Disappointing movies.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE - an intriguing premise and some gorgeous imagery and scenery aside, this film is unendingly heady and pretentious. Regan simply telling the astronaut in "The Exorcist" [1973] "you're gonna die up there" is more deeply disturbing than ANYTHING in this film.

WASTED POTENTIAL - a miracle of special effects, cinematography and production design with a nice score to boot, but it's all wasted on these dull-ass stone-faced boring-ass characters.

WASTED POTENTIAL - it's a beautifully-made film with gorgeous art direction, character and creature puppets and matte paintings. Unfortunately, nothing much really happens and it feels like the plot of a TV episode.

WASTED POTENTIAL - started off so good, such nice camera movements and performances and editing. But none of that can hold up the directions the plot goes in.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE - some beautiful scenery and production/costume design, but bad performances (especially that child) and not much of a story. Basically an excuse to thread pretty images together with a vague narrative.

WRONG IMPRESSION - I really thought this would be a movie about a tyre flopping people to death. It's actually a pretentious, meditative meta-comedy about the audience that are observing the tyre, which kills people with psychic powers (i.e. not flopping).

OVERHYPED - it was supposed to be the horror movie that redefined the genre but it really just imitates tropes from classic horror movies and lampshades them. There's nothing clever about describing the archetypal protagonists, settings and monsters of horror movies in dialogue.

WASTED POTENTIAL - had a cool sci-fi premise, but Gyllenhaal's character is a total stupid-ass and the last half hour of the movie is him trying to rescue a bunch of simulated people that don't even exist so he can be with a simulated woman he just met. It's like "Inception" [2010] but bad.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE - a seriously gorgeous-looking film that claims (by proxy, via its narrating characters) it will make agnostics believe in God. Except that it's a farfetched story with an annoying protagonist, and it's *fiction*.

TRIES TOO HARD - "Machete" [2010] already nailed the over-the-top grindhouse action movie pastiche thing with a memorable story, characters and action, but this one tries too hard with craaazy characters that do nothing, wacky plot threads that go nowhere, and a sci-fi third act setting up a sequel that still doesn't even exist.

OVERHYPED - I've being hearing amazing things about this movie for years, and when I finally got a chance to watch it, it turned out to be less a high-concept action sci-fi movie and more a lame comedy with neat VFX.

OVERHYPED - I just didn't like the characters or the way the story unfolded. Felt more like a psychological thriller than a sci-fi movie about AI, which I expected it would be.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE - despite some good worldbuilding, comedy and dialogue, it felt like being wacky and stylish was more of a concern than having a solid story that weaves everything together. So it's about two guys stealing a painting then breaking out of prison...?

WASTED POTENTIAL - I basically watched this because of the people involved, including Matt Smith playing the gangster villain, the wonderful Benoît Debie as director of photography, and Ryan Gosling (recent star of Nic Refn's brilliant "Drive" [2011] and even better "Only God Forgives" [2013]) writing and directing. But it turned out to be an incoherent hybrid of David Lynch and Harmony Korine.

WASTED POTENTIAL - a wonderful cast of actors playing an interesting cast of characters in an epic western shot on 70mm. Except halfway through it turns into exactly what you'd expect from every other Tarantino film - shoot-outs, exploding heads, and more shoot-outs.

WASTED POTENTIAL - comes across forced, and following up "Skyfall" [2012] like this reminds me of how the miserable "Quantum of Solace" [2008] followed the excellent "Casino Royale" [2006].

OVERHYPED - thought it was awkward and weird, and really nothing special.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE - like a never-ending music video based on the director's favourite songs.

WASTED POTENTIAL - I didn't watch the whole thing so maybe I missed the best bits, but I was expecting something more along the lines of "Hercules" [1997] for Māori mythology. Instead it seemed like just a routine Disney princess story.

WRONG IMPRESSION - maybe this isn't the movie's fault (I honestly don't know) but it was advertised as a documentary on Amazon Prime. It was clear to me from about 5 minutes in that it was actually a horror mockumentary, so that felt very misleading.

WASTED POTENTIAL - comes across a little pointless when, with all its build-up, the exorcism is just people chanting for 20 minutes. It's so boring to watch that they added in distorted voice sound effects over the possessed woman's screaming and rambling.

WASTED POTENTIAL - it goes in subversive and interesting directions, sure, but sometimes it does a disservice to "The Force Awakens" [2015] because of it. Characters follow the same arcs (Finn overcomes his cowardice -again-, Kylo Ren leans towards the light but does something to cement his place in the dark -again-), plotlines are wasted (Rey and Ren's connection goes nowhere, Finn and Rose's escapade is pointless), and questions go unanswered (how did Maz get Luke's lightsaber? Who are the Knights of Ren?).

OVERHYPED - after being won over by "The Avengers" [2012] and its writing of the heroes and their dynamics as a team, I really expected more. Some of the plot threads are better than others, but I found a lot of the characters' decisions to be stupid, Thanos to be a little underwhelming, and the tone to be inconsistent.

WASTED POTENTIAL - down there with "Troll 2" [1990], "The Room" [2003] and "The Last Vampire on Earth" [2010] as one of the most baffling and shockingly bad movies I've seen. Like those three, it feels like it was written, directed and acted by aliens, which means you're in for hilarity and confusion.

WASTED POTENTIAL - could've been a really clever satire but it just wasn't, and it didn't even have that many laughs.

WASTED POTENTIAL - incredibly cheesy. It might be a family movie but that doesn't mean it has to be as badly-written, poorly-acted and derivative as it is.

WASTED POTENTIAL - the trailer was solid, but the movie's essentially a sequence of abstract dream sequences with little in the way of real scares. Vague imagery and lame jump-scares don't affect me.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE - frustratingly vague, despite a solid and enthralling first half.