Michael Rechtshaffen

Charmless sequel.

Essentially a telenovela with cinematic pretensions, La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) is a vapid slab of soap depicting a love triangle among three remarkably uninteresting characters.

Although he effectively establishes the downtrodden milieu, Lee’s script ultimately succumbs to mounting clichés and plot contrivances.

The film effectively summons an evocative moment in time. But...the film ultimately feels like a marketing tool for ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

A disappointingly dreary affair.

Unfortunately, the whole seldom adds up to the sum of its illustrious parts, and Jarmusch's trademark deadpan quirks seem to have gotten lost in the translation.

A crass, sophomoric and, more to the point, offensively unfunny parody that sets out to remake Shaft and his blaxploitation ilk as a Jewish action hero.

While Wedge’s animation background comes in handy during some inventive chase sequences (shot in rural British Columbia), Monster Trucks is otherwise a clunky nonstarter.

There also are hints of Doug Liman and Tony Scott to be found in this hopped-up, bullet-riddled crime thriller, but while certain sequences pack an admitted visceral kick, the prevailing effect is one of utter overkill.

There's seldom a dull moment -- but nor are there any that allow viewers young or old to invest in its elite team of furry characters to any satisfying or lasting degree despite the presence of an energetic voice cast.

Although her colorful life would reach a tragic, decidedly pulpy end, Leo plays it to the absolute hilt.... Unfortunately, the other characters and the vehicle that supports her turn out to be less satisfyingly dimensional.

While superbly acted, the dramedy plays out like a tepid "Big Chill" at best.

Quite an entertaining genre piece boasting a terrifically sinewy lead performance from Wanda De Jesus.

There’s the kernel of an intriguing political thriller buried beneath all the strained exposition and pompous speechifying enveloping An Acceptable Loss, but writer-director Joe Chappelle never manages to find it.

Although the film has its undeniably immersive, convincing moments, the merging of dramatic re-creations and on-camera "performances" proves less seamlessly executed than those masterfully coordinated land, sea and air missions.

This flaccid psychological thriller keeps spoiling its own surprise by constantly signaling the big plot twist.

The Wayans brothers manage to squeeze it all in to consistently amusing effect and in a way that just barely manages to stay within those PG-13 parameters.

May have been adapted the 1996 French film "L'Appartement," but pretty much all evidence of what was once an engaging psychodrama has been lost in the translation.

While Phillippe's tongue seldom ventures far from his cheek in addressing the cult of celebrity, he maintains a nice technical grip on the tension and intensity — at least until things start to unravel toward the end.

A colossal snore.

Over the course of almost two hours, all the amped-up visual effects and slapstick silliness can become awfully exhausting, making a hinted-at sequel ultimately feel like a threat.

Sufficient cheap thrills and enough of the prevailing camp quality.

To his credit, director Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cite Soleil) gets right to the business at hand where the set-up is concerned, but it's in the execution that this would-be thriller falls flat.

Borrowing liberally from the likes of "RoboCop," "Mad Max" and, of course, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Double Dragon" struggles and ultimately fails to find a satisfying tone (and pace) of its own. [03 Nov 1994]

Will primarily strike a chord with Latina-skewing audiences with minimal crossover potential.

While Harnett’s a real trooper and stuntman-turned-filmmaker Scott Waugh (“Act of Valor”) establishes an effectively bone-chilling milieu heightened by an immersive sound design that keeps those whipping winds and howling wolves in uncomfortably close proximity, the embellishments fail to create crucial suspense.

While the main characters appear to have been given a bit of Powerpuff Girl sass by screenwriters Meghan McCarthy, Rita Hsiao and Michael Vogel, it ultimately does little to goose the limited hand-drawn 2D animation.

The Thor Freudenthal-helmed sequel lacks the energetic zip of its predecessor.

More of a character-etched mood piece than a tautly calibrated caper, Dead Man Down benefits from potent visuals and a compelling international cast that also includes lead Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard and Isabelle Huppert.

Tediously one-note comedy.

Never achieves sufficient traction to go the blockbuster distance.

Instead of taking the audience in unfamiliar directions, filmmaker Mora Stephens (who wrote the script with Joel Viertel) is in such a heated rush to get to all the salacious bits, the story doesn't build crucial dramatic tension.

A tasteful melodrama courtesy of the easy chemistry between its two leads and a generally restrained touch from Tony-winning director George C. Wolfe in his feature debut.

Returning director James McGrath and screenwriter Michael McCullers had an opportunity to build on an entirely workable formula, but instead have settled for a frenetic sugar rush of a retread that rapidly wears out its welcome. Pint-sized viewers might be distracted by the noisy, chaotic result, but most others will be hard-pressed to find the proceedings cute and adorable.

Farrelly’s loftier impulses work against the material. The result is a meandering, disjointed production that struggles throughout to find a satisfying tone.

A weakness for the formulaic, combined with a noticeably weighty running time, continually bumps up against the film’s many fine points.

An awkward blend of live action and animation.

The childhood years of Brazil’s national treasure have been given a lamentably pedestrian big-screen treatment by Pelé: Birth of a Legend.

By now Bowers, who also directed the last two Wimpy Kid movies, knows how to choreograph the inherent chaos for optimal giggles, even if many of the book’s more satirical elements have been swapped out for broader slapstick.

While the corrupt Indiana Jones conceit certainly held promise, the Hesses fail to move it much further beyond that "what if" premise, taking weak, obvious potshots at its fundamentalist target.

While visually engaging, this production of Disneytoon Studios -- it was originally slated to go direct-to-DVD -- lacks the sort of character depth and dramatic scope normally associated with the Pixar brand.

Rose’s pickles might have a pleasant snap, but there’s none to be found in the tired, limp shtick in Sheldon Cohn and Gary Wolfson’s screenplay, which has been choreographed at a lumbering, drawn-out pace by director Michael Manasseri.

The plodding film goes awfully heavy on script exposition and all too light on character depth, leaving Cage and company — including a smartly cast Peter Fonda as his been-there, done-that alcoholic dad — to come up with their own complexity.

Although the performances, including that of Rebecca Romijn channeling Cybill Shepherd as a femme fatale type, are sturdy, their characters have been given absolutely nowhere interesting to go.

This particular reconceptualization actually does an impressive job of capturing the nasty dread of the original. It certainly is a vast improvement over those previous remakes/sequels.

Unfortunately, Twohy has tried to turn the Riddick enterprise into a sprawling, Tolkien-powered epic, jamming the screen with too many historical parallels and a confusion of new characters.

While Vikander and McAvoy are two undeniably photogenic actors who also radiate considerable intelligence, their best efforts are lost in the claustrophobic environment.

Sets out to be a baby "Big Chill" but plays out like an unsold Fox pilot.

Boasting two terrific performances by Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood as the adult and teenage versions of the same character.

While Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser turn in a pair of sturdy performances, the film itself proves to be a harder sell, especially because it looks and sounds like Mamet but proves to be a flimsy knockoff.

The end product is surprisingly charmless -- a shrill "Devil Wears Prada"/"Bridget Jones"/"Sex and the City" knockoff that keeps threatening to fall apart at the seams.

The film insistently asserts its autobiographical roots at the expense of sharper plotting and characterizations, not to mention more energetic pacing.

Think of it as "The Matrix" for the quantum physics set.

While by no means a masterpiece of the form, John Carpenter's The Ward is an economical period piece that still effectively demonstrates what a skilled technician can accomplish in a single location with a compact cast and sturdy old-school effects.

Amusing, but formulaic, romantic comedy.

Even with the inspired choice of Steve Martin in the Clouseau role, this "Panther" picture is more bumbling and fumbling than the blissfully oblivious, accident-prone Inspector.

Unable to decide whether it wants to be a rambunctious family comedy or a tender romantic comedy, the Dennis Quaid-Rene Russo vehicle strains to be both and ends up falling short of both marks.

A shrill, far-fetched thriller.

For a while there, Mathieu Kassovitz's atmospherically charged direction sucks the viewer into the story's hellish vortex. That is until the film becomes possessed by an increasingly ludicrous beyond-the-grave element from which there is no rational return.

An often imaginative though less than magical family feature.

Has something a bit edgier in mind than the usual, soft-focused wedding bell high jinks. For the most part, that's exactly what it delivers -- an amusing, smartly cast romantic comedy told from a guy's perspective.

Somehow Murphy manages to lift his dignified, all-knowing servant character off the page, giving a meticulously composed performance in a vehicle that can’t help but feel superficially repackaged.

Visually inspired but thematically derivative.

While the Nick Peet-directed film has its cheerfully outrageous moments . . . even mild shock value in the time of an epidemic might not be just what the doctor ordered.

Get past what sounds like a melodrama about a forbidden love affair, and director Oren Jacoby's carefully crafted film deftly blends archival footage with dramatic re-creations and interviews with surviving family members to illuminating effect.

Witless, excessive and ultimately boring gore-a-thon.

Both the anticipation factor and writer-director Mick Garris' slick adaptation fail to live up to the old hype.

Director George Gallo, taking a cue from his 1991 film, “29th Street,” romanticizes everything in a nostalgic glow, but without a sturdier script featuring fully dimensional characters at his disposal, the performances prove to be as unconvincing as their ethnic accents and period wigs.

Walking With Dinosaurs takes rewarding advantage of a much bigger budget and state-of-the-art technology to bring its impressive collection of Cretaceous creatures to vivid life. But while the walking part’s pretty impressive, the talking part — not so much.

Instantly forgettable.

Insistently distancing if aesthetically pleasing.

As vapidly generic as its title, British director Scott Mann's Heist is a by-the-numbers crime thriller that squanders a decent cast, including Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Dave Bautista.

This lifeless, talky, family-oriented feature never manages to rise to the occasion of its witty title.

A sweet 'n' sassy period comedy with a "Juno" sensibility and the soul of a "Little Miss Sunshine," the hard-to-resist Dirty Girl announces the official arrival of Juno Temple.

A gritty serving of pulp fiction masterfully perpetrated by Samuel L. Jackson as a philosophical ex-con trying to buck the considerable odds by taking a shot at redemption.

The production squeaks by on the visual charm of art director Ian Hastings’ period touches and warm autumnal hues. The voice talent is a decidedly mixed bag.

The film fittingly embraces the elements of camp and kitsch that played such a major role in defining the Nomi persona.

Rather than sticking with that entirely workable setup, writer-director Martin keeps distractedly flip-flopping back and forth in time leading up to the big heist, preventing the plotting from building any tangible tension.

Even for something preaching spiritual tranquility, Milton’s Secret exhibits the barest trace of a pulse.

Smultaneously silly, ostentatious and terribly boring.

Ryan and the rest of the cast are forced to slug it out with the kind of trite dialogue that seems to have been lifted straight off of those corporate inspirational posters.

The problem once again remains an inability to sustain those de rigueur elements of tension and suspense much beyond those first 20 minutes.

An unpleasant exercise in self-indulgence

Manages to retain a certain goofy appeal thanks to the stand-up efforts of its comically adept cast members.

Simply put, Sherlock Gnomes is a dreadful bore.

Tpicture delivers the requisite number of pratfalls, and the genial Ice Cube makes for a credibly hapless everyman, but the comedy still feels a little too safely soft around the edges.

Sharing its title with a historic Reno hotel that's seen better days (or maybe not), El Cortez is a clumsy lump of ponderous pulp fiction with "Cooler" aspirations.

Billy Crystal and Bette Midler hustle to peddle the threadbare material that makes Andy Fickman's comedy a perfectly tolerable, if uninspired, moviegoing experience.

An awkward mix of proficient 3-D animation, detailed technical recreation and strained storytelling that stalls on takeoff.

6 Days can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.

Unfortunately in the hands of writer-director Adam Alecca, this overly talky, slackly executed game of cat-and-mouse comes off as cheesy rather than chilling.

Despite its serious imperfections, the soapy escapism provided by The Perfect Guy at least arrives at an opportune time.

While that let’s-band-together-and-save-the-park setup clearly isn’t the freshest acorn on the tree, director and co-writer Cal Brunker (2013’s Escape From Planet Earth) at least manages to keep all the ensuing chaos at a reasonably brisk clip. Drawing similarly energetic performances from his voice cast is another matter.

It all begins to fall apart around the midway point, before completely unraveling into a confused, murky mess.

Director Grau seems to be making up the film as he goes along — never a good idea when tackling the sort of genre piece that requires building tension and some semblance of dread to succeed.

Despite its high-profile cast and a sizable marketing push from distributor Summit Entertainment, audiences won't require any paranormal powers of their own to realize they've seen this one before.

The largely uninspired Clone Wars feels landlocked. In the absence of any extensive innovation, the video game-ready results play more like a feature-length promo for the imminent TV series of the same name than a stand-alone event.

Jumper proves disappointingly inert. All the state-of-the-art visual effects in the world can't compensate for spotty plotting and bland characters that prevent an intriguing premise from going the distance.

There are twist endings and there are twist endings -- and then there is the logic-strangling, complete cheat of a reveal that takes place in the final 10 minutes of Hide and Seek. It's so absolutely preposterous that it stops the film cold and draws a collective "Aw c'mon!"

The dull production obviously sees itself as an updated "Cincinnati Kid" for the World Poker Tour set, but the end result and its characters have all the originality and dramatic depth of a TV telecast.

The film’s prevailing theme may be that nothing is black and white, but the execution, with its strident lobbyists, salt-of-the-earth farmers and onscreen admonition to “investigate before you donate,” proves spottier than a kennel full of caged Dalmatians.

While a fictionalized account of Lee’s career certainly held some sex, drugs & rock ’n’ roll potential, the blandly pedestrian film Spaceman seldom delivers despite an engagingly game lead performance by Josh Duhamel.

Although chances are good that something called This Is Your Death is not going to be admirably restrained in the subtlety department, there was at least the hope that this grotesque thriller wouldn’t have kept pivoting uneasily between audacious social satire and mawkish moralizing.

The back-to-the-beginning approach unimaginatively goes through the motions, offering scant justification for its boring existence, at least from an artistic point of view.

It's all quite a mess, with awkward performances, worse dialogue and a painfully protracted running time conspiring against any chance of enjoyment, even in a so-bad-it's-good guilty pleasure way.

A dysfunctional drama.

Despite the labors of leads Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, there's no screen magic being made here.

There’s howlingly awful and then there’s The Assignment, a thoroughly ridiculous, numbingly slow neo-noir thriller.

A tepid ghost story filled with all the usual things that go bump in the night minus the somewhat crucial element of suspense, this bland effort from Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's Ghost House Pictures is surprisingly devoid of the creepy, claustrophobic atmospherics that haunt the brothers' Asian work.

Directed with aching purpose by Lawrence David Foldes from a script he wrote with Grafton S. Harper, the lavish-looking but hackneyed memory play is small-screen fodder at best.

For every poignant keeper...there’s a clunker.

It's business as usual at Camp Crystal Lake, with very little in the way of fresh jolts or an innovative visual style that would have really revitalized the hokey franchise.

By the time they're done with all the tinkering, "Scooby-Doo" ends up bearing as much a resemblance to Hanna-Barbera as the recent "Cat in the Hat" did to Dr. Seuss.

Combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.

A textbook example of how not to mess with success, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is every bit as forced, synthetic, banal and mawkish as the first edition.

It’s as if co-directors Michael Thurmeier and Galen Tan Chu, both veterans of the Ice Age franchise, sensed that there was essentially nowhere left to go with the concept and opted to instead overstuff the production with too many characters breathlessly doing tired, pop culture-heavy “bits” like it was open mic night at the Paleolithic Punch Line.

The over-the-top tone gets stale awfully quickly -- especially once it becomes clear that it's all wacky style over any real attempt at substance.

Along comes Elektra to effectively lower the bar for Marvel Comics page-to-screen transitions.

It admittedly starts off great guns, but all too quickly it becomes apparent that the big-screen arrival of the supernatural Western DC Comics series Jonah Hex"is firing loud, empty blanks.

In this lukewarm climate of pointless remakes and uninspired sequels there's always welcome room for a film that wants to push the envelope, Shadowboxer merely crams it with a lot of nonsense.

No less noisy, obnoxious or just plain groan-inducing than the previous installments.

A winning mix of sharp comedy and touching bits that keeps the laughter -- a few tears -- flowing.

The film, both in scope and tone, has a downsized vibe that would have made it a much better fit on an ABC Family than in a movie theater.

Truth be told, Lies We Tell is a pretentious and muddled dud of a melodrama.

Presumably a glib attack on sanctimonious small-town religious hypocrisy informed by Black's own strict Mormon upbringing, the film is tonally all over the place, eventually settling in a rut that comes a lot closer to resembling bad camp than edgy satire.

Ultimately, Adam Moreno's screenplay, with its multiple narrators and constantly shifting points of view, makes for mighty confusing viewing.

The end product is a standard-issue cult drama that nevertheless has its gripping moments thanks mainly to the presence of Emma Watson.

Director Renny Harlin's take on Agatha Christie's versatile "Ten Little Indians" is total B-movie swagger in all its unsubtle glory.

In his first feature outing, director Soham Mehta overplays the significance of virtually every aspect of Rajiv Shah’s script, no matter how minor, with painfully slow pans and needlessly lingering establishing shots.

Despite the overstuffed assortment of vampires, werewolves, warlocks and demons of all shapes and sizes, The Mortal Instruments seldom feels like anything more than a shameless, soulless knockoff.

A bigger-louder-dumber take on that good ol' CBS hillbilly hit, the movie version of "The Dukes of Hazzard" starts off on the wrong foot and keeps heading, appropriately, south.

Essentially sleepwalks its way through a strictly by-the-numbers premise.

The more recent concert and backstage material, assembled by director Andy Grieve, lacks the energy and immediacy key to dynamic performance films.

An uneven romantic comedy that feels as fresh as a hunk of week-old soda bread.

A tone-deaf muddle that shifts moods more often than its lone wolf vigilante rubs out bad guys, clocking in at a punishingly paced two hours and change.

For a comedy, it's not really funny.

The visually stirring format proves unable to lift the story and performances out of a prevailing, airless stupor.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 proves that even grisly, gory violence can be awfully boring.

In terms of inspiration or even the slightest shred of ingenuity, Banks ranks more like an 000 than an 007.

A decent premise — and a game Gina Carano — get left in the dust kicked up by Scorched Earth, a dull, draggy post-apocalyptic western set in the not-too-distant, environmentally toxic future.

The guys occasionally over-reach for irreverence, director and fellow "Workaholics" veteran Kyle Newacheck mainly succeeds in delivering the most defiantly outrageous farce since "Borat."

If "This Christmas" served up a crowd-pleasing portion of yuletide "Soul Food," then The Perfect Holiday offers dried-out leftovers.

Highly watchable, anchored sturdily by Lane's convincing performance.

Comprising reclaimed bits from "Blade Runner," "A Clockwork Orange" and "Children of Men" and glibly served up with hyper Guy Ritchie attitude by first-time feature director Miguel Sapochnik, the resulting in-your-face mess never knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

It's like being trapped for an hour-and-a-half in a pound full of yappy puppies.

An acutely misguided, purported satire dealing with the prickly subject of child molestation.

What might have been a pertinent, evenhanded examination of the notion of free speech on today’s college campuses wastes little time in exposing an overwhelmingly right-leaning bias in the disappointingly sensationalistic agitprop that is No Safe Spaces.

A plodding comic caper that fails to deliver.

That it ultimately manages to work as effectively as it does is a credit to the firm, focused visual grip of director Perelman, best known for his Oscar-nominated 2003 drama, “House of Sand and Fog,” and, especially the impressively-rooted portrayals of the two leads.

The star wattage quickly dims in this slick-looking but ringingly hollow affair that starts off generically at best before collapsing into a convoluted heap of shrill screen cliches.

And thanks to some creative character casting and a self-aware script that isn't averse to poking fun at itself, Show Dogs emerges as a high-concept family comedy that manages to avoid being taken for the runt of the litter, even if it doesn't really bring anything fresh and different to the arena.

The laughs tend to come in fits and starts, built around individual set pieces rather than being generated organically out of the storytelling.

With a dirge-like pace that provides ample opportunity to figure it all out well ahead of the protagonists, you keep wishing somebody would buy a vowel to hurry things along.

Definitely has its amusing moments, but ultimately all that improvised shtick gets mighty tired without any real break in the nonaction.

Inept on every level, Panic 5 Bravo is a virtually unwatchable, blood-soaked crime drama serving as the writing-directing debut of actor Kuno Becker.

The payoff is sporadically rewarding at best.

Coming up short on tension and long on talky exposition, Josie emerges as a Southern-fried dramatic thriller that fails to deliver the pulpy goods despite a nicely rooted Dylan McDermott lead performance.

Unfortunately Marryshow, in his various capacities, has neglected to instill his terminally obnoxious character with a vital shred of audience empathy, let alone to provide sufficient comedic beats that would have better engaged his thoughtfully diverse cast.

Plenty of salient points to make in this satirical cautionary tale, there's still not enough to sustain the expanded running time.

Overlong, over-the-top dirge.

Narcopolis starts off intriguingly and ends solidly. It's everything else in between that isn't particularly compelling.

Despite his attempt to graft an environmental message onto a traditional musical template, there's little about director Danny Baron's feature debut that feels convincingly organic to either the plotting or the characterizations.

Writer-director Hadi Hajaig was obviously shooting for a mid-1980s indie vibe along the lines of Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild,” but aside from an overstuffed soundtrack that goes heavy on the B-52’s, there’s nothing particularly engaging or nostalgic going on beneath all the forced irreverence.

Despite the lazily self-satisfied results, his (Sandler) aging fan base likely will come along for the lackadaisical ride.

For all the digitally enhanced Smurfness, the results are remarkably mirthless.

After a promising start, this quirky comedy falls flat despite Eckhart's best efforts.

David Hubbard's script is so steeped in sludgy sentimentality that the film's early hints of quirkiness quickly give way to heavy-handed faith healing.

While the likable Seth Green, Matthew Lillard and Dax Shepard are definitely up to the comic excursion, the picture charts an uncertain course between wild and mild, eventually running aground in a pile of male-bonding muck.

The usually likable Bullock, obstructed by glaring continuity problems and often baffling character motivation, comes across as unsympathetically dazed and confused here, giving the viewer little reason to care about this desperate housewife's puzzling predicament.

In the absence of a sturdy, plausible foundation on which to hook all those grisly bits, the film, originally a Dimension release, tends to play out more like a protracted "Saw" outtake reel.

Strictly old hat -- and a poorly assembled hat at that.

An entirely dispensable, soapy caricature of a love story that comes complete with a jukebox full of music industry cliches plus Ashlee Simpson's big feature film debut.

Few will likely embrace the insufferably chirpy, high-concept rom-com that struggles to stretch a mighty shallow premise into a feature-length proposition.

A soggy, listless affair, this would-be fun-in-the-sun sunken-treasure frivolity starts taking on water from the get-go, thanks to drawn-out exposition and languid pacing.

While Pine is undeniably a charismatic actor, that likability can only generate so much audience good will in a production overstuffed with cartoonish caricatures lacking any sort of deeper connective tissue.

As written, directed and played by Swartzwelder, Clay is such a self-absorbed, judgmental jerk that anyone who would willingly subject themselves to his endless pontificating could rival Anastasia Steele in the masochism department.

It's a charming-looking, tenderly told story about friendship and diversity.

While writer-director-editor Aram Rappaport draws effectively weighted performances (especially from the always committed Driver) and maintains a crisp pace, he’s less adept at balancing those big picture thriller elements with Clifton’s personal journey, which ultimately serves to rob both aspects of greater potency.

[A] lethargic, hallucinatory mish-mash with matching dialogue that has all the zing of a Wikipedia entry.

In Mob Town, the cast’s definitely got the goods, but the writing and direction consistently fail to seal the deal.

A wincingly unfunny comedy caper.

After a promisingly tart start, the strident satire stumbles and falls into a sitcom-y hole from which it never emerges, despite the game efforts of its dynamic ensemble.

Unlike that widely appealing picture with the giant green ogre, this one's strictly for the kiddies.

John Henry is a lead-footed revenge thriller that lands with all the subtlety of the mighty steel-driving man’s sledgehammer.

There's infinitely more than one anomaly to be found in The Anomaly, a thoroughly nonsensical futuristic sci-fi thriller that makes a case for the perils of vanity projects.

Once the initial round of breast-feeding and rectal thermometer bits is fired off, the picture starts to give off the funky whiff of unattended Pampers.

Preachy doesn't begin to describe War Room, a mighty long-winded and wincingly overwrought domestic drama.

A towering heap of nihilistic nonsense that plays like a cornball "Children of God."

Despite its connotation of sun-drenched sensuality, Rio, I Love You is a dispiritingly dull affair.

A misconceived washout of a darkly gothic story of madness, addiction and child abuse made all the more unpleasant by Gilliam's trademark intense visual style.

Its release calculated to coincide with the X Games, Supercross: The Movie is advertainment to the extreme.

The cheap and cheerful picture has its humorous moments thanks to Steven P. Baer's broad but buoyant script and a supporting cast of character actors who know how to hit a good line home.

This first feature by Jabbar Raisani is played out with considerable conviction on the part of its director and the tough-guy cast (led by Rick Ravanello), but the alien element is less convincing because of corny costumes and static-y special effects.

Although the reliable Cooper (taking over the role from Henry Cavill) and the rest of the cast...valiantly do battle against the thunderous score, they’re ultimately unable to pump up a dreary mission that fails to adhere to the most basic rules of audience engagement.

Proves to be more prone to malfunction than dysfunction.

It’s a loud Oz hodgepodge that never adheres to a prevailing tone long enough to allow viewers to emotionally engage with those characters in spite of some admittedly inspired CG flourishes.

Despite attracting some top-drawer talent, “Arsenal” is a brutally unpleasant, bottom-of-the-barrel crime drama that unsuccessfully attempts to drown the terrible dialogue and pedestrian direction with buckets of gushing blood.

A shrill, garish hodgepodge of familiar elements from other animated vehicles (most evidently 2013’s Epic), there’s virtually nothing about this forced, fractured fairy tale that feels remotely fresh or involving.

There's absolutely nothing fantastic or transporting about London, an endlessly ponderous relationship picture that also has zilch to do with the British city.

Riddled with as many plot holes as those highways and byways have potholes, the heavy-handed writing and direction, with its awkward close-ups and purposeful, sustained takes does its cast few favors.

Carrey's quietly exacting, uncharacteristic performance, though not qualifying as a saving grace, hints at some promising new career directions in the same manner Robin Williams successfully tapped a darker side with "One Hour Photo." All Carrey needs now is a better film.

Although the Tarantino influence still is tangible, this time around Duffy reveals himself to also be a big Francis Ford Coppola fan, but the cartoonish end result plays like "Godfather III" meets the Three Stooges.

Every bit as frantic, frenetic, groan-inducing and all around grating as its two predecessors.

Every bit as vulgar, sophomoric and thoroughly tasteless as 1999's Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. But what is most annoying is the sequel's capability of inducing laughter even as one hates oneself for so easily succumbing to the total silliness of it all.

It’s hard to imagine how anything salvageable could have been made out of [Gee Malik Linton's] comically pretentious script with its heavily religious overtones and plotting that grows more ridiculous by the minute.

D-grade "Running Man" ripoff.

Although the resulting tonal shifts between funny and serious aren't always executed as seamlessly as they might be, Khoury deserves props for defying rom-com conventions more often than he succumbs to them.

There’s scant evidence of any creative spark in Spark: A Space Tail, a thoroughly generic, unremittingly charmless computer-animated adventure.

There are a couple clever touches here and there, including one sequence in which the end of a candy cane has been carefully licked into a highly lethal weapon, but for the most part the accompanying histrionics feel more regressive than retro.

The result proves to be as appealing and effervescent as a flute of flat champagne.

Perhaps a greater passage of time was needed to provide a more effective historical perspective, but "Tiger" has a bigger problem with a dramatic structure that sags conspicuously in the middle, never to completely correct itself.

Writer-director Larry Blamire has clearly done his homework, and his playful cast nails the requisite acting-so-bad-it's-good pitch.

The storytelling has all the dramatic complexity of a paint-by-numbers set, and you know exactly where all this is headed from the get-go.

While the film, with its preponderance of potty jokes, might placate the very young already primed by boisterous singing chipmunks, older viewers will likely find it all harder to, uh, bear.

So blatantly not funny that it might as well have been called "National Geographic's Van Wilder 2."

An unmitigated B-movie that isn't thrilling enough or cheesy enough to make it worth the trip.

Resembling something dwelling in the bottom of the remainder bin, The Seventh Dwarf is a garish-looking, slapdash mashup of an animated fairy tale.

This evangelical "Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam" by way of "The Dukes of Hazzard" takes a mighty ridiculous route to righteousness.

Loud, mean-spirited and generally obnoxious, Son of the Mask makes the boisterous 1994 original look downright demure and refined.

There's a veil of artifice clinging to every aspect of The Lovers, a thoroughly unconvincing time-traveling epic costume drama pairing a miscast Josh Hartnett and Bollywood beauty Bipasha Basu.

An unholy mess co-produced by Cameron's faith-based Camfam Studios.

Never gets off the ground, trotting out the same predictable twisting heads and psycho-babble without a whiff of originality or discernible visual flair. As a result, the would-be thriller proves as scary and unsettling as a slab of devil's food cake - only considerably less satisfying.

As wannabe Tarantino misfires go, at least one can say that Avary, who in addition to sharing story credit on “Pulp Fiction” also contributed (uncredited) to “True Romance,” comes by the affectation more honestly than most.

This ridiculous thriller would be hard-pressed to last much longer than its title in theaters before doing time on DVD, as is already the case in many overseas territories.

Without the gore, this old school slasher rehash is one anemic bore.

A monumentally unfunny time-waster.

There's a fresh candidate in the running for worst movie of 2007 honors.

Italian writer-director Francesco Cinquemani, in his feature debut, has essentially done a cut-and-paste job, assembling a thoroughly uninvolving, tension-free futuristic sci-fi thriller.

Has the crass look and feel of a 90-minute infomercial.

By the time the film reaches a faith-based, third-act crescendo, Bean, Walsh and company, despite their best efforts, look like they know they've been beaten, while the score's mournful strings wring out whatever pathos remains untapped.

A cliched, talky variation on the 1936 Bogie classic "The Petrified Forest," with scant dramatic tension but gallons of spilled blood on the menu.

Any scrap of charm or honest-to-goodness humor already possessed in limited quantities by the original has been relegated to the outhouse in this sorry follow-up.

By the time one of the gun-toting members of Team Snipes growls “Let’s finish this!” viewers would be hard-pressed to disagree.

The result is a slacker comedy that goes slacker by the second, trying hard to be rude and crude but suggesting an old John Candy-Dan Aykroyd movie with bongs and more swearing.

This crass drag of a dud at best manages to elicit just a couple of half-hearted chuckles over the course of its 80-minute allotment.

While clearly aiming for R-rated irreverence, the script, penned by former Kevin Smith assistant Knutson, along with Andy Snipes and Dana Snyder, proceeds to hurl a tired barrage of obnoxious sexist/racist/homophobic sludge, with humor that seldom rises above crotch level.

One of those rare instances of a movie being so bad ... it's still really bad.

Even ignoring the fact that it was completed back in 2017, Reality Queen! a punishingly shrill, unfunny mockumentary about a social media darling of a Paris Hilton-type celebutante, can’t help but feel totally so yesterday.

D’Souza might be preaching to the choir, but at least this voter recruitment tool could have aspired to something more challenging than an amateurishly slapped-together rehash.

United Passions, with its clashing, production partner-mandated Europudding of accents, fails to find a unifying voice.

Shades of "Like Water for Chocolate" and "Chocolat" -- but unlike the latter's tender Juliette Binoche-Johnny Depp romance, the ordained Rai-McDermott union fails to generate any convincing heat, and no amount of cardamom pods or lotus root is going to help.

It's very much in "A League of Their Own" league, but what the inspirational sports drama Believe in Me might lack in freshness, it nicely compensates for in heartfelt, winning conviction and spirited performances.

Awkward comic timing and uneven performances spoil the desired effect.

A breathtakingly immersive travelogue that packs a persuasive environmental undercurrent.

Acutely nailing the dysfunctional stand-up milieu both on- and off-stage, the micro-budgeted film is more a wryly-etched character sketch than an involvingly-plotted proposition, but it still manages to leave an impression thanks to Joshua Burge’s convincingly-inhabited lead performance.

Filmmaker Nicholas Mross takes a straight-ahead, even-handed approach to the controversial payment system.

Writer-director Barnaby weaves a surprising amount of tenderness into the fabric of violence, as well as a good measure of magic realism, to keep the gritty story engaging.

A film that would have been more potent had it been a 40-minute short rather than a feature-length proposition.

Delusions of Guinevere is a savvy if uneven satire.

Darling's documentary is garden-variety filmmaking, but it does an effective job in illustrating how years of fiscal crises have forced academia and industry to forge alliances that once would have been considered unlikely.

The comedy isn’t so much sharply observed as it is obvious and obnoxious.

The arty visual effects, backed by a soundtrack of ambient noise, may recall the experimental work of early practitioners such Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, but the ponderous, headache-inducing results do the story and the actors no favors.

Screenwriter Victor Hawks' inclusive, all-God's-children message is above reproach, but his lead character is ultimately too good for the movie's own good.

Although formulaic to a fault, this French film directed by Nicolas Cuche packs a charming effervescence thanks to the easy chemistry of appealing leads Max Boublil and Aïssa Maïga.

Each sequence is masterfully calibrated for maximum lip-quivering effect, swelling strings and all.

Writer-director Marni Zelnick makes an assured debut, coaxing considerable production value out of her limited budget while weaving in an understated, enlightening conservation message that feels organic to the story.

A technically impressive but talky sci-fi drama that never quite comes to life.

One just wishes that the filmmakers had made this a more open debate on religion versus science instead of a documentary that too often feels manipulatively Machiavellian in its presentation of all those "irrefutable" facts and findings.

This portrait of strong, independent women grappling with change in their individual lives holds initial allure, but the effect proves ephemeral.

Groundswell Rising is an undeniably passionate but frustratingly one-sided examination of the controversial method of gas extraction.

The faith-based impetus behind this redemptive, family-friendly, American Revolution-era yarn is placed front and center amid all the digitally assisted derring-do and skulduggery.

It's not every day you get to see a satanic-revenge home-invasion martial-arts thriller, but should another come along that's as laughably cornball as The Cain Complex, you'd best hide until it blows over.

The film's oddball assortment of broadly played characters feel like sketch comedy escapees stretched beyond their limits, an attempt to fill the demands of a feature-length canvas.

With its solid performances, nice attention to period detail and a foreboding rumble of a symphonic score by Jan Duszynski, Jack Strong adds a unique Eastern Bloc POV to the enduring Cold War movie arsenal.

It's all pleasant enough, but the film, ultimately more of a checklist than an in-depth analysis, never really shines any fresh light on Canada's identity crisis or gets to the source of all those preconceived notions.

Although the lead performances, including a turn by Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark on "Game of Thrones") as a no-nonsense police chief, are uniformly solid, the hollow Montana has trouble unloading all those stolen parts.

Commercial director Shyam Madiraju, making his feature debut, demonstrates a spare, sinewy visual grip on the low-budget film, especially during that crash sequence. But the mechanical script strands a capable young cast in a sea of hackneyed character types and soggy platitudes.

A dull, meandering romantic comedy with serious believability issues.

The film slowly, painfully declines from merely oddball to awful, with vapid dialogue and muddy character motivations, particularly where Woll's unsympathetic Alice is concerned.

Like an uncle making a long-winded, embarrassing toast to the bride, Smith may have a lot of defining childhood memories at his disposal, but that doesn't mean they all need to be shared.

The whole package, with its bizarre fondness for slow motion, feels correspondingly sluggish. All the components are here, but A Faster Horse cries out for more dynamic performance.

Although Fontaine, a former soap opera actor, hits the saga's sins-of-the-fathers theme too often, there's a palpable small-town-in-transition feel to the fictional Braxton.... And there's no denying Fontaine's reflective but rumpled Rolando Ramirez is an interesting protagonist.

Even if the world had been clamoring for yet another "Step Up"-type hip hop dance movie, it wouldn't be Dancin' It's On!, an inept knockoff that proves every bit as clunky as its punctuation-challenged title.

Director Kishan SS has made Care of Footpath 2 (a.k.a. Kill Them Young) as a bombastic, overlong melodrama that doesn't recognize the occasional need to takes things down a decibel or three.

This first feature is populated by blandly underdeveloped main characters who tend to recite their lines rather than inhabit them.

The sci-fi drama 400 Days ultimately disintegrates upon impact because of a lazy payoff.

Filled with humanitarian good cheer — and enough costume changes to rival a Diana Ross concert — Imba Means Sing delivers a heartwarming song of hope for the future.

Succeeds despite an intrusive soundtrack that underscores each genuinely heartfelt moment.

Employing a restless, constantly moving camera and deliberately isolating soundscapes, the meditative and often mesmerizing film confronts the global issue of swelling immigration in the face of steely bureaucratic indifference with a disarming grace and palpable humanity.

Bell proves to be one tough cookie, but she's ultimately taken down by all the stiff, under-developed dialogue and iffy supporting performances.

Travolta, who took over the role from Nicolas Cage, and Meloni, who’s looking more and more like Robert De Niro every day, have a loose, easy chemistry that goes a long way to enliven all that overworked familiarity.

Although their extreme staycation is obviously not everybody's idea of a swell time, the bracingly gorgeous images and meditative serenity still offer a vicarious respite from all those urgent headlines and deadlines — no bear spray required.

There just aren't enough rescue dogs in the world to save "Rescue Dogs," a shrill, yappy live-action comedy that proves considerably more annoying than adorable.

While we may have been locked up with these characters before...Cohen's unwavering commitment nevertheless commands attention.

Shalini Kantayya's debut documentary feature never stays in any one place long enough to make a sufficient impact.

Those taking in Someone Else, an unconvincing, nonlinear drama about a pair of dramatically different Korean American cousins who are attracted to the same woman, will soon likely be wishing they had chosen to watch something else.

An extraordinarily moving, deeply personal, filmed diary

With its twinkly piano and soul-stirring cinematography, Love Thy Nature feels like the visual equivalent of a hot oil spa massage — and leaves a residual effect that proves equally as fleeting.

Despite clocking in at a scant 70 minutes, the troubled-youth drama Memoria manages to make a hauntingly poetic impression.

Cursed with obnoxiously broad characters and nonsensical plotting, A Bit of Bad Luck is an intended backwoods satire that runs hopelessly off-course from the outset.

Generically directed by Daniel Zirilli, who shares story credit with Tom Sizemore, the listless Asian Connection may be set in Bangkok and Cambodia but it feels about exotic as an order of take-out Thai.

Director Paul Borghese, who previously attempted to ape Scorsese with his 2013 mob drama, “Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn,” is content to simply rehash shopworn tropes.

The film, like Walker’s trek, occasionally feels like a bit of a slog to those unexposed to the folklore, but it makes some interesting observations in regard to the pursuit of fact over fiction.

At the Fork serves up an even-handed perspective on the subject of eating ethically.

Conspiracy of Faith marks the darkest and most gripping screen adaptation of the Jussi Adler-Olsen novels to date.

The unfocused Undrafted ultimately possesses all the dramatic intrigue of an intentional walk.

It’s a rare film that can dredge up nostalgic fondness for 2002’s awful “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” but Total Frat Movie manages to rise to the dubious occasion.

Enduring Natural Selection, with its painfully overt themes of good versus evil, absolution and redemption, is the true definition of survival of the fittest.