Gabe Toro

Ultimately, American Mary simply reveals itself as a film with little on its mind, content to scare rubberneckers into contemplating the backstory of the more outlandish body manipulation jobs they’ve seen in public. A documentary would have sufficed.

A couple of shootouts and chases are impressive, giving the film a little bit of momentum it sorely lacks, but it’s heartbreaking that ultimately the film doesn’t work.

It's not a surprise that he most resembles an older Charles Bronson in Taken 2, as both found the enthusiasm to soldier on in the action genre well into their old age. Bronson had a bit more patience with these films: after this, it's doubtful Neeson will.

About Alex is about too much and too little, a sandbox for its considerable cast, but ultimately just following the reunion rulebook.

An end-film tease for a laughably unnecessary part two feels emblematic of the entire film: McKee and Sivertson aren't interested in laying any groundwork regarding cogent themes or diverse characterization, because there are skulls to be split and blood to be drank.

In other words, here's the same slop you've seen before, only with brand new accents. Also, more pooping.

The Family is ultimately a headache, nearly two hours of baseball bat beatings and dull witticisms, with zero inventiveness or energy.

Like its predecessor, Machete Kills is never less than busy with ridiculousness.

It's like stocking a team with proven performers and hoping that everything else will work itself out at the end, including a rickety script, indifferent direction, and a plot that pretends its final act is anything other than a cliché-hugging inevitability.

He (Fishburne) rips into his dialogue like steak, savoring every word as if he were paid by the syllable. For a moment, we’re in a different movie, one where someone has decided to singlehandedly deconstruct a cliché. It’s a very short moment.

The crime isn’t that Kick-Ass 2 is vulgar (which it is), but that it’s for so little gain.

Hell Baby works as a joke factory first and foremost, a collection of tropes (some mocked) second, and a movie a distant third.

Temple and Panabaker are quite good in their lead roles, to the point where you start to hate the fact that the movie's thesis thrives on the girls being damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Comes to you courtesy of WWE Films, though it's a considerable departure from their recent family-friendly approach. But it does make sense that the audience for post-apocalyptic films will start out with the Speak & Spell version of this premise, a knuckle-dragging time waster you could predict with your eyes closed. But hey. It's a movie.

The picture isn’t plotted with story beats, only shock moments.

Ultimately of course, this is Statham’s show, and as always he doesn’t disappoint.

The little action in 'Percy Jackson' wouldn’t be out-of-place in a superhero film, which is to say it’s mostly functional, and sometimes quite diverting.

For being a kids-centric film, the picture is relatively slow and joyless.

What's distinct about Mr. Jones is that it lengthily utilizes three separate storytelling techniques... Given the sloppiness of Karl Mueller's directorial debut, it feels less like innovation and more like an attempt to cover up shortcomings.

It's all very cheap, wholly unconvincing, and loaded with dull narration.

Black Out ultimately limps to feature length, burying its intriguing leading man underneath endless mishaps and shenanigans.

Caught In The Web grows slack as its premise evolves.

Ultimately, the cumulative effect is deadening, just another chapter in an endless battle between overtasked and underpaid good guys, and cowardly baddies; the only real humanity in the film comes from Hudgens’ Cindy, who seems like a wild card of sorts, her character’s dimensions suggesting a world outside of the lurid details of this case. Refreshingly, she’s the only one in the film who refuses to be defined by the death and tragedy surrounding her.

It's well-acted, certainly, though these performances belong in a film with sharper pacing, one that breathes easily. But, this directorial debut from Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner breathes like a frequent smoker: in fits and starts, peppered with coughs and dry heaves.

Tedious effort.

For those of you who felt "Ides Of March" was entirely too cerebral and challenging, here comes the dunderheaded Knife Fight. A political satire that treads no new ground, this name-heavy comedy wastes an engaging central performance by Rob Lowe.

For Scenic Route, it doesn’t seem to be the journey as much as the destination: seeing two sorta-friends wailing on each other feels like the shortcut a better movie never made.

The project seems compromised by a meager budget and limited scale.

The film progresses to the point where it feels less like father and son, and more like a young boy listening to an inspirational audiobook.

The fashion mogul feels as if she’s learning bit by bit how to tell a story cinematically, how to complete transitions and flash back and forward, how to set a mood and tempo. It’s basically the rough cut of a student film which, to its credit, is also often more interesting than most student films outright.

This is a laughably bad movie, but an amazing drinking game waiting to happen.

Much of the credit must go towards the makeup crew. It's a Fangoria funhouse up in here: Cabin Fever: Patient Zero has some of the most disturbing, disgusting gore effects of all-time. This is a movie made by people who have studied some of the worst injuries known to man.

It’s all very first draft, with a layer of supernatural permeating the events that suggests added attempts to connect three wildly disparate storylines.

Director Mark Steven Johnson can’t seem to balance a tone here, which is a pity because for the most part he stands back and lets the two stars go at each other.

This expensive misfire runs a little less than ninety minutes, which means that there’s likely a 105-110 minute long version that the producers hacked up in order to get the maximum amount of 3D showtimes to not embarrass the studio on opening weekend. Judging by the released product, that version is likely even worse, if such a thing were possible.

This is the sort of movie that should be playing in the background on an episode of “Tim And Eric,” and yet instead it’s being released by IFC Films. Bring alcohol.

What’s obnoxious is that it’s never in doubt where Assault On Wall Street is headed, and it seems to believe there’s a certain poetry to taking its time turning Baxford into a non-verbal Travis Bickle.

The film’s dismal action staging and over-complex story can’t seem to overcome Mr. Fairbrass’s lo-fi presence.

At its worst, the film is a panoply of ersatz camera placement and terrible scene blocking, actors having no clue how to interact with their surroundings as they rifle through dialogue that stands as a series of historical checkpoints rather than a cohesive story.

The film similarly boxes itself in when it feels the need to mimic the third-act occurrences of "Paranormal Activity" when it's obvious that improv had the film going in an entirely less predictable direction, clearly pointing out the fallacy of A Haunted House: you can't parody something and also try to emulate it as well.

Most of Tomorrow You’re Gone moves incredibly slow for a ninety minute movie.

Basically, it’s a film made for brainless grunts who like to hang out all day making sub-literate jokes about boobs and gays while watching the game. No wonder the first movie was such a success.

An oddity recommended for only the most fervent, undemanding comedy junkies.

About an hour in, if you haven’t walked over to the nearest stove and shoved your head inside, the sinking feeling sets in that you’re stuck with this unpleasant asshole.

The Starving Games is the sixth directorial effort from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, and they are nothing if not consistent.

Karr came up through documentary filmmaking, and he knows how to turn the switch on an event to make it feel immediate and dangerous. Unfortunately, the picture strands its characters in the middle of this event, building to a climax that seems open-ended if only because the story, and its skimpy characters, has nowhere to explore.