Eric Kohn

Whether or not you adore “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Million Dollar Baby” — or even the “Almighty” franchise, for crying out loud — the Freeman spark that elevated those movies is nowhere to be found, and Freeman minus the Freeman factor is just a lost cause.

Even when The Tax Collector finds a steadier purpose as a taut revenge thriller, it’s mostly just a slog of vulgar threats and violent outbursts, trading substance for anger until the credits bring some measure of peace.

On the surface, Last Blood may be a mess of B-movie contrivances, but like its world-weary namesake, it’s also a timely window into the vanity of violent solutions, and why brutality is only viable when fighting for a lost cause.

Men in Black: International, which launches Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth into a bland variation on the same “MiB” routine, lacks the energy or ambition to make its intergalactic stakes into anything more than baffling cash grab. This misconceived attempt to inject a tired franchise with new life ends up as little more than an empty vessel.

After 85 minutes of mediocrity, The Week Of finally lands on one inspired bit, and then there’s another half hour to go.

Somewhere in this material is the potential for tense exploration of private desires afflicting people enmeshed in extreme psychological disarray, but this sleepy drama never approaches the sophistication (or pulpy fun) that would allow it to succeed on that mission.

Fortunately, you don’t need to wish for better versions of the movie experience Wish Upon calls to mind; they exist, and deserve repeat viewings far more than Wish Upon deserves one.

A bad movie by any culture’s standards, The Great Wall mostly goes to show that if the future of the business lies with Hollywood -China alliances, it doesn’t bode well for either side.

Rings never solidifies into one of kind movie, cramming a handful of possibilities into its bloated running time.

Cheesy without being self-aware, hobbled by rampant transphobia that the screenplay’s too dumb to address, this inane burst of campy stupidity can’t get beyond the sheer absurdity of its very existence.

Even without its mopey, painfully on-the-nose dialogue and ponderous story, The Last Face sets itself up for failure with its premise, and Penn's apparent inability to recognize it as such. It's his worst movie.

Wakefield's by-the-numbers approach to didactic storytelling relies on tons of random factoids positioned out of context to drive home his agenda.

Not even Matthew McConaughey can sustain the mushy, amateurish story, which digs itself a deeper hole as it moves along. The established talents of both director and star only serve to magnify the many wrong moves that this stunning misfire takes.

Instead of commenting on the vapidity of the film industry, Paul Schrader's miscast, poorly executed and utterly soulless drama is an example of the failing art form it seeks to indict. Though it has real ideas, Schrader and his team never manage to put them into action.

Just as the frequent cutaways from sexual activity tone down the titillation, Lovelace never garners the energy to construct a fully involving melodrama, rarely rising above Lifetime movie standards. Given the material, the irony here is that the filmmakers play it too safe.

Guided by an over-the-top Nazi hunter played by Judd Hirsch (clearly enjoying himself), Cheyenne begins a road trip through Middle American that goes nowhere, and Penn's mopey has-been routine starts to feel like a bad joke that just keeps getting worse.

It's a familiar mold: the perils of suburban discontent have been so thoroughly explored that The Details plays like a hodgepodge of familiar circumstances on an assembly line to disaster.

Lee Daniels' The Paperboy is a rare case of serious commitment to outright silliness.

Pattinson portrays the monotonous Georges Duroy in two equally dry modes: scowls and smirks.

If "Extremely Loud" came out in the weeks or months following 9/11, more audiences (and critics) might find an excuse to appreciate the way its soul-searching protagonist works through his grief. Ten years later, his struggle actually feels outrageously old-fashioned.

It's hard to believe that The Devil's Double doesn't intend to be a put-on. Despite a real-life basis of its plot, Lee Tamahori's fierce depiction of hedonistic Saddaam Hussein spawn Uday Hussein relegates the character to a farcical cartoon.