Kevin Jagernauth

No one wants to be the sober person at a party where everybody is high, but that’s often what “The Marijuana Conspiracy” feels like.

The most Crisis will give you is the empty gift of occupying two, completely uneventful hours of your life.

The filmmakers’ inability or unwillingness to actually engage with the discourse it builds Echo Boomers around leaves the film feeling both artificial and hysterical.

The Audition is a harsh, and often cheap, picture that offers a fragmented view of a family diseased by the pursuit of perfection, who yet enable the behavior to continue at the ongoing cost of their happiness.

For all of the delightfully deranged places Primal could’ve gone, it stays drearily buttoned up.

The film’s half-hearted politics — which do make a statement, regardless of intent — are perhaps less egregious than a movie that’s simply going through the motions for the bulk of its running time.

Lords Of Chaos is more interested in the spectacle than the substance behind the true story, and that kind of phoniness likely wouldn’t even get the film or Åkerlund invited into The Black Circle.

With no unique viewpoint on the story of its own, it’s perplexing why Papillon went in front of cameras at all.

Earnestly aiming to land with the weight of an Important Film married with Big Ideas, the more Submergence tries and strains to find connections to contemporary issues, the more those beats ring hollow. “Submergence” not only leaves the talent involved underwater, but the audience also longs for anything of significance to cling to.

With some films, you can tell where one or two things went wrong — perhaps a decision in script, or a performance that’s off base — but The Snowman is the rare movie where for every choice, there was a better way to go.

Brad’s Status rarely affords its titular character an opportunity to have a real conversation with anyone else his own age, so the movie becomes a monologue from someone you quickly realize you don’t really want to get to know anyway.

Perhaps the array of characters read better on the page, but it all feels slight in execution, particularly when half of the running time is spent on Tommy’s past and what unfolded between himself and Shelley. Combine all that with a particularly lackluster sense of urgency and pacing, and you have film that offers few reasons for investment.

‘Jane Doe’ never aspires beyond the ordinary, and more crucially even fails to meet that modest standard. Lifeless and lackluster, ‘Jane Doe’ never draws blood.

My Blind Brother is mirthless, though Kroll and Slate have a delightfully easy charm that occasionally rises above the tedium.

Didactic yet generic, The Promise endeavors to educate about a period of recent history that is still unacknowledged by the Turkish government, but curiously manages to be anonymous in form nonetheless.

Walter Hill’s legacy of pushing the edges of genre conventions made the prospect of (Re)Assignment, at least on paper, potentially dangerous. But the filmmaker’s touch is completely lost here, and the only danger the film winds up posing is to the time spent by those who choose to watch it.

It would be too easy to say The Magnificent Seven isn’t magnificent. It’s definitely not, but the film has an even more egregious quality: it’s uninspired. There’s no risk, no real attempts to subvert expectations, and no desire to truly give the audience something, if not entirely new, then at least surprising.

Falls flat on its face thanks to a severe lack of self-awareness and an air of dramatic self-importance.

Tedious and painfully miscalculated, Dirty Grandpa is never as filthy or funny as it thinks it is.

Working at cross-purposes, Colonia tries to have it both ways, wanting to be a shocking true story drama and a riveting piece of moviemaking. But it’s not intelligent enough to accumulate any emotional payoff, and it’s too generic and unsophisticated in its execution to work purely as popcorn entertainment.

The entire film seems cloaked with a general vibe of “good enough.” Embarrassingly cheap CGI effects, poor ADR, and slipshod, jarring editing are the technical failures that compound with the creative ones to indicate a movie that’s not just miscalculated, but seemingly committed to putting together, at its best, a deliverable product and nothing more.

The film’s attempted cathartic payoff is inauthentic and unearned, and it’s a shame considering that Gyllenhaal once again gives a committed turn.

When the script isn't working, Evans turns towards the soundtrack and leans on indie rock when he can (and when the low-budget picture can afford it) to attempt to do some of the emotional lifting.

In turning his back on the familiar tropes of blockbuster comic book movies, Trank doesn't have a clear new identity for Fantastic Four to distinguish itself with, and the result is a movie rich with possibilities, but trapped in the basic structure of a superhero movie, with no idea of how to wholly circumvent traditional expectations.

Carelessly crass, and yet enthusiastically performed, the film does at least offer the curious spectacle of witnessing strings of jokes energetically thud in a movie that's not worth the commute to your nearest multiplex.

Manufactured and manicured to appeal to the teenage fans of Green's book, Paper Towns is so polished and edgeless, that even Margo herself would look at the finished product, and question its authenticity.

Self/less is brain/less entertainment, but if there’s any consolation, the impression it leaves is so fleeting that you can soon replace it with better movie memories.

Earning the opposite of its intended effect, United Passions makes you believe we have yet to witness the true depths of FIFA's ego and arrogance.

The filmmaker should perhaps thank his actors for putting in more effort than this movie is worth.

Can't Stand Losing You lacks that sense of the three dimensional when it comes to documenting the band, presenting a sanitized, bird's eye view of their history

Big Game comes away with the distinction of being watchably terrible. There is a certain ridiculousness that is engaging, but this shouldn't be confused for merit.

If Playing It Cool is meant to be an ironic interpretation of what happens to these characters, the film isn't sharp, smart or insightful enough about how actual humans interact to pull it off.

Director Ari Sandel, working with a script by Josh A. Cagan, doesn't have the deftness to really convey how Bianca's personality turns conventional wisdom into her own unique, attractive qualities.

There is an emptiness that lingers around Jupiter Ascending. From the lack of original thought in its conception to the expensive excess in its execution, the directors' usual bag of tricks can't manage to fill the void.

This film requires so many leaps of faith and suspensions of disbelief that you might develop acrophobia.

Sadly, the sequel isn't even so bad as to be memorable. Instead, it's vaporous, not even possessing the qualities indicating that anyone involved cared about any detail of the film.

The Dying Of The Light is forgettable, anonymous and at times almost amateur, and the product of a director searching for a new method of storytelling.

While the idea is original, it's also ridiculous, and the story is not close to clever enough to put it into any kind of context that is compelling, interesting or believable.

Woefully misguided, Black And White is at times painfully quaint and obtuse about contemporary issues surrounding race and class.

Felony isn't a federal case of a bad film, but it's certainly a serious misdemeanor, one whose crime is running away from the challenge the story sets up, to settle on something cheap and conventional.

The Good Lie is so manufactured around a particular dramatic blueprint that any sense of spontaneity, surprise and engagement are sucked right out of the picture.

Overstuffed yet trite and empty, Fort McCoy attempts to mix heavy drama, slapstick comedy and romance all in the wrappings of a coming of age tale set in the summer of 1944, but flounders on all fronts, resulting in a picture that offers a rather naive and simplistic view of the murky territory between good and evil.

Let's Be Cops is a fine example of what happens when filmmakers rely too heavily on the potential chemistry of the cast, rather than giving actors something decent on the page to work with.

Even within the spinning cylinder of mediocrity that is Into The Storm, there are some minor pleasures to be had. Those are mostly found in Walsh, who is probably best known for comedic supporting turns, but makes the most with what is nearly a leading man part here.

If you've seen the previous "Transformers" you know what you're getting into, only this time, the director feels uninspired, more like he's punching a clock at the blockbuster factory, with even his flair for inventive setpieces mostly muted.

The film is not only one dimensional when it comes to its subject, but also of the time and place where Hendrix arrived.

Third Person is an audacious failure, one that even its starry cast can't save. With a trite script, and an even more glib thematic undercurrent, Third Person is nothing short of an outright embarrassment.

When you plunk down your $12, you will get the destruction you were promised. But it's too bad it's such a repetitive, unengaging, glaringly digital experience and worse than that, you'll have to sit through the disaster that is the rest of movie.

There is something of a manufactured air to the proceedings, one that is acutely aware of the techniques and traits of other similar better film, but without the strength in writing to back it up.

Eventually settles into a dull routine much like the dissatisfied characters of the film, which will make for an easily dissatisfied audience.

For the most part, the most shocking thing about Swerve is how utterly straightforward it is.

By time the third act arrives, the film turns harshly toward cliché, convenience and melodrama to disastrous effect.

A thoroughly dull, conventional tale of two people who can't find a compromise on their individual priorities to be together.

When the end comes, and the suggestion of a sequel is left faintly lingering (though not in the way you’re expecting), weariness descends on just how unimaginative Carrie is and how easily it settles for the expected, rather than striving to be excitingly refreshing.

Devil's Knot lacks potency or a compelling narrative reason why anyone remotely familiar with the case needs to be watching it.

Bad Words wants so desperately to be funny that there isn't much time left to make any logic out of the story.

Mr. Nobody is simply a failure.

Savannah does attempt to tell the story of the friendship of those two accomplished men, but does so in a manner that is so astonishingly tone deaf, confused and narrowly focused that it leaves you almost amazed at the lack of vision behind the entire enterprise.

Broken simply can't get it together on any level, delivering a tedious drama, that for all the characters and over-emoting, doesn't have much to say.

White House Down wants to riff on the stirring action crowd-pleasers of old. But instead of playing on those motifs, White House Down becomes a slave to them, turning into the very kind of rote, brainless, poorly choreographed and leaden action movie it wants to lighten up.

A b-movie potboiler at best, and indebted to countless other and much better films, this tedious, dumb, so-bad-it's-almost-funny procedural is an overstuffed thriller that offers one single idea, and proceeds to beat it to death, without much of anything to say.

Almost coming off like an academic blueprint of what a serial killer movie should look like, rather than anything with a distinct voice or authorial hand, "No One Lives" shocks by virtue of being completely uninteresting.

The Impossible strikes an insincere tone, one that doesn't let the obviously powerful moments stand on their own, but instead follows the beautiful Hollywood stars to safety, while the real story is left on the ground.

Aiming for a trifecta of small kids, their older sisters and parents in the audience, Fun Size fails them all in a movie that is neither a trick nor a treat.

We strongly insist that any pain you experience while watching this movie will never be useful, anytime or anyplace.