Jordan Hoffman

While there are some okay side stories (stuff with the daughters and daughters’ friends) it kinda feels like attending a dinner party and checking in on the first world problems of a friend you kinda like, but don’t like enough to ask any follow up questions.

There’s a streak of old-fashioned B-movie spooky playfulness here, and when actual, motivated characters are on screen it’s delightful.

While ultimately gory — and a little dopey — this is no rowdy, exploitation-y, gross-out picture. This is a film where ambience, glossy imagery and performance are more effective than the splatter.

Cheadle’s got the cred, and the period evocation is tremendous. It’s just that I’m not sure he has all that much to say

Southside With You uses our affection for the Obamas to add urgency in the otherwise simple script.

Johnson’s Ana squeezes believability out of one of the more silly romantic entanglements in recent popular culture. It’s all there in her face, which Taylor-Johnson frames in close-up. She’s fully aware this scenario is ridiculous, but can’t seem to turn away from its lunacy.

It’s somewhat heavy material for a film aimed at children, but perhaps very necessary in an age where a beer-stained uncle might have ruined Thanksgiving wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap.

The result, while instantly forgettable, is a fundamentally pleasurable experience.

It is a quiet, subtle story and, as is so often the case when an actor takes their first trip behind the camera, a showcase for terrific performances.

Go For Sisters is something of a frustration. It’s the least interesting crime caper ever, and there are fascinating characters forced to go through the motions as if any of us could possibly care.

Even though The Wave is fiction, there comes a point where it ceases to be nail-biting fun and just an exercise in voyeuristic cruelty.

Alas, a winning lead performance isn’t enough when it is at the center of a flawed movie. The Greatest Showman can only hoodwink for so long before the tent collapses. This is an enjoyable film, but its rags-to-riches tale in a sanitized 19th century is extremely by-the-numbers.

This movie sure means well, and it’s just entertaining enough to (slightly) slip off the shackles of the great cultural conformity factory it ultimately represents.

There are laughs found in almost every scene, though not many big ones. There’s also the problem that no amount of parody can top the real thing.

This is a case of good acting saving a movie from its own poor choices.

The world needs people like Foley, and this film argues that cameras are every bit as important as firearms in the current struggle. This movie, despite its somewhat simplistic form, acts as a fine tribute to the man, his work and the bravery of others who are called to his field.

All told The Zookeeper’s Wife is a story worth telling, even if there are a good number of not-so-hot spots along the way.

This melancholy documentary shows how championship dreams can turn into a nightmare.

It has a nose for what's cool, but is completely inept at execution.

Perez’ style is like a less-serious David Lynch, which is a nice comparison for a first-timer. Not all of his scenes nail that eerie surrealism, but he’s got a knack for a well-placed prop and the right timing for a dopey gag to come in and pop the balloon of suspense.

It isn’t just the sheer density of jokes that is impressive, but the diversity.

A dopey splatterfest that features one-dimensional characters and a draggy first act that’s eventually won over by creatively immature gross-outs and absurd violence.

Small Time is impressive, just slightly, because it’s the one thing used-car salesmen are rarely accused of being: honest.

Tangerine offers a warts-and-all depiction of a subculture seldom treated with respect by straight society. The movie handles it in a sincere way that’s entertaining, too.

The script may feature numerous wobbly passages in which everyone eerily states precisely what they are thinking (an unfortunate tradition that runs throughout the series) but if anyone can sell it, it’s Stallone and Jordan.

By keeping its characters at such a far remove, the film doesn’t condemn them nor cheer them on. At least, not on paper. In actuality, with all the crafty editing moves, slick music cues and stylish production design, Nocturama does the one thing it shouldn’t: it makes domestic terrorism look cool.

I can’t believe just how dumb Hot Pursuit is. Moreover I can’t believe just how much I laughed.

Ricki and the Flash’s emotional intensity creeps up on you, and it’s all due to the performances. Everyone’s sympathetic, everyone’s got depth.

Surprisingly, many of Bekmambetov’s updates work well.

For family entertainment, you could do a lot worse.

The Road Chip isn't exactly what I'd call a good film and has almost nothing going on in the visual department, but for those saddled with kids for an afternoon, you could do a lot worse.

The movie itself is a retread of indie story beats we’ve all seen time and again. Slate’s tornado of a central character doesn’t quite overcome the rote aspects of this production.

Barbershop: The Next Cut is hardly subtle, but it is more nuanced than you might expect.

It’s rare when you can pinpoint the exact moment a movie goes off the rails, but when Nerve downshifts from far-fetched parable into idiotic action, the film at least has the decency to speed itself along to get to the ending.

It’s the same low-budget horror flick you’ve seen many times before, but it’s nice to see some local variants on a familiar theme.

Despite the numerous patchy moments The Brass Teapot by and large squeaks by as an enjoyable entertainment.

Klown Forever has even less of a plot than the first film, which is a bit of a problem.

The on-stage moments of Entertainment are revelatory but, unfortunately, some of the in-between meat of the film doesn’t quite connect.

The restrained performances and luscious location photography are enough to make this a film worth exploring, though it might not be a bad idea to down a few caffeine-rich drinks before settling in to watch.

The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification.

There is something so authentic in this film that once you get past the annoying voice and some of the dreadfully unfunny side characters, it is disarmingly sweet and even occasionally clever.

If anyone other than Hawkins were in this film, it would be very hard to recommend. With her in virtually every scene, it is a lovely, tiny character study.

Despite the desultory nature of the film, it is sure to hammer home some key points.

Both Rogen and Franco, who have marvellous chemistry and exude good cheer, continue to tweak their personas in this very amusing, very imbecilic film.

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus isn't entirely successful – and certainly offers few new insights into the nature of addiction – but it remains a welcome change of pace.

The best parts of Paper Towns are also the best part of being young – just hanging out doing nothing with friends who know you too well to allow for any lies.

Surprisingly, for a movie this ephemeral, the closing sequences, which consist of flashbacks and confrontations, are actually quite touching.

The end of the movie goes completely off the rails, but in a way that is charming in its stupidity.

By the end of the movie few won’t be rolling their eyes or checking their watch, but there’s enough that’s fundamentally good in the meat of film not to wholly reject what The Giver is giving us.

It’s coarse and it’s stupid, but it is, thanks mostly the two good performances and some stylish use of music and editing, a little bit moving.

One of the world's top disturbing tourist attractions is now finally getting the spooky film it deserves

Despite the uncomfortable sexism and altogether predictable nature of the film, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t modestly entertaining.

This is detached, flat film-making at its most bare. You figure out which lines of dialogue deserve to be underlined.

God, it’s so obnoxious. And the worst thing is that it works. I was smiling and applauding at the end, then I had to take a long walk alone to wonder what was wrong with me.

The Ted franchise is perhaps unstoppable if MacFarlane sets his sights a bit lower, finds a way to streamline the plot mechanics and just give moviegoers what they never knew they wanted: time hanging out with a foul-mouthed anthropomorphised soft toy.

Put bluntly, Tim Story's film wears you down until you relent and say, yes, I like these people and it's fun to watch them all have such a good time.

There’s a fine line between a slowburn and dull, and this Magnificent Seven frequently finds itself on the wrong side.

There is a sincere effort to get beneath the facade of what an extremely fit twentysomething firefighter’s life is like. There’s even a possibility that the film’s first act is intentionally distancing so that the later scenes will have a bigger payoff.

Katherine Diekmann’s Strange Weather is a fairly simple melodrama, and one that could use a few reminders that it is better to show not tell. But as a showcase it’s a role that would fuel actors’ dreams.

Though this telling has more than its share of well-worn story beats that Salinger’s hero Holden Caulfield might accuse of being phoney, there are enough occasional insights into the creative process, as well as juicy tidbits about the secretive Salinger, to make this a very agreeable, if at times shallow, watch.

The three leads draw you in. The pace gives these actors time to breathe, show nuance and make their characters human.

Clearly there is entertainment value in this documentary, but it’s very much of a “behind the music” calibre.

There aren’t too many weird or original moments in Bad Moms...but Lucas and Moore, who wrote the script for The Hangover, know how to clear the stage for talented performers that can spin gold from next to nothing.

This is not much more than a light crowdpleaser, but when you’ve got two powerhouse performers like this it is very difficult not to find oneself at least temporarily charmed.

Despite being about serious matters (labor relations, systematic oppression, racial microaggressions), Sorry to Bother You is slight and raggedy, but when it leans into its surreal, midnight movie instincts it proves engaging and amusing.

Gitai has chosen stylistic cinema over propaganda, and he is a director who regularly gets bogged down a bit in form.

While Bad Boys for Life has a completely asinine story, generic action, predictable plot beats, moronic dialogue and truly reprehensible politics, I still had a good time.

Basically a drama-in-disguise. Unfortunately, it’s a formulaic and extremely uneven one, albeit with a number of sympathetic performances.

Like dining at Burger King, it's undeniably enjoyable, but may leave you with a queasy feeling when it's all over.

At the halfway mark, a little spice gets shaken into the otherwise thin soup. It’s still far from a must-see, but there are rewards for those who stick to the end.

The movie starts with the volume cranked to 10, then never takes a breath. At three hours it is unbearable. Yes, this is meant to be a “bad trip” of a movie, taking you inside the experience of someone undergoing a crisis, but there’s a limit. And then it’s revealed that this grown man has mommy issues. For that you made me sit through all this noise?

It is highly likely you’ll forget the movie by the time you go to bed.

Weirdly it's because it is so damned hokey that parts of the movie are agreeable. One can't help but laugh. That, plus the lead performer, Ben Wang as Li Fong, is extremely likable. He gives a terrific performance, even if you've seen every beat before.

It isn’t just the bright colors and the costumes but every visual aspect of Byzantium that sings. Neil Jordan knows where to put the camera. It’s just a shame he wasn’t able to inject a little life inside that frame.

For a film that reminds use over and over that this is a whole new world, this movie feels awfully familiar.

This is design work of the highest caliber and it is impossible to not enjoy simply watching these little buggers run around. It is unfortunate, however, that the creativity, originality and propulsive storytelling found in the original “Monsters Inc.” just didn’t matriculate with them.

It's darker, stranger and pushes more buttons.

Out of the Furnace is no disaster, but it doesn’t achieve what it hopes to achieve, and it has no one to blame but itself.

Then Bill Nighy shows up and is awesome and punches you in the heart. It ultimately feels like a cheat, and while there won’t be a dry eye in the house, it won’t be earned.

As a movie, quite frankly, it stinks. As an “entertainment object,” it will no doubt find its boosters.

While Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F isn’t terrible, and it does have a few funny zings plus one decent chase scene, there’s not a molecule of originality on display. One can’t help but call it a missed opportunity.

The Homesman certainly wins a few points for trying a different type of Western. There are no greedy land barons and no gunslingers drawin’ at high noon. But being unique isn’t enough if the story remains uneven and the characters don’t feel real.

What's unfortunate is that Toothless is starring in a toothless story.

There’s no way to overstate the gorgeous look of this film, but the mannered dialogue and deliberateness of pace becomes less of an homage to Asian revenge films than a parody.

Unfortunately, there is an uncanny lack of urgency in the film. The characterizations are flat, the would-be quippy dialogue rarely elicits laughs, and the action sequences seldom rise above the level of satisfactory.

Schreiber saves it to an extent with some unusual performance choices, but when you compare this ending to the emotional supernova of Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine” it comes way short.

In this 75-minute straight shot of Discovery Channel cinema, no emotional crests are peaked, but viewers will come away informed.

This movie is not particularly good. One seizes upon highlights from the sideline when what’s happening front and center is just so dull.

What’s strangest about this three-hour movie, though, is that despite some deadly slow patches, it still feels like an hour was cut from it, considering how characters develop off-screen. On more than one occasion, there are scenes that suggest deep and lasting relationships between people … that must have happened while the camera was somewhere else.

For every poignant moment there’s a gaudy dream sequence, wretched internal monologue, ham-fisted zoom or an exchange of dialogue sorely lacking nuance.

There are tones of 1970s shaggy realism that are interrupted by moments of character-driven shtick. The wistful scenes aren’t rich enough to engross you and the comedy isn’t clever enough to make a difference.

Co-writers and stars June Diane Raphael (“Whitney,” “New Girl”) and Casey Wilson (“Happy Endings”) are genuine and true comic performers. Even though the story stunk, the set pieces were uninspired and the direction was downright wretched, when these two are “on” and doing schtick, they are absolutely fresh and hilarious.

An embarrassing gut-punch of unfiltered schmaltz, but its sympathy for the devil-style humanism is well-meaning.

A dark, dreary and dull “Mad Max in Neutral” from director David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) that tries to pass off its blunt narrative and repetitiveness as some sort of style.

Only completists need check in with Homefront. The rest of us can just stay home.

Unfortunately the bulk of the picture is cut together like a beer commercial on poorly lit cheap video without much panache. Unless primary colors with a gauzy halo is panache.

The movie is two hours of cheap jokes, culminating in the world’s biggest Family Guy episode. It tries so hard to be clever, it just ends up being cringe.

It’s just so embarrassingly thin. The few chuckles are all the more depressing when you realize that this could have been a winner with a clever screenwriter and a competent director.

The movie gets completely lost, unsure if it wants to be a serious exploration of repressed memories or a work of giddy, spooky trash.

There are scenes that snap together nicely with some sharp and nuanced observations. But the film is saddled with uninteresting surface-level characters. There’s a phoniness exuding from the entire project, made all the more discouraging since the plot-light, shaggy dog story is trying to feel so real.

This movie is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, with no shortage of cringeworthy moments and an uninteresting lead performance.

Little kids will be bored, as there are only a few scenes with any action, and of those, only one, featuring an enormous skeleton with swords sticking out of its skull, has any oomph.

It’s one hell of a yarn, which makes The Lovers and the Despot’s strangely soporific style something of a disappointment.

In the spaces between the hackneyed dialogue, ham-handed score, and poor acting, Walking With The Enemy eventually wins its sole victory: a desire to look the story up on Wikipedia later that day. That may be a small triumph, but it’s hardly the mark of fine cinema.

Helms, a funny performer, is just the face of a mining expedition for easy yuks out of a recognised title. What that says about our regurgitative culture is rather depressing. There’s so much nostalgia on our screens right now. I could really use a vacation.

Animator Raul Garcia’s 70-minute anthology of five Poe stories, Extraordinary Tales, has its moments, and will be a welcome respite for any middle schooler sitting through a boring lecture. But if we were ever asked if we wanted a second viewing, we’d have to quoth the raven: nevermore.

The Maze Runner is not a good movie, but it wins points for omitting much of what makes typical teen films excruciating.

This laid-back amusement should not be misinterpreted as competent storytelling. Though some of the jokes land, that’s entirely due to the performances; there’s not one example of clever writing in the entire picture.

What’s ultimately frustrating about Zipper is that it seems like it has something important to say about infidelity and the sex industry, but can’t decide what that should be.

While engaging, this Desierto is a little dry.

The public and private Rachel are, at first, quite different, until her eventual decision to be an out-of-the-closet believer. Even with this rancid script and amateurish direction, McLain sells this inherently undramatic turn as an emotional triumph.

Sprinkled among the desultory morass are occasional firecrackers of brilliant schtick-based comedy.

Wendy is undoubtedly self-assured and in-your-face, and the gorgeous location photography certainly has an impact. But it’s wrecked by chapters so lengthy they become simply excruciating.

Hunting Elephants has its requisite scenes of planning and setbacks, but it mostly settles for old-people jokes (now I know the Hebrew for Viagra: it’s Viagra) and making Patrick Stewart look like an imbecile.

Trash Fire is too quick to burn through its ideas.

As things go bad for Wilson, the movie, unfortunately, loses a considerable amount of steam as well.

While the topic of mass delusion is fascinating, this film is too unfocused to turn it into compelling drama.

Surely there is a good movie to be made about caring polyamorous relationships, but as with any romantic story the audience needs to fall in love with the idea of these characters being in love.

Ryan Reynolds does the best he can with the material.... But any intelligence is tossed once we get mired in a series of dull chase scenes.

It’s unfortunate that Byrne’s offering such a tremendous performance in a film that is, to put it as bluntly as possible, so very dumb.

An Inconvenient Sequel is more a portrait of Gore than a call to arms. It ends with a sort of forced positivity, much of which is recycled directly from the first movie: political change is hard, but we can do it, morality demands it.

The noble intention to make us dwell on our culture, and perhaps shame its more voyeuristic members, quickly devolves into a cavalcade of tedium.

Everything about this picture is at such a deliberate arm’s length that it is hard to know what is meant to be whimsical and what is serious melodrama.

My All American is awful; but it gets points, I suppose, for at least looking professional.

Amid all this holiday melancholia, Wilde bursts into the film with an intensity that feels held over from another, better movie.

By the end of this relentless, sprawling and bloody crime opera it may be you who is on your knees, begging for the damn movie to just hurry up and end it.

The specifics of the journey get all the attention, while the fundamental conflicts remain not just unoriginal, but alarmingly nonexistent.

There are, indeed, some sparks in this movie. The Vikander/DeHaan romance is a dud no matter how well it’s lit, but the “downstairs” passion between Grainger and O’Connell has a degree of realism and eroticism.

Lights Out is yet another half-baked, PG-13 scare-em snoozer centered on an underdeveloped supernatural concept that won’t even give kids a good nightmare.

This vaguely science-fiction action picture based on a video game (and not a sequel to 2007’s Hitman) is an idiotic mess with a bafflingly dense prologue, an endless final battle, lifeless performances and anticlimactic twists, but it does have a degree of visual flair.

The frozen landscapes are undeniably gorgeous and the empty school halls are chilling. There are crafty moments here and there, glimpses of the midnight movie that could have been. February’s big villain is precisely what the film is lacking: a devilish spirit.

Blackhat can’t decide if it is a grim, realistic story from the trenches or cyberwarfare or a giddy, “who cares if that makes sense?” Bond film.

The Measure of a Man’s decision to keep its conflicts so microscopic in the service of realism is a real problem. Put bluntly, Brize’s touch is so light that it’s immeasurable.

The final act is a pineal flooding of baffling explanations and twists. What’s worse is that there is very little drama underpinning it; by this late stage the collected characters are still stuck dredging up their backstories, doing little to propel the narrative forward.

The Legend of Tarzan ends up being a garbled, clunky production that tries to please everyone and ends up pleasing no one.

The good news is that Ejiofor is great even in the scenes that don’t go anywhere. Those who find heaven here on earth in the form of strong film performances ought to commune with Come Sunday. The rest can sleep in.

It’s surprising that a film about Deep Throat could be such an anticlimax.

There’s slow cinema and there is boring cinema, and this is an unfortunate example of the latter.

The connection that these two are allegedly making must be taken on faith. Little is shown or spoken to sell it.

Despite an idiocy metastasized into the marrow of its script impervious to any radiation, there is, as with many of Sandler’s productions, at least something of an upbeat quality to its reprehensibility.

Bagaria’s personal journey has none of the gravitas on screen that the director wants it to have, especially when set against the backdrop of actual human rights crises in Damascus.

Think about that one insufferable guy you knew in school who comments on everything you put on Facebook. Now try and imagine spending an entire movie’s run time with him.

He spent 28 years in prison and this is what he gets?

While we open with dazed individuals in a crashed limousine as it begins to take on water, Submerged’s frequent flashbacks eventually reveal a tiresome crime plot rife with soporific acting and unremarkable dialogue.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, one of our top-tier film actors right now, is on good form throughout, and the others act their hearts out, too. But they are somewhat left out to dry in a production that feels more like syndicated television than a feature film.

There’s not much that glitters in Gold, a lackluster caper that proves that even the priciest ore can bore.

It’s a play shoehorned into a film. Sometimes that can work – LaBute’s managed it before – but it’s a steep hill to climb, and this one doesn’t quite make it.

All the pieces are in place for a gripping indie horror flick, but this pointless, motivation-free film just goes around in circles.

Naishuller’s technique is one that could be well served as a shorter gimmick; a solitary action scene in a larger film. Hardcore is unrelenting and unforgiving in its commitment to be loud, fast, destructive and gross.

Bacon, Mitchell and especially young Lucy Fry are all quite effective in these dramatic scenes. But this isn’t a drama. It’s a dumbass, inexpensive horror flick which means anything real is thrown away so that poorly rendered CG ghosts can hover about and smash up windows.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny isn’t so much a continuation as a Xerox copy with cheap toner.

There’s no way around this: The November Man is asinine. It is not without its pleasures – if you like seeing people get hit in the face with shovels, that is – but it might be the most irresponsibly dumb spy thriller I’ve seen in some time.

Considering this is the first biopic of one of the world’s most beloved athletes, it’s too bad such a predictable and ham-fisted kids’ flick was the goal.

Life After Beth, a frustrating affair due to its waste of resources, feels rushed and under-rehearsed. It is a style of film-making that hopes it can glide its way into your good graces on ad-hoc performance flourishes, a wall-to-wall audio mix and editing patches. One soon recognizes this all a cover for one key issue: a lack of original ideas.

Songwriter sells the “nice boy” bit well, but if you aren’t already a fan, it eventually becomes tiresome. There are occasional glimmers of a real person (wishing to topple Adele, laying down a “no Snapchat” rule at his house, etc.) but rarely is a feature film so bluntly just marketing.

There’s something inherently fishy about a movie that claims our facts are drawn from an inefficient data set which then turns around and uses the same methodology.

There are sequences of the four prowling the streets on their boards with a fatalist, sinister beauty that show Caple Jr is more than capable of crafting striking compositions. Unfortunately, the jump from image-making to storytelling in this case fails to stick the landing.

One sees film-making like this and can only say: no más.

The bulk of The Intern is a morass of wackiness, a chain of sequences shot in a flat and predictable manner that range from tedious to idiotic.

I give the odd, small film Maggie all the points in the world for experimenting with genre-blending and subverting audience expectations, but there’s just too much about it that fails to connect.

Eastwood, who once upon a time was a flavorful director, is working in movie-of-the-week mode here. Cheesy, direct, bland.

By the end of this 89-minute film, I was absolutely on the edge of my seat. Not due to suspense, but due to my utter disdain for the infantile plotting.

What we have on our hands is a dud, but there are a few grace notes that save it from being an unmitigated disaster.

There are plenty of great moments, but they jump out amid a jumble of strangely flat scenes. This doesn’t feel like the work of a great master; it’s a discordant brew that just doesn’t blend right.

Unfortunately both Eisenberg and Stewart, both frequently brilliant, are on unsure footing here. The movie simply doesn't know if it wants to be Jason Bourne or Cheech and Chong.

This film looks absolutely gorgeous, but apart from its production design it is basically a disaster.

Tina Fey is in the film, for heaven’s sake, and I love her to pieces, but by now we know to expect something humdrum when she’s on a movie screen.

Hollow, uninteresting and false.

The first sixty minutes of Pompeii are awful, bordering on unwatchable... The final forty-five minutes of the movie however are, by sheer force of will, irrefutably entertaining. At least there’s raining death in the form of fireballs smashing up the place.

Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is the worst thing Lars Von Trier has ever associated himself with.

The prolific 76-year-old British creator of character-rich, social dramas steeped in natural realism (usually) has whiffed it and whiffed it hard with this one. It’s not that it’s just “lesser Loach.” It is, in my opinion at least, humiliating.

Cripplingly lifeless.

The whole picture is lifeless and without consequence.

It’s just boring – and boring in a way that apparently has no endgame.

While I wasn’t exactly expecting greatness from the film, I did think it would contain a few thrills and maybe some laughs. Having Lara Croft leap around and avoid traps should be an easy formula—but for this crew, it remains an unsolvable puzzle.

The Lifeguard is a painfully dull (alleged) drama utterly lacking in originality or self-awareness.

“Expendables 3” has fewer nauseating clichés than The Judge.

There aren’t any clever moments, just a parade of clichés you’ve seen in many other indie romances.

It’s as if everyone made this movie about the joy of being on vacation—while also taking one.

After the unnatural way it plops this gruesome group in their social Siberia, it goes from (alleged) comedy to serious drama with all the subtlety of a 10-year-old playing Mario Kart.

The first act of the film wins some laughs on surrealist shock humour, but at the expense of ever accepting this character and her world as real.

Fading Gigolo wants to be some sort of sunny tapestry about New York’s social groups, but it’s impossible to see past its absurd premise.

If there was just one extended sequence that crackled with originality you could at least say it has its moments, but, truly, there’s nothing besides repeated use of swear words in lieu of wit.

The Michelle Yeoh fronted spin-off movie Section 31 is 100 minutes of generic schlock containing only trace elements of Star Trek.

This is television-level moviemaking top to bottom, from its preposterous premise, scenery-chomping performances, idiotic sound cues and force-fed jump-scares. Deliver Us From Evil delivers formula, and in a formulaic fashion.

This movie is ridiculous.

Many of The Boss’s troubles stem from its constant, unpredictable shifts in tone.

Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is the cinematic equivalent of a drunk man at a sports bar sucking back whole jalapeño peppers hoping for applause without ever being dared. The amusement in watching doesn’t compensate for the pity one feels for someone so desperate for attention.

Abhorrent politics aside, it’s also a terrible movie. The dialogue is atrocious, the performances rote. One could make the case that its incoherence is a grand meta-narrative statement about the fluidity of combat, but I don’t think that’s the case.

Jacqueline (Argentine) isn’t just a bad movie – there are plenty of those. It’s infuriating.

One can always keep praying that the next of these films will be a little better.

Despite a lead performance by the always welcome Julianne Moore it is rudderless in its presentation and outright stupid in its central conceits.

Now I understand why Jesus’s childhood remains such a mystery: the story is unbelievably boring.

Masterminds is a bit of an interesting case study, as it is basically a Coen brothers film but put through a mechanism that removes all the wit, visual style or excitement. In its place are tortuously dull set-pieces, rambling dialogue and banal stagings.

There’s a special variety of infuriating that comes from a bad movie by talented people.

You’ve seen this movie before with peppier actors, and not tethered to a visually uninteresting set that looks like a remainder from a 10-year-old episode of CSI.

Even without the current headlines, United Passions is a disgrace. It’s less a movie than preposterous self-hagiography, more appropriate for Scientology or the Rev Sun Myung Moon. As cinema it is excrement. As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study.

For a movie with the ostensible mission of spreading the Gospel, it does a poor job of speaking to anyone except the faithful.

Clinton, Inc.’s director, Bill Baber, can’t even slander a dead woman without coming off like an idiot.

Young kids will find the second, more action-heavy half of the film entertaining, but everyone else will want to crawl into their shell.

God’s Not Dead 2 is a much better movie than God’s Not Dead, but that’s a bit like saying a glass of milk left on the table hasn’t curdled and is merely sour.

Embarrassing for everyone involved not because of any squeamish subject matter – quite the contrary, seeing retirement-age characters are refreshing – but because the story structure is so fake and so plodding.

This lifeless, by-the-numbers production is an excruciating exercise in cliche and tedium. Its sole joy is in trying to figure out which of its leads is overacting most.

The corn in The Identical is as tall as an elephant’s eye – but there’s nothing that says the story of a man torn between his religious upbringing and his desire to be a musician can’t make for a good movie. In fact, considering a little movie called "The Jazz Singer," there’s ample proof that it can be groundbreaking.

This is the film’s grossest crime. It’s dumb, it’s long, it’s dull, but it isn’t quite bad enough to be camp.

Bad movies come and go, but Hurry Up Tomorrow presents the Weeknd as so needy and so irritating that it may have lasting effects. The next time one of his songs comes up on a playlist, I may hit fast-forward. I've spent enough time with this guy.

Watching Sharp Stick is like encountering that pain box that Paul Atreides faces in Dune, only instead of a hand it’s your entire soul. Every moment is awkward, phony, excruciating, and just so unbelievably bad.

Ti West’s pointless new film The Sacrament, an exercise in talking loud and saying nothing, isn’t just bad, it’s infuriating.

There is a whiff of an interesting idea in there, but it is buried in tedious scenes lacking clear direction, endless generic (and poorly lit) shoot-outs, and cringeworthy sequences of allegedly witty banter. This movie is an absolute wreck.

Does this mean that Sabotage is a rich, morally complex story about the gray zone between good and evil? Hell, no. It just means it is a bungle.

It’s a wafer-thin, poorly plotted, insufferable comedy about a jerky guy who’s swapped actual human interaction for Facebook likes. People like this exist, and their stories should be told, but it would be wise to scroll past this version.

A Haunted House, its despicable bigotry aside, is also a not-very-good comedy.

A pastiche of bad film cliches and scenes devoid of any real conflict or character development.