Jeez, did the "surprise" climax have to be this eye-rollingly stupid?

First-time director and screenwriter Hue Rhodes shows no discernible talent for dialogue, humor and, especially, pacing.

No trite, tear-jerking cliché goes undrooled in the script by director Kirk Jones.

Jammed with story threads that don’t cohere, Cirque commits the cardinal sin for a vampire movie: It’s bloodless.

The infuriating cop–out ending reduces the premise to mush. I wanted to scream. Here goes: Arghh!

This afternoon-TV special trying to pass as a real movie earns an extra half star solely for Samuel L. Jackson, who brings his usual fire to the role.

A borrowed idea -- hello, "Blade Runner," hi there, "Matrix" -- but an idea nonetheless.

It's not just that Jennifer Lopez looks lost and out of her league acting with Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman. That's to be expected. It's the drag-ass solemnity of this turgid family drama that makes you crazy.

Political satire is so rare that it's a shame to watch the reliable Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland lend their talents to one that is blind to its own incompetence.

It's not so bad that it's good. It's so bland that it's boring. Not even worth a hissss.

Overthought, overwrought and thuddingly underwhelming, this high-profile misfire makes a congealed gumbo out of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning 1946 novel and the Oscar-winning 1949 movie that followed it, sinking a classy cast in the goo.

Shopworn propaganda.

Offensive on multiple levels -- if only the plot had any levels at all -- Black Snake Moan leaves no "Tobacco Road" cliche unsmoked. Ricci gives it her all, and then some, but even her body and Jackson's blues can't heal a movie that rockets plum off its nut.

Veering between sentimentality and exploitation with a few misguided stops at raunchy sex farce, Reign Over Me never finds a tone to suit its purpose.

I laughed, then I wished it was funnier, then I just wished it would end.

Me, I just think it blows. What does it matter if you spend millions on a movie - love the talking, battling bears! - if the effects are cheesy, the story runs off on tangents and after watching the movie fail utterly to be the next Lord of the Rings, you just want to go home.

By the end, Vantage Point is such a unholy mess of drooling sentiment and sloppy loose ends that you’ll hate yourself for being suckered in.

Penelope is dead on arrival.

Don't hammer this film for trying to get inside the head of Mark David Chapman before he shot John Lennon outside the rock legend's New York apartment on December 8th, 1980. Hammer it instead for failing to do so with any depth or insight.

If you don't see where this is going, you've never seen a movie. Sorry it had to be this one.

Questions: Did everyone involved in this botched thriller OD on speed? Does jimmy-legs director D.J. Caruso think if he slowed down the action we'd figure out how stupid the plot is?

Watching the stars try to out-cutesy the mutt is one for the puke bucket.

Here's a true S&M date movie. Only sadistic men and masochistic women could love it.

Will Ferrell and Danny McBride can find the dumb fun in anything. Too bad that Land of the Lost is so much less than anything.

The money shots of the living tableau are padded with jokes that feel embalmed before the actors get them out of their mouths.

Satire in a blanket of bland.

What the film lacks is suspense, surprise (the new ending is a dud) and passion.

Even director Carl Franklin, an artful purveyor of sterner stuff in "One False Move" and "Devil in a Blue Dress," can't prevent One True Thing from descending into chick-movie hell.

Though saddled with hoary jokes, Goldberg at least pumps some funky life into the bland proceedings.

A movie about death that stubbornly refuses to come to life.

Con Air has all the signs of a hit. That's depressing.

The movie, however, is a crock.

Director Sydney Pollack zapped out a taut thriller in "Three Days of the Condor". But The Firm is mostly flab, in the manner of Pollack's elephantine Havana.

The film wants to make a case for Parker as the first modern woman. It gets the look and the attitude right, but it can't find her heart.

Kasdan has inexplicably reduced flesh-and-blood characters to cartoons.

Buffy isn't heinous, just disposable. As a friend tells Buffy while she eyes a fashion purchase, "It's so five minutes ago."

This big-screen Hamlet, pumped up to operatic scale by overkill director Franco Zeffirelli, exposes Gibson's shortcomings.

It's the Bay touch you feel in the way actors register as body count, characters go undeveloped, and sensation trumps feeling. A nightmare, indeed.

So why oh why is The Expendables such a limp-dick bust? Because Stallone forgets to include non-spazzy direction, a coherent plot, dialogue that actors can speak without cringing, stunts that don't fizzle, blood that isn't digital and an animating spirit that might convince us to give a damn.

What Dick rendered potent, Nolfi renders preposterous.

A sappy-sweet romcom that seems to have been invaded by a screenwriter - one Geoff LaTulippe - with delusions that he's David Mamet.

It's damn hard to enjoy a thriller when you don't, won't, can't believe a word of it.

I found myself wishing that Taymor would turn off the sound and fury and let The Tempest speak for itself. My wish wasn't granted.

Patrick Lussier is listed as The Director, though I saw no evidence of anyone in control.

Looks aren't everything. Case in point: Sucker Punch, a dazzling visual design that goes tone-deaf every time it opens its dumb mouth or makes claims to profundity.

A trio of appealing actors is trapped in an action-spiked romcom death-sentenced by a lack of humor, heart and a coherent reason for being.

The Vow is a sopping hankie of a romance for women who love to suffer and the men who love them.

The movie deserves a stake through the heart.

I've been told the movie plays best with very young girls. That's an insult very young girls should not be forced to endure.

Morning sickness afflicts most of the potential mommies. For me, the movie itself triggered the vomiting.

There's no thrill in Gone because you can see every surprise coming. It lies there flapping like a dying fish. Skip it.

The Host basically comes down to a vote for Team Jared or Team Ian. I voted myself into oblivion about half an hour in. Niccol, who once added mystery and suspense to the sci-fi of 1997's "Gattaca," is no match for the giant marshmallow that is The Host.

Then there's the movie itself, which should be crazy, stupid fun but settles for just stupid.

Another January dud. Broken City drops hot-shot actors in a quicksand of clichés and watches them sink.

Magicians have been pulling rabbits out of hats for ages. And yet, with all this talent, no one can make a decent script materialize.

With that cast, we rightfully expect fireworks. What we get is the film equivalent of a wet blanket.

Judd is slumming again in ths lame suspense yarn that could barely pass as a TV quickie without the bankable names of Judd, Tommy Lee Jones and director Bruce Beresford.

The kind of movie that TV stars do when they're on hiatus and trying to squeeze one in.

Trash.

Slack direction fails to touch a nerve. Martin was scarier and funnier extracting Bill Murray's molars without Novocaine in "Little Shop of Horrors." Now that was one crazy dentist.

A fine case ... but none weighty enough to keep this fluff from evaporating as you watch it.

Makes you gag.

This mumbo-jumbo plays like The X Files on Prozac. No wonder the actors look narcotized.

Off the shelf after two years to capitalize on the popularity of Vin Diesel, Seth Green and Barry Pepper. It should have stayed there.

Even a search party would be hard-pressed to find a spark between Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas in Pollack's latest tear-jerker.

Plods along in the Oscar-winning, yawn-inducing tradition of "Out of Africa," making me yearn for something less "National Geographic."

The true story of the LaMarcas, well told by the late Mike McAlary in Esquire, has been pounded into TV-crime mush by screenwriter Ken Hixon and director Michael Caton-Jones. Shockingly, the acting doesn't help.

The self-congratulatory histrionics of Williams, lower lip trembling as he triumphs over torture in the name of the human spirit, represents a trend in Hollywood to make accessible melodrama out of unspeakable tragedy.

Contrived, manipulative and shamelessly sentimental, this film is notable for the courageous reach of Sean Penn, who gives a bold, heartfelt performance.

Crossing "A Beautiful Mind" with "Sex Kittens Go to College," first-time director Stephen Gaghan (he wrote Traffic) causes a head-on collision.

Cruz is a dish, but her movie is as soggy and indigestible as Styrofoam.

Even with sex, drugs, hip-hop and a murder, these four stories are dull, dull, dull, dull.

It's sledgehammer whimsy, and it's not talking to me.

What DePalma has never made is a dull movie. Until now.

For the first time, the Farrellys seem to be embarrassed by their own crudeness. For the first time, they should be.

Rob Cohen, who last directed "The Skulls" --ouch! -- can consider this one another career-killing skid mark.

Slick-dick director Simon West, of "Con Air" and "The General's Daughter" infamy, continues to show no flair at all for blending action and character. Jolie and Lara deserved better. So did we.

There's a strong movie in this life, but writer-director Leon Ichaso ("Sugar Hill") hasn't found it.

It's soft-core pap for horny boys and their hornier dads.

Despite melodramatic lapses -- the gripping action recalls Walter Hill's 1981 "Southern Comfort" -- this is Schumacher's most ambitions film since "Falling Down" in 1993, and it plays to his strengths with young actors.

Good-natured fun when it isn't stale, which is most of the time, this talky comedy set in a Chicago barber shop is a sitcom pilot disguised as a movie.

Something lazy, slow, shallow, stupid, amateurish, unfunny, unsuspenseful, uninformed, unspeakably dull and witlessly written, directed and acted (the special effects suck, too).

Chockablock with things we're not supposed to notice: that Roberts is wasted; that she and Cusack have no characters to play, so it's virtually impossible to understand why she loves him or vice versa; that the script provides comedy without bite and romance without resonance.

For starters, it blows. Madonna continues to mistake a knack for striking poses with the interpretive skill of a real actor.

Valentine's Day is a date movie from hell.

Has no vital signs at all, just crushing dull repetition that makes one noisy, violent scene play exactly like the last one.

As for the ladies who think any kind of chick flick is preferable to football, be careful what you wish for.

Do you really need me to tell you how scary this horror show isn't?

Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching "Transformers 2" for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity.

There's a difference between exposing misogyny and crassly exploiting it.

The cast got to spend a month shooting on Bora Bora. So that explains why they're in the movie. Why you'd spend good money for a ticket to watch them have all the fun and not have any fun yourself passes understanding.

I'd watch the vibrant Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in anything, but The Time Traveler's Wife is pushing it.

There’s not a real or spontaneous minute in it.

I have the same allergic reaction to this open faucet of tear-jerking swill as I do to the 1996 Nicholas Sparks novel that inspired it.

A romantic comedy so numbing it feels like Novocaine.

"Sixth Sense" rip-off.

Breathlessly boring.

You know a sequel isn't working when, ten minutes into the movie, a voice inside your head starts screaming, "Please make it stop!"