When Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code hit it big — and “big” really isn’t an accurate word for it — it was inevitable that Hollywood would pounce to make it into a movie. It also was inevitable that the result would mine box-office gold. What I didn’t expect is that said motion picture would be a leaden, crashing bore.

Say what you will about Brown’s book — that means you, offended Catholics and people who now pretend they never liked it when they totally once did — but there’s no denying that sucker had a pace that rivaled a toddler after downing a sippy cup full of Red Bull. By comparison, Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code — already overlong at 149 minutes — crawls on the floor, about as speedily as the assassinated character who opens the film, with every scene drawn out past its welcome, overstuffed with interminable speeches. There’s something to be said for brevity – a concept likely eradicated from Opie’s brain once he won the Best Director Oscar.

It makes one colossal mistake: treating the source material as if it were literature. Look, I loved reading Code, but it’s a B-level thriller. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman treats it as if it were a work of serious art, where every sentence had been constructed with precious care, like a Jenga tower, with designs on a Pulitzer Prize. In doing so, the fun is sucked clean out of it, leaving us with one history lesson (and quasi-history lesson) after another, all of which numb our attention. Although it hews closely to the original story, there’s nothing here that sheds light on why the novel sold 2 bazillion copies and counting.

Things distract us: Tom Hanks’ ill-advised academic mullet, Audrey Tautou’s neck mole, Ian McKellen’s shameless honey-baked ham of a performance. The listless tempo carries with it an unintended side effect: highlighting how entirely preposterous Brown’s puzzle-upon-puzzle plot is. Never mind how an old man with mere minutes to live could plant hidden clue upon hidden clue by the razor-thin chance that the people he intended to follow it would indeed — one wonders why the treasure hunt be so elongated when, honestly, it needs no steps beyond the first one. That’s something easily forgiven in the reading experience (if thought is even given to it at all), but maddeningly apparent in the movies. —Rod Lott

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Complain all you want about the sequels and Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake, but in reality, the made-for-TV Psycho spin-off known as Bates Motel does more damage to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film than anything else. Cross Psycho with The Love Boat and you get this utterly miserable, hour-and-a-half comedic thriller.

Bug-eyed, open-mouthed Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) stars as Alex, the best friend of Norman Bates during all their institutionalized years. Upon death, Norman has left the Bates Motel to Alex, who plans not to level it, but reopen it. Upon his release, he has to contend with all sorts of crazy things that confuse and puzzle him so, like fast food drive-in speakers and Lori Petty in a chicken suit.

Adding a café and fountain, Alex reopens the place to quite an eager crowd. First, suicidal writer/aerobics instructor Kerrie Keane (The Incubus) shows up with plans to off herself in the tub. Then Khrystyne Haje (that tall redhead from TV’s Head of the Class) intervenes and drags her to an impromptu sock hop with all her friends, where she’s hit on by a career-nadir Jason Bateman. This all prompts Keane to reconsider the value of life, although she’s been hit on by Jason Bateman and has come into contact with Lori Petty, chicken suit or not.

Bates Motel offers one ray of hope when it appears that Mother Bates — in a Scream-like outfit — has come back to kill off the guests, but that quickly becomes a double Scooby-Doo ending. Absolutely, profoundly pathetic. —Rod Lott

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If you’ve ever wondered what Cape Fear and/or Duel might have been like by way of Leave It to Beaver, by all means check out Hot Rods to Hell, a hilariously outdated, candy-colored creed against juvenile delinquents and their red jalopies.

Dana Andrews (Airport 1975) and Jeanne Crain (Skyjacked) portray the Phillips family heads who decide to buy a motel after Mr. Phillips injures his spine in an auto accident. En route to their new home, they’re menaced by three clean-cut youngsters in a red hot rod who don’t like the idea of such squares taking over the motel at which they hang. (Hanging out at a motel? Who’s the square?)

First, they bean the little boy with a thrown beer can, prompting him to scream, “All girls are nuts!” Then, they try running the Phillips clan off the road several times, as well as engage in games of chicken. The crotchety highway patrolman gets in a speech: “These kids got nowhere to go, but they want to get there going 150 miles per hour.”

Andrews is certainly no hero; every time he springs into action, he has a back spasm. Plus, everything he says sounds drunk. Crain overemotes at every opportunity, but she’s hot in that middle-aged, snotty, redhead-housewife way, so I’m cutting her slack. —Rod Lott

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The 2000 German horror film Anatomy cast Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente as a med student discovering a secret society of surgeons operating on bodies before their time of expiration. To its credit, the sequel is no mere carbon copy, switching gears from the slasher genre to the medical thriller, but still rendered in that twisted manner we’ve come to expect from the Krauts.

In Anatomy 2, an idealistic young intern (Barnaby Metschurat — gesundheit!) joins a Berlin hospital and is soon invited to join a select group of doctors that gathers weekly. As he soon learns, they’re all anti-Hippocratic, but since he’s eager to rub shoulders with the bigwigs, he joins anyway. Perhaps his decision had something to do with the late-night sexperiment he has with the Jeri Ryan lookalike who gives him seven orgasms. The lot is conducting clandestine research of its own involving synthetic muscles operated via remote control that improve one’s muscular strength by as much as 400 percent.

At first, our hero sees potential in curing his crippled brother, but it becomes clear that the organization is only interested in creating supermen at all costs — even if it means become morphine junkies and killing off any member who tries to leave. Potente has a cameo as an investigator who warns the doc of his involvement — perhaps far too late.

Anatomy 2 isn’t better than its predecessor, but at least it is its own being. The filmmakers could have just retread the original, but opted to go a different route while still playing upon our distrust of doctors and fear of bodily harm. In the process, the sequel has become far more glossy and far less gruesome, but I was entertained. —Rod Lott

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Trailer provided by Video Detective

Three adjectives apply to all three men at the center of Young, Violent, Dangerous, a ’70s Italian police drama from the mind of the great Fernando Di Leo (The Italian Connection). However, he yielded directorial duties on this one to Romolo Guerrieri (Johnny Yuma). I, for one, could sense the absence of Di Leo’s sure touch, and greatly missed it.

Louie, Paul and Joe and the troublemakers to whom the title refers. Joe’s the one in a Fritz the Cat T-shirt and overalls who plays hopscotch, just for the record. Louie’s the one whose girlfriend, Lea (Eleonora Giorgi, Inferno), rats them out in the first scene, letting the authorities know of the bored, pampered boys’ plans to rob a gas station.

That felonious act leaves four men dead, which excites constant gigglebox Joe as they escape from commissioner Tomas Milian (Cop in Drag): “You gotta admit, guys: It was better than OK Corral!” The trio immediately robs a bank of $5 million, then, after a round of group sex where someone farts, a grocery store. One long and winding car chase later, they’re fleeing with Lea to the country, where innocent campers await to be murdered for the hell of it.

Crime sprees usually make for can’t-miss concepts in films, but Young, Violent, Dangerous — while amusing in its first act — is too off-target to register for greatness. Milian’s a fine hero, naturally, but his screen time is limited, given over to the three punks you really don’t want to hang out with. Eurocrime can offer much worse, but it also can offer much better. —Rod Lott

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