Geoff Berkshire

The lukewarm family dynamics sit awkwardly alongside equally underwhelming action sequences.

Even with a bona fide icon at its center, The Comedian doesn’t dig deep enough to add anything substantial to the subgenre.

Character actor Michael Cudlitz’s first leading role is the sole selling point of Dark Tourist, a well-acted but rote and ultimately repellent character study of a psychologically disturbed loner.

Visual spectacle still takes precedence over coherent plotting, and the human characters retain all the gravitas of generic placeholders who accidentally made it into the shooting script.

Tawdry but cripplingly self-serious, the second feature from Mora Stephens (a full decade after her little-seen, also politically themed debut “Conventioneers”) benefits from Patrick Wilson’s committed star turn.

There’s no question writer-director Neil LaBute’s effort doesn’t catch fire.

Empty cynicism isn’t a substitute for well-reasoned critique, and Roth winds up looking more clueless than the so-called “social justice warriors” he’s trying to satirize.

The timidly plotted proceedings never veer from romantic-comedy formula. There’s a whole lot of talk and very little action here, and not just because the squeaky-clean pic wears its PG rating like a badge of honor.

The film’s haphazard structure and freewheeling arguments only serve to reinforce tired pothead cliches — it’s paranoid, prone to starry-eyed dorm-room philosophizing, and it doesn’t know when to quit.

Every bit as sitcom-ish and saccharine as its predecessor, but considerably less distinctive.

The part may be tailor-made for Simmons’ no-nonsense persona, and his performance reliably rock solid, but the bland execution of director Gavin Wiesen and the uninspired scripting of Seth Owen have no comic zing.

Even a prickly pro like Sutherland can’t do anything to elevate a hokey self-help lecture disguised as family entertainment.

The goofiness is redeemed somewhat by a wickedly violent climax — the exclamation point at the end of a rather simple sentence.

Despite an impressive global scope and admirable ethnic diversity among the interview subjects, the central thesis that women are leading the charge on green issues receives nothing but anecdotal support.

Cheerfully exhorting imagination, creativity and bravery in children while demonstrating none of those virtues itself, The Hero of Color City proves to be a dispiritingly colorless feature-length babysitter.

So good at making the most outlandish elements of his first two films seem completely credible, Jones can’t find a way to get this cartoony spectacle to soar. His heartfelt approach to the material only underlines the silliness.

The sudsy quality of the production ensures all the performers look terrific, but aren’t given particularly impressive material to work with.

Despite a game lead performance from smallscreen star Katie Cassidy (“Arrow”) as a young woman with multiple personality disorder and an incorrigible punk attitude, this latest low-budget outing from helmer John Suits simply doesn’t have the imagination or resources necessary to pull off its clumsy stabs at visual pizzazz.

The low-budget production feels chintzy and impossibly square, even by tyke standards.

While every moment is captured with the reverence of a fawning fan, Holwerda’s star-struck approach neglects to shed new light on his subjects or even showcase their greatest hits.

Brightest Star, has all the trappings of a contemporary romantic comedy, but also the good sense to strive for a deeper examination of a young man’s search for his place in the universe.

“Lazarus” shamelessly steals from superior genre efforts and lacks any distinguishing traits beyond a wildly overqualified cast.

Exploiting Lawrence's newfound fame is the only hope this ill-conceived, poorly executed venture has of connecting with audiences before poisonous word of mouth sends potential buyers in search of a more attractive address.

The Gallows isn’t without a certain amount of atmosphere, it simply feels borrowed wholesale. That would matter less with a better script, but the four main characters are paper-thin even by genre norms.

Neither warm and fuzzy in the best holiday movie traditions, nor edgy and irreverent a la “Bad Santa” (coincidentally also co-starring Graham, to better effect), it’s something of a mystery what audience A Merry Friggin’ Christmas intends to serve.

Even a brisk running time, barely topping 80 minutes, is too long to ask audiences to stay in the company of these characters and their terrible self-inflicted predicaments.

Sanchez’s thoroughly conventional approach here does little to elevate a dismally generic script from frequent collaborator Jamie Nash.

With plot elements cobbled together from recent animated hits, the blandly executed pic might as well be titled “Happy Minions of Madagascar’s Ice Age.”

An aggressively obnoxious tone undermines a decent concept and appealing cast.

An utterly unevolved romantic comedy, “Cavemen” tries to split the difference between raunchy and sweet and fails miserably on all counts.

At least the narrative sloppiness and ineptly delivered themes in the script by Brian Bird and Lisa G. Shillingburg (freely adapted from the novel by Jim Stovall) feel of a piece with the entire production.

This confused and confusing pic delivers no thrills, chills or anything remotely surprising.

Sidney Hall strings its audience along on a tedious journey that runs out of steam long before reaching an embarrassingly overwrought finale.

Writer-director Eli Morgan Gesner (a clothing designer and skateboarder who previously helmed the skateboarding and hip-hop doc “Concrete Jungle”) could have milked the premise for gleeful counterculture exploitation (like a 21st-century “Basket Case”) or campy John Waters-style gross-out comedy, but settles for mean-spirited banality.

Lack of originality feels like a fairly meaningless complaint when Roth’s film was derivative enough to begin with.

Jack’s predicament is both revolting and claustrophobic, but he never emerges as any kind of hero or villain, just a passive victim, which makes the pic’s most off-putting quality its endless tedium.

The lovingly crafted documentary Why We Ride ultimately chokes on the fumes of bombastic self-seriousness.

Essentially a homemovie cobbled together with bland talking-head interviews, director Yuliya Tikhonova’s film offers little to interest jazz aficionados or those simply curious about the band’s lineup of veteran sidemen from the era of classic jazz.

An alternately enchanting and exhausting anime adventure in which cutesy characters and peppy vocal turns belie a darker, angst-ridden narrative.

Its compassion and careful sidestepping of exploitation tropes can’t make up for a fundamental lack of depth and urgency in the storytelling.

Eschews hysteria, preachiness and self-importance in favor of calm, persuasive scientific arguments.

Eric Chaney’s debut feature, Indigo Children, doesn’t so much copy Terrence Malick as swallow the filmmaker’s stylistic tics whole and vomit them out onscreen in an ungainly if mercifully brief mess.

The second feature from writer-director Tenney Fairchild (“The Good Humor Man”) actually attempts to be an emotionally resonant relationship tale, but lives down to its title by delivering nothing but inane comedy and insufferable drama.

Veteran filmmaker Greg MacGillivray (“Everest”) seizes the opportunity with striking imagery, which goes a long way toward compensating for his frequently over-earnest messaging.