Francis Lawrence (Constantine) didn’t have to work too hard to clear the bar Gary Ross set in 2012 with the dull adaptation of The Hunger Games. I wish he had anyway, because Catching Fire does just that only about halfway in, and then never roaring.

Assuming audiences have digested the previous film and its Battle Royale of a plot, Catching Fire catches Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson, 2012’s Red Dawn remake) ditching their potato-sack wardrobe to embark on a victory tour of the nation’s 12 districts and sell the illusion of a romance to the huddled masses. Instead, they deviate from the government script and Katniss becomes a “beacon of hope for the rebellion. She needs to be eliminated,” orders nefarious President Snow (Donald Sutherland, Space Cowboys).

To do that, Snow forces the pair into another round of Hunger Games, this time an all-stars edition planned by Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master). As Head Gamemaker for the Capitol, he creates a deadly beach scenario full of such frights as angry monkeys, blister smoke and Amanda Plummer.

Once Lawrence — the director, that is — gets his young stars into combat, the movie becomes mild fun to watch. Before that, it’s almost as bland and plodding as Ross’ work, which mistook its dystopian setting as a mandate that it also couldn’t have a soul. Dozens of characters with names that sound like failed foreign breakfast cereals return, but Mr. Lawrence is able to inject the proceedings with more juice. Too bad his leads remain ever languid.

The one thing that the original The Hunger Games had that Catching Fire does not is an actual ending. What viewers get here is not just a cheat, but a bout of expository diarrhea. It is possible to give a story closure while leaving some threads dangling for the next chapter; this one is all damned dangle. —Rod Lott

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Adam Simon’s Brain Dead is engineered to mess with your head. It undoubtedly will succeed if you have trouble telling Bill Pullman apart from Bill Paxton, since both men star in the loftier-than-usual Roger Corman production.

Pullman (Spaceballs) is neurosurgeon Dr. Rex Martin, cajoled by hospital administrator Jim Reston (a visibly grease-slicked Paxton, Weird Science) into determining if mental patient Jack Halsey (Bud Cort, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) is faking his clinical paranoia. A mathematics genius believed to have killed his family, Halsey has important numbers in his head that some very important people want retrieved.

Entering his findings into what appears to be a MacPaint knockoff, Dr. Martin finds Halsey to be the real deal. Our good doctor then helplessly bounces between realities in which he is not the physician, but the patient; in which he is a doctor, but under Halsey’s name; in which various people — including his wife (Patricia Charbonneau, Manhunter) — are found murdered, their eyes stabbed free of their sockets.

So often does Brain Dead leap from level to level, with Dr. Martin jolting “awake” in a sweaty panic, I couldn’t help but think of The Kids in the Hall‘s classic sketch a year earlier in which “I had the pear dream again.” Simon’s movie is like those three minutes, if extended to a feature length. It would function better as an episode of The Twilight Zone — which makes total sense since Charles Beaumont, a regular scribe for that landmark TV series, shares screenplay credit with Simon — especially since they do not have the budget necessary to pull off their collective ambition.

Is it “the most terrifying film of the decade,” as the posters claimed? No. It’s not terrifying at all, yet at least one cannot fault the movie for overflowing with ideas. Whereas Simon went on to bigger things, notably Corman’s Carnosaur, Beaumont remained deceased, having passed away in the late 1960s. Another nugget of trivia: Paxton’s Martini Ranch band provides the club-ready, Dragnet-era Art of Noise-esque end theme. —Rod Lott

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Baby-faced Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid, Innerspace) is a gadabout psychic specializing in extreme telekinesis, perpetual womanizing and dim-witted snark: “Who’s your decorator? Darth Vader?” He’s “recruited” for an extended stay at Thornhill College to participate in a top-secret project; over a pitcher a beer at a proto-Hooters pub, Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow, Flash Gordon) lays it all out: The doc is researching how to psychically project a person into another’s dream and have that person actively participate with — and protect — the REM-phase sleeper.

Having succeeded in the how-to portion, Novotny wants Alex and his considerable mind powers to join the team. Being on the run from gambling-related goons, Alex accepts, and Dreamscape works best when depicting his lab sessions of the surreal and nonsensical. Years away from CGI, director Joseph Ruben (1987’s The Stepfather) has to rely upon cut-rate green screens and matte paintings, but these effects are nonetheless effective. Besides, dreams are imperfect, so having the seams show seems appropriate.

For the first two-thirds of the film, the dream sequences differ wildly in tone. The one set atop an under-construction skyscraper is riddled with high-anxiety suspense, while one involving infidelity is funny. Viewers are served one that is genuinely scary (with a Snakeman lurking among Caligari-esque corridors) and one that is genuinely sexy (as Alex enjoys train-car copulation with a project researcher played by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom‘s Kate Capshaw in her prime).

If only Dreamscape didn’t collapse in its final act, when the focus shifts from Alex to the President of the United States (Eddie Albert, The Devil’s Rain). Plagued by visions of a nuclear holocaust, the leader of our free world just wants “these damn nightmares to end!,” while others wish to end him. On the whole, the movie is like a ’70s conspiracy thriller wrapped in an issue of EC Comics’ Weird Science. I loved it without question or criticism upon its premiere, when I was 13; I like it fine today. —Rod Lott

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As vast and desolate as the Himalayas it depicts is Man Beast, an abominable turd. In her film debut, Asa Maynor (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) plays Connie Hayward, a young woman who hires Steve Cameron (Tom Maruzzi, in his one and only acting credit) to lead her high up into the mountains to find her brother before it’s too late.

Like a few other “distinguished scientists,” Connie’s sib has gone in search of the yeti — “a kind of people covered with hair,” we’re told — and yet not a single member of those expeditions ever was heard from again. For quite a while, viewers of this freshman directorial outing by Jerry Warren (The Wild Woman of Batwoman) may wonder if the missing men committed suicide simply to have something to do.

Only two things happen in Man Beast: climbing and boring, in roughly equal measure. Although the movie is a mere 62 minutes, it seems to take hours to reach the bargain-basement creature of the title, who sits in the snow and carries a big stick that resembles a salami hanging in a deli. Upon first glance, it looks like a cosplay version of Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion; as Warren allows his monster to stumble toward the forefront, rejected Chewbacca sketches come to mind.

The whooshing of the wind bears more personality than the yeti or any of the human cast, making Man Beast a steaming pile of cryptozoological crap. When Connie cries the flick’s last line, “Take me away from here, Steve! Take me away!,” you will share the sentiment. —Rod Lott

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You’re a movie executive who’s just watched a double feature of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and inspiration strikes. These movies are great, no question, but you know what they need? Laughs! You set up a meeting and pitch the filmmakers on a third Batman film, only this time, the main villain will be portrayed by Adam Sandler in full Waterboy mode.

Thus, Superman III, a sequel overloaded with pratfalls, double takes, broad acting, pathetic plot contrivances and the ruinous casting of comedian Richard Pryor (Silver Streak) as a computer genius led awry into cartoon villainy. It’s genuinely mind-boggling that producers would take a beloved and financially successful cultural icon and treat it like garbage. Then again, look at 1997’s Batman & Robin. Better yet, don’t.

With the right material, Pryor was a comedy genius, but in a movie laden with miscalculations — replacing Richard Donner’s stewardship of Superman: The Movie and Superman II with the unsuitable campiness of Richard Lester (Help!); treating Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) like an afterthought; believing that computers can do anything, because science — the stand-up legend’s painful flailing about is by far the most atrocious. He seems to be acting in an entirely different film, and not a good one.

Christopher Reeve, the ideal Superman/Clark Kent combo, heroically survives scenes that would cripple a more cynical actor. Reeve’s main strength was an ability to project decency, and this alone allows him to escape the debacle relatively unscathed. He even adds a dash of surly menace when a piece of faulty kryptonite turns Superman evil — well, more dickish, really; a prick with a 5 o’clock shadow. It’s still campy, but Reeve makes it work, even when he goes all Fight Club and battles himself in a junkyard. It makes no logical sense, but it’s by far the most interesting scene.

The rest, sadly, crumbles away as Pryor and co-antagonist Robert Vaughn (The Magnificent Seven) compete to see who can debase himself more. And at the end, after causing untold danger to life and property, Superman releases Pryor because hey, mistakes are why pencils have erasers. Also, Lester hates you.

Side query: While his job is integral to the mythos, have we ever seen Clark Kent actually perform “journalism”? His big story here is writing a piece on his high school reunion, leading me to believe Clark is less a star reporter and more The Daily Planet’s advice columnist. —Corey Redekop

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