So nonlinear that calling it nonlinear doesn’t cut it, the Hong Kong oddity The Invincible Space Streaker has nothing to do with space, and there’s no streaker. But here’s what goes down, or as much I was able to decipher from its truncated-English subtitles (“I order you kill him!”): After a hard day at grade school, about two dozen little boys go to a local watering hole and remove their little-boy pants to go skinny-dipping. This odd group activity is halted by the appearance of a mystical guy with a stereotypical bad haircut. He’s dressed in a robe that makes him look like Dr. Strange, except that I don’t recall the Marvel Comics character having ever enjoyed an eyeful of undescended testicles during an afternoon romp.

Anyhow, this creepy doctor convinces roughly half the kids to follow him to this lab by using a poster of a superhero as bait, presumably because candy — the favored tool of kidnappers the world over — sucks ass in Asian countries. Doc promises to turn them all into “superman” (lowercase), but once the first kid is wired into a crazy contraption in the evil lair, it’s clear there will be no kid-to-superman transformations.

Instead, Doc changes the first boy into a cute capuchin monkey. The other children react via frightened subtitles: “It’s the monkey! Not superman!” Another kid becomes a pot-bellied pig. A third boy is on the road to mutation when his full-bladdered friend yanks down his shorts and pees all over Doc’s face and the machine. (And it’s no special effect, either, as the camera horrifyingly details.) These two tots manage to escape, but the one whose transformation was interrupted by the ol’ stream-of-urine-as-means-of-distraction trick finds himself turned into a masked superhero. His costume is an unsettling blend of Boba Fett, Evel Knievel, The Fly and Liberace. He kicks bad guys and then there’s an elaborate (at least by the standards set forth thus far) motorcycle chase.

Then there’s more fighting as the hero fights a walking bug, several guys on choppers and, for a split second, what appears to be a man in a wolf costume. Pee-Pee Boy helps out by discovering the joys of explosives, and then promptly dies in a slow-motion scene highly reminiscent of Willem Dafoe’s death in Platoon. This makes the hero angry enough to zap the crap out of the bad guys to emerge victorious. Why he didn’t do that in the first place and thus spare his best friend’s life is beyond me. But all the little boys celebrate this triumph by taking another nude group swim, as the title card screams, “THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMING!” —Rod Lott

By all measurable standards, I should wholly love Priest. Take the plot of The Searchers, add a generous portion of cinematic/literary dystopia (equal parts Judge Dredd, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Equilibrium and whatever else you have on hand), throw in some classic Western tropes, blend with actors I admire, top off with monsters and neat visuals, and stir.

And voila! Half-baked mash. I don’t expect greatness, but shouldn’t there be at least a soupçon of pulpy fun watching futuristic holy warriors kick vampire ass? Why is this so limp?

Hard to fault the actors. Paul Bettany (Legion) as “the priest with no name” is terrific (he should play bad-ass far more often). Karl Urban’s human/vampire villain has no real logic, but the Star Trek reboot star is a pro. Cam Gigandet (Pandorum) is a vacuum, but doesn’t have to carry much weight. Brad Dourif, Maggie Q, Mädchen Amick and Christopher Plummer, meanwhile, do what they can with nothing.

It’s all down to script and direction — hey, who’d’ve thunk? The screenplay is all high-concept and soggy-toast dialogue; any true grit has been PG-13’d down to nothing. The vampires don’t make sense; they’re considered intelligent (they’ve been confined to reservations, kind of an obvious analogy), yet here they’re unthinking, feral CGI beasts. It’s a mystery why anyone would want to become one (many do try); it’d be like yearning to be one of the bugs from Starship Troopers.

The direction by Scott Stewart (retiming with Bettany after 2010’s Legion) is all visual flair with no sense of pacing. Priest looks great, but even at 80 minutes (taking out the seven minutes of credits), it drags. When an animated opening is the only section to create any real tension, you’ve got a problem.

Note to Hollywood: I’d like to formally suggest Urban play the gunslinger should Stephen King’s Dark Tower series ever see film; snarling from beneath a flat-brimmed hat, clad in boots and black duster, Urban is Roland to a T. —Corey Redekop

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If not for representing the public’s first look at the work of Ray Harryhausen kids Dennis Muren and David Allen, it’s likely Equinox would be lost to the ages. It’s an early line on the résumé for so many others, too, including animator Jim Danforth, co-star Frank Bonner (later to achieve sitcom immortality as WKRP in Cincinnati’s Herb Tarlek) and even Ed Begley Jr. (as an assistant cameraman).

Produced (and padded) by schlockmeister Jack H. Harris (The Blob) from Muren and friends’ homemade effort of 1967, the film sends four teenagers to the mountains for reasons that are twofold: One couple has planned a picnic, while David (one-timer Edward Connell) has been summoned there by his geology professor (sci-fi author Fritz Leiber Jr.).

The teens enter a cave, wherein a cackling old man in plaid gives them a book filled with weird symbols, multiple languages and a backward Lord’s Prayer. Needless to say, the tome is damned, and its readers inadvertently unlock a dimensional gateway. Before long, they’re throwing rocks at a growling beast and being tormented by a winged demon. Those monsters are animated via stop-motion, whereas the not-so-jolly green giant in a loincloth is an actor made large and in charge through forced perspective.

Pay no attention to the ladies being depicted as barely smart enough to operate a camera (“Boy, you could grow up to be a real fussbudget,” says Bonner); Equinox is only interested in the couples’ ongoing tussles with the various creatures, all of which are rendered impressively, even if the art is dead by today’s standards.

Equinox has one thing going for it that bests millions of dollars worth of CGI: a DIY aesthetic. On weekends, Muren and company made that cool movie you and your neighborhood pals always talked about doing, but never had the resources or energy. Its creativity trumps its numerous imperfections, making it impossible to wish the project ill will. —Rod Lott

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Pitch Black’s plot can be summarized simply: After crash-landing on a seemingly deserted planet, a group of space travelers happens upon killer aliens that only come at night … and a solar eclipse is about to occur. Indeed, that happens, but once it does, nothing is built upon it.

Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill) is Capt. Carolyn Fry, who leads her shipwrecked charges against apparently insurmountable odds. One of her passengers is the bald, bass-voiced Vin Diesel (The Fast and the Furious), portraying Riddick, some sort of super-criminal with silver eyes who, as luck would have it, can only see in the dark. He’s the one mean guy who you know will find it in his heart to turn nice somewhere during Act 3, at least long enough to save some people.

Our survivors find an abandoned ship they believe could be used to escape, if only they can transfer the power source from their now-useless one to this as-yet-unharmed one. As they’re doing so, darkness comes, and so do the aliens. As is rote with today’s technology, the aliens are total creations of CGI, so they never look real, as if you get to see them much at all. Most sightings of these creatures are limited to flying swarms of them, which makes them look like toy jacks. Standing still, they kind of resemble black woodpeckers. Either way, they’re not scary.

Although beloved by enough people to spawn sequels, Pitch Black is just plain void of suspense or imagination — a description befitting of every tired Alien retread since 1979. Directed and co-written by David Twohy (The Arrival), it aims to be arty, given its limited color palette, barren setting and clunky dialogue.

Mitchell can be commended for not patterning the vulnerable Fry after Sigourney Weaver. Diesel, however, is goofy — all attitude, zero ability. Not that he’s given much to do, other than run fast, bare his muscles and shave his head using a shiv and motor oil. Before the story even really gets rolling, Pitch Black reveals itself to be a cheap-looking (despite $23 million), hair-above-amateur production whose only thrill for this viewer arrived when it finally ended. Ditch Pitch. —Rod Lott

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Every now and then, a movie really is every bit the feast of turkey as the critics say. Supernova is that movie.

By all accounts, it was a troubled post-production process, with director Walter Hill (The Warriors) taking his name off it, The Hidden’s Jack Sholder coming in for reshoots, Francis Ford Coppola doing some uncredited editing — and the end result is such a mess, it feels like you’re watching what would happen if the studio held an “Edit a Feature Film!” contest for the general public.

Supernovocaine (as I like to call it) follows a small crew floating through space on one huge ship. There’s the captain, Robert Forster (Jackie Brown), who watches Tom & Jerry cartoons. James Spader (Stargate) is a recovering addict, which has nothing to do with anything, but you’ll notice that with his hair dyed black, he looks a lot like Jeff Goldblum. Angela Bassett (Strange Days) is the no-nonsense, tough-as-nails doctor. Then there’s Lou Diamond Phillips (Young Guns); Robin Tunney (The Craft), who looks like a man here; and a robot so laughable that it appears to come straight out of Hardware Wars.

Everything’s peachy-keen until they rescue a mysterious young man (Can’t Hardly Wait’s Peter Facinelli, the JV Tom Cruise) from a mining facility in another dimension. He brought a glowing, vagina-shaped special effect with him, you see, and he likes to kill people. So he begins the rote one-by-one method of cinematic homicide. Who do you think will make it to the climactic showdown? To quote Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57, “Always bet on black!”

None of it makes sense, and it doesn’t help that the cast is saddled with mumbo-jumbo dialogue like “We’ve jumped into a high-grav field right in the path of that moon’s debris cloud!,” which Spader is forced to utter without so much as a smile. Not even the promise of zero-gravity sex scenes — fulfilled — is enough to save this one from stupidity. —Rod Lott

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