A typically lax late-period Ferrara work, far from the glories of "King of New York."

Sandler's puppy-dog persona is just about ready to be put down. From its title on, this is entertainment for extremely lazy audiences.

The original film, for all its zaniness, existed in a recognizable Koch-era metropolis, one that paradoxically added to our hero's likable haze of denial. This time, the town is far shinier (what recession?).

None of this is particularly well wrought, and only a bizarre gas mask worn by the séance leader counts as an inspired (if slightly silly) touch.

The new movie is simpler plotwise (a race to the Fountain of Youth), while at the same time being somehow more deadening.

Please. If you're going to ask audiences to submit to a dim theater themselves, at least greet them with the proper monster they paid for.

In theory, there's nothing wrong when a movie reminds you of TV. (That's where the fun is, anyway.) But when a movie resembles a long-lost, corduroy-clad episode of "The Rockford Files," that's a problem.

To the movie's small credit, there's very little grasping for larger significance: It's a dumb horror film, complete with a sexy female lust object (Kaboom's Mesquida) undraping for a shower scene.

Depending on what you need from this movie, there's slight redemption in its full-on commitment to raunch, both in baby-shit–to-mouth scatology and some choice zingers.

Dedicating a movie to John Hughes doesn't equal capturing the master's ear for the universality of adolescent angst.

Controversially, Escrivá started the Opus Dei, and There Be Dragons is best appreciated by those seeking more realism than the albino self-whipper of "The Da Vinci Code."

What's the word on the film debut of Rihanna, playing a sass-mouthed petty officer? Dreadful (ella, ella).

All of them slog through countless boring sword-and-sandal skirmishes, none of which feel remotely suspenseful, until the hugeness of it all becomes a mildly passable joke.

Some kind of napping for sure: The line between rigor and tedium is crossed in this Madrid-set home-invasion thriller, captured in a dozen or so claustrophobic shots but impoverished as a piece of drama.

It gets bogged down in slo-mo indie quirk when it should be faster, more in our face.

Breillat, as always, goes her own way, but her impressionistic scenes barely cohere, even at this brief running time.

The predictability is crushing, and with movies like "Crazy Heart" and Sofia Coppola's distinctly personal "Somewhere" so close in the rearview, David M. Rosenthal's estrangement drama feels especially soft.

The better actors — Kevin Costner, chiefly, as the adoptive Earth father — strain to supply warmth, but mostly, the minutes stretch into great expanses of blahness, much of them filled with Transformers-grade skyscraper snapping and bloodless catastrophe.

This time, Stone is just sloshing around in the shallow end. When John Travolta and Benicio Del Toro show up for extended, cartoonish dialogues, you'll wonder what year it is, and let out a sigh of relief that the moment is long gone.

Like all advertisements, this scripted movie is a perfect fantasy: expertly coordinated, simplistic (the bad guys like yachts and bikini girls while our heroes have loving families) and more than a little scary.

J. Edgar is infuriatingly coy and noncritical about its subject, an undeniable patriot but also an alarmist and a ruiner of lives.

The hard fact, though, is that Harlin's instincts - always toward the massive and slo-mo - make him a fairly dunderheaded political analyst.

There's nothing strictly wrong with any of this, except for the fact that even a buttoned-down period piece like "Topsy-Turvy" feels sexier.

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.

When Mark Ruffalo shows up as a crumpled detective, you expect a dose of reality, yet on his heels come twin hams Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, whose solemn presences (as Christopher Nolan knows well) prove wonderful distractions from silliness.

Filmed with the somber pretentiousness of a "Babel," the movie never quite converts its premise into something grander (never mind believable). Meanwhile, the world starts to riot, yet their bed is warm. Will love save the day? Unfortunately for us, our sense of smell remains intact.

The casting is spectacularly wrong, and even on its own scant merits, writer-director Lorene Scafaria's screenplay has little insight into apocalyptic licentiousness, barring a tart line or two.

The movie is one big scream, clichéd and hardly credible as an oblique call to civility.