Martin Tsai

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

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

At a different time, I might have been more inclined to entertain Reijn's proposition seriously. But it's just her luck that the great Catherine Breillat, who has devoted her illustrious career to investigating these taboos, dropped a far superior film on the same subject matter, Last Summer, just a few months prior, beating Reijn to the finish line.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

To call it amateurish would be kind.

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.

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

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

It is a series of free-associating non sequiturs underscored by nonillustrative graphics and an intrusive soundtrack.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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