Was this last weekend the worst for new movies?

Is January the worst time of the year for movies?

In Hollywood, the first few months of every year are about one thing, and one thing only: awards season. It's a time for Tinsel Town to recognize and reflect on some of the great filmmaking and acting from the previous year -- and to pat each other on the back with big gold trophies! But what about the movies those new releases? You know, the movies that don't get a lot of hype because the studios either don't have much faith in them or because they simply don't care.

This weekend's box office numbers were, in a word, poor. The three major new releases -- "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," "Parker," and "Movie 43" -- all had disappointing debuts, taking in a total of $31 million. Of the three, "Hansel and Gretel" fared best, making up $19 million of that total. Contrast the three new releases with holdovers "Mama," "Silver Linings Playbook," and "Zero Dark Thirty" -- which took in close to $33 million total -- and you begin to see that things could have gone a little better this weekend. Box Office Mojo estimates that among the top 12 releases, this weekend was down more than 10 per cent over the same weekend last year.

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Poor box office numbers weren't the only problem for this batch of January releases; the reviews have also been terrible for the trio of new films. If you add up the Rotten Tomatoes review scores of "Parker," "Movie 43," and "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," they barely reach the 60 per cent threshold between "Fresh" and "Rotten" on the site.

With an unsurprising 18 per cent on the site, most reviewers of "Hansel and Gretel" concluded that the film "fails as both a fantasy adventure and as a parody of same." With a 37 per cent rating, RT's critical breakdown described the Jason Statham actioner "Parker" as both "generic" and "convoluted." And scoring an astonishingly low 5 per cent on the movie review aggregator, the critical consensus for "Movie 43" is that the film is "loaded with gleefully offensive and often scatological gags, but it's largely bereft of laughs."

"Movie 43" producer/director Peter Farrelly took to Twitter over the weekend to address the film's poor critical reception.

In general, critics probably do need to lighten up a bit, but the veteran comedy director behind such movies as "Dumb and Dumber" and "Hall Pass" must have known what to expect when the studio gave his surprisingly star-studded movie a January release date.

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Historically, movies released in January have fared no better. This time last year, audiences were treated to the Katherine Heigl vehicle "One For the Money" and the Sam Worthington flop "Man on a Ledge." It was left up to Liam Neeson's film "The Grey" to fend off the the most recent (and worst) entry in the "Underworld" series. And 2011 saw a similar mix, with Jason Statham's "The Mechanic" (we're sensing a pattern with the bald Brit) and Anthony Hopkins' "The Rite" battling it out for most forgettable box office debut.

January 2013 has already seen the box office demise of films like "Gangster Squad," "The Last Stand," and "Broken City," so it should come as no surprise to anyone (filmmakers especially) that the latest crop of releases suffered the same fate. Audiences beware, a January release date usually means one thing: stay away!