Martin Tsai

Reckless cultural insensitivities aside, Stone and Hopper’s writing is simply not smart or funny. Poop and fart jokes comprise the core of their repertoire, and if you’re curious how reliant the film is on this material, Paramount is literally handing out whoopee cushions to promote the film.

The film persistently misses the mark as a raunchy comedy amid all the side commentaries and Park's earnest tone. Yet it's equally clumsy at making sense of its portrayals of the indignities that Asian Americans routinely endure.

It doesn't help that what passes for acting here seems more like a table read.

Agron's screenplay and Harvey Lowry's direction seem more concerned with scattering bread crumbs than fashioning credible characters and an engaging story.

If only writer Stacey Menear and director William Brent Bell took the very real horrors of domestic abuse as seriously as they do the virtual horror of paranormal activity.

Coming off like a hodgepodge of rejected spec scripts for "The Walking Dead," Anger of the Dead reveals particularly misogynistic and misanthropic filmmaking.

Since the rally ultimately proved ineffectual, the film could at the least serve as a sobering postmortem on where it fell short. But filmmaker Amir Amirani instead gives protesters a figurative pat on the back by insinuating that they helped inspire the Egyptian revolution some eight years later.

There's no characterization to the cartel members beyond freeze-frame title cards; they are interchangeable and expendable.

Writer-director Diane Bell suggests that these women are so steeped in low self-esteem and codependency that they would not be able to leave their men if they didn't have each other.

Who knew a movie seemingly meant to spread holiday cheer could be so off-putting in an almost sadistic way?

The film, unfortunately, treats the important and complex subject of post-traumatic stress disorder in an oversimplified and reductive way.

Since his due-diligence efforts were rebuffed by the American Dental Assn. and the Food and Drug Administration in their declining of interview requests, director Randall Moore doubles down on the already ex parte narrative with heavy-handed editorializing.

It's tough to stomach in more ways than one.... A capricious, counterintuitive narrative also renders the film nearly unwatchable.

Seemingly meant for the stage, the film feels unnaturally theatrical with characters stiltedly reciting each line of dialogue even when supposedly conversing. But with Mahoney's pedestrian, shot-reverse-shot direction, these scenes play out like situational skits from an instructional video made for ESL students.

The pedestrian writing and acting prove even more cringe-worthy and dreadful than the special effects.

A one-dimensional movie painted in painfully broad strokes and whizzing, hurry-scurry action sequences.

Shark Lake lacks bite. Its audience doesn't even get to revel in blood and guts; the whole thing seems like it was edited for broadcast.

The film never gives a real sense of the daily travails associated with traumatic brain injury.

By cramming in as many tangents as imaginable, Olvidados ultimately loses sight of what the story is even about.

The film is a disingenuous, thoroughly dramatized reenactment at best and a reality show at worst.

Tidbits that would make the film interesting have been squandered. Instead, we get the standard-issue haunted-house fodder. The ghosts manifest in so many different ways that it seems like the movie is grasping for straws.

The film is measured and executed effectively to satiate horror fans' bloodlust, yet its underlying messages are just so repugnant.

Perhaps the vapid existence of millennials is precisely the point that co-writers Erik Crary and Steven Piet (who also directs) are driving at, but the film itself proves inarticulate and unsubstantial.

The film has the vibe of something you might see on Nickelodeon or ABC Family but with a lower budget.

To call it amateurish would be kind.

Novice screenwriter Craig Walendziak has followed England's template, charting the daily worsening of the symptoms. But he doesn't get that the 2013 "Contracted" was special because it was much more than a zombie flick.

The film might have gained some heft had director Ruby Yang let the transformations unfold before our eyes instead of force-feeding us testimonials.

There isn't a whole lot to the script, and the exasperating direction by Natalie Bible only makes the film look like an extended trailer that teases but never delivers.

The performances are cringe-worthy, the appeal of the material marginal.

The Curse of Downers Grove seems to be jumping on that 1990s teen slasher bandwagon two decades too late.

Touted as a documentary "about the crowd revolution," Capital C devotes its entire running time to just one aspect of crowd-funding: small entrepreneurs raising capital.

The script, the special effects and Jack Heller's direction simply don't add up in the profile of the mythical creature. It's quite obvious the filmmakers didn't put a lot of thought into it and went straight for the cheapest thrills.

First-time filmmaker Tony Aloupis, formerly frontman of the New Jersey rock band Shadows of Dreams, serves up Americana like a stale slice of apple pie.

SlingShot has about enough material to fill one interesting "60 Minutes" segment.

Although Beef and Conan are far from stereotypical, the quirkiness and eccentricities ascribed to them by writer-director Kenny Riches harp on their otherness all the same.

Laughter can break down barriers, but don't count on director Matthew Ladensack to help bridge differences.

Even the most talentless and narcissistic fame seekers on reality television are not nearly as vile, reprehensible or worthless as a film that actively wishes harm on them.

Flashily shot and cut like a long-form music video, the film is merely an empty vessel for a Guy Ritchie-esque stylistic exercise.

Unfortunately for English speakers, nothing here is lost in translation. Everything is exactly as lame as it sounds.

We get too little character development to be invested in the story and barely a glimpse at the horrific plight of enslaved people.

In writer-director Raj Amit Kumar's heavy-handed political theater, characters are little more than avatars of opposing cultural currents.

Miles Away comes off like some low-budget take on "Trapped in the Closet" or a Tyler Perry movie, except it treats kitsch with all sincerity and seriousness.

With a succession of tangential flashbacks, the film gradually disengages viewers from the plot.

Whereas the original "Monsters" was a road movie about an odd couple fleeing an alien-infested zone, "Dark Continent" cribs from contemporary war movies like "The Hurt Locker" and "American Sniper," then tosses in extraterrestrials as an afterthought.

Unfortunately, directors Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick have squandered a worthy subject.

While fans can appreciate all the winks and nudges, the film is a wreck for the uninitiated.

Director Hilarion Banks dutifully captures all of it in a series of nicely shot extended takes, which would have been fine if the cast had been able to interact in some sort of uniform tone.

Filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods water down the element of surprise, even if they get the found footage shtick down to a science.

Ghoul can't decide whether it should be about cannibals, serial killers, ghosts or demons.

Rather than evincing any expertise or affinity for the genre, Wolsh's effort seems glib and hollow.

Even if you do manage to make sense of the plot, it still doesn't make the film any more watchable.

The Business of Disease seeks to cast suspicion on Big Pharma, but it proves to be a glorified PowerPoint presentation interspersed with commentary by people of questionable qualifications who aim to incite paranoia with propaganda, conspiracy theories and straw-man arguments.

With Snyder-Starr producing the film, My Way impresses as an exercise in narcissism.

Rountree and Banks have come up with a nonsensical and pointless genre exercise.

Director Theo Avgerinos seems preoccupied with making the film look expensive, but no amount of flair could make it less vacuous.

Tiu finds absolutely nothing redeemable in Cissy's upbringing. Her wholesale rejection of her parents' values isn't the enlightenment filmmakers would have you believe; it's internalized racism — conditioned by a lifetime of exposure to stereotypical depictions and cultural colonialism — to think that Asians' heritage and culture necessarily deprive them of happiness and fulfillment.

There's little going on in the final product other than good intentions, as Jeta Amata always seems overreaching for the right buttons to push.

Writer-director Timothy L. Anderson mistakes foul language for wit, and the result is all painfully humorless.

Francis has a few moments of inspiration, nonchalantly deploying visual gags. If he were going for cult status, perhaps gonzo is the way to go. The rest of his stylistic flaunts, plot twists and contrivances are joyless.

Though billed as a 3-D experience, Leonardo is flat in more ways than one.

Barker just hammers home the human-interest angle with a stirring score that serves to instruct the appropriate emotional response to each scene. The tacked-on uplift in the end is beyond comprehension, given that some of its subjects remain in peril.

The obnoxious sound design and score divest the film of much of its suspense, and perhaps more important characters have no survival instincts. The audience never has a chance to build some false hope that someone might make it out alive.

There are rich veins to mine here had writer-director David R. Higgins bothered.

Dela Torre tinkers with some of the undead's best-known traits, yet his reinvented wheel still feels like a retread.

Director Simon Brand devotes so much running time to fear-mongering and grotesque stereotypes that a last-ditch effort at moral ambiguity and a critique on muckraking barely register.

The film operates under the assumption that the average Joe associates Mormonism more with "Sister Wives" than Mitt Romney, so the film will be an eye-opener only for subscribers to such stereotypes.

Whereas Haneke's films grapple with the blunt force of violence, novice filmmaker Markus Blunder just lets the violence snowball all the way down a slippery slope.

Like so many filmmaking wunderkinds who could have used a course in common sense, Glanz is technically assured but emotionally hollow.

Although this film doesn't miss the whole point of found footage as the recent "Into the Storm" did, Jung does little to help suspend our disbelief.

It's essentially a glorified PowerPoint presentation that juxtaposes archival footage — an echo chamber of interviews, readings and performances taken entirely out of context — with amateurish stock footage and a short running time.

After catalogs so many clichés in the dysfunctional family at its center that the film could be taught in a screenwriting class as a lesson in what not to do.

37: A Final Promise comes off as a paranormal and schizophrenic take on a Lifetime movie with themes of terminal illness and assisted suicide.

Aside from the film's double-entendre title and typical slasher-movie poster, director Quist and screenwriter Ponickly have given us nothing to fear.

Making sense was never a top priority for "K," and its sequel is just as much of a hot mess.

Writer-director Larry Brand is all too eager to show off his cleverness. Bad dialogue and Cinemax aesthetics make all the clichés seem even more clichéd.

The method to Von Trier's madness is that he provokes thought alongside outrage in his parables. Here, Gebbe musters only outrage, as her antagonists are without nuance, mercy or any redeeming quality.

At its best, the film seems as dreary a travelogue as that Nia Vardalos vehicle "My Life in Ruins." At its worst, Chaplin of the Mountains feels like an overambitious film-school thesis with superfluous political and philosophical posturing.

Everything we can gather seems to nullify any virtues we saw in the original film.

If it only had a brain, a heart and the nerve.

The slickly produced documentary Farmland often comes off like lobbyist propaganda, profusely extolling the virtues of the independent American farmer.

The filmmakers forget the fundamentals of B-movie 101: Skin-baring spring breakers make for the most qualified carnage.

A "Saw" knockoff without the torture porn.

So instructional is the film, directed by Brook's son, Simon, that it feels like one of those P90X or Insanity home fitness programs: Try this at home. You too can perform on stage.

The film hardly scratches Abu Ghraib's surface.

Familiar paternal regret gets ratcheted up here with an illogical and gratuitous investigative exercise.

Andrew Douglas, who directed the 2005 "The Amityville Horror" remake, mishandles the standard noir as straightforward drama and gives it an unfortunate after-school-special vibe.

War of the Worlds: Goliath is just a few cereal commercials shy of a pointlessly cartoon marathon — violent, messily drawn and lifelessly dragging.

Irrational camera work and editing render Southern Baptist Sissies more fitting for the theater merchandise stand than for theatrical distribution.

Corrado Jay Boccia's directorial debut strikes as almost passable, with a relatively known cast and elaborate stunts. But his inexperience rears its ugly head as the film never musters real suspense and urgency.

If you admire Kellan Lutz's chiseled body, The Legend of Hercules does offer plenty of that in 3-D glory.

When a director merely goes through the motions, even Chekhov can be reduced to daytime soap.

Little parallelism or consequence can be gleaned from Kwak's narrative that crosscuts points between 1963 and 2010. Seeing as his surrogate in the first film is absent in the sequel, the shared cultural memory has also given way to genre exercise.

Live at the Foxes Den comes off like some long-unproduced Broadway musical finally dusted off when someone raised enough money to mount it as a film production instead.

The fact that Child and Shaw share writing and producing credits here almost assures it will be a self-aggrandizing puff piece.