Gary Goldstein

Beyond the Reach is a grueling, unsatisfying thriller that fails the logic test in spectacular ways.

Sadly, there's not an ounce of tension or a single decent scare to be found amid any of this convoluted mayhem.

There's a late-breaking twist that might seem impressive if it didn't make all the previous mayhem feel so intensely pointless.

Brick Mansions, Paul Walker's penultimate film (prior to "Fast & Furious 7"), is a dumb and ugly action picture that works strictly as a reminder of the late actor's head-turning good looks and modest charisma.

Alexander Sokurov's Faust is a grueling side show of a film, a morbid, mightily uninvolving piece.

A muddle of tired themes, bad behaviors and gruesome set pieces.

This indulgent, overlong film takes a solid hour for its bigger themes of love, loss and guilt to settle in. By then, however, the movie has tried our patience to the point that many may not care.

The story might have had some thematic heft if we knew or cared anything about the characters. But all we can glean about the disastrous Kostis is that he’s had hard times, while Anna is a total cipher.

There’s barely a convincing — or amusing — situation or interaction, including the film’s climactic nuptials, which also turn fatally contrived.

For all its gore and violence, stabs at tension and nightmarish intrigue, the film proves a slow-going, largely unsatisfying ride.

First-time writer-director John Alan Simon simply doesn't have a strong enough grip on the movie's narrative, pacing or performances to surmount the pitfalls of this ambitious, budget-conscious effort.

It mostly plays like a slapdash mockumentary crossed with a bad reality TV show.

This tonal mishmash is a misfire of literally gross proportions.

For all its loaded potential to evolve into a gripping look at life in a correctional facility plus an atypical spin on gay longing, the film squanders much of its running time with thin, repetitive scenes of young men behaving badly.

It’s only October but your Thanksgiving turkey has arrived. It’s called She Came to Me, a mishmash of flimsy, fanciful and far-fetched notions dressed up as a screwball New York rom-com. Given its pedigreed cast and filmmaker, the results are doubly sad.

A depressingly slick and empty house of cards that collapses under the weight of its muddled intentions.

Just when you think the film has gratefully escaped its most inevitable turn, it goes there, adding one final kernel of corn to this ho-hum horse tale.

Schmaltzy, overlong and a bit tedious.

The uninvitingly titled Chlorine is a flat, undercooked suburban comedy. Or is it a drama? Or maybe a kind of satire? Regardless, it's short on style, substance or any clear raison d'être.

This strained, often crass comedy traffics in broadness and inconsistency far more than anything smart, clever or dimensional. That might be more forgivable if the film was at least funny. It's not.

Ironically, the only thing that makes much sense about the DIY effort Oconomowoc is its baffling title.

A grating and witless would-be spoof of religion, male-bonding and, it seems, horror movies.

This poky, clichéd, slackly told picture, directed by Emilio Aragón, would've felt dated a few decades ago; now it feels like a downright relic.

Too many roles remain underdeveloped — if developed at all. A lack of cohesion or camaraderie among the inmates compounds the film's impersonal vibe.

The cast, including Jason Biggs as a dorky social studies teacher, does what it can with the toothless, painfully unfunny, thoroughly unconvincing material. How some movies get made is truly a mystery.

Overall pacing is flaccid and too many scenes peter out when they should punch. But perhaps the movie’s biggest infraction is that there’s hardly a chuckle in it.

Despite a skillful use of color, lighting, framing and music, the movie’s artificiality might have played in a short film but becomes tedious and pretentious when stretched to 90 minutes.

Writer-director P.J. Hogan may have based Mental on an actual incident from his childhood, but the crazy quilt of a movie that resulted feels anything but real.