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Every Dark Horse Comics collector’s wet dream, 10 years too late: outer space’s two biggest badasses duking it out, mano a mano, with the fate of humankind caught in the middle. But even if you can look past the disgraceful liberties director Paul W.S. Anderson takes with each of the respective franchises, the anti-climactic finale—a predator and a human, fighting side by side—is as far beyond the realm of suspended disbelief as any intergalactic species is from Earth. —Matthew Borlik
It’s a classic superhero story: Meek line-toer at a cosmetics corporation finds out about an evil cold cream, gets killed by company goons, then comes back to slutty life after some kitty mouth-to-mouth. Next, girlfriend starts walking walls like Spider-Man and rubbing catnip on her face like…a moron. —Tricia Olszewski
OK, we’ve got a charred, several-thousand-degree planet called Crematoria and a sun-drenched utopia called Helios Prime. There’s a gang of H.R. Giger– worshipping, planet-destroying death dealers called the Necromongers, and the one badass tough guy furious enough to stop them is from a race called the Furions. Sci-fi hacks try to build a Vin Diesel star vehicle on George Lucas’ foundation, complete with his embarrassingly literal naming system. —Jason Powell
Blame the casting department for letting this anemic, one-note remake of Argentine hit Nine Queens get away: John C. Reilly, the most bafflingly miscast lead since Vince Vaughn played Norman Bates, looks most of the time as if even he’s having a hard time believing the scenery-chewing shit that’s coming out of his mouth. —Chris Hagan
The special-effects potential of earth, wind, and fire having been exhausted during the natural-disaster film’s brief popularity in the late ’90s, director Roland Emmerich—the man who started it all—had no terrestrial phenomenon left to turn to but ice. Aspiring directors take note: Frozen water does not make for much of a compelling villain. Keep runnin’ Jake! The ice is comin’ for ya! —MB
Few movies are bad enough that a video-store clerk will flatly refuse to rent them out, but Barry Levinson’s painfully unfunny comedy—starring Jack Black as a schemester who strikes gold after inventing a spray that makes pet shit magically disappear—is one of them. If only some genius could come up with a product to make this turd of a film fade into nonexistence. —MB
The conspiracy-blog-worthy plot of the film aside, there is an honest-to-goodness greater message to be gleaned: George Lucas, stop being such a baby and let Spielberg finish that fucking Indiana Jones movie.
—Mike Kanin
New York Minute was that oldest of publicity gambits: a movie release to celebrate the day when its stars could finally be balled good and legal. OK, so it actually came out a month or so before the Olsen twins’ much-ballyhooed birthday, but with plot wackiness that includes the still-17-year-olds running around in heels and towels, consider the pervs courted. Fun fact: New York Minute is not only the film’s title, but also how long it lasted in theaters. —TO
How can something packaged with Mary Poppins be all bad? No doubt, that was the attitude counted on by an evil legion of Disney toadies when they DVD-bundled The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement with Julie Andrews’ 1964 children’s classic this holiday season. Why else would someone plunk down $17.99 on this pile of dog loaves? Its predecessor might have been surprisingly palatable, but Royal Engagement is the type of criminally stupid cash cow of which Garry Marshall is, sadly, never ashamed. —Anne Marson
Think Hilary Duff is just another talentless, photogenic creation of the recording industry? Judge for yourself in this low-carb Fame wannabe. The only times that the singing voice of La Duff’s character isn’t dubbed are the occasions when she tries and fails to hit a note. Yet more disturbing, however, is the young popstress’s resemblance to the lead female puppet from The Dark Crystal. —JP
Jennifer Tilly and her two co-stars—I’m not talking about the dolls—can’t save the Child’s Play franchise’s Scream 2. Don Mancini’s script suggests that the “B” in “B-movie” stands for “bottom-of-the-barrel,” which, if the movie-within-a-movie setup and wildly overreaching pop-cultural allusions are any indication, has been scraped completely clean. —CH
Potential satirical gold yields predictable witlessness in the once-able hands of the Wayans brothers. How far do they go for laughs? Not very: In case you didn’t know, women tend to gossip when they go to the bathroom; men merely shit. —CH