Ernest Hardy

All the while, director Lorena David labors to keep implausibility and bad acting from sinking a ship that never should have left port.

What the film suffers from most, though, are its own low aspirations: stroking the libidos and funny bones of brain-dead 12-year-old boys immersed in the shallow end of hip-hop.

Flawed at its very core.

Far from the worst film this summer, but it also doesn't rate strong enough to be a future video rental.

The film's deadly lulls outweigh its infrequent highs.

The film, whose clumsy editing and dearth of establishing shots keep the viewer in an unintended state of confusion, is a corpse in its own right: It’s filled with the rotting ideas of far better movies.

Almost unbearable.

The film isn't as smart as it thinks it is, and its characters are painfully generic.

Horribly slapdash affair.

So what do the tea leaves say? They're hard to read through the over-the-top grossness and weak acting, but it's probably that gentrification is good, poor people and assorted lowlifes don't deserve prime real estate, and Sean Penn's baby girl needs a better agent.

The script is often ludicrous (gratuitous digs at feminism; muddled commentary on war and the military), the sets look like sets, and the acting-aside from Helsham and Plunkett-doesn't even rise to the level of student films.

That clunky, God-awful bit of exposition-heavy dialogue perfectly encapsulates all that's wrong with this dismal film.

A determinedly old-fashioned boxing/coming-of-age film, only perfunctorily hitting its marks.

Quickly reveals itself to be a hyper-stylized flick (lots of odd angles and studied production design in the service of flashbacks and dream sequences), but the glossy sum effect is that of a film student straining for a weightiness he can't pull off.

Heartfelt but insipid drama, the naiveté quickly becomes exasperating.

Like a lot of recent queer-themed cinema that aspires to be politically charged, Maple Palm takes a hot-button issue (here, it's homophobic U.S. immigration policies) and reduces it to dry sloganeering and shameless emotional manipulation of the audience.

Merkin tries too hard for stylistic flourishes (as the hyper set-designed, claustrophobically seedy hotel underscores) and winds up almost sinking the noir-ish tale he’s telling.

The actors do what they can with direction, from Gil Cates Jr., that calls for yelling, flailing and rapid-fire delivery of stale bons mots, but none of the film is as funny or clever as Cates and screenwriters Ron Marasco and Michael Goorjian (adapting Edgar Allan Poe's short story) seem to think.

A little too familiar to be wholly satisfying. What makes it worthwhile is Julia Jay Pierrepont III's direction.

Has one thing to recommend it, but even that will likely appeal to a small subset of filmgoers: the cult of Brendan Sexton III.

In remaking the 1966 South Korean film "Full Autumn" and setting it in America, writer-director Kim Tae-Yong uses the melancholic, gray backdrop of Seattle as both character and metaphor, crafting a film that's visually beautiful and incredibly moving.

Though not must-see cinema, it is entertaining and affecting.

The film would have been more powerful if it also included a man or woman who wasn't lovable once you got to know him or her--maybe one of the young crack or meth addicts whose violent demeanors, as explained by an old-timer, have considerably shifted the dynamics of street life.

Uneven acting by the cast and a script that could have used at least one more overhaul to synthesize its elements (the love story is so flimsily mapped out as to be unbelievable) cripple Saulter's ambitions, but the energy of the film pulls you in and holds you through its tragic ending.

The images of the style as it evolves, and especially those that fill the last 15 minutes of "Tattoo", are so beautiful and often majestic that they overshadow the film's small shortcomings.

A surprisingly thoughtful, well-researched attempt to give both sides of the argument respect while illuminating the long history of tensions surrounding gun ownership in America.

It's a movie by people who lifted almost all their ideas from much better movies, and lean too heavily on "based on a true story" to pave over their film's weaknesses.

Writer-director Thomas Verrette's thriller grapples with the foundational relationship between memory and self-identity. It's a well-trod path of exploration, and Verrette-- largely competent, often pedestrian-- doesn't bring much new to the investigative process.

[Kosareff] backburners what's most fascinating (stories of former titans of the industry; segments discussing how shifting social mores impacted said industry, the key roles of women in the factories) and squanders a chance to discuss the larger implications.

A vanity project riding the waves of a socio-political moment, Two confirms just as many stereotypes as it attempts to dismantle.

The film ultimately plays less as female empowerment than it does a narrative in which the comeuppance doled out is likely to be received as a digestif for those in the audience who got off on the gendered violence in the first place.

Its soap-opera plot is old hat, and the largely amateurish acting of the ensemble makes it hard to connect with many of the characters.

Writer-director Luiz Bolognesi's film doesn't push the envelope in terms of technique or style, but its fast-moving story roils with a righteous anger that is mesmerizing as Bolognesi whips up a Zelig-like overview of Brazil's tortured history.

As the film dissects various cultural norms and goes behind the scenes of the $5 billion penis enhancement industry, it transcends the concerns of one man to show the flipside of the gender equality movement.

The cast (which includes familiar character actors like Nicolas Coster and David Leisure) is wildly uneven, talent-wise, and there's a stiltedness to the film's earnestness, but its sincerity is palpable.

Guinzburg's retool is full of unintentional humor, high-school-theater level acting, and shoddy writing.

Despite the shakiness of their collective accents, the cast goes through the paces of this tense, testosterone-driven shoot-'em-up with gusto.

A must-see documentary.

From the cool voiceover to the crisp dialogue, the script strikes the perfect balance between stylized and naturalistic language that is profane, poetic, and prophetic.

The lack of a critical framework means that some of the most intriguing notions the interviewees put forth are never explored.

The World Famous Kid Detective is a poorly written, acted, and directed kid flick with one cool idea: It's chock full of snippets from old detective noir flicks.

The film looks great; the animation is detailed, fluid in action and meticulously designed, and the action sequences are meticulously mapped out. But K Missing Kings is really for diehards who have not only embraced the series but also the handful of manga it spawned.

There are moments in director David Midell's NightLights that play like PSAs, but that earnestness is paved over by wonderfully affecting performances.

There's a lot of potential in the idea of exploring asexuality in the modern world, but The Olivia Experiment loses it in a sea of clichéd characters.

There's an off-putting self-absorption in [Tirf's] self-examination-slash-ode-to-Haiti, and it weakens the whole project.

The film is riveting from the start, with its ragtag multiculti heroines and heroes meshing multiple identity markers (activist, academic, refurbished hippie), often within individual selves.

Too bad that Josh's story, ostensibly the core of the film, is overshadowed by Calloused Hands' retro racial views.

The brisk, informative film wants to press the urgency of this perfect storm of capitalistic opportunism but is weakened by a frequently overwrought score and cheap graphics that often give Business something of a histrionic undertone.

The acting is community-theater-level, and the sets look phony, but there's unintentional humor in counting the clichés as they mount.

Politically simplistic (if not naive) and aesthetically sterile.

The film hits its mark of being a popcorn action flick just fine.

Director Ruby Yang doesn't even try to upend the clichés that practically define the kind of inspirational documentary she's made about art transforming the lives of at-risk and disabled students. She embraces them while pushing the film toward an eye-misting ending you'll see coming from the opening moments.

The film twists tension in the viewer's gut as the clock ticks toward a day of reckoning. But the script could be tougher-minded.

This is a real-life horror story, raw and galling — but not surprising. The fact that viewers, like the Fergusons, can muster only bittersweet relief at Ryan's release from prison is the film's whole point: The legal system itself is so damningly captured.

Written and directed by Tommy Oliver, 1982 is a ham-fisted morality tale about love, marriage and the fallout of the ‘80s crack epidemic as though told by someone whose intel on all three came primarily from pulp sources.