In the latest issue of Kinema Junpo, Japan's most venerable film magazine, you can read a lengthy tribute to Gaga, the dogged independent movie distributor that's marking its 30th anniversary this year. The occasion is certainly worth commemorating: This is the company that released "Seven," "Talk to Her," "The Artist" and "12 Years a Slave" in Japan, not to mention all of Hirokazu Koreeda's recent films. In a movie market strewn with casualties, it's a genuine survivor.

Alas, the film splashed across Kinema Junpo's front cover hails from an altogether less exalted pedigree. Gaga may be synonymous with prestigious Oscar bait, but it is also the distributor of C-grade schlock, such as "Pompei," "Last Knights" and now, just in time to piddle in the birthday punch, "Gods of Egypt."

Even judged against the cruddiest offerings from the Gaga back catalog, this would-be blockbuster from Alex Proyas — whose name should probably be preceded with the title "former visionary director" — is spectacularly shoddy. Set in an Ancient Egypt populated mostly by Caucasian actors, who deliver their lines in crisp English accents worthy of a village amateur theater production, it seems intent on evoking the cheesy thrills of the sword-and- sandal movies that Italy used to churn out in the 1960s.