Chuck Wilson

Bass isn't a gifted actor, but he retains his dignity, mostly by keeping his head down and avoiding the eyes of the idiots around him.

First-time director João Pedro Rodrigues' unwillingness to define his hero’s background or motivations becomes more and more frustrating as the film goes on.

Director Uwe Boll (House of the Dead) pulls off a nicely staged fistfight in an open-air market at the start, but soon loses his way amid mind-glazing exposition and endless gunfire aimed at bulletproof giant lizards.

A horror movie that's not horrific enough, Soul Survivors plays like a "Twilight Zone" by way of "Touched by an Angel."

The one saving grace is a sweet, affecting performance by Werner de Smedt.

The movie is eerily photographed (by Brandon Trost), but never suspenseful or scary, and eventually, events descend into goat-sacrificing silliness.

It's all very predictable, very Hollywood. Storytelling cliché, it would seem, knows no borders.

Screenwriters Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore fail to conjure a single witty line. Nor is there any finesse to be found in director Brian A. Miller’s inept staging of car chases and shoot-outs.

A surprise hit in Thailand, the film is nonetheless a reductive mess.

A mindless muddle.

Although Thornton and co-writer Tom Epperson are clearly trying to get to some essential truth about the ways in which machismo hinders love, their insights are scattered and pedestrian.

The new thriller from Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) is visually dazzling, but the story starts off silly and ends up a confusing, maddening mess.

There's not a believable moment in all of it, but for a while the film chugs along on Ryan's innate charisma. Even so, no amount of movie-star twinkle could lighten screenwriter Cheryl Edwards' bizarre character arc, which finds Jackie turning, overnight, into a callous, possibly racist, ninny.

A truly dreadful sequel.

Even the easily weepy may grow impatient with the snail’s pace of this melancholy romance.

What they don't do often enough is battle anacondas. It's all tease and no payoff.

Why the devotion to such dull material?

A sappy love story wherein nary a gun or action sequence is seen after the first 10 minutes.

Aftershock is incompetently made and morally muddled, but since talent, morality, and Mr. Roth have never been on speaking terms, we're not exactly surprised.

There are moments that suggest the comedy that could have been.

Writer-director Matthew Weiner, creator of the magnificent Mad Men, has made a feature film — theoretically a comedy — that's just shy of terrible.

Screenwriters Melissa Carter and Erica Bell (Sleepover) have given Murphy -- perhaps the twitchiest actor of her generation --cutesy quirks to play in lieu of a character.

With her long, black coat and midair karate-chop skills, Selene is more Matrix-y Neo than Count Dracula, which may explain why this movie is so brutally un-fun.

To be fair, it's not solely Cage's fault that his new film, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, is lousy -- director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) deserves most of the heat for this listless dud.

Inane uplift tale for teens.

Very Good Girls is a film one wants to like but can't. It just doesn't work.

This time, Zombie doesn’t appear to have many deep thoughts, so Michael doesn’t just stab his victims, he slices and chomps them into gooey pulp — an overkill motif that actually feels false to the character and quickly becomes a depressing bore.

Moves slowly and deflates completely when the over-hyped family secret turns out to be a dramatic dud. Still, it's an awfully pretty movie. Let's all summer in Maine.