeky and extremely bloody action extravaganza, keeps an audience so off-balance for so long that you may throw in the towel well before the final bad guy falls.

Frankly, scarier critters have checked into Roach Motels.

The director tries to infuse Shock and Awe with the taut procedural drama of “All the President’s Men,” “Spotlight” or “The Post.” But he winds up demonstrating just how difficult it is to make shoe-leather journalism entertaining, much less artful.

What makes The Time Traveler's Wife work as drama, though, and certainly better than it might have, is an unhesitating emotional commitment on the part of the actors (and Schwentke).

“Thunder” doesn’t boast a distinctive look or a cast of famous voices. But its characters are engaging and its action sequences exhilarating.

A vulgar attempt to revamp the undead genre by introducing computer-generated splatter and a casketful of themes from genetic tinkering to conspiracy theories.

Director Griffin Dunne lacks a clear vision, torn between blithe spirits and brimstone, between madcap and macabre. But then what does it matter when there's so little magic on screen anyhow? That is unless you count making audiences disappear.

Silly? Contrived? Vapid? You bet. Put more simply, "The Prince & Me" is . . . cute.

This movie is a predictable, gruesome piece of business.

As it stands, this movie seems to have conflicting desires: to endear itself to the audience and then repel it.

There’s no denying that kids will delight in “Sonic 2’s” zany antics, explosive set pieces and commendable lessons. Older viewers should get a kick out of the punning dialogue and meta-humor, which wryly calls out homages to Batman, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones.

It tries unsuccessfully to make a wry gumshoe noir out of an overarching, cross-sectional political diagram.

Here, by its cooperation with the Disney factory, NASCAR says it's also warm 'n' cuddly, and that if you love your magic bug, it'll repay you with victory. Why does it allow itself to be co-opted by a story that diminishes the skills, experience and talent it takes to win?

It’s all so confusing. But reason is an obstacle to appreciating The Nun II. What you need, like Irene and Debra, is faith — in this case, in the power of pure nonsense.

Wingard’s not a sentimentalist, and “Godzilla x Kong” stumbles whenever he tries to slap phony emotions onto the film to make it more like a generic crowd-pleaser.

It is flat-footed, uninspired and disjointed from start to finish, a glaring disservice to the men who played the game.

A prosaic, sexually perverse thriller masquerading as a critical look at military injustice.

Hong Kong director Stephen Fung (“Tai Chi Hero”) is no John Woo, but he gives The Adventurers almost as much style as its larcenous characters exude.

Thanks to a sensitive performance from Kinnear, as well as from a terrific cast of supporting actors, what could have been merely a feel-good exercise in Eschatology Lite instead becomes a wholesome but also surprisingly tough-minded portrait of a man wrestling with his faith.

In its own way, the movie version — handsomely directed by Phillip Noyce and featuring an appealing, sure-footed cast of emerging and veteran actors — aptly reflects The Giver’s pride of place as the one that started it all, or at least the latest wave.

The hatchet-happy editor, ever-attentive to the transient attention span of the film's target audience, barely allows the hero time out from one virtuosic battle before he is flung in the face of a new enemy.

Wyatt Earp, a bio-pic that lasts more than three hours and moves with the urgency of a grazing buffalo, lacks everything from a coherent dramatic structure to a clearly articulated point of view.

It’s a fantastic idea, but the execution is inconsistent. Alice, the movie, dares to go through the looking glass, but it doesn’t entirely know what to do once it gets there.

The speculative ending is actually the most intriguing thing about “The Alto Knights,” more interesting even than De Niro times two. And yet the film’s climax nevertheless fails to raise much of a heartbeat in this boglike slog through a momentous moment in murderous mob history.

Blair Witch runs only eight minutes past the original, yet it feels about a half-hour longer. The new toys — especially the drone — allow for fresh situations, and there’s more blood and supernatural affliction than before. Mostly, though, the filmmakers just repeat familiar moves and expand established locations

It's all ultimately made watchable by the exceptional cast ... and a story that, despite some unsavory racial undertones, holds the audience's interest even when it veers toward the downright silly.

Entertaining enough for the trick-or-treat crowd, but a bit more bite wouldn't kill it.

Rock of Ages gets too mired in plotty cul de sacs, manufactured setbacks and numbers that are all staged as show-stoppers. In the words of the Journey song that serves as a climactic singalong, it goes on and on and on and on.

A taut, well-acted, not very scary, not very hard to figure out serial-killer mystery.

The frightening myths about adoption that run through Like Mike make even its happiest endings a little bit creepy.

The film doesn't even cut it as cheap escapism.

By the time it winds down, U.S. Marshals has all but destroyed itself. It's gone pffft! in the night.

The premise is tragically flawed and politically incorrect. In fact, it is blatantly cat-ist.

This is, after all, the kind of movie in which traffic accidents not only mess up getaways but also liberate goats to wander through the airport. We need more of that stuff.

These storied 13 days feel like the Hundred Years War.

This Psycho seems a little nuts.

In the end, what mars "Timothy Green" most is its middle-of-the-road approach. Its appealingly quirky, fairy-tale-like center is so coated with sugar, it cloys. It's not that "Timothy Green" is odd, but that it isn't odd enough.

Andre Benjamin, Woody Harrelson, Maura Tierney and David Koechner -- all talented -- seem amazingly zombie-like here. And Jackie Earle Haley, as a stoner fan of the Tropics, is more disconcerting than funny.

My Stepmother Is an Alien, the new Richard Benjamin film starring Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger, is E.T. with hormones, a landlocked Splash. No, that actually sounds like fun. And it would be wrong to suggest that this thing is fun. Very wrong.

The movie is carried by sweeping widescreen images, dynamic camera movements, impressive special effects and a color scheme that contrasts icy blues against fiery reds.

As it is, fans of Candy are expecting a John Candy movie -- that is, a reasonably hilarious comedy about a sweetly sympathetic bumbler. And while he is as cumbersomely lovable as a Saint Bernard puppy, he's rarely allowed to be funny here. He seems miserably uncomfortable as a romantic lead, or maybe it's just that he's playing opposite the Stepford Actress.