Frank Scheck

The unfortunate result is that you wind up thinking how much more you'd prefer to be rereading that contemporary classic than watching this tedious exercise.

Whatever suspense that might have been generated by the violently gory goings-on is dissipated by the sheer visual incomprehensibility.

The Happys never manages to find a consistent tone, awkwardly blending broad comedy with serious emotional moments that don’t come off. It also attempts to weave in serious discussions about sexuality and ethnicity in Hollywood, generally via stilted dialogue exchanges in which the themes are explored in boldface fashion.

Unfortunately, for all the debuting filmmaker's talent for creepy atmospherics, I Trapped the Devil feels draggy and attenuated even with its brief 82-minute running time including credits. Despite some good performances, the film goes nowhere, and very, very slowly.

Too much of the proceedings are silly rather than horrifying, with the nadir being the appearance of some particularly athletic Yetis who briefly pitch in to lend a hand.

Now that the filmmaker has reached a certain age, she no longer seems to have her finger on her generation’s pulse. Case in point: The Hot Flashes, a ribald comedy whose menopause-referencing title is all too indicative of its pandering humor.

Unfortunately, A Convenient Truth doesn’t manage to sustain its comic premise over the course of even its admittedly brief feature-length running time. The thin joke would seem more appropriate fodder for a brief sketch towards the end of a Saturday Night Live episode when time needs to be filled.

Lacking the stylistic flair provided by del Toro in the original, this sequel directed by Steven S. DeKnight (TV's Daredevil and Spartacus) becomes increasingly tiresome in its cliched plotting and characterizations, hackneyed dialogue and numbingly repetitive, visually incoherent action sequences.

Featuring endless scenes that defy credibility..Any Day truly succumbs to mawkishness in its final act.

Writer-director Kelker never establishes a consistent tone, eventually aiming for a tragic conclusion that feels hopelessly unearned.

A top-notch varied group of actors, no doubt attracted by the colorfulness of their roles, has been assembled, but their hardworking efforts are ultimately done in by the supremely pretentious nature of the material.

Featuring enough stereotypical characterizations and situations to fuel a dozen artificial rom-coms, After the Ball pretty much drops the ball in every aspect.

Severely wasting the talents of Rosemary DeWitt, who really, really deserves better material, Arizona is as arid and barren as the state that provides its title.

There's nary a believable moment, emotionally or otherwise, in No Postage Necessary, which also suffers from its overly treacly musical score composed by Closshey. The film bears as much relation to real life as cryptocurrency does to hard cash.

Tedious, visually unsatisfying, poorly acted and narratively disjointed, Area 51 is a textbook example of directorial sophomore slump.

Whatever social commentary is intended in this cautionary tale, it is lost in the overall thematic murkiness, and the film is reduced to being a series of increasingly silly, ultra-violent episodes.

Very little about what happens is very interesting, with the contrived situations and artificial-sounding dialogue giving the proceedings the strained feel of a mediocre off-Broadway play with a misjudged air of profundity.

The only thing it delivers is unrelenting tedium. Every aspect of the production proves so amateurishly realized that it begins to feel a put-on, although the humor seems to be strictly unintentional.

Ironically, the most original aspect of Maximum Impact is its title. Somehow, it has never been used for an action movie before, despite sounding like every one ever made. And after this, it may never be used again.

Starts out as a potentially interesting psychological thriller before devolving into familiar horror movie tropes.

This latest installment of the horror movie spoof franchise is mainly notable for its Charlie Sheen/Lindsay Lohan cameos.

Elba, who recruited his former Luther director Miller into the project, gives the film more dignity than it deserves, and Henson delivers a performance of complex emotional shadings. But their fine work is utterly wasted in this B-movie exploitation thriller that would barely make for passable viewing on late night cable television.

This low-rent frat house comedy is at once far more vulgar and decidedly less anarchic than its obvious inspiration and should flunk out of theaters before this year's crop of freshman students even finish unpacking their bags.

This stupefying dull mockumentary purports to explore themes of media manipulation and political propaganda, but whatever points it’s attempting to make are buried amidst the ponderous goings-on that will result in a quick exit from theaters.

Lead actors Cole and Latimore are competent enough, but they don’t come close to approximating the original film’s stars’ charisma or likability, with the result that their characters’ ill-advised activities leave a sour taste. This is one party you can’t wait to be over.

Thomason delivers a strong performance as the stalwart hero, and Furlong... makes for a highly convincing jerk. But their efforts aren’t enough to prevent the end of the world, at least as depicted here, from seeming awfully dull.

Claustrophobic, tedious sci-fi thriller.

14 Cameras is another pointless exercise that equates sliminess with terror. The film is creepy, all right, but not in a way that proves remotely edifying.

It's never remotely involving, and you can feel the lead performers straining to handle their acting chores. The exception is Haddish, who is so convincingly scary and menacing here that you wish her character were in a better, dramatic movie.

For all its vividly and realistically rendered graphic violence and gore, The Basement is an example of torture porn at its most ironic. It threatens to bore its audience to death.

Attempting to be a cautionary tale for the Airbnb era, the pic squanders its potential with ham-fisted execution.

It's a good thing that forgiveness is a predominant theme of Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day, because viewers will have to look deep into their hearts to forgive this kidnapping drama for its heavy-handed melodrama and tawdry plot elements.

Incarnate, much like its central character at key moments, barely seems to have a pulse.

Attempting to mix emotional pathos with broad farce, the film fails on both levels.

At a lean, mean 90 minutes or so, Ambulance might have been a guilty pleasure. Instead, it’s the sort of cinematic thrill ride so overstuffed that you can’t wait for it to be over.

A particularly nasty slice of medical-themed horror, Marc Scholermann's film is the sort of thriller in which the tenderest scene depicts an autopsy.

Attempts scares and yucks in equal measure and fails to deliver either.

Visually murky, choppily edited and lacking both narrative clarity and well-defined characterizations, Captive State is a deeply frustrating viewing experience. It seems to be straining mightily for a future cult status which it doesn't deserve.

Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger doesn’t show up until more than an hour into this relentlessly unfunny comedy and by then viewers may have tuned out long before.

Veteran television director Greg Berlanti (Riverdale, Everwood), who demonstrated real cinematic talent with Love, Simon, is unable to make any of this remotely convincing or, more problematically, entertaining. The wild tonal shifts leave the viewer in the dust, and not even the two stars are able to make any of it work.

Like the first film, the sequel (directed by Kyle Newacheck) proves moronic, witless and relentlessly vulgar. Which is to say, Happy Gilmore fans will love it.

Self-destructs in its quest for comic outrageousness.

I Hate Myself :) centers on two thoroughly repellent, self-absorbed figures with whom spending time proves a nearly intolerable trial.

Despite its technical gloss and effective performances, Den of Thieves never manage to feel other than hopelessly derivative.

Derivative and otherwise lacking in originality, the film which features enough gratuitous nudity and violence to satisfy the genre crowd is a strictly by-the-numbers affair that probably won't be filling the multiplexes in Salt Lake City.

This lugubrious drama fails in its essential goal of making us care about its central character’s existential crisis.

Ultimately Adam & Steve mainly goes to prove that indie gay romantic comedies can be just as witless, vulgar and over the top as their straight, major studio counterparts.

It's certainly an imaginative concept for a detective story, but the storyline gets so convoluted and baroque that unintentional humor sets in. By the time we learn the outlandish motivation of the time-traveling serial killer and her true identity, the twists have been coming so fast and furious that we've long stopped caring.

The Parts You Lose somehow manages to be both unmoving and tension-free, wasting the talents of several notable actors in the process.

It has all the flaws of the recent Bradley Cooper vehicle Burnt, only without the sex and the charm.

A grim little drama about a young woman's experiences with a left-wing cult, Alison Murray's debut feature suffers from disjointed storytelling and myriad other problems, including a bizarre reliance on modern dance sequences to interrupt the action.

The film is nearly unendurable.

Featuring murky visuals, an even murkier narrative that lamely sputters to its conclusion, and frequently amateurish performances — the effectively low-key Isabelle is a notable exception — the film never explores its undeniably disturbing issues with enough thematic depth to compensate for its ragged execution.

Completely lacking in visual, narrative or stylistic coherence, the film also suffers from cheap-looking visual effects and poorly staged and edited action sequences that will not exactly please the fanboys.

Crowe himself, as usual, is the best thing in the film, once again upgrading less than optimal material with his indelible screen presence.

Straining mightily for a mythic quality and reaching a predictably melancholic, violent conclusion, Road to Paloma mainly comes across as a vanity project star vehicle.

Despite the best efforts of the talented lead performers and an overqualified supporting cast, this is a movie for which you should practice social distancing.

Aiming for charm but instead coming across as hopelessly forced, Swimming With Men barely manages to stay afloat.

This dour, uninspired, Hispanic-themed variation on the profitable "Step Up" dance movies is unlikely to similarly rouse teens.

Auggie is purposefully grim in style and execution, moving at a snail's pace and seemingly photographed in drab shades of gray. Although its running time is a mere 81 minutes, the pic seems to last forever.

With its clichéd characters and situations, formulaic subplots (Alexandre neglects his grad student daughter to concentrate on his career) and overly cutesy comic tone, Le Chef is a cinematic dish best sent back to the kitchen.

Ploddingly paced (it runs nearly 20 minutes longer than the 1977 film, to detrimental effect), poorly scripted and featuring largely amateurish performances and cheesy special effects, this Rabid strives to emulate the striking body horror of the original but mainly comes across like a half-baked imitation.

Ultimately a hollow and pointless exercise.

Clara forgets to have anything resembling a compelling plot. Or an original one. Even science geeks will find little here compelling.

Laborious and dull, I Can Only Imagine 2 only comes to life in the comedic scenes featuring Ventimiglia, who buries his handsomeness in a buzz-cut, full beard, and Buddy Holly-style glasses to resemble Timmons.

A slow-burn psychological thriller all too visibly wearing its cinematic influences on its sleeve, Beach House delivers suitably ominous atmospherics but doesn't seem to know where to go with them, ultimately resorting to familiar genre tropes.

Awful Nice, about two perpetually warring brothers, grates on the nerves from first moment to last.

Suffers mightily from its limited budget and narrative scope.

Mister America proves a witless, one-note political satire whose deficiencies are even more glaring when such humor feels entirely redundant to our current state of affairs.

Wedding Palace is being billed as the first Asian-American romantic comedy and the first U.S.-Korea independent co-production. Too bad, then, that this shrill, unfunny effort from director/co-writer Christine Yoo features such broad clichés and stereotypical characters that it doesn’t exactly reflect well on the Korean-American community.

Extremely crude in its technical elements, the low-budget film does reveal stylistic ambitions through devices like frequently reverting from color to black-and-white film stock. But the shaky narrative style and broad characterizations undo its effectiveness.

Infusing its generic horror tropes with vaguely satirical aspects, the film doesn't really work on either level. Unintentionally campy (or purposely, it's hard to tell) and marred by ridiculous plotting and dialogue, #Horror is mostly just a horror.

Sacrifices suspense and narrative coherence for moody atmospherics and hallucinatory visuals. Uninvolving to the extreme, She's Missing misses the mark entirely.

Reduced to a teen girl empowerment vehicle that trots out every show business cliche about sacrificing your values for stardom, the film is a non-starter.

Instead of being drawn in by Daniel’s spiral, we observe it from a distance. The result is that Longing, presumably intended as a cathartic meditation on grief, simply feels absurd.

Unlike so many of Anderson’s efforts, In the Lost Lands isn’t adapted from a video game. But it sure as hell feels like one, and not one that would be fun to play.

An aimlessly wandering DIY-indie that will send viewers retreating to popcorn movies at their local multiplex.

Featuring many of the same grandiose elements as those predecessors, Moonfall looks and sounds like a would-be cinematic blockbuster but comes up painfully short in its ham-fisted execution.

The compendium of clichés might have been more palatable if the lead characters were more sympathetic, but it's hard to connect to Arielle's relentless need for attention and the utter stupidity that ultimately has tragic repercussions.

This talky, ham-fisted effort proves particularly disappointing because it should have been much better than it is.

For all its visual stylishness, The Carpenter’s Son feels like such an essentially misconceived project that it seems destined for future cult status, with audiences at midnight screenings shouting out the more outrageous lines in unison with the actors. Which may not be what the filmmaker intended, but sounds like a lot of fun.

Despite the world-changing ramifications inherent to the plot, the results are more tedious than thrilling.

Whatever charms the first two movies possessed (and they were considerable thanks to the talented and appealing cast) have been thoroughly lost in this soulless installment.

Unfortunately, despite its uncomfortable resonance, Beneath Us barely scratches the surface of its provocative ideas, sacrificing nuance in favor of cheap shocks.

Much like the recent, widely reviled I, Frankenstein, this misconceived project mainly signals a need to go back to the drawing board.

Even more egregious than the film's concept is its execution, as it somehow manages to make scenes of drug addiction, hustling and even brotherly incest quite tedious.

Perry doesn't even try to successfully integrate the story's comedic and dramatic elements, merely toggling back and forth between them as if in need of mood stabilizers.

The film’s reluctance to fully explore its provocative moral conflict renders it terminally bland.

It’s all pretty tedious, with Miller failing to infuse the proceedings with the stylistic flair necessary to compensate for the cliché-ridden plotline, whose twists can be seen a mile away.

For all its admirable intentions and the terrific performances by its talented ensemble, Inherit the Viper fails to have any genuine impact. Neither weighty enough to satisfyingly explore its themes nor sufficiently suspenseful to work as a straightforward thriller, the film proves dramatically inert.

She's (Milla Jovovich) constantly being besieged by a seemingly never-ending series of monsters, and we -- at least every couple of years or so -- are forced to sit through yet another installment of the mind-numbing series.

Strictly for the Beliebers.

Features sitcom-style stock characters and situations, not to mention the sort of ethnic stereotypes to be found in TV ads for fast-food Mexican restaurant chains.

Barely qualifies as late-night cable television fodder.

In the absence of anything truly original in the screenplay he co-wrote with Juliet Snowden, director Stiles White vainly attempts to ratchet up the tension with a series of cheap jump scares fueled by loud noises that are the cinematic equivalent of shaking hands with someone wearing a joy buzzer.

Coming across as more than a little desperate in its unrelenting freneticism, Think Like a Man Too possesses none of the charm of its predecessor. By the time the seemingly endless film reaches its conclusion, you’ll wish that what happened in Vegas had stayed in Vegas.

Ponderously paced and mostly flat in its dramatic effect, this wooden period piece is slow going indeed.