Mark Keizer

Sitting through The Winning Season you marvel at how it obsessively duplicates all such films that came before but still consistently thwarts your impulse to dismiss it out of hand.

The movie was written and directed by Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Crash) and when stripped to its logline, it's pretty ridiculous.

The hijinx get deflating, yet the tension and genuine sense of investigation keep you involved.

Unlike Jack Nicholson or Bill Murray, whose smile can be either charming or sinister, Hanks always lets us know the character is headed towards redemption. A Man Called Otto would have been a more authentic emotional journey if he didn’t.

A classic case of being too much of a not-very-good thing.

Pierce delivers everything the role requires except serious menace, while the less-seasoned Crawford improves as his handsome face bares more of the evening's scars.

Appearances by Toni Collette and Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes should draw a few curious parents to what is, most of the time, a quirky and quite enjoyable coming of age saga.

The original Jonathan Ames novel from 1998 is a rich, funny and unusual work. The movie opts for the funny and unusual, leaving us with characters ill-equipped to rise above their shtick or engage our sympathy.

Ultimately, Hill performs his duties like a man for hire in Dead For A Dollar, much like Max Borland is a man for hire down in Mexico.

It is a movie of tropes and clichés that argues, with generic earnestness and a near-total lack of surprise, that the city is a corrupting influence compared to the nurturing, sun-drenched simplicity of the country.

The execution is where it’s lacking: the wit, the timing, the headlong comic drive, and the ability to make us laugh at actions and dialogue that, in any other context, would be rude or distasteful.

The film teases us with hat-tips and in-jokes and then pushes them aside to become an ungainly horror mashup that works in pieces, most notably during its climatic free-for-all, but not as a whole. In The Retaliators, the storylines fly in as many directions as the blood.

Jaglom doesn’t ratchet up enough tension for Jane to work as a nail-biter and once the catfight in the pool begins, the film forfeits all claims of being any sort of exploration of trauma. So we’re left with a slow burn thriller where complicated YA issues and vengeful social media posts make for a less than potent mix.

The issues the movie attempts to tackle—parental expectations, heartbreak, anxiety over choosing the right path—have all been addressed better in other films.

A charmingly hardened Carla Gugino reprises her role as the titular porn star, still pregnant and now coping with retirement.

The new film could have benefited from even a moment of genuine reflection. Being a mechanic seems like a thinking man's occupation. The Mechanic, though, barely has a thought in its head.

One of Hot Tub Time Machine’s only genuinely nifty moves is getting John Cusack, Dobler himself, to topline the film.

Nobody here brings their A-game, denying us the pleasure of what Adams and director Anand Tucker could create together.

It's only sporadically amusing and it's certainly not original.

Brotherhood moves fast, but it can't outrun its superficiality.

No one is expected to take any of this seriously, so Schwentke keeps things light: light on big laughs, light on unique action set pieces and light on any sense that these game but retired spies are too old for this crap.

Even Reese Witherspoon, whose adorable scrunch-face projects the romantic travails of lovelorn women everywhere, looks unsure of herself.

Stone embarrasses himself by backing the wrong horse and then making a weak case for him.

It becomes a parade of interpersonal conflict and miserable circumstances that adds up to nothing less than angst-porn.

So it's apropos that Forby's biggest misstep is his thin and careful script that can't carry us away on the same winds of fate that would put a sovereign republic's future in the hands of such a young woman.

Impractical Jokers: The Movie is an undistinguished and unnecessary extension of a brand whose primary attributes are likability, authenticity and relative modesty (given the worst impulses of the genre).

Robert Young's Eichmann feels the burden of history so heavily that it's effectively smothered by it.

Sternfeld's depiction of small town life feels completely inauthentic at almost every level.