Mark Olsen

At times, Lipsky's storytelling is too cutely self-aware, trying too hard, making Molly's Theory of Relativity something of an intriguing, if not entirely successful, exoticism.

The Last Exorcism Part II is an effectively unnerving, slow-burn supernatural horror tale. The film is smartly different enough from the original to survive on its own, though it lacks some of the first film's sense of surprise.

Von Trier has managed to cobble together just enough of interest — odd moments, pieces of performance, stray ideas and the simple audacity of putting this mess out into the world, that it feels like there may be something there worth considering, a maddening possibility. And that may be his cruelest prank of all.

The Wrong Missy is a lightweight throwaway, the kind of movie it is difficult to suggest one actually choose to watch, but if your algorithm somehow lands on it provides a certain harmless diversion.

Intermittently fun, but mostly just efficiently passable.

It'll give fans exactly what they expect while passing unseen by anyone else.

Endings, Beginnings has some genuinely engaging moments somewhere in between its beginning and its ending, but too much gets lost in a saggy, shaggy middle.

The film’s politics are not exactly sophisticated, motivated more by the convenience of the moment than any cohesive worldview.

The plot frequently resets/realigns itself in the fashion of "Lost" or "Alias," as good guys become bad guys, friends become enemies, and combatants become lovers. To portray confusion and uncertainty is one thing; to make a film this unsure of itself, wracked by its own faulty footing and reticence, is quite another.

Watt seems to want to say something about the role of fate and happenstance in creating connections between people, but she never quite brings the strands of her ideas together.

There is so much about its package – the stars, the premise, the talented supporting cast – that would make for a film of warmth, humor and insight on the struggles of leaving the past behind and getting out of your own way on the path to fulfilment. Instead, the movie settles for being a party comedy and little else.

Just as with the 2011 film "The Smurfs," the new The Smurfs 2 is a passable mediocrity.

The film essentially grinds along in second gear. A promising debut, Dirt Boy nevertheless fails to fully deliver.

Cholodenko's new film relies on easy caricature over true character such that the film fails to build emotional momentum or resonance.

Though Logelin’s story of loss and perseverance is touching, there isn’t really anything deep or convincing about grief or parenting in Fatherhood, making this promising tale something more middling and a touch disappointing.

Despite a few scattered moments, the team-up action of The 355 never fully comes together.

The laugh always comes first, and Myers' puppy-dog tenacity to that cast-iron tenet of low comedy, disarming and even somewhat charming in the first film, now has an air of careerist desperation about it.

The movie is visually inventive and with enough good moments and smart moves to never be entirely dismissible, while not strong enough to overcome its essential thinness.

While the performances ensure that the movie is always watchable, the hesitant storytelling makes it far from compelling, a bad trip about a bummer vacation.

Roaming freely between comedy (which mostly works) and drama (which mostly doesn't) before settling on trite sentimentality, the film may not be an altogether unpleasant way to pass the time, but, ultimately, the innocuous Captain Pantoja doesn't earn its stripes.

Wyatt, Monahan and Wahlberg never seem quite settled on what they want to say with the character or the story, so the film feels marked not by ambiguity but uncertainty.

As told by Helgeland this Legend simply isn't memorable, because a tremendous effort by Hardy is let down by unfocused storytelling.

The movie is handsomely mounted with upscale production values, but it feels sluggish and disjointed.

Like husbands who think that carrying in the groceries is really pitching in, Lucas and Moore have their hearts in the right place, but their efforts have little real insight or impact.

The movie would like to see itself as a feminist allegory of abuse and systemic oppression, but it comes off as something far more scattered and unfocused.

Watching Americano is like hearing a long story about someone else's holiday, and while it seems everyone had a nice time, it's too bad they didn't shoot a better film while they were there.

The movie has a fan's heart, a sense of loving every goofball moment, but as directed by Mike Mendez it also seems perpetually caught between being a spoof or playing it straight and winds up falling between the cracks rather than rising above.

Director Erik Van Looy has filmmaking chops to spare, and while he has created a sharply shot and crisply paced film, he isn't able to make it all cohere.

Family Weekend is no worse than many of the dysfunctional family comedies that populate the Sundance Film Festival — "Little Miss Sunshine" is name-checked within the movie itself — but isn't any better either.

It’s a tantalizing idea - a little rom-com sugar to help the Big Pharma exposé pill go down -but Slattery-Moschkau is simply not a writer of the caliber necessary to pull off that delicate balancing act.

The film has only the sheer charm of its cast to get it by, and it says a lot about the actors that they nearly pull it off.

With its chatty, overstuffed patter, Hoodwinked strains at the seams to look with it, like one of those dressed-alike Beverly Hills mother-daughter combos. Having said all that, the songs (yes, there are songs, too), mostly written by Todd Edwards, provide an unexpected bright spot.

Kick-Ass 2 is a lesser version of what it appears to be, an uncertain jumble rather than a true exploration of outrage, violence and identity.

The entire movie has a disappointing air of smug self-regard about it, with an expectation the audience will adore everything about the characters as much as they do. What at moments feels like a nascent interrogation of contemporary masculinity ultimately suffers from the very impulses it seems to want to parody.

Extraction would be better if it just doubled down on being dumb. Instead, although the movie does indeed have some dazzling action sequences, they are interspersed with dramatic scenes that feel increasingly belabored, giving the movie a peculiar stop-start rhythm as it makes its way to a lumbering, extended gun battle final set piece.

One Direction: This Is Us is not the raw confessional that title might imply but rather both a primer and new product presentation.

The movie is all over the place and there is no attempt to weave it into a coherent whole — which is regrettable as scene for scene it often works.

Though the film at times works scene by scene, Webley can't quite tie it all together. A disjointed jumble, The Kill Hole can't dig itself out.

A project such as Operation Homecoming should shed light on their experiences, but Robbins' film just falls short. [06 Apr 2007, p.E17]

During the all-important underwater sequences, the three-dimensional effects are surprisingly muted.

The Outpost is a visceral battle picture but little more.

Not out-and-out terrible enough to be completely dismissed, while also not particularly memorable either, perhaps the truest summation of the film is to say simply that the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a movie that exists.

After a strong start the movie steadily declines, one set piece after another, and there are many moments where the mind wanders and then asks: “Is this still going on?”

There is something fun about a movie that so brazenly portrays excessive pot smoking.

There is a journeyman’s proficiency to “Chapter 1” but little in the way of real spark.

The action set-pieces and the comedic character scenes in the film seem to be taking turns and are rarely brought together in a meaningful way.

The movie isn't fantastical enough to sustain itself outside the bounds of reality, yet every time something real creeps in, the movie stumbles and cowers.

Tamara simply doesn't cover all the bases in its drive to be both a grubby teen splatter flick and a more high-minded thriller.

The original film was not a time capsule; it was a snapshot, capturing a unique time and place. The new film simply doesn’t have the same spark and energy.

What at times feels like a maniacal romp becomes just another sporadically funny, but mostly lame, piece of disposable product.

And whenever the film shifts from spunky "let's put on a show" fun to overly earnest drama, it slows to a crawl, with mawkish performances that fail to rise above the soggy material.

Undiscovered is beaten on all counts by TV’s "Entourage" and "Unscripted" in its portrayal of the aspirational lifestyle and its end-of-the-rainbow spoils.

The first "Ghost Rider" film, directed by Mark Steven Johnson, was sort of a fizzy goof, the kind of movie where you don't expect much and then think, "Hey, that was actually kind of fun." Spirit of Vengeance, though, is undone by increased expectations, as promising more only makes it feel they are somehow delivering less.

There is a great divide between a film about people in the throes of aimless, meandering lives and a film that is simply aimless and meandering. Smokers Only never acknowledges, let alone bridges, that gap.

Gores certainly seems to be enjoying himself, and diplomacy and plain old good taste prevent one from saying much of anything about his screen performance. Arnold doesn't merit such kindness, nor does producer and director Penelope Spheeris, whose work barely rates above the level of rote competence.

Mo’Nique's character here is so underwritten that the actress doesn't get a chance to really capitalize on her extra screen-time. Her sassy forte may be talking so straight-up she sounds crazy, but she seems a little advanced to be doing "yo mamma" jokes.

There may be an audience out there for any movie about gospel music, regardless of how bad it is, but as filmmaking or as drama, it's hard to imagine anyone singing the praises of this one.

Doogal is one of those pickup-and-redub jobs, the original version having been made by European studio Pathé based on a 1960s British children’s show, "The Magic Roundabout." And lacking even the minimal pop-cultural pizzazz of "Hoodwinked," the story, dialogue and animation here really are for-kids-only.

Has moments of real interest, but they require wading through a lot of dead air.

Really the biggest problem with Dark Skies is that Stewart can never quite decide just what story he is telling — a slow-burn horror parable or paranoid invasion flick — or whether to focus on this character or that, instead struggling to string together scares regardless of how they fit together overall.

The movie feels disjointed and made up of parts that Dolan couldn’t bring together as it shuffles between three story strands.

"Rubber" felt inventive and complex, but here Dupieux's absurdism is simply muddled, masking the fact he doesn't really have much to say.

The sex-comedy-for-girls idea never quite takes off.

Not for the squeamish (a guy rips out his own arm, for goodness' sake), the film is nevertheless more than just a gonzo gross-out. But not by much.

While there is something to be said for a movie that aims to grapple with some of the “big questions” about the very nature of existence and reality, Down the Rabbit Hole makes teen sex comedies, action-chick sci-fi and the other usual multiplex chum seem like high-minded discourse.

It's an unsurprisingly ambitious movie from the notoriously, proudly headstrong Crowe, which makes it such a disappointment that it feels so blandly earnest and unexpectedly hesitant, with none of the unnerving conviction the actor often brings even to lightweight promotional appearances.

Being a mildly pleasant, passingly amusing light entertainment isn't exactly saving the world, yet the film crosses its wires to blow up even that modest assignment.

As with even the worst of Allen’s films, there is just enough to satiate fans and make the whole thing seem maybe, possibly worth the effort.

When huge chunks of character development and narrative exposition are relegated to a track announcer's running commentary, it can never be a good sign.

Boutella often has an otherworldly screen presence that makes her perfectly suited for this kind of material, but the fussiness of all that is happening around Kora means that the character and performance never get a chance to breathe and blossom, or to fully come to life.

With good intentions and a warm heart but undone by uneven performances and shaky storytelling, Bob's New Suit never quite finds the right fit.

It all misses the mark emotionally, hindered by one-dimensional characters and telegraphed developments.

Some movies are so interminable that it seems they might never end, while others are assembled with such indifference that you are essentially left waiting for them to start. Pixels somehow manages both.

If the first film seemed indicative of much of what is wrong with movies in the streaming era, feeling inessential and disposable, a cog in a machine rather than something unique, “Extraction 2” is a snapshot of a sequel in this moment, bigger, expanded and even less necessary.

It's like a musical with no big numbers, or an action film withholding the explosions.

For a film that purports to be about the process of maturity and growth, it is woefully un-evolved, lacking in understanding and insight.

Just because the filmmakers have their roots in the Midwest doesn't give them a pass when it comes to their stereotypical rendition of small-town people and ways, chock-a-block with sadistic cops, shotgun-toting locals, and strippers from up in Des Moines.

A disappointing hodgepodge that fails to tie up its conflicting strands of family drama and suspense thriller.

Going Down is woefully lacking in the comedy (or the sex for that matter), and even some of the teens look a little long in the tooth.

Pretension, in its own way, is a form of bravery. For this reason and this reason only -- the power of its own steadfast, hoity-toity convictions -- Chelsea Walls deserves a medal.

The film does, in the end, raise something of an existential dilemma: If you set out to make a new version of something you know to be bad, and you make something that is in fact bad, have you somehow succeeded?

Chai's structure and pacing are disconcertingly slack. Missing the loose ends and ambiguities of actual conversation, the dialogue makes characters sound like they're delivering speeches rather than interacting.

Perry can now knock these films out in his sleep, and with “Madea Christmas” he certainly seems to be dozing at the wheel.

Rinsch, making his feature debut, shows the shortcoming of someone coming from the image-based world of commercials and advertising. There are moments of genuine beauty and a few terrifically eye-popping effects, but no feel yet for storytelling.

That the bonds of friendship between Vince and his pals are predicated so strongly on excluding others feels regressive and drags the movie away from harmless high jinks into something needlessly more spiteful and ugly.

As the cop who finds himself in way over his head, kickboxer-turned-actor Conrad Pla turns in a performance of such staggering ineptitude that it almost (key word: almost) reaches a so-bad-it's-good, Plan 9 From Outer Space brilliance.

Despite Redford's enthusiasm and best efforts, A Walk in the Woods is a tedious journey to nowhere special.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is just a sloppy rag bag of ideas cobbled from other stories.

Traub does her plucky best, coming off as part Judy Blume heroine, part post-WB hipster, and she provides the film with its few and infrequent moments of emotional truth.

Machete Kills winds up a slightly camp, tinny parody of bad action movies, playing out with the same sense of tedium as a genuine bad action movie.

The makers of Lisa Picard Is Famous -- having mastered the obvious early on, set their sights on the unfunny and repetitive.

Relies almost exclusively on the gushing exuberance of Gooding Jr., and the aw-shucks factor of his digitally expressive, face-licking canine co-stars, leaving such potentially game actors as James Coburn and M. Emmet Walsh out in the cold.

The film is, perhaps, intended as a deadpan burlesque of race and class and beauty ideals...but it plays more as a boorish, overextended punch line.

The movie feels like a flakey, off-the-cuff blog post that somehow transmogrified itself into a feature-length documentary.

There was a time when the slack storytelling, stock characterizations and general by-the-numbers feeling of the film could be put into perspective by saying it seemed like a TV biopic. But even TV movies are done with more verve than this these days.

By the time a not terribly surprising tragedy hits and these crazy kids get theirs, the movie doesn't so much end as finally keel over.

Ultimately neither freewheeling enough to work as a diverting entertainment nor barbed enough to strike home as any sort of social commentary.

The entire film has an oddly underdone quality to it, as if aiming not for greatness but to simply be passable.