Michael Rechtshaffen

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.

A Spanish-language black comedy with a frenetic style that plays out like regurgitated Tarantino and Guy Ritchie.

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

A wobbly comedy-drama.

It’s all quite amusing up to a point, but unfortunately that point arrives early on in this practically two-hour-long take on a one-gag premise.

In the absence of more intricate, involving plotting, the tongue-in-cheek characterizations and eye-catching production design only take things so far, and the novelty begins wearing off well before that dog-eared copy of “6 Dynamic Laws” reveals its final chapter.

This wannabe daring comedy about a man who attempts to "fix" the Special Olympics strains for that patented naughty and nice balance with squirmingly squishy results.

Manages to squeak by with enough charming set-pieces and amusing sight gags to compensate for a stalling storyline.

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.

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.

What could have been a biting black comedy taking product placement to the logical extreme instead is so obviously predictable that even a savvy cast led by David Duchovny and Demi Moore can't sell it.

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.

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.

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.

Ultimately unsatisfying.

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.

Ends up having all the satisfying substance of a supermarket impulse item.

While its flaws are considerable, the Holocaust-themed thriller Remember benefits mightily from a quietly commanding Christopher Plummer performance that almost makes you forget the wonky plot logic.

While the juvenile performances are bright and engaging, and there's no shortage of genuinely humorous observations about love and life in the Big Apple, there's an inescapable small-screen dynamic to the scope and rhythm of the production.

All three actors turn in solid, committed performances despite physically limiting surroundings, even as you're left with the inescapable feeling that this raft has sailed.

When there's a whole mess of zombie killing to be done, who cares about reflective writing or that time-wasting element of suspense?

An initially intriguing plot line makes a messy getaway in this throwback heist movie.

Thanks to Martin and Hunt, who both have a seemingly casual flair for mining laughs from even the most generic lines of dialogue, Cheaper by the Dozen works better than it might have in less capable hands, but even they're challenged by some of the picture's forced mood swings.

In a way, the film ultimately gets snagged in its own contraption.

While Elgort, whose big breakout role was in last year’s “Baby Driver,” does a decent job of delineating the two characters and Patricia Clarkson reliably comes through as their sympathetic doctor, the clinically distancing production never forms a meaningful bond with its audience.

After a while all the tasteful images of undulating waves and pulsating jellyfish can’t help but underscore the inescapable naval-gazing that goes with the territory.

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

Definitely acquired-taste material and will perform best in the hipper, bigger rooms.

While there are plenty of madcap antics to fill a feature, all that manic energy ultimately proves to be more exhausting than exhilarating.

Dispiritingly generic in both appearance and tone.

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

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

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.

A blandly generic family film.

By the time the film finally gets to Fletcher’s dark and stormy, death-defying stunt, its greater liability is a talking heads-intensive structure aimed squarely at aficionados while certain to leave the uninitiated a little surf-bored.

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

A thoroughly uninspiring drama that ultimately buckles under Michael Mayer's weighty direction.

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.

The picture continuously shuffles moods like tunes on an iPod without ever making any lasting commitments.

The results are decidedly more mind-numbing than bone-chilling.

A probing though ponderously episodic drama that ultimately feels as stitched together as Sawchuk’s frequently unmasked mug.

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.

The blades of the brotherhood may be sharp, but the execution is exceedingly dull.

A dramatically inert, lethargic dramedy that isn't nearly as quirky and poignant is it perceives itself.

Andy Serkis' decidedly non-Disney Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle may have intended to offer a darker, grittier take on the classic Kipling stories, but the end result proves to be more of a murky muddle.

Less sex comedy and more Seth comedy would have made for a much livelier excursion.

Lacking the incisive bite of the keenly observed campus-based “Dear White People,” the movie too often finds itself on the unfunny side of that very fine line between risqué and bad taste.

In short, No. 4 is one big snore.

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.

There seem to be some impressive performances here, though it's not always easy to tell because director James Cox is always feverishly cutting away to something or other.

We, unfortunately, learn very little in this Earth Day release (originally completed in 2012) that we haven't seen before in more evolved, better focused documentaries.

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

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.

While Henner and Begley bring a seasoned ease to their secondary roles, their presence, and that of a lively Zach McGowan as Cassidy’s drug-dealing ex, can’t compensate for wobbly dramatic stakes and glib main characters who don’t lend themselves to audience empathy.

This mannered character study comes across as more affected than affecting.

This non-secular variation on "The Usual Suspects" falls prey to a creeping structural rigor mortis that sets in early.

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

Insistently distancing if aesthetically pleasing.

It might also have been nice to have included some archival footage that would have illustrated how little the Yukon River setting has changed over the last century, but Horvath appears to have no interest in digging any deeper.

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.

A dreary dramedy of a road film that starts off ploddingly and proceeds to only grow more so as it crawls along.

Charmless sequel.

That outrageous third-act reveal proves to be a major deal-breaker.

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.

Among the more glaring issues are performances that sound distractingly contemporary and obvious budget constraints that serve to suffocate the overly talky chamber piece instead of providing much-needed breathing room.

Ultimately, just as the events tread a fine line between fantasy and reality, so does the film teeter precipitously between promise and pretense.

The old debate over nature versus nurture is played for (sporadic) laughs in Birthmarked, a satire that's unable to deliver on a promising hypothesis.

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

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.

A shrill, far-fetched thriller.

While their last movie managed to temper the outrageousness with an underlying goofy sweetness, the biggest offense here isn’t that it’s offensive, it’s just not all that funny.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

If you could take the Shrek, Happy Feet and Smurfs movies, toss them in a blender and hit the pulse button a few times, the result would be a pretty reasonable approximation of Trolls, an admittedly vibrant-looking but awfully recognizable animated musical comedy concoction.

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

The script is not without some perceptive observations about family dynamics, but the problematic tone keeps getting in the way. A little absurdist levity in these instances always helps to prevent things from becoming too maudlin, but in Stockman's hands, the played-for-laughs elements in this tragicomedy feel forced rather than organic, ultimately creating an emotional disconnect with the viewer.

Buried beneath all the increasingly tired visual gags and well-worn character conventions is a workable message about following one’s muse, but director Ash Brannon, a Pixar veteran, along with at least eight other writers, seem content simply to lay down the same old licks.

Tumbledown sees its good intentions undermined by cloying sitcom conventions.

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!"

Awfully dull, with scant evidence of the sort of things that make horror movies attractive -- like mounting suspense and spine-tingling creepiness and, oh yeah, the element of horror.

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.

You don’t need to be well-versed in rom-coms to know that, in the process, Harper and Charlie will ultimately fall into each other’s arms, but getting there proves to be a slog courtesy of screenwriter Katie Silberman’s talky, sitcom-ready dialogue and director Claire Scanlon’s ponderously uneven pacing.

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.

As long as he maintains his focus on the notoriously private Land and the painstaking efforts of Impossible Project’s chief technology officer and Polaroid vet Stephen Herchen to recapture lightning in an SX-70, Baptist delivers something reasonably compelling. Unfortunately the bulk of the overly artsy production is preoccupied with the exploits of others.

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

The film takes a long time to get going because of all the prolonged, glib chit-chat that loses whatever satirical edge it might have initially possessed.

Haphazard plotting and seriously undernourished character development aside, none of the emotional stakes have been planted deeply enough to elicit audience involvement in young Pete’s plight.

A painfully earnest but dramatically inert film.

Being big on improvisation doesn't necessarily mine nuggets of comic brilliance, and there are times you wish Argott and Joyce would have adhered more closely to the Matt Serword-penned script.

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

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

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.

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.

The payoff is sporadically rewarding at best.

An obvious "Ocean's Eleven" knockoff, minus any of that franchise's hip sensibility.

Mercilessly plodding pacing, problematic character motivations and a fundamental lack of chemistry between the two star-crossed lovers in question don't do a lot to help its cause.

The challah may be extra special, but the humor found in John Goldschmidt's direction and the conventional script by Yehudah Jez Freedman and Jonathan Benson is disappointingly stale.

For a comedy, it's not really funny.

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

It's the kind of sprawling ensemble piece that screams out for a Pedro Almodovar, but in the absence of an Almodovar it simply screams out -- in persistent, tedious intervals.

Beckinsale delivers even if Underworld doesn't quite manage to follow through on its initial promise.

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.

While Long gives it his trademark amiable best and Klabin and longtime collaborator Patrick Lawler cook up a heady cocktail of lively though budget-conscious visual effects, at the end of the day the Carl W. Lucas script feels more like a concept pitch than a fully-plotted proposition.

Ends up committing the spoof genre's worst crime: becoming a tired parody of itself.

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.

It’s certainly a tasty premise — one that holds considerable noir-tinged promise — and for at least the first half of the film, the quirky blend of increasingly grisly goings-on and wryly observed social commentary forms a cohesive whole before veering irretrievably out of sync.

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

Though the concept serves as a soul-stirring showcase for contemporary inspirational performers, the writing and direction (both attributed to Rob Hardy) commit a multitude of sins.

Painstakingly formulaic and uninspired (it could have been called The Mighty Guts), the lumbering comedy will unlikely make much of a dent at the boxoffice. [17 Feb 1995]

Factoring in the flat narration by Clarke and some awfully hokey visual effects, Better Angels would have benefited from better angles.

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

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.

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.

While the early going might bring to mind the Dogme 95 school of stripped-down filmmaking...the result, with its collective of uniformly unsympathetic characters, ultimately overdoses on all the unscripted bad vibes.

That it squanders a terrific cast in the process -- one that also includes Common, Phylicia Rashad and Pam Grier -- makes it all the more disappointing.

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

An unwieldy, excessively talky affair, unintentionally exhibiting all the clunky stops and starts and self-conscious ramblings of a particularly awkward first date.

The script, co-written by director Georgina Garcia Riedel and Jose Nestor Marquez, plays like a first draft that misses out on comic opportunities.

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.

Not bad enough to be considered a camp, guilty pleasure, it's more of a dull, defanged dirge with the reliably intriguing Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins turning in oddly disaffected performances.

Director Will Cannon keeps the energy level cranked but over-amplifies the dramatics to shrill effect, resulting in an unfortunate tone that undermines the serious-minded intent.

Never really gets up to speed on any engrossing level, save for Michael Hardwick's notable cinematography.

What might have achieved a degree of cult status across the pond when it was aired in 10-minute installments, struggles to pass big-screen scrutiny.

The depiction of teenage acute depression settles for shallow character development and self-indulgent tropes that distract from a strong Hugh Jackman performance.

Perhaps he was too distracted by wearing so many hats (Dara also performs the self-penned Once-style ditties on the twee soundtrack), but both he and Lancaster didn’t bother to imbue their sketchy characters with sufficient likability.

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.

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.

Hoodwinked occupies some considerably shaky turf situated uncomfortably between "Shrek" and dreck.

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

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.

Director Levy struggles to find a uniform pitch that would agreeably blend together the gags, the visual effects and the obligatory heart moments. In its absence, there's a stop-and-start hollowness that confuses noise and chaos for comic energy.

A killer concept falls frustratingly short of the finish line in Empathy, Inc., a dark morality tale that ambitiously casts contemporary technology in a throwback visual setting.

Visually inspired but thematically derivative.

At its core is a well-intentioned message about inclusivity and valuing inner beauty, but the film, adapted from the 2012 YA best-seller by David Levithan (albeit with a problematic perspective shift), remains stuck in a stubborn rut somewhere between confusing and snooze-inducing.

Although the prospect of watching a mash-up of "La La Land" and Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" holds promise, director-writer Josh Klausner, in a departure from his screenplays for "Shrek Forever After" and "Date Night," opts instead for offbeat spiritual enlightenment, but is unable to sustain a delicate tone that becomes increasingly twee as it goes along.

The director's split-screen effects and hand-held digital camerawork go from being innovative to repetitive to irritating in a Santa Cruz minute.

Acher makes some astute observations about the contemporary dating scene, but this airless vehicle ultimately feels more like a stage piece than a feature proposition.

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

A crass, clumsily constructed romantic comedy.

The execution struggles from the outset to find a sustainable comedic pitch.

Yet another feature comedy that began life as a TV show sketch and is still stuck in infancy (not to mention infantilism), "Run Ronnie Run!" has about 10 minutes of sharp, funny satire to its name before running out of laughs. [15 Jan 2002]

Michael Mueller’s character-driven script is about the only thing that feels driven in this otherwise listless vehicle, and “The Beat Beneath My Feet” conveys all the pulse-pounding energy of a funeral procession.

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.

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

Instantly forgettable.

After a while, the extremely limited camera movement and languid pacing take an exacting toll, resulting in a viewing experience that is considerably less than idyllic.

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 it’s all bathed in a warmly nostalgic glow courtesy of cinematographer Darin Moran, and the cast, including Peter Stormare as an oddball shaman called the Rock God, is uniformly engaging, too often the familiar proceedings get bogged down by extensive slo-mo surfing sequences and pointless “Wonder Years”-style narration.

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]

A colossal snore.

Hotel Transylvania checks in as an anemic example of pure concept over precious little content.

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

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

This feature glimpse into the Bell Jar is an exercise in drudgery, with nothing particularly insightful or revealing to say about the charter member of the Suicidal Poets Society and the artistic endeavor in which she would make her indelible mark.

Replaying many of the visual gags that worked so amusingly before, the latest edition proves every bit as repetitive and uninspired as its glib title, bringing little that’s fresh or funny to the interlocking brick table despite boasting a script penned by originators Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

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

Even those who have never been exposed to the considerable charms of the Masayuki Suo original will likely find Peter Chelsom's all-American version of Shall We Dance? to be a dishearteningly sullen, lead-footed misstep.

Part war drama, part political thriller, part romance -- and wholly uninvolving.

Banal dialogue, over-modulated performances and melodramatic scoring combine forces to sink the stirringly photographed proceedings quicker than that treacherous flash flood.

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.

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

Unfortunately, as cobbled together by writer-director Patrea Patrick, those historical elements, in which grainy black-and-white archival footage is unconvincingly blended with repetitive reenactments, keep distracting from the main attraction, who is prominently featured in candid interviews conducted some years prior to his death in 2018.

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

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

Crammed with charmless characters and/or hammy performances.

While the muted performances might have benefitted from the occasional more emotionally rooted response and the South Africa locations don’t quite convincingly double for John Ford country, it’s the inertness that ultimately stops Black Beauty in its tracks.

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

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

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.

Healy is never able to find an absorbing middle ground in Mike Makowsky’s script, vacillating gratingly between shrill farce and murky thriller that flails its way toward an intended twist-ending that really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

An unpleasant exercise in self-indulgence

Oliver Parker’s Swimming with Men is a lazily formulaic male-bonding comedy.

For a film about one of the fastest guns in the West, the dramatically lightweight Hickok is mighty slow on the draw.

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

Chief Zabu may have been buried for the past three decades, but this tiresomely talky would-be satire is no treasure.

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.

With the exception of a decent train-top chase, Torque is all vroom and no action.

Lopez’s first feature comes across as fragmented and overwrought, with characters and performances that seem to have been egged on by the score’s achingly purposeful piano.

Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder may have worked together in the past (most notably in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”), but Destination Wedding, a painfully indulgent anti-romantic comedy about a pair of miserable misanthropes who bond over their shared contempt of the universe, forces their screen chemistry well beyond any reasonable limits of tolerance.

Gratingly unfunny groaner littered with zero-dimensional, unlikable characters and hackneyed, threadbare comic setups.

Scrape away the soggy one-liners, generic CGI and cheesy musical numbers and what remains has all the briny allure of reheated fry oil.

In the end, you'll either succumb to the silliness of it all and cheer Johnny B. on to his green card or, more likely, be in desperate need of your own exit visa.

Smultaneously silly, ostentatious and terribly boring.

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.

Although the production establishes the requisite lived-in, small town feel, it has also chosen to take its dramatic cue from the seemingly sedated gaze of its lugubrious, aliens-obsessed protagonist, whom Le Gros portrays with a remarkable economy of expended energy.

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.

Perhaps in the unique case of The Healer, it could just be said that although the cause may be noble, the end effect is decidedly less rewarding.

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

Taking aim at American society’s seriously broken criminal justice system, Iroc Daniels’ well-intentioned multi-character drama The System compensates in compassion for what it lacks in a more accomplished delivery.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[An] annoyingly oblique exercise in arty affectation.

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.

Proves to be more prone to malfunction than dysfunction.

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

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.

While the endless introspection may be therapeutic for those involved, it's not so wonderful for the innocent onlooker, who's subjected to the ponderous musings of the emotionally catatonic group while a series of similarly vapid flashbacks offer little in the way of relief.

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 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.

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.

While the fake news angle is admittedly a timely one, the film’s ultimate dubious achievement is its remarkable ability to make “Dude, Where’s My Car?” feel like vintage Kubrick.

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

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.

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

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.

A plucky ensemble fails to elevate Crash Pad, a forced, formulaic revenge comedy about an obnoxious slacker whose new housemate turns out to be the husband of his older ex-mistress.

Two tedious hours later, the sensation of doing time is all too tangible.

This overcooked Thanksgiving turkey succeeds only in managing to take all the fun out of dysfunctional.

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

Infinity Chamber (renamed from the original “Somnio”) may accurately convey the oppressive perpetuity of its title, but all that repetition in the absence of more inspired plotting results in a payoff that feels inescapably contrived.

While those vibrant Vietnamese backdrops make for an enticing tourism pitch, audiences are advised to skip this girls trip.

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.

A plodding comic caper that fails to deliver.

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.

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.

Had the film and its poky lead characters at least managed to pick up the sluggish pace, experiencing Buddymoon wouldn’t have felt like such a slog.

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.

The most appreciative audience for this lame National Lampoon release likely will be guys in tour buses.

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.

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.

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.

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

The film is content to sluggishly go through its preordained paces without bothering to take any compelling detours.

Ultimately coming across more like a bloated, corporate infomercial, Beers of Joy will undoubtedly leave only those who know their ABV (Alcohol by Volume) from their IBU (International Bittering Units) thirsty for more.

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

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.

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.

The bizarro plot threads, and dippy characters fail to connect in any rewarding way, resulting in a largely unfunny film that proves as repetitive and tedious as the 1971 Philip Glass snippet that provides its entire score.

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.

While Mrs. Brady gets to cut loose, the weakly written supporting characters aren't as lucky, given precious little to say and even less to do other than attempt to hold their own in the face of pacing that's slower'n molasses.

Problem is, filmmaker Martin can’t seem to decide whether he’s making a tribute or a send-up, and the overlong, yet under-plotted, results, with awkward close-ups and prolonged, flatly delivered exchanges, take their toll.

The melody may be as old as the Bible, but The Song could have benefited from a fresher voice.

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

[A] misguided hybrid that makes tediously clear from the outset that the conceit just isn’t working.

A gutter ball of a sophomoric, white middle-age male sex farce fantasy that quickly wears out an already tenuous welcome.

Any hope of prestige is dashed by the heavy-handed, cliché-ridden direction of former stuntman Johnny Martin and his star’s detached portrayal of a guy whose mind is permanently elsewhere.

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.

A dysfunctional drama.

At best a kitschy "Catch Me If You Can" and at worst a tedious comedy that grows more tiresome by every self-consciously irreverent minute.

The production is over-stuffed with cutesy split screens, jarring dream sequences and a pushy score by Bright Eyes band members Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis that succeed in dragging the proceedings from merely cloying to increasingly annoying.

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

Despite relocating across the pond to the esteemed British Museum, the creaky Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb fails to capitalize on the comic potential provided by that change of venue.

Embracing the worst of Hollywood excess, director Wuershan crams in enough CG effects to fill a dozen Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay features, but the uninspired payoff quickly grows tiresome.

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.

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.

Writer-director Park Kwang-hyun certainly keeps the visual energy aloft with its frantic genre-splicing, but the over-the-top approach ultimately plays out like several years’ worth of Super Bowl commercials strung out end to end.

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.

What starts out as a screwball “Squid Game” ultimately yields a paltry payoff in the case of “Stanleyville,” a self-consciously quirky social satire that is content to coast on its waning surface weirdness.

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.

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.

As directed by Bill Condon (Sister, Sister) it could be redubbed "Farewell to the Fresh," having been watered down into a standard, run-of-the-mill slasher film, the only remaining hook being the one that its one-handed heavy uses to impale his victims. [17 Mar 1995]

The results might make for some swell production stills, but as a motion picture, Teknolust never really makes it alive out of Hershman's head.

Flaming out from the get-go, Trash Fire represents another soggy batch of Southern Gothic horror-comedy from writer-director Richard Bates Jr. that spews out pitch black smoke with little combustible substance.

Filmed in Nashville several years ago, it isn’t really surprising that this poorly paced production has spent so long on the sidelines.

A limp sex comedy about men behaving badly.

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.

A raunchy, ploddingly unfunny comedy sequel to 2012’s equally crass but disarmingly endearing “Goon.”

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

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.

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

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.

The key to every successful comedy, romantic and otherwise, is having central characters who are likable or at least relatable to some degree. It's a basic concept that's lost on writer-director Max Heller's Born Guilty, a shrill urban relationship satire whose lead protagonists are so insufferably self-centered and whiny, there's little hope for redemption.

Despite Presswell's evident enthusiasm, the tediously talky, dramatically stilted results offer conclusive evidence that mastering suspense requires artistic skill beyond sampling the Master of Suspense.

One could say the mechanical direction leeches the energy out of virtually every sequence, but that would imply there was any there to begin with — and, although the young actors seem likable enough, their characters never credibly come to life.

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.

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.