As I began to shift my focus to the screen before me, taking in the beauty and breathing elegance of these 32,000 year-old drawings, brought to life with incredible texture by the 3D filming, I took a moment to give thanks for my day which had been filled with creative images and the spirit of artists both living and living on through miraculous discovery -

If the filmography of Robert Rodriguez were projected onto the wall of Plato's cave, the fever dreams of its sorry inhabitants might come out something like this. "Sucker Punch" is an asylum for every unoriginal impulse that strikes director Zack Snyder's attention deficient mind. It is an unmitigated disaster of storytelling—thematically diarrheic with visuals to match. This hopeless post-"Inception" melodrama isn't based on a comic book like either of Snyder's previous efforts, but every genre cliché carries over tenfold.

It's tough to hear yourself think over the racket of "Battle: Los Angeles"—not that you'll need to do any thinking. The film is an affront to the senses: loud, ugly, and coarse. It's the kind of brainless would-be summer blockbuster that might be fun if it were willing to ease up on the melodrama, but gloom and doom with an extra helping of hopelessness is the only item on the menu. Cooked up in the same tepid crockpot as a decade's worth of mediocre extraterrestrial epics, "Battle: LA" is unfit for human consumption. Call the health inspector.

"I Am Number Four" is Number Two. A cheap joke, but it's just what this adolescent stinker deserves. Granted, nigh unwatchable cinematic misfires haunt the calendar's early months, amongst whose company D.J. Caruso's latest foray into teen actioners is admittedly a god among insects. Copping a Michael Bay aesthetic (Bay produces), "Number Four" does "Twilight" by way of "Transformers." The film is slick, glossy, and absolutely uninteresting.