Melissa Anderson

Enduring a day-long session of couples' therapy is more fun (and flies by faster) than this film.

The film too often relies on rote sermonizing when tackling the city's scourge of shootings, a grave topic that The Next Cut is simply too feeble to examine with any real depth or meaning.

The handsome pooch is also the only appealing aspect of the latest tale of privileged boomer pulse-taking from Lawrence Kasdan.

The Broken Tower is sincere, amateurish, and misguided.

There is an easy camaraderie and chemistry among the central quartet, a harmony that continues when Chris Hemsworth, charmingly stupid, enters as the phantom-vanquishing squad's receptionist. Yet the main performers rarely get to display their individual idiosyncratic strengths.

Denied the opportunity to see Candy at her best, simultaneously mocking and paying homage to golden-age glamour, viewers instead get too much of Jeremiah Newton, a close friend of the actress's and guardian of her papers, personal effects, and ashes (and one of Beautiful Darling's producers).

Little music from the concert itself is heard. On display instead are inane, occasionally borderline offensive portrayals of Jews, performance artists, trannies, Vietnam vets, squares, and freaks.

Blunt, loud, and showboaty, Illegal suffers even more when compared with another recent Liège-set film about the horrors faced by paperless immigrants: the Dardennes' "Lorna's Silence."

Dutifully follows the template of scores of movies about the Shoah: wringing from atrocity the most unseemly sentimentality.

Just as Friends With Kids compares unfavorably to Westfeldt's earlier effort, her cast members' previous projects further highlight this film's shortcomings.

That so many of the colossal yokel's mental states are literalized, as when the screen fills with thousands of rats while Margueritte reads Camus's "The Plague" aloud to her new pal, typifies the movie's antipathy to nuance.

For a film that's supposed to be rooted in such a specific time and place, Sylvia isn't really concerned with details: Costumes, hair, and décor appear to be the work of "That '70s Show" interns; William H. Macy, as Danielle's Mormon soon-to-be stepdad, continuously muffs a Sooner State drawl.

Despite the movie's title and Bening's central role, women are oddly peripheral.

An earnest, if inert, civil rights docudrama clearly shot on the cheap (many of the wigs appear to have been borrowed from the Black Dynamite set).

All the words that follow assault the ear in this unnecessary rehashing of the earthy virtues of low-paid laborers versus the stiffness of the bourgeoisie.

Mama never delivers the primal terror its premise would suggest.

Although Common and Rainey make a well-matched duo, their chemistry is frequently squandered by a script that boxes them into impossible roles in one clichéd scene after another.

In any language, the actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) does what she can to best serve her scripts, even when they're hopelessly beneath her.

The noxious self-absorption of straight white women that Schumer has sent up so blisteringly on her Comedy Central show is extolled more than it is lampooned.

Serious Moonlight has a backstory much more intriguingly dramatic than what's onscreen.

The Boss is a better film than Tammy, but it still flounders, almost capsizing in its sloppy final third.

It's dispiriting enough to witness Kunis still waiting for a comic lead role worthy of her. But the usually nimble Wahlberg - who at least has one great moment rattling off "white-trash girls' names" - suffers the most, playing second fiddle to a knee-high Gund knockoff.

Too limp and scattershot to warrant anything stronger than indifference.

Appears to have been made on a budget equivalent to the cost of a WNBA fleece hoodie. But even at that price, the first feature by Tim Chambers is profligate with sports-movie clichés.

In this densely populated ensemble piece, Reeves stands out as the only actor whose damaged character evokes sympathy and avoids cliché. Pippa, played by Wright Penn in near-permanent Stepford Wife mode, isn't much more than a vehicle for false epiphanies and forced rapprochements.

10 minutes early to the Free Fire press screening, I grew restless as “Annie’s Song” played on a continuous loop in the theater; the gimmick filled up my senses with the quickly confirmed fear that Wheatley’s film would rarely rise above the dopey and obvious.

Writer-director Talbert similarly follows formula for the overcrowded and overplotted Noel-season movie, ladling out too-generous portions of churchiness, multigenerational dance-off, and Mars vs. Venus sermonizing.

Nivola and Breslin sing and perform the original numbers, welcome interludes that provide respite from Rosenthal's lousy script.

The pathetic attempts at outré, taboo-busting humor as sociopolitical commentary can't disguise what this film really is: a mawkish, MOR comedy of manners that even its straw man Nicolas Sarkozy would find suitable for date night.

Speaking of camp, the diva battle teased in the trailer for Joyful Noise between its two stars, Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, flatlines, as do most of the movie's jokes.

Immediately forgettable family entertainment, suitable for release only in the dung-heap month of January.

The abundant charm of first-time actor James Rolleston, playing the 11-year-old of the title in Boy, doesn't quite save the aimless, nostalgia-woozy second feature from Taika Waititi (2007's Eagle vs. Shark).

By the end of Christine — and of Christine — the reporter is at once burdened with too many signifiers (is Chubbuck a tragic heroine of second-wave feminism? of our current macabre newsscape? of untreated depression?) and a cipher. As with most biopics that resort to maximalism, more is less.

A film only Hilton Kramer could love, (Untitled) aims wide and misses.

Forget "Son of Brazil": This syrupy origin story/biopic on the nation's beloved reformist president, whose second term ended in 2010, should be titled Mama's Boy.

Breezy, superficial documentary.

Impersonally directed by cinéma du look pioneer Luc Besson, The Lady was written by first-timer Rebecca Frayn, whose script has all the elegance and nuance of Google Translate.

Unconvincing, flawed matriarch Mendes and junior showboat Ramirez appear to be acting in entirely different movies.

For a film about the perils of too much talk, there's quite a lot of babbling presented as profundity. The political statements in Pontypool, much like those in another recent Canadian offering, Atom Egoyan's trite terrorism hand-wringer "Adoration," seem all the less provocative for appearing several years too late--McDonald's film might have had more punch if it were released when Bluetooth first rolled out.

Though Crawford's bangs and facial hair are the most art-directed aspect of the movie, he's costumed to look like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia (Madison Avenue branch).

Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent--who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs--The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes.

While rooting for the marine mammals (and wishing for more footage of them - and even of their animatronic incarnations), your heart will also go out to the cast, stuck even more pitiably in syrupy manufactured crises.

Though lazily mocking hyper-vigilant parenting, the film treats the moldiest clichés - as gospel.

It's uncertain whether or not Taranto and debuting helmer Anders Anderson looked at the "Law & Order: SVU" and "Cold Case" episodes that also used the crime as a plot thread; the sub-televisual incompetence of their film suggests not.

Greenspan and Harmon's paltry song of themselves concludes with five minutes of outtakes, capping the self-love.

As generic and impersonal as a new credit card offer, Jodie Foster’s Money Monster is the latest big-studio production to try to cash in on populist outrage over Wall Street abuses and New Gilded Age inequality.

Isabelle and Gérard's regrets and laments about their parenting skills betray no bone-deep rue or shame but are delivered with all the conviction of two luminaries merely running their lines.

Wiig's cheering presence in an otherwise depleting project/cross-promoted product highlights the fact that Zoolander 2 is a referendum on dying industries: not just the portfolio of Condé Nast titles that Wintour oversees as artistic director, but also the Frat Pack.

If Markell's instincts for script exhumation are questionable, she's the victim of even worse timing: Who thought releasing her film 10 days after Liv Ullmann and Cate Blanchett's praised-to-the-high-heavens "A Streetcar Named Desire" closed was a good idea?

Glatze's blog entries are read aloud by Franco, an infamous graduate-degree collector not so long ago, in a voice that suggests poetry-MFA earnestness, horrible acting, or both.

Grossly exaggerating his characters' either/or constructions, Moodysson forgoes any real ideas about the world's vast inequities, content to pummel his audience with portentous global guilt-tripping.

She is also played by Sarah Jessica Parker, a performer so aggressively determined to make us like her that no work-life conflicts in the film ever gain any traction; we're too distracted by the actress's manic tics (the head tilts, the popping of the wounded-deer eyes) to notice any real adversity.

The tears and recriminations, eruptions and reconciliations hold a begrudging fascination for about an hour.... After that, though, the volume is never turned down and these characters are never less than the most unendurable company.

Outrageously sentimental and retrograde.

Audiard himself might have benefited from a simple reminder of left from right; his rudderless film confuses a pileup of preposterous, sentimental scenarios with genuine emotion.

Yet it's not entirely forgettable. I'll long be haunted by Dennis Quaid's manic performance as a palm-greasing dad who seems to be under the influence of bath salts-tweaked-out acting that matches the camera movements.

Hough emits all the charisma of a personal assistant.

Hoariest of all are the exhortations to make distinctions between "fiction" and "life."

Close's prosthetic makeup renders her face too immobile, a marked contrast with her unfixed accent; both highlight the pitfalls of a star's idée fixe. It's a shame, because the material - based on a novella by George Moore published in the 1927 collection Celibate Lives - deserves better.

Though Snitch loudly announces itself as a social-issues movie, its nominal outrage over the severity of our nation's sentencing laws for first-time drug offenders is quickly subsumed by a jacked-up narrative of a father going to extremes to save his son.

With all due respect to Leo Tolstoy, all unhappy film families in which someone ascends those "12 steps" are exactly alike.

This toothless, silken-looking satire takes aim at easy targets: white Williamsburg ennui, technology, yoga.

Another movie, not as awful as this one, might one day find better use for the easygoing vibe between Queen Latifah and Common, the stars of Just Wright.

As dull and impersonal as a sheaf of open-enrollment insurance forms, Office Christmas Party brings together — and underutilizes — several funny performers from TV shows (Silicon Valley, Veep, SNL) that pinpoint what this dim comedy does not: the specifics of workplace environments and their particular pathologies and joys.

Of sole interest is Benoît Magimel's Vincent, who sheepishly confesses a same-sex attraction to one in the cabal; his moments on-screen provide the only break from this slog.

Sheridan, repeatedly drawn to family sagas, including his own (2002's In America), aims for Greek tragedy but ends up with a PTSD melodrama, with Maguire able to produce slobber almost as effortlessly as Portman can summon up tears--essentially all her role calls for.

It's heartbreaking to see Lathan, an underemployed actress whose talents were last put to good use in 2006's "Something Else," in such a ridiculous, impossible role.

Binoche's hushed histrionics, though, are of a piece with the fruity portentousness of L'Attesa.

Hackford's pacing throughout is continuously off, with scenes extending several beats too long, his two leads adrift and bored.

Proceeds as a tedious, clumsy diddle, constantly reminding viewers how much progress has been made since the Victorian era.

A sprawling mess of multiple romantic triangles in which all the angles are obtuse.

Inevitably, his generic disgruntlement will soften: Amerindie dyspeptic-comedy formula dictates that the man who rants two times too many against the addiction to phones and the internet will, by film’s end, have a heart-stirring video chat.

Like Amélie's scrubbed-up "City of Lights," Paris 36 is an antiseptic arthouse trifle, so eager to soothe that it only numbs.

The greatest frustration-not just in For Colored Girls, but in Perry's entire oeuvre-is witnessing talented (and often criminally underemployed) actresses struggle with the material they've been given.

"There's a midget in the oven!" is about as inspired as the dialogue and set pieces get in this queasy-making entertainment.

What's most crushing is witnessing what should have been the dream pairing of Kunis and Timberlake - both foxy, loose, confident performers - here generating zero chemistry.

Its characters are all too easily determined but never specific—or memorable.

Despite the nonstop banality, Johnson remains the sole source of allure: Her sleepy eyes suggest nights devoted to pleasure inconceivable to James.

Making even more appearances than the rodent is the Big Gulp; the lady bounty hunter is constantly consuming junk - though at least when Heigl is snacking, she isn't talking.

Screeches and scrambles from scene to scene with manic sitcom energy, much like the cherished pet hamster of one of its characters.

Misery pile-up.

Spread becomes a sloggy, tepid comeuppance tale.

Fifty years after her death, the actress's corpse is still being picked over with ever-diminishing returns, as evidenced in Liz Garbus's garish, misguided documentary.

Plays like both a supremely outmoded chick-lit adaptation and an outrageously obscene gesture as the economy continues to swallow up livelihoods, homes, and hope.

To Save a Life wants to rescue kids from the Satanic messages of "Gossip Girl"--a benign, even worthy enough objective, but must alternatives to empty, materialistic adolescence require baptism in the Pacific?

A misguided tale of sentimental education.

Though its structure may be whittled down in comparison with the earlier works, Biutiful is even more morbidly obese than "Babel" in terms of soggy ideas, elephantine with miserabilist humanism and redemption jibber-jabber.

A sloppy, desultory, depressive buddy comedy the color of beer-infused pee.

A movie so excruciating that it makes its predecessor, "Valentine's Day," seem like "Nashville" in comparison.

Curiously, Blackmail Boy's alternate title is "Oxygen"--and by film's end, you'll be gasping for it.

The mild Islamophobia and highly questionable casting choices in the film call to mind other texting abbreviations, namely AYFKMWTS and GTFOOH. In the end, though, it's an armed-forces acronym dating back to World War II that best describes this dismal project: FUBAR.

McKay's bumptious movie awkwardly combines fourth-wall-breaking gimmickry and flaccid indignation with the goofball energy that defines his comedies.

Blind Side the movie peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the rescue of African-Americans who become superfluous in narratives that are supposed to be about them.

Hoping to distract us from the zero ideas found in his film, Levinson demands that his cast act loudly and unbearably, a task for which Demi Moore, as the second wife of Ellen's first husband, is perfectly suited.

Continuing both his bad filmmaking and obsession with lethal orifices, Mitchell Lichtenstein follows up "Teeth," his clumsy debut about a dismembering vagina, with a voluminous explosion of poop.