schlocky

Citizen Vigilante, a film from German director Uwe Boll and starring actor Armie Hammer, is violent – and very schlocky – stuff.

From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026

Though the Johnny Cage figure is a walking embodiment of cheesy Hollywood tropes, his presence seems not to embarrass the film into abandoning its schlocky ways.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026

Even the schlocky stuff — the films we assume will float from our memories the second they’re over — can turn out to be barn-burners as unforgettable as a good PTA speech.

From Salon ● Jan. 31, 2026

There are also props: plastic chainsaws and fake knives, which might seem like schlocky touches but help with strength training.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2025

It is lightly schlocky in the 1980s way — ultra-saccharine, hyper-melodramatic — a diminishing resource in the contemporary pop landscape.

From New York Times ● May 6, 2023

But more dark films are making waves each year, distinguished in part from their schlockier cousins, thanks to better budgets and an undercurrent of metaphor or social commentary.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2019

Understanding televisual adaptations to be generally schlockier than their sources, I cringed to imagine what would result from a Britton-centered adaptation of “Dirty John,” a pulpy true story with a tabloid aesthetic.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 20, 2018

Put the top down and bring on the summer spectacles, the schlockier the better.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 4, 2015

Like Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal, AHS is a different kind of quality television: ambitious, bitchy, frisky, entertaining as all-get-out, and unabashed by TV’s schlockier roots.

From Slate ● Oct. 9, 2013

The schlockiest films, the ones I had to take for money to survive are strewn about everywhere.

From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2024

Much as, in the Rock Era, even the schlockiest pop bore some compositional or presentational relationship to rock, the hits of the post-’80s period orbit the sun that is hip-hop.

From Slate ● Sep. 28, 2018