Carla Meyer

The freshest thing about Breakin' All the Rules is its dropped "g.''

To earnest for its own good. Sincere and heartfelt, it's the kind of family film that might be at home on cable.

The slasher scenes, though relatively few, are amazingly evocative for such a low-budget movie.

Laura Dern is not a wizard. She cannot make the dumb and formulaic elements of her romance/travelogue movie “Lonely Planet” disappear. But Dern brings such authenticity to Katherine, her confident, matter-of-fact successful author character, that her performance often outweighs this Netflix movie’s flaws.

Misbegotten mess.

House of Spoils suffers most from genre hybridization. The more explicit horror moments feel grafted on to what is essentially a character study with mystery elements. But as “Speak No Evil” recently demonstrated, Blumhouse no longer signifies low-budget, terrifying horror. The brand has become shorthand for movies lacking clear identities.

This tale of tortured love between a Mormon missionary and a West Hollywood tomcat renders its gay and religious characters so stereotypical that neither lifestyle appears attractive.

Delivers laughs most of the way through.

Teen sex comedies always have more homoerotic moments than you can shake a ... whatever ... at, but Eurotrip seems overly concerned with penises and predatory men. This brand of humor, a time-honored crutch for comedy writers, is both lazy and unseemly.

Self-indulgent and admirable.

Light on inner conflict and heavy on cliches.

[Brody's] mannered performance helps downgrade this picture from a middling sci-fi film to a bad, borderline-camp sci-fi film.

There’s authenticity in the coach’s belted khaki shorts and in the anguish Hunt brings to a moment where the coach no longer can bear being at her star player’s wake. This moment is the film’s most moving until images of the real coach, and real Caroline Found, accompany the credits.

Muniz, however, is hampered by Stripes' constant moping, which brings out the "Malcolm in the Middle'' star's whinier tendencies.

The picture never comes out from under the weight of its dreariness, despite fine acting, foot chases and conspiracy theories galore.

Offers enough glossy good cheer to appeal to everyone.

This brand of eccentricity does not suit Cusack. He lacks Cage’s manic gleam and irrepressible sense of play. Cusack comes off as glum and a bit lost, negating Miller’s effectiveness as bogeyman.

Sweaty, filthy, miserable and well acted.

Jackpot! involves a fight to the finish between the abundant charisma and likability of leads Awkwafina and John Cena and the impossible material they were given. The actors lose, because nobody could survive so many jokes based on groin kicks and bathroom humor or a movie premise as lacking in context as it is sky-high in concept.

Melissa is the only fully developed character in an overlong, badly paced film filled with cliched dialogue and accented by pleasant yet forgettable music.

The studio behind Wicker Park bills it as a "romantic thriller.'' But it's actually an example of an even more unusual subgenre: the dumb, suspense- free and undersexed stalker drama.

The sequel might have the formula down, but it lacks everything that made "Anaconda'' fun.

Swayze's presence crosses the line from curious to bizarre and adds a heavy layer of cheese to Havana Nights.

Daniels has the talent to make a genuinely complex horror film. What was “Precious,” if not a horror movie made all the more chilling by its lack of supernatural elements? But for “The Deliverance,” Daniels simply dusts off the same crab-walking, veins-a-popping demon moves we have seen a million times.

Confusing, mixing messages of self-empowerment with those of conformity.

The whole cast is likable and the scenery lovely, making this only the second-worst Shields beach movie, after “The Blue Lagoon.”

It's strung together, with cliches instead of puka shells.

The tense, stylish thriller turns into soft-core, slapdash psychodrama.