Annabelle / ** (2014)

One of the most exhausted devices of supernatural horror is a creepy-looking doll with murderous tendencies wreaking havoc on its owners. Long before Chucky there was a homicidal clown in “Poltergeist,” and before that was Talking Tina, one of the prominent menaces of “The Twilight Zone” – their commonality was that the victims always were oblivious to dangers until far too late, perhaps because no one involved could really believe a small toy had the capability of causing great harm to others. That is the first mistake of the characters in “Annabelle,” who are given enough warning signs to facilitate the dread: the emphasized arrival of said doll, its strange facial expression, an ambush by satanic cultists who die with it in their possession (one of them bleeds into the doll’s eyes), creepy noises from around corners, and rocking chairs that come alive by themselves even when no one is nearby. Then there is a moment where the husband, granting suspicion to his paranoid wife, throws the doll away in a garbage can. Shouldn’t it amount to something startling, then, when it then appears packed away in a box, as if no such decision transpired? If there were a persistent sentiment amongst the demonic spirits that inhabit them, it’s that you always have a chance to endure if you find yourself in the home of flyweight suburbanites with only a dozen functioning brain cells between them.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them / **1/2 (2016)

The most elusive of assets in any yarn about whimsical adventure is a writer’s confidence in the material: the assuredness that words and actions have profound ramifications towards a story arc and its characters. Those that lack such an assertion usually become lost in their own inspiration, and rarely offer any sort of significance other than vague interludes of wonder. The new “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” a film within the “Harry Potter” universe that arrives just as the demand for franchise consistency has awoken in the hearts of moviegoers, is of the latter distinction – certainly ambitious in scope and filled with images as enchanting as they are sharp, it rarely seems to know what it has in mind for the ambitious events that are destined to play out. Instead there are only rough connotations for us to rely on; it tells the story of Newt (Eddie Redmayne), a former student of Hogwarts who has arrived in New York carrying a suspicious briefcase filled with magical creatures from the wizarding world to, I suppose, research their bizarre behavior without overreaching influences. Unfortunately, chaos ensues in the presence of an unknowing witness and Newt’s creature are set free in the city, just as the divide between human and magic worlds runs dangerously blurred.

Minions / ** (2015)

“I would wager a movie entirely about their antics would be welcomed immediately by moviegoers… They are simply too amusing to ignore.” – Taken from the review for “Despicable Me 2”

When one forecasts an idea without thinking about possible repercussions, he gets exactly what he deserves. Though it might have been contrary to the tone I was going for, I initially spoke highly of the Minions in the “Despicable Me” films as a way of finding silver linings in the clouds of mediocrity; never did it dawn on me, especially after the above proclamation, that a film about said ensemble would legitimately come to fruition, especially so soon after their most recent theatrical appearance. But while our youthful imaginations gravitate towards comic relief in feature cartoons because of how natural it all seems to worlds full of energy and color, could an idea like this have really amounted to something passable in a stand-alone fashion? These quirky, strange yellow underlings amuse us as consistently as Saturday morning cartoons, but never for much more. They occupy the screen with demeanors that suggest momentary distraction, reminding us how much quirk can go on in the peripheral of a whimsical animated adventure.

Oz the Great and Powerful / ** (2013)

It’s hard to comprehend how this could have gone so wrong. The wondrous childhood realm of Oz, of witches and munchkins and flying monkeys and little people made of china, is a ripened fantasy world that has dangled luscious fruit in front of our eager faces for well over a century, and yet has endured a stigma of untouchable notoriety for well over half of that time. No doubt the immense success of MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939 shut all sorts of future windows for ambitious filmmakers who desired a taste of the literary pie, but time would inevitable allow those windows to be shattered (the first attempt in 1985, “Return to Oz,” added an adult subtext but failed at exploiting the deep-seeded magic of the stories). Now comes “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a movie about the untold adventures of the mischievous and manipulative man who would become the great Wizard, and the prospect of revisiting the elusive magical country is astonishing. Coupled with the notion of a talented and successful director like Sam Raimi being at the helm, all the key ingredients for a highly anticipated prequel line up effortlessly, and the idea seems ironclad. And yet somehow we wind up with a great looking mess, a movie that encompasses technical brilliance and breathtaking images but never lets them off the autopilot setting.

Exorcist: The Beginning / *** (2004)

It's difficult to approach certain movies without the smallest morsel of cynicism, especially when they are undertakings with as convoluted a past as "Exorcist: The Beginning." Practically any movie news site would be happy to report that this theatrical release is actually the second complete version of a prequel to William Friedkin's immortal 1973 scare-fest, assembled from scratch by director Renny Harlin after the studio's first cut (directed by art-house filmmaker Paul Schrader) apparently wasn't even scary enough to be re-edited from scrap footage, let alone deserve a release. What Morgan Creek might not have consciously realized at the time, however, is that their decision to completely redo an existing and unreleased film was something for the cinematic history books, a resolution so excessive and tricky that it represents a case of decision-making that is simply unprecedented in its extremity. Furthermore, to simply erase one man's entire effort and replace it with another's also meant that a second film based on one premise would be a big gamble financially; unless it set box office charts on fire, the studio would actually be coping with the loss of money from not one but two films. That's good decision-making for you, I guess.

Artistic Possession -- The War of the "Exorcist" Prequel

Months after completing a prequel to "The Exorcist," art-house director Paul Schrader find himself stuck in a predicament -- his film, a psychological thriller that takes a big departure from the series, will probably never be seen by the general public

Every once in a while, a movie studio comes along and makes a decision regarding an upcoming project that is beyond dimwitted. Just ask director Paul Schrader, the latest witness to this trend, whose new opus will probably never be seen in major release thanks to the brains behind Morgan Creek Productions. Why, you ask? Because as we speak, all existing cuts of his endeavor are sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust while a completely new version of his movie is being shot. And get this: this new version uses different actors, an entirely different script and is being overseen by a completely new director, too. If this all sounds like the plot of some kind of anti-Hollywood satire, then no wonder—it is perhaps the first time in major cinema history a studio has gone to such extreme lengths to undo someone's effort because the end result didn't match what they had hoped for.

Dumb and Dumberer / * (2003)

Ever get the feeling that you will probably dislike a movie only after a couple of minutes of seeing it play out on screen? This is exactly the kind of emotion that manifests during the rather painful introduction of "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd," the prequel to the very successful idiot comedy from a few years back. A series of character introductions pass onto the celluloid with a quirky thrust, but instead of chuckling or even smiling at what material is thrown at us, we stare off without so much as cracking a smile. The scenes are not funny. The scenes that follow are not funny. The scenes that follow still are still not funny. The movie is so laughless that only four notes needed to be recorded on my notepad during the entire screening: after the first 20 minutes, I scribbled down "not very funny"; 20 minutes later, "still not very funny"; 20 minutes more later, "not funny at all"; and finally, after witnessing the conclusion, "painfully unfunny in every way." This is the kind of comedy that doesn't even deserve to be associated with its own genre.

Red Dragon / ***1/2 (2002)

The recent surge of movie villain admiration could not have arrived at a better time than now, as one of the most notorious of his field, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, finds himself worming his way back onto motion picture screens in Brett Ratner's "Red Dragon." In the opening scenes of this "The Silence of the Lambs" prequel, the camera descends into the quiet, ordained audience of a classical music concert like a magnet being drawn to its attraction, a man whose brilliant and cunning psyche spawns the kind of fascination that make his mental corruption seem less distracting than it should be. He's a dark and sinister man at heart, but the calm behavior suggests otherwise; unlike most film antagonists, Lecter realizes the physical limits and works around them, tackling his casualties in ways that no jail cell can barricade. When he is confronted in "Red Dragon" by the man who caught him years before, there is no negative reaction or hatred in the doctor's eyes; he simply smiles, listens to the agenda of his visitor, and then compares himself to him. "Perhaps you're more like me than you care to imagine," he insists with sly enthusiasm.

Along Came a Spider / *1/2 (2001)

The villain referred to in the title of Lee Tamahori's "Along Came A Spider" is not the innocuous arachnid who "frightened Miss Muffet away" in nursery rhymes, but instead a viscous and manipulative psychopath who creeps between the cracks of the plot without fear of being discovered by someone who just might unravel his web of deception. He also doesn't seem to mind much that he's wandering around without a sense of what he's doing, or what the point exactly is of his endless mind games. And that's an even bigger problem with the movie than you might first suspect, because the protagonist of the picture, a forensics detective named Alex Cross (the always-admirable Morgan Freeman), is so smart and alert in his police investigations that even more cautious criminals would not likely slip through his fingers. Watching him wade through this incoherent mess is like seeing a good baseball pitcher benched for the season; he has the talent and the ambition, but the situation he's in just doesn't give him the opportunity to show off the way he deserves to.

The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas / 1/2* (2000)

It's no wonder that "The Flintstones" started out as a cartoon; a world in which human beings live in the stone age and use dinosaurs as household appliances is one incapable of surviving a live action production. Many people have enough difficulty in finding it plausible simply by description; it revolves around a town called Bedrock, where families live in houses made of stone, use chisels to write letters, drive cars using their feet as pedals, wear animal skins, and talk with the intellect and tone of an average modern family. Certain details are not that hard to believe, but the combination of them, among others, only makes this concept more pretentious and bloated. In the series, which embodies all of these qualities without a twinge of stability, the least ridiculous element was the fact that the Flintstones eventually went on to meet the Jetsons.