MAX PAYNE [2008]

Director John Moore brings a lot of visual style to his cinematic adaptation of the third-person shooter video game series Max Payne.
Thinly based upon the first game, Max, a fallen New York City detective obsessed over finding the murderer of his wife and child, while stumbling into a much larger case involving a new strain of powerful narcotics.
This mess of a film is riddled with bad dialogue, illogical plot advancements & actions and terrible acting from just about everyone involved.  If it's goal was to make Frank Miller's work look mature, then it succeeded on every level with the cheeseball violence and overly stylized gruffness.

1½ watches out of 5

BATMAN & ROBIN [1997]

How do you make a bad Batman movie with Robin in it worse than it all ready is?
You add Batgirl into the mix.
Joel Schumacher's notoriously bad film is every shitty thing they say it is. The dialogue is terribly sloppy and predictable, the acting is half-assed and the story is nothing short of "who gives a shit?"
The only thing this film has going for it is the colorfully attractive sets and the loopy music by Elliot Goldenthal.
I know it's purposely hokey at times but this is just insulting to our intelligence. Pure bat guano.

1 star out of 5

BATMAN FOREVER [1995]

Ditching the dark, gritty timeless atmosphere Tim Burton had established for the Batman franchise, hit & miss director Joel Schumacher went for a more colorful "modern" Tokyo look which was deemed more MTV family friendly.
Val Kilmer does an adequate job at replacing Keaton as The Caped Crusader. Tommy Lee Jones doesn't seem to have a clue who Two-face was and comes off as more of cheap knock-off of Nicholson's Joker. Jim Carrey is on auto-pilot as The Riddler but is nonetheless entertaining. Nicole Kidman snoozes her way through the unintentionally skanky female lead. And Chis O'Donnell as Robin? No. Just no.
The painfully titled Batman Forever is embarrassingly bad at times and yet somehow manages to entertain just enough for the most part. It's not as horrible as it could be but it's a sure sign of the troubled times to come.

2½ Bat-butts out of 5