I am, today especially talking today to Carlos Saldanha who just directed Ice Age 2 and Michael Caton-Jones who just snuck Basic Instinct 2 into the theaters.

Carlos, I actually liked your first film, Ice Age, but thought Robots was kind of a waste. I wondered if my review - ok, along with about 250 others - hurt your feelings. Have you lost your confidence? Is that why you went back to the well with Ice Age? Honestly, you should have looked for some other project. This film truly is bearably watchable. Not much of a storyline, nothing noteworthy that was not covered in the first Ice Age and even the animation was nothing that is moving the medium forward.

So it’s the video sales and foreign that you are looking for, right? I know that you are making a lot of cash opening week, but I think you wasted what minimal talent you have portrayed in the past to get this done. This film was about the most obvious form of Trailer Baiting I have seen. We have been forced to see little Scrat fight that acorn for months, as a portent of things to come, only to find out that it was the best part of the movie.

Michael, you have made a few mid-level flicks in the past decade or so. The Jackal, City by the Sea and Memphis Belle were all good films. But I can see from your resume that you don't have a top-flight film to your credit. Was this supposed to be your ticket to the big time? If so, I think you made a bad miscalculation, because this film needs to be titles Basics In Stink! It is a train wreck that you cannot take your eyes off of not because it is good, but because you want to see what stupid things that Sharon Stone, playing novelist Catherine Trammell is going to say next to convince a British detective that she did not kill anyone.

Again.

Michael, I really did not care, I just wanted to see Stone naked again. But I would have to tell the readers of Film Monthly that her tits are not worth the $9. Once again, at Film Monthly, we see them so our readers don’t have to. All that was missing was Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin saying, "Nice beaver," to make everything complete in this poor shadow of the original. Michael, I believe you will be in line for some Razzies come next spring.

To all of Hollywood - I know you all want to say you do it for the art and the creativity of it all. That is why some of you go to film school.  But if that is going to be the case you need to stop making garbage like these films if you want to be believed. Stop preening and give up the pretense. These two movies were crap. And not even very good crap.

But they are not the only miserable movies being trotted out as entertainment.

So you go ahead and make these things but don't expect us to keep paying $9 plus corn and cola to see it and still call your work any good. We might rent your work, certainly won't spend the money to buy your work, and will most likely wait for it to come on cable and say, "Oh, yea, that was that movie that was supposed to be so bad - oh well, I will watch it while I get ready for my Saturday afternoon nap."

Hank Yuloff is a film critic in Encino, California.