As long it sticks to that chase, Babylon A.D. remains a sub-passable lead-footed action film with neat scenery.

Dunmore creates a memorably grimy London, but the moral grime covering the film proves less memorable.

A lot of The Break-Up doesn't work. Actually, apart from some funny moments between old Swingers sparring partners Favreau and Vaughn, and a nice scene with Jason Bateman as the couple's realtor, virtually none of it works.

It's seldom a good sign when a Rob Schneider cameo elevates a comedy, but Little Man aims so low and fires so often that it can't miss all the time.

No one makes it out of this laughless mess unscathed.

If there's anything sadder than a satire without teeth, it's a thriller without thrills. Even sadder is the rare movie that fails at both genres simultaneously. That, and that alone, makes Man Of The Year exceptional.

There must be some solid marketing reason for putting out a Christmas movie before the jack o'lanterns have begun to rot, but if so, it's elusive. Couldn't this lump of coal have waited another month?

Whatever its model, the film is assembled from much poorer material, leftover parts of Lifetime movies and well-meaning indie films seen only on opening nights at some forgotten festival in Tampa.

Cage has some fun with the role, making Blaze a kind of Zen Elvis with a strange fixation on Carpenters songs, but the film's priorities lie with the digital effects and not the story, and even the effects aren't that hot.

So instead of history and drama, we get images, many of them striking but none of them memorable, and noise that deafens until no sense can escape. The events beg for Shakespearean gravity, but the only tragedy here is that so little could be made of so much.

Maher's too smart to make a movie this dumb.

The original was a tart dipped in acid; this one's a biscuit sprinkled in Splenda.

It's a horror film better suited for skittish cats than humans.

As a piece of storytelling, The Haunting In Connecticut is pretty lazy. As a horror movie, it’s lazier still, bringing out every annoying shock-cut and disorienting sound-design trick of the last decade.

Even the movie's rubber monsters look tired.

It doesn't help that neither Ferrell nor McBride bring their best material, with McBride offering yet another variation on an angry redneck, and Ferrell falling back on Ron Burgundy-like bluster and nonsense exclamations.

About Piven: When did it go wrong? When did the caustic character actor guaranteed to liven up even the dullest movie turn into a walking black hole of smarm from which no joy can escape?

This isn’t a movie. It’s a MySpace page.

When a film whose cast includes Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch, Fred Armisen, Craig Robinson, Demetri Martin, and the now rarely seen Carol Burnett can’t scare up more than a smattering of laughs, the patient was never meant to live in the first place.

It's a film for kids who want to know what headaches feel like.

As for the 3-D, much ballyhooed in the film's advertisements, it's another muddy conversion that does little but make the film's unconvincing blood effects look a little darker. It's good, theoretically at least, to have Craven back. But why come back for this?

Candy-coated or otherwise, crap's still crap.

It's as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who've spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him.

Peter Stormare has fun engaging in some Walken-level scenery-chewing-almost literally-as the patriarch of a werewolf clan. Good for him. That means at least one person has found something to like about this tedious collection of wisecracks and hand-me-down monsters.

Dredd, a second attempt at making Judge Dredd a movie star, overcorrects, veering in the opposite direction with a dark - literally and otherwise - nearly humorless bit of ultraviolence distinguished largely by a fondness for spurting CGI blood.

It doesn't help that the characters have so little to them. Weston plays Moriarty as such an unfailingly good, temptation-free kid that he only needs a halo floating above his pre-Raphaelite curls to complete the picture.

A fairly faithful adaptation of what a game is like, but without the pleasure of getting to play or the much-needed option of pressing the "off" button.

Mostly Boogeyman remains content to be a film about a boogeyman who hides in closets and under beds and gobbles people up. And for that, it deserves a certain amount of respect. On the other hand, the film could hardly be any sillier.

The plot's profound implausibility wouldn't matter if the ideas and emotions behind it had any power.

Some good Bob Dylan songs are called in to underline the big moments, but end up eclipsing them instead. There's more drama and insight in a snippet of "One More Cup Of Coffee" than the entirety of Jack & Rose.

Domino de-emphasizes the human element--not to mention such niceties as plot and clarity--to such a degree that only those who show up purely to watch combustibles go "boom" won't feel insulted.

Parker's film is flat beyond the flatness appropriate to the story; the conflict between Glover and Paymer follows Melville's original so squarely that it quickly begins to feel like they're going through the motions.

All the principals -- except, significantly, screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan -- reprised their roles for the sequel, and all seem confused as to why they returned.

Never recovering the energy of its early scenes, the heavily improvised Château becomes shapeless and dull.

The junk-shop surrealism ultimately gets the better of everyone's good intentions.

Shakespeare hasn't had it this rough since Lemmy from Motörhead performed the opening soliloquy in "Tromeo And Juliet."

It's a lot to suffer through for a film that has nothing to say, but insists on saying it anyway. Repeatedly.

The first 20 minutes of Blast From The Past, in which the film actually does something with its central concept, aren't that bad.

McKellen is fine, of course, but the film as a whole offers about as much insight into evil as Ming The Merciless in a “Flash Gordon” serial.

A mud bath of sentiment, strained speechifying, and gloppy music.

Hardwick switches gears from wacky comedy to romantic drama about halfway through Deliver Us, but it's too late, and what follows is far too dull to make any difference.

A film as grisly as it is dumb.

When they (the family) arrive at their destination, the story arrives at an ending that's neither obvious nor interesting, kind of like the film leading up to it.

This must all make sense to Yanes, somehow, but the film plays like a private joke with no punchline.

Yet another comedy that suggests someone should take Martin aside and remind him that he can do better.

The once-reliable Danes is a particular detriment, but it's really hard to care whether either character escapes from what looks like a really unappealing summer camp.

It's drainingly mediocre.

The best that can be said of Son Of The Bride is that it's attractively photographed. But, then, so was the Hindenburg explosion, and this packs far less excitement into its two shapeless hours.

It's a sign of trouble when watching a movie prompts nostalgia for the movie it's ripping off, particularly when that movie wasn't any good. But walking out of Johnson Family Vacation, it's hard not to feel misty-eyed for the urine-soaked-sandwich gags, incest jokes, and other refined comic elements of "National Lampoon's Vacation."

Attempts at high spirits and the presence of Matthew Lillard all suggest that this is supposed to be a comedy.

Aside from a promising scene involving a cornfield rave and the pyrotechnic potential for grain alcohol, it drags along, taking a small eternity to set up a final showdown that plays more like a bloody pro-wrestling event than the stuff of nightmares.

Director Rob Bowman seems at a loss as to what to bring to the film, which, even with its good choice of leads, plods along from one dragon fight to the next, all of them staged to showcase Fire's impressive CGI dragons, but none choreographed with any real flair.

Through it all, Muccino piles on one shrill confrontation after another. At times, he seems headed for the melodramatic turf owned and operated by Pedro Almodóvar, but where the young Almodóvar would have deployed a prankish wit and the older Almodóvar scraped toward the humanity beneath.

Has little to recommend it. A sterling example of how an unimaginative combination of interviews and archival footage can drain the life from even the most compelling topic, it feels padded at a mere 68 minutes.

The film combines dour heroes with a drab look, and the string of "Don't try this at home"-style stunts should underwhelm even viewers too young for James Bond or XXX.

Anyone who already knows better than to taunt the disabled, or former Oscar winners, should probably give it a pass.

If there's one thing more heartbreaking than a crying child, it's a crying child wearing thick glasses, an image exploited numerous times throughout the course of the dull, uninvolving, tissue-thin Hope Floats.

A mess.

This is teen product at its most generic.

What a shame that The Hunting Of The President feels like part of the problem.

Chow has a future in a America if given better material with which to work; here, he's wasted in a movie that's forgotten 20 minutes after the credits roll.

Playing in theaters when it belongs on television, where snacks and bathroom breaks can counteract its punishing dryness, and the option of watching something else doesn't involve driving home.

The Spanish import The Other Side Of The Bed takes a winning idea and drives it directly into the ground.

Sadly, The Punisher is about little more than bullets hitting bone, and how good it might feel to be on the right end of a gun.

Works equally poorly as a tourist brochure and as a drama.

It's also hard to figure out who this movie is supposed to delight: It's too scary for little kids and not nearly scary enough for anyone allowed to rent "The Ring" without getting carded.

If you've ever wanted to see Queen Latifah fatally attacked by jellyfish at the bottom of the ocean, Sphere is the movie for you. If you're looking for more, you're not going to find it here.

There's no pea soup, but sketchy effects, cheap jolts, swirling cameras, and buckets of blood surround Exorcist: The Beginning with the potent aroma of cheese.

Plays less like an exposé than a piece of exploitation, its clear divide between good and evil allowing no breathing room for real drama.

Hard not to pelt the screen with rotten fruit when confronted with a film like Christmas With The Kranks.

Though it soon devolves into a laughable mess, The Forgotten at least spends its first 10 minutes or so raising provocative questions.

When a sequel has to hit the reset button and take all its characters back to where they started, it probably didn't need to be made.

Spade can still be funny when he lets himself be mean, and Dickie Roberts shows glimmers of that dynamic, but they're muscled out by lazy slapstick and maudlin stuff.

Emmerich now directs entirely in watered-down Spielbergisms, and his storytelling skills, never strong, have gone slack. His talent for stretching a concept that can be described in 10 seconds into a feature-length movie, on the other hand, remains impressive.

Rudnick is a wit, and his script allows everyone a decent one-liner or two. But the problem with one-liners is that they only last one line, leaving a whole movie around them that needs filling in.

Even without the difficult imagery, Breillat's grim observations on men, women, and sexual orientation, are tough to take.

Troy does look good--so good, in fact, that it takes a while to reveal itself as a thundering dud with much action but little personality, human drama, or brains.

Hoffman and Travolta are both good, but this toothless satire does little to justify their performances.

2012 is ultimately only about finding new ways to topple monoliths. Only they don’t feel that new.

Adults should steer clear. Kids should be sent to it only if they’ve been extraordinarily naughty.

Fans of the genre might appreciate the decidedly R-rated violence and nudity, but that's really all the film has to offer.

Bynes appears in practically every scene, and the film seems to have been designed as a showcase for her comedic skills, which she apparently left behind in the trailer.

Apart from a funny turn by "Arrested Development's" Will Arnett as Williams' evil boss, nobody appears to be having a good time. And the feeling is infectious.

It's really gory and really dull. Mostly just dull.

A romantic triangle between werewolves and humans doesn't sound dull, but director Katja von Garnier seems to determined to drain the life out of it.

Garry Marshall has too much confidence that he can match the weighty issues here with the light comedy. He can't. Or at least he can't with this cast.

Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.

A witless reprise of '60s and '70s biker movies.

This is junk, a bunch of hard-R action scenes kept together by the thinnest of plots.

What darkness the movie achieves comes solely from the lighting.

A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story’s mounting ludicrousness—two words: adamantium bullets—or a conclusion that’s only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe.

Dieckmann fails to notice that Thurman doesn’t have the comic chops for the material--she comes off more like a self-pitying loser than a witty, put-upon everywoman.

Marmaduke saves its farts for the beginning and end, but the stink carries through the whole movie.

Director Samuel Bayer, a veteran commercial and music video director responsible for Nirvana’s “Smell Like Teen Spirit Video” back when the original Nightmare series was still a going concern, brings a slick visual sense but not a hint of vision.

Stone's film, more an act of boosterism than inquiry, is a tremendous missed opportunity.

Aniston and Sandler, however, play characters too awful to deserve anyone better than each other. But what did we do to deserve them?

Star Martin Lawrence, now the sole remaining element from the original "Big Momma's House" 11 years ago, looks pretty tired both in and out of makeup here.

It shouldn't, in other words, be that hard to make a good Conan movie. John Milius did a half-decent job with "Conan The Barbarian" in 1982, but this new film of the same name feels like a half-hearted revamp of virtually any of the Conan rip-offs that clogged up video-store shelves in the '80s.