Seventh Son

There are countless similarities between Segrey Bodrov's inept fantasy Seventh Son and last year's massive dud RIPD, only here star Jeff Bridges is given the flavorless Ben Barnes for an apprentice instead of the wise-cracking Ryan Reynolds. Seventh Son runs a relatively lean 102 minutes, and it feels as though generous chunks of plot and character development have been stripped away in favor of nonstop CGI action and peril. The film is basically a rich man's Uwe Boll version of Dungeons and Dragons—a lot of tacky visuals, world-building mumbo-jumbo and gooey CGI creatures encased in a narrative vacuum. It has the scale of a nine-figure studio blockbuster, but not the look. Seventh Son screened for critics at the Esquire IMAX, and while some films play better on the big screen, this one demands to be seen on the smallest screen possible. An iPhone would be too large. D.B.