Jordan Hoffman

It's darker, stranger and pushes more buttons.

With Muppets Most Wanted, the vaudevillian pandaemonium is alive and well.

History and politics are present in this film, but over at the kids table.

Despite the presence of grandfatherly Michael Caine, Kingsman’s tone is about as far from the Christopher Nolan-style superhero film as you can get. Verisimilitude is frequently traded in for a rich laugh. The action scenes delight with shock humour.

The Lost City is a big studio release playing in theaters, and for any kind of “date night,” it is a solid base hit. But should you find yourself on an airplane a few months from now and this is a viewing option, that’s when it becomes a home run. It’s not a knock to admit we all desire comforting movies in uncomfortable situations.

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.

It’s a great story that lends itself to some striking scenes. Yet the film in total – if I may paraphrase Webb’s critics – has a number of holes.

There’s more to this movie than sweeping music and celebrating in slow motion. It all stems from Costner’s remarkable, taciturn performance as Coach White.

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

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

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

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

It doesn’t make sense as a comedy, it doesn’t quite work as a drama, and it doesn’t follow the typical roadmap of a biopic, but Rules Don’t Apply is strangely compelling nonetheless.

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.

There are issues of trust between the two men. It’s unclear who is exploiting whom—and impossible to know what is being recreated for the camera and what is being captured “live.” This is all to the betterment of Voyeur, which, it isn’t too much of a spoiler to say, ultimately concludes that Mr. Talese and Mr. Foos aren’t all that different from one another.

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.

What could have been mere summertime chum is actually one of the more cleverly constructed B-movies in quite some time.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

[A] gripping, well-acted and sharply-written low-budget drama.

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.

[A] touching, insightful and, at the end of the day, extremely well-meaning film.

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

To the Wonder is distinctly lacking in oomph and, without an emotional connection, without anything interesting happening on the screen, the beauty can only take you so far before the endeavor falls like a house of cards.

The ludicrousness on display here is enormous.

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 is a frustrating filmgoing experience, but still one worthy of your time for the acting alone.

When something is this engaging (and funny, did I mention funny?) it ceases to merely be about ideas and becomes, even in this borderline sci-fi context, a thoughtful movie about people.

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.

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

Mayer’s The Seagull is not a masterpiece, but it is impressive, and for those who agree that it is important to check back in with the classics, the whole company deserves its huzzahs.

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

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.

The Walt Disney World-set Escape From Tomorrow is both a great gimmick-dependent story and a remarkable piece of filmmaking. It is a radical, transgressive departure that exploits new technology in heretofore unseen ways.

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.

Ficara and Requa have an irreverent streak, one that even might strike some as a little flippant against the gravity of the war.

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

While Bad Words is a little too dopey to take seriously, this is compensated for with a handful of truly amusing sequences.

We get the playfulness of seeing quirky magic powers mixed with the familiarity of how a time loop plays out. Add in Burton’s authorial visual stamp and what we’ve got is an extremely pleasing formula. It gels as Tim Burton’s best (non-musical) live-action movie for 20 years.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Adrift doesn’t have quite the existential gut-punch of JC Chandor’s similar All Is Lost or the recent Cannes debut , but what it lacks in the department of pure howling cinema, it makes up for with the emotion of its central relationship.

Straw is not exactly subtle, but the emotions are so raw and the performances are so earnest that you’ve really got to have a heart of stone not to care for these people.

Formulaic, dare-I-say-sappy movies, when done right, can be really good, and Nonnas is one such example.

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.

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.

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.

What’s terrific about The Duff is that Casey and Jessica may not have intentionally befriended the less attractive Bianca as a way to make themselves look better, but they don’t exactly deny that she serves that purpose.

Yellow Birds goes heavy on the brooding, and even though a lot of it looks gorgeous and carries the whiff of great importance it is ultimately stunted by a central event that isn’t worth the mystery that surrounds it.

There are countless clever dialogue parries as well as some quite outstanding rants. It definitely takes the movie outside of the world of pure realism, but the theatricality is well worth it.

First and foremost I’m So Excited! is late night cabaret – funny, filthy and more than a little bit sloshed.

Shyamalan teases out new information in just the right doses, remembering all the while that this is, at its core, a B-picture. It isn’t gory, but it’s gross, and the camera knows just how much to show to keep us dialed in.

The film, which uses the gimmick of jumping between parallel universes to explore, essentially, how to be your best self, is awash in zany sci fi culs-du-sac, sly movie references, and a deranged high fructose attitude that scoffs at the idea of everything but the kitchen sink. The Daniels want infinite kitchen sinks.

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.

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.

This spiral of self-imposed despair feels like part three of a trilogy of American financial darkness after Killing Them Softly and The Counsellor. The Gambler isn’t quite so audience-unfriendly, but those looking for a typical Wahlberg thriller might come away disappointed. Others looking for a less sure bet might reap the rewards.

Hazanavicius is one of our weirder directors. His schtick is to parrot other styles, either with his parody Bond films (the two OSS 117 movies) or The Artist. But Le Redoutable is his best work, I think, and not just because I’m fond of the French New Wave.

Song to Song is, once you root around for a story, the best of a recent trilogy.

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.

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

This picture isn’t as showy or obvious as one of his (many) masterpieces, but it is quite good and deserves your time and respect.

Despite being clever and crafty it can’t break out of the curiosity shop. It’s the finest diorama in there, but something to admire, linger over then move past.

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

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.

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.

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

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 actual plot of this movie is confusing and idiotic (I really had no idea what the main baddie was trying to accomplish), but luckily, this is not an obstacle to having fun.

The Duke of Burgundy will have its detractors. But this is not just a filthy movie. It's a considerable work of art, and one that touches on a rarely discussed side of human sexuality completely free of judgement.

For family entertainment, you could do a lot worse.

While Draft Day is a very agreeable and predictable movie, it is also very timely.

Moore doesn’t want to tear Trump down so much as he wants to build Clinton up, and however much of a dingus he may be (some of his jokes really don’t work), he is sincere in his optimism and empathy. That’s something that you just can’t fake.

And while it is enjoyable and has many great moments, it doesn’t quite come together with polish.

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

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

Some Velvet Morning is a horror film with no blood, with words the only weapon for 98% of the picture.

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

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 movie snaps together like a jigsaw puzzle, a series of concluding beats that seem inevitable and perfect, and designed to please all parties, so long as you don’t dwell on the logic too much.

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

Though Nicholas Hoult is charming as he struggles to find inner strength, Renfield lives or dies by Nic Cage camping it up. And he delivers.

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.

Lengthy passages are unrelated to any discernible narrative, and seem to exist in that interzone your mind travels through just before it goes to sleep.

Greene makes it clear early on that his interests lie less with a news report than with what Werner Herzog dubbed “ecstatic truth”. The dial swerves between “catching something” to “clearly rehearsed” and back again, and all to the betterment of the final project.

Throughout the picture you understand the miracle and good fortune of finding love, and recognize the great changes in tolerance American society is currently (albeit slowly) undergoing.

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.

I'd place it more alongside the enjoyable The Visit or Split, and, indeed, there are some story commonalities with both. It is, however, masterfully shot, with great use of wide angles, cropped frames, and a sense of foreboding inside and around the concert venue.

If you do not find yourself hootin’ and hollerin’ at Viola Davis — excuse me, President Viola Davis — packing automatic weapons, tossing grenades, and charging into a helicopter, well, your loyalty to good, idiotic fun might be questioned.

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.

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.

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.

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

Carrie Pilby the film is 100% Carrie Pilby the character, a living quirk machine that in a lesser actor’s hands might be insufferable.

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

Bonello's decision to show rather than tell keeps the audience on its toes.

his bleak and somewhat sadistic picture is the type of movie that unfolds like a slow car wreck. You know something bad is going to happen, you just aren’t sure what, or how, and when it eventually happens it is repulsive and yet you still can’t turn away.

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.

Age of Adaline, which starts off looking like a frothy series of excuses to put Blake Lively in some fabulously timeless gowns, ends up an emotional and even bold chamber drama. Its ending is ludicrous, but also perfect, and I’d be lying if I didn’t get a little choked up.

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

While engaging, this Desierto is a little dry.

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.

There’s just too much good stuff to dismiss White Bird in a Blizzard out of hand, even if it does have a somewhat dull and desultory plot.

Plaza has found her Ron Burgundy: the vessel of a true imbecile in which to pour her strange genius.

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.

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.

No one in the film is particularly likeable, and while the global implications about epistemology are interesting, the specifics of this particular case, at least rendered here, are quite dull.

The whole picture is lifeless and without consequence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We can debate if Burn Your Maps merely fetishises a different culture or holds it in true reverence, but I’d like to give it the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, the performances are terrific all around.

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

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

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

Amsterdam is not a great movie by any shakes, although it looks terrific and all of the performances . . . are energetic, entertaining, and enjoyable.

The film isn’t a home run, but with Rudd in the lead in something so out of the ordinary for him, it’s fair to call a ground rule double.

S-VHS isn’t as pants-pooping scary as the first, but it is funnier, tighter and slicker.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Director Ron Howard does a solid job of getting the smell of salt off the page and into the picture. The first half works quite well simply as a procedural, but when the action comes we run into trouble. The well-earned seriousness is washed away as we’re broadsided by B-movie tropes.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jared Hess, co-creator of Napoleon Dynamite and a string of other small oddball pictures, brings a fresh perspective to what could have been a lumbering IP-pallooza movie.

This isn’t a movie so much as a fetishist’s fever dream—a fantasia of New York crime movies from the 1970s that places the specificity of its time and place at center stage more than any actual New York crime movie from the era.

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.

Perfect Sisters may stand accused of being rife with tone-deaf stylistic choices, but the more positive spin is to call it a marginal film elevated, however inadvertently, by the strange specificity of its scenes.

Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself.

All of the action is shot cleanly, and I could always tell where everyone was in relation to one another during the setpieces — which may not sound like much of a win, but if you think that, you clearly haven't watched too many direct-to-streaming movies. If you want something done efficiently, hire a union man.

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

The first half of Pacific Rim Uprising is about as fun as a trip to the dentist. The second half, however, is a dizzying and delightful foray into enjoyable pandemonium. It’s like the laughing gas really kicks in.

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.

It’s a film tremendously out of step with current tastes, and while I doubt that was its goal, this peculiarity makes it strangely watchable – even enjoyable.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

For young people looking for something to do besides doomscrolling, you could do far worse. For those old enough to have seen the first one in theaters, this'll be a decent one to stream later in the year.

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

Ryan Gosling wanted to make an art film and, despite some dull patches, pretty much succeeded.

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.

Trash Fire is too quick to burn through its 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.

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.

The action is the real star here, and it’s all good enough. It isn’t great – the aerial special effects are distractingly cheap – but at least there’s lots of it on display.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Hollow, uninteresting and false.

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.

Surprisingly, many of Bekmambetov’s updates work well.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I’d be lying if I said this movie didn’t crack me up on more than a few occasions.

Cripplingly lifeless.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Either I’m getting dumber or the “Transformers” sequels are getting more coherent.

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.

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

It’s hard to find compliments for Jamie Dornan beyond “very athletic”—but from start to finish, one can’t give Johnson enough credit for making these asinine movies work as well as they do.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

As the anticipated follow-up to Roman Coppola’s marvelous 2001 film “CQ,” this is something of a letdown, but as a breezy romp it could be far, far worse.

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.

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

Meet the Blacks is an asinine film (though with a kernel of seriousness) but whenever it feels like it is running out of steam, something strange and surreal will happen to elevate it above a typical spoof movie.

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.

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.

Far-fetched, absurd and hopelessly schticky, but if you can get past its boring initial set-up, it’s actually quite funny.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 only thing worse than the dialogue is the absurd product placement.

This movie is ridiculous.

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.

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.