Mike D'Angelo

A few dreamy interludes aside, the film’s tone is cool, dispassionate, and matter-of-fact. All that’s missing is a reason to give a damn.

Set and shot in a small coal-mining town in West Virginia, this earnest, well-intentioned melodrama creates a number of potentially compelling figures, only to shove them into contrived corners that undermine the film’s sense of authenticity. It’s as if The Sweet Hereafter had been infected by Babel.

Servillo—who previously embodied another former Italian prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, in Sorrentino’s Il Divo—never fails to deliver a memorably offbeat take on an outsize figure. Loro loses a bit of momentum once Berlusconi finally becomes its central figure, but it also gains some much-needed complexity.

Jacobs manages this controlled chaos with a dexterity and brittle artificiality that’s quite distinct from all of his previous films

While what will happen next is never especially interesting, how it will happen, and from what unusual angle, generates enough excitement to keep things intermittently lively.

Pacino has finally started acting again, which is cause for celebration. It’ll be real cause for celebration if/when he also starts picking projects worthier than The Humbling, Danny Collins, and now Manglehorn, all of which see him struggling to find moments of truth within a contrived, borderline ludicrous scenario.

So doggedly ordinary that it constantly teeters on the edge of tedium.

Anyone who paid the slightest attention to the Jayson Blair story when it broke will find nothing new here, though director Samantha Grant does a solid job of laying it all out. What’s disappointing is how little time is afforded to subsidiary aspects that are arguably more significant than Blair’s anomalous transgressions.

Without an improvisational buffer, in which actors feel their way naturally and uncertainly from moment to moment, Shelton’s scenario feels as painfully contrived as it is.

Dom Hemingway is often ghoulishly funny, with Law, who put on weight for the role and plays up his receding hairline, turning in a larger-than-life performance unlike any he’s given before.

What keeps Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! from being irredeemably offensive are Almodóvar’s efforts, however vague and tentative, to undermine his own thesis.

Portman’s emotional connection to the material couldn’t be more obvious, yet the film itself is still largely inert.

This is a more professional-looking production, with a much stronger cast, but it has the same half-assed feel.

This story remains fascinating, but the perspective here feels skewed.

Eventually, both characters and narrative start to feel like an elaborate pretext for what’s really, at heart, a documentary about the various ways that wealthy corporations avoid paying taxes, combined with an earnest public-service message about helping the homeless. Those are admirable goals, but springing them on viewers via an entertaining bait-and-switch risks inspiring disappointment, or even provoking resentment.

First-time director Nate Taylor, who has a background in editing, gives Forgetting The Girl impressive technical polish, but the performances he gets from his young, unknown cast are strictly amateur-hour.

There’s not much to Jackie & Ryan, which is what almost makes it something special.

It’s a thoroughly upbeat paean to the magic (and the hard work) of theater, with not so much of a hint of discord—of mild interest to aficionados and Spacey fans, but almost terminally bland.

It doesn’t help that The Command looks phony right from the outset, being an English-language film involving virtually no actual Russians.

An opportunity to see the Sutherlands onscreen together — with Donald playing Kiefer’s disapproving preacher dad — is the only new thing that Forsaken has to offer. Whether that’s enough will vary according to taste.

Éric Rohmer used to make one of these pictures practically every year, but it’s a tricky genre to pull off, and Sachs (working with regular co-writer Mauricio Zacharias) doesn’t supply the neurotic wit that would make Frankie distinctive rather than just… nice.

Like most self-conscious attempts at a “midnight movie,” Tusk lacks the conviction that would make it anything more than an outré curiosity; it’s essentially a filmed dare, combined with fan service.

All the same, Tickled does shine a much-needed light on that individual’s long history of abusive behavior, which has resulted in only a light slap on the wrist, thanks to inherited wealth and the power it confers.

Bushwick imagines nothing less than the collapse of the United States Of America, with half the country in armed revolt. At a time when that possibility can feel all too frighteningly real, it’s dispiriting to see it employed as little more than an excuse to engineer a live-action Grand Theft Auto.

From the evidence here, Walker’s forte may have been not action but stillness—a knack for embodying ordinary Joes without any fussiness. That we’ll never find out is truly a shame.

Movies don’t necessarily have to tell stories, but if narrative is eschewed in favor of an unvarnished portrait of ordinary life, it’s best to cheat a little and make ordinary life feel extraordinary. Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday refuses to stoop to such measures; for better and for worse — mostly for worse — it sticks to the mundane promise of its title.

If 5 Flights Up is worth seeing, it’s primarily for the pleasure of Keaton and Freeman’s company, plus maybe for some tips on buying and selling an apartment.

Still, it’s dispiriting to see him (Nelson) produce something as turgid and heavy-handed as Anesthesia, which employs a dozen or so cardboard characters as mouthpieces for singularly unilluminating thoughts about the ways in which people struggle to bury their unhappiness.

It’s a mess, but it’s a commendable mess. Bonus points for ambition and nerve.

Enabling and mocking paranoid obsession at the same time might sound incoherent. In this hilariously demented spin on L.A. noir, it’s simply honest.

Passion, De Palma’s latest film, will irritate the faithful for about an hour, then thrill them as the master abruptly springs to life and starts carving up screen space with his usual reckless precision.

In the end, despite its quirky twists on the genre, Wyrmwood is just another zombie flick, riffing on its predecessors and hoping that’ll suffice. It needed more creativity. Or more passion. Both, maybe?

Assassination Nation tells you right up front what to be appalled by, then simply delivers what it promised. Unlike the best examples of either horror or satire, it ultimately comforts and confirms rather than challenges.

Intensive research has killed many a biopic, but Cézanne Et Moi, which recounts the tempestuous lifelong friendship between Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola, labors even more tediously than most to accommodate personal details, whether or not those details serve the narrative.

Anyone who’s seen The Miracle Worker in any form will find Marie’s Story very familiar, and even perhaps a bit rote.

Boys will be boys and wealthy a--holes will be wealthy a--holes in The Riot Club, an alleged cautionary tale that revels in bad behavior for nearly two hours before finally offering up a stern “tsk, tsk, tsk.” Unlike the great gangster and outlaw movies, however, this unpleasant, moralistic film doesn’t succeed in making transgression look cathartically appealing.

Thompson makes Ruskin such a cardboard villain, playing on stereotypes of the cold, stuffy intellectual, that she turns Gray’s story into a tastefully dreary domestic-prison saga.

Directed by Phil Morrison (Junebug) from a lackluster script by Melissa James Gibson, All Is Bright coasts entirely on the formidable talent of its cast, though Giamatti merely offers another variation on the irascible persona he’s been cultivating since Sideways, while Rudd is ultimately defeated by his character’s shapelessness.

Nothing even remotely wild touches this generic indie movie, which embraces every imaginable cliché in depicting the emotional travails of a sensitive kid in mourning. There isn’t a wolf in it, nor a fox, nor a hog, nor much of anything else. Maybe a chicken.

Almereyda’s sweeping cuts take material that was already problematic (though this technically isn’t one of Shakespeare's “problem plays”) and render it almost nonsensical.

What We Did On Our Holiday sets up a sturdy comic scenario and then proceeds to head in another direction altogether—one that’s nearly impossible to anticipate, making the film much more of a goofy delight than would have seemed likely at the outset.

At its core, this is one of the most incisive, penetrating, and empathetic films ever made about what it truly means to love another person, audaciously disguised as salacious midnight-movie fare. No better picture is likely to surface all year.

A credulity-straining duet between two fine actors.

Sunset, Nemes’ second feature, not only confirms his talent but demonstrates that his style works beautifully even when transferred to perhaps the least horrifying milieu imaginable.

Because Watts is a gifted actor, Penguin Bloom does sometimes convey paraplegia’s emotional trials.

LaBute has always been fond of the last-second rug-pull that re-contextualizes everything, but Some Velvet Morning’s climactic revelation is distinct from those of his previous films in a specific, intriguing way, one that trades brutality for something more poignant. If only the journey to that destination were a bit more flavorful.

What keeps Ghostland from flatlining is Sono’s gift for delirious spectacle, along with the movie’s tacit acknowledgment that it’s utterly ridiculous.

Within the limitation of their roles, all the actors do solid work... but the movie’s tone is doggedly, almost noxiously sincere, verging on downright moist.

It’s a rote hatchet job, rehashing information that virtually everyone already knows, but at least it facilitates one of the year’s oddest and gutsiest performances.

The movie occasionally sputters to life thanks to the energetic contributions of various supporting players, including The Daily Show’s Jason Jones as an overly aggressive Interpol agent, and a little-known actor named Dax Ravina as a thug with an impressive knowledge of Georges Seurat.

Here, Sutton is working with actual characters, played by professional actors, and his instinct is to flatten them as much as possible.

Broken may someday be remembered only as a minor footnote in Norris’ career, but it’s already a career worth following.

Thankfully, Flag Day isn’t another disaster, though neither is it anywhere near the vicinity of Penn’s best work.

Mostly, though, this very empathetic project suffers from an inability to offer anything beyond what one would expect from its synopsis.

As an impression of a Terrence Malick film, The Better Angels is technically faultless, unimprovable. All that’s missing is the soul.

Kitano’s surreal autobiographical phase was maddening, but it’s depressing to see him stoop to giving audiences what he thinks they really want.

All in all, The Pretty One is too lightweight to justify such a disturbing act of reinvention.

Every so often, Egoyan takes another stab at the offbeat, achronological, weirdly intimate mode in which he originally specialized, but the spark never quite fully ignites. Guest Of Honour, his latest effort, is decidedly that sort of low-wattage Egoyan classic, serving up familiar preoccupations and structural curlicues—minus any inspiration.

Rigor Mortis can’t fully work for a Western audience, but it does at least provide a fascinating glimpse of a strange genre that never quite crossed over.

A wholly fictional tale, and while it has a few lovely, tender moments, there’s a definite feeling of “been there, drawn that.”

In The Name Of… might have worked moderately well as a character study, if not for the film’s insistence on treating other priests as mustache-twirling villains.

It’s a movie to be mildly enjoyed and then left behind — apropos, given the subject matter.

Dialogue is witless (though at least there are no pop-culture references), and the kids are all generic types with pre-packaged personalities.

Apparently struggling to please two very different audiences at once, Horovitz seems to have little control over the material, ultimately wrapping things up with a neat little bow that makes a mockery of the preceding ugliness.

Egoyan will not be getting an Oscar nomination for this picture. But after a long creative slump, he may have found a new calling.

What’s certain is that a stronger, more searching exploration of this scenario—one not so starkly conceived in terms of victims and villains—would have gone a long way toward alleviating potential misgivings. Wolf is so thin that one can’t help but look right through it.

Only one scene — the very one that Pegg shows up in — demonstrates any real creativity, and even that mostly amounts to a couple of goofy dudes attempting to intimidate each other with terrible dance moves.

It doesn’t help that Boulevard is a movie that feels at least a decade past its sell-by date, if not two.

47 Meters Down never remotely approaches greatness, but for an hour or so, its unfussy, workmanlike portrait of ordinary people in crisis (plus killer sharks) gets the job done.

A lump in the throat inspired by real-life heroism is all that this dour, monotonous drama has to offer. Indeed, it’s easy to guess that the story is fact-based—it’s far too blah to have been invented from scratch.

Wasikowska gives a solid, emotionally precise performance, ably supported by the men around her (especially Ifans, who relishes Monsieur Lheureux’s unctuous cajolery), and the result is intelligent and eminently watchable.

Unfortunately, Edgerton the writer creates a situation so thorny that he can’t find a way out of it.

As movies expressly courting the faith-based audience go, Paul, Apostle Of Christ acquits itself reasonably well from moment to moment, avoiding the howlers that plague such Pure Flix titles as "Samson" and "God’s Not Dead."

The film fictionalizes his life story so aggressively that it’s no less (or more) entertaining than the average rom-com.

Superficiality reigns here. Arguably, that should dominate a movie about a fashion designer. But fashion shows run 10-20 minutes, not two and a half hours.

This is a much drier, more reserved affair, though it can be quite powerful on the rare occasions when it allows raw emotion to make its way to the surface.

It’s hard to build a story entirely on grace notes, but Lafleur comes close.

Hagiography doesn’t magically becomes less tedious simply because its subject made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, however, and this stolid, mournful drama does little more than solicit the viewer’s respect and admiration for Pitsenbarger, whose entire life gets reduced to a single act of uncomplicated nobility.

What keeps 21 Years from feeling roughly that long, in addition to the clips (fun fact: Before Sunset’s ending can inspire tears even when shown out of context, with talking heads chattering over the dialogue), is the occasional offbeat moment during interviews.

Three cheers, then, for Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan, whose joint first effort, For The Plasma, ranks among the year’s most singular movies, even as it also ranks among the year’s most painful movies to endure.

Given the wealth of possibilities, this doc’s superficial, exceedingly polite approach is a big disappointment.

At best, the film is a Rorschach testimonial, lionizing its subject while offering enough objectivity to allow non-believers to opt out. At worst, it’s a very long infomercial.

But Zwick and Fletcher, in their eagerness to make an argument against the death penalty, needlessly stack the deck.

Whether it’s worth seeing a film solely for one amazing performance is a personal judgment call; for those who take that particular leap once in a while, though, here’s a worthy candidate.

Because the actors are uniformly strong, though, and because the neighborhood itself provides such a credible context, Slattery manages to create the impression of an immense backstory that informs every interaction, making any sketchiness seem like naturalism rather than a failure of imagination.

What he discovers is powerfully moving, but every step of his journey — and of the copious flashbacks that fill in various blanks — tests the viewer’s patience. It’s like eating an entire box of stale cereal to get to the prize.

It’s an equally fiery, magnetic star turn, but being trapped in a stolid, unimaginative, and simplistic example of the genre — a typical historical biopic, in other words — saps a surprising amount of its strength.

The gambit doesn’t really work — fans of "The Notebook" and people who own "Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama" will both come away disappointed — but it’s hard not to respect Krzykowski’s attempt to do something different.

Almost paralyzingly dull until its last few minutes.

There’s no mystery here, no narrator wrestling with the limits of his own generosity and tolerance. Just a lot of stunning scenery and exemplary rectitude.

White Bird In A Blizzard, is another literary adaptation, gunning for respectability. It’s the most mainstream and accessible picture he’s (Araki) ever made, but this time his pendulum swung a bit too far in that direction.

The film struggles in vain to balance petty infidelities and other personal crises with displacement, famine, and death.

As vicarious, you-are-there re-creations of historical events go, it’s creditably workmanlike; whether that’s the best use of the dream factory is another matter.

That sense of mystery definitely keeps Partisan intriguing, though it also creates expectations that Kleiman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sarah Cyngler, isn’t especially interested in fulfilling.

That Mazer succeeds in playing this for laughs — however sporadic — rather than as a kitchen-sink downer is an achievement in itself.

There’s something icky about a life-threatening coma that serves no function except to engineer a meet-cute.

War On Everyone’s saving grace is its freewheeling refusal to commit to any particular tone, including the rancid one that generally dominates.

A lot of the story’s emotional shifts seem designed expressly to prolong the narrative, which is pretty darn skimpy.

Enjoy the wordplay in the title, because that’s as witty as the horror comedy Life After Beth ever gets.

Alas, the film, which had at worst seemed unfocused (not a cardinal sin for a comedy), takes a bizarrely reactionary turn in the homestretch, undermining all of the goodwill Hahn had accumulated up to that point and turning her character into detestable yuppie scum.

Sincerity and good intentions are all it has going for it, alas, and the result is the cinematic equivalent of a plate full of spinach.

If only this imaginative environment were populated with a single compelling character or stimulating idea, rather than serving as busy distraction from the narrative tedium.

Any rooting interest in the central lovers evaporates, as both seem so terminally stupid that the thought of them potentially having children together is frightening. Maybe their divorce proceedings will be hilarious.

What’s left in the absence of McCarthy’s prose is a sincere but fundamentally pointless ode to a madman, which does little more than invite viewers to gawk at the unspeakable.

It’s hard to be persuasive, though, when your protagonist comes across as a collection of quirky tics rather than a credible human being.

Spelling everything out is never recommended, but for a horror movie, in particular, it’s death.

Rush has a lot of fun with Oldman’s gradual thaw, and the questions the movie raises about authenticity and deception, while not remotely in the same heady league as those in "Certified Copy," nonetheless allow it to conclude on a satisfyingly ambiguous note.

Nobody’s given the opportunity to do much more than brood prettily and occasionally shout carpe diembromides into the pounding surf.

As writer-director Josh Boone introduces these characters, he superimposes words on the screen to suggest how they channel their thoughts and conversations into their work. But that’s the extent of the film’s interest in writing, which serves strictly as a “classy” backdrop for a series of painfully contrived amorous meltdowns among a family who might as well run a dry-cleaning business.

Apart from the novelty of seeing Mortensen act in Spanish, there’s virtually nothing of interest, and even he does little more than confirm that a performance can be monosyllabic in any language.

Writer-director Eran Creevy demonstrates little facility for kineticism — one of the movie’s best scenes gets flat-out ruined when he abruptly shifts to hackneyed slo-mo — and his cynical plot gets so convoluted that one of the bad guys has to break it down for the audience in a climactic monologue-at-gunpoint.

Unfortunately, Felt’s actions, while historically important, don’t exactly make for riveting drama, especially compared to a classic about two dogged reporters. Nor does the film succeed in making Felt himself particularly interesting, except perhaps as a proxy—purely by coincidence, one assumes, given any movie’s lengthy gestation period—for another, recently terminated FBI honcho.

Mauriac’s portrait of a society obsessed with family honor and the appearance of propriety at all costs comes through strongly, but that can’t entirely compensate for a character study with a hard-working vacuum at its center. Like Keanu Reeves, Tautou requires a perfect fit; when she tries to stretch, she gets stranded.

Unfortunately, this promising material turns out to be merely the setup for a thoroughly generic action flick in which a gang of thieves without much honor attempt to pull off one last big heist. In the long, dispiriting slide to mediocrity thereafter, McGregor largely relapses into cute-rascal mode.

Here’s the trouble: Devil’s Pass isn’t actually about the Dyatlov Pass Incident. It’s about five blandly good-looking American kids who decide to make a documentary about the Dyatlov Pass Incident but subsequently disappear in the same area, leaving behind — sigh — their camera equipment.

October Gale plays like an adaptation of a quick outline for a romantic thriller, rushed into production before anyone got around to actually writing the screenplay and fleshing things out.

The movie seems regressively punitive, to the point where it arguably qualifies as slut-shaming.

The title’s parenthetical plural sums up the problem with Some Girl(s): Five slow-cook dialogues that reveal the nice-guy protagonist as a super-tool is four too many.

It’s a slow-motion horror movie founded on utter nonsense.

Title notwithstanding, Somewhere Slow doesn’t dawdle and luxuriate; everything is presented right up front, then underlined three or four times for good measure.

The story’s overall trajectory is familiar, and sometimes clichéd, but it still has the power to surprise and startle from moment to moment, which is what really counts.

Once Mary makes the difficult decision to leave her family (rejecting the arranged marriage they’d planned for her) and follow Jesus (or “the rabbi,” as everyone mostly calls him, in a nicely accurate touch), she’s unfailingly loyal, understanding, compassionate, and wise. In a word, she’s boring. At least Jesus gets to be plagued by fear and doubt.

Being Charlie is Rob Reiner’s best film in at least two decades — admittedly a low bar to clear, given the competition (which includes such forgotten piffle as Alex & Emma and Rumor Has It…), but even a modest Meathead comeback is more than welcome.

Caranfil, who’s made several previous features in Romanian, struggles throughout to find the right tone, mostly in vain. There’s no way to know whether he was hampered by the need to go international, but the film’s general lack of authenticity certainly doesn’t do it any favors.

Young Ones looks promising in the early going, when it’s relying on Shannon’s customary intensity and building its harsh, arid world. (Principal photography took place in South Africa.) Shannon quickly disappears, though, and that’s when the dreary plot kicks in.

Inch’Allah tries hard, and serves up a few moments of compelling specificity, but for the most part, it has little to offer beyond good intentions. For a subject this daunting and knotty, that isn’t nearly enough.

Anyone merely hoping for more gravity-defying fight sequences will be reasonably satisfied by Sword Of Destiny, which chugs along amiably enough and never goes very long without a skirmish of some sort.

First-time director Robin Pront serves up plenty of brooding atmosphere, but the screenplay, adapted from a stage play by Pront and Jeroen Perceval (who also plays the sensible Harvey Keitel role), never succeeds in eluding genre cliché.

Visually, nothing’s changed, with Auteuil still framing his actors (and himself) in purely functional medium shots, occasionally punctuated by postcard-pretty views of Marseilles’ piers. Dramatically, however, Fanny is a bit meatier.

A Teacher feels a bit like watching some fool cross a busy freeway on foot over and over again for an hour and change. There’s little to do but await the inevitable splat.

Mumford and O’Leary struggle to make sense of their characters, but are stymied by a script that regards them primarily as mouthpieces for talking points that, again, aren’t even the points anyone’s using when talking about drone warfare.

The result is predictably, frustratingly bloated and meandering, even as the short’s charms remain largely intact.

The Little Death never feels remotely of a piece, and is likely to find its proper audience months from now when the individual sketches show up on YouTube.

Unlocked starts off sturdily and then wobbles more and more as the plot twists multiply.

Most great-author biopics are just faintly dull and unnecessary. Rebel In The Rye, true to its ridiculous title, is proudly, even aggressively hackneyed.

Even had it premiered at, say, London’s Frightfest, The Last Day On Mars would be a disappointment. What it was doing at Cannes is a mystery.

Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (The Fluffer, Quinceañera) do their best to avoid sensationalism, but age difference and statutory rape are the only factors that make the story remotely interesting.

Sommers’ typically hyperactive touch robs the material of most of its charm, placing way too much emphasis on Koontz’s goofy plot, and making Odd a bland paranormal cousin to Guy Ritchie’s ass-kicking Sherlock Holmes.

Marsan does his best to convey his character’s essential decency, but he’s hamstrung by Pasolini’s insistence on underscoring the emptiness of John’s existence at every opportunity.

Like text that’s been translated into another language and then re-translated back by someone else, Uncharted bears a clunky resemblance to any number of classic action-adventure movies.

Neither Hank nor Asha ever says or does anything that suggests they’re vital, complex individuals, and even their mutual interest in the arts is utterly generic, devoid of any intellectual exchange or even real curiosity. People this dull are available all over YouTube, for free. It’s unclear, however, why strangers would bother watching.

Ultimately, Digging Up The Marrow is more of an affectionate comedy than a horror movie, despite a third act that features some tense moments and hostile critters.

Why the murderer feels compelled to don a 3-D printed mask of each victim’s own face isn’t entirely clear—nothing about, say, recording a repugnant podcast episode merits symbolic self-inflicted harm—but, hey, it’s a novel gimmick.

The film’s monsters are so unconvincing that director Marvin Kren has no choice but to hide them as much as possible via rapid-fire editing and violent shaky-cam, relying on his actors to fill in the gaps with hysterical screaming.

Seeing two idiosyncratic actors like Tipton and Teller wasted on such generic material is dispiriting. Just a little acknowledgement of the real world, especially vis-à-vis online hookups, would have been welcome.

Mackie’s performance, for better and worse, is anything but robotic. He plays more or less the same charismatic wiseacre he usually does, interpreting Leo as a machine that’s every bit as uniquely expressive as is any human being. That injects some welcome levity into what’s generally a flat, dour adventure, directed by Sweden’s Mikael Håfström with little of the old-school verve that he brought to Escape Plan.

The movie version plays exactly like every other rehab-facility melodrama ever made. Even the stuff that Frey invented seems overly familiar, borrowed from sources ranging from "28 Days" to (somewhat improbably — people in recovery aren’t necessarily allowed dental anesthetic, it turns out) "Marathon Man."

About Alex benefits from a uniformly strong cast that does its best to find moments of truth in the banal, derivative scenario they’ve been handed.

Each scene in Off Label, viewed in isolation, seems perfectly fine, even fairly interesting. It’s how all of those scenes fit together—or, rather, how they absolutely don’t—that creates the overall sense of grotesque deformity.

Even if Mandy Lane had been released in a timely fashion, it’s unlikely that it would have found much of an audience. For all its good intentions, it’s ultimately too half-assed and lethargic to work as a conventional horror film, and not nearly thoughtful or incisive enough to subsist on thwarted expectations alone.

12 Mighty Orphans tells the true story of a Depression-era high school football team improbably formed at a Texas orphanage, but the screenplay may as well have been invented from whole cloth, given its relentlessly formulaic nature.

Numerous potentially interesting ideas orbit one another in Planetarium, but none boasts sufficient gravity to merit a landing, it seems.

On the plus side, Collins (Mirror Mirror, The Blind Side) and Claflin (Finnick Odair in the Hunger Games franchise) are both appealing enough, even if their chemistry makes Rosie and Alex’s we’re-just-pals stance appear even more ludicrous than intended.

This Is Where I Leave You struggles in vain to meld broad, farcical comedy with low-key, contemplative drama. It lurches so violently between its twin modes, in fact, that it’s a wonder the actors are able to remain standing upright.

Jackpot feels more like Guy Ritchie than the Coen brothers. It revels in moronic violence, unleavened by playfulness or wit.

Le Chef involves a showdown between traditional French cuisine and molecular gastronomy, but the film very much serves as the cinematic equivalent of fast food, offering generic, processed menu items that are practically pre-digested.

A compelling story might have succeeded in overcoming those cosmetic distractions, but Bettany only offers an overwrought romance.

Once Sackville-West gets bored with Woolf and starts seeing another woman, garden-variety jealousy takes over. Not quite as fascinating as the story of a man who inexplicably metamorphoses into a woman and doesn’t age for 300 years.

Much of the book’s emotional context appears to have been lost in translation.

What makes Miss Meadows egregiously awful is that it has no perspective whatsoever on vigilante justice. As an ostensible work of satire, it lacks bite, never truly questioning or complicating its heroine’s actions; the film isn’t even outrageous enough to be appalling (which paradoxically makes it appalling).

Uncaged improves on the first film only with its ending: This one boasts a modestly effective twist rather than a truly moronic one. Encouraging, but not nearly enough to justify a third trip down this 47-meter well.

Cruz gets little to do in general apart from wear a succession of gaudy ’80s outfits, while Bardem, who gained weight for the role (reportedly aided by prostheses), acts primarily with his massive, frequently exposed gut. Both actors speak throughout in heavily accented English rather than Spanish, a choice that exemplifies Loving Pablo’s indifference to authenticity.

24 Exposures is a transparent auto-critique (or self-justification, depending on how you look at it) in the form of a rather vague thriller, and doesn’t work particularly well in either mode.

Lazer Team is carried along by the sheer enthusiasm of its main quartet....It’s just too bad that there’s less wit in the dialogue than there is in the Barenaked Ladies’ closing-credits song.

Even at its dumbest, The Ice Road holds your attention; a climactic fight/chase scene even acknowledges that it’s hard to look badass on a slippery surface.

Literalizing "Strangers On A Train’s" gay subtext might theoretically have been interesting, but Breaking The Girls’ LGBT angle, like everything else about it, seems pandering rather than heartfelt — a “contemporary rethinking” of material that was once sturdy enough not to require a pseudo-sleazy hard sell.

This comparatively low-budget effort represents a marked improvement from Devlin’s debut theatrical feature, Geostorm, which was among last year’s very worst films. He’s graduated from painful tedium to an acceptable means of killing two hours. One step at a time.

Good People might have been better titled "Dumb People", or at least "People Who Have Never Seen A Movie In Their Entire Lives."

Most of Echoes Of War amounts to Hints Of Aggression, with the film struggling to find enough incident to reach feature length.

The film’s more or less a mashup of Emmerich’s two wheelhouses: alien contact (Stargate, Independence Day) and cataclysmic disasters (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), with some Armageddon thrown in for good measure. You will actually hear your brain cells commit seppuku as you watch it.

Functions exactly like a sketch movie, using its meager, essentially irrelevant plot as a clothesline upon which to string a series of self-contained bits. At least half of the bits are pretty damn funny, though, and that’s arguably all that matters.

With a radically different tone and less naturalistic performances, The Truth About Emanuel might conceivably have worked. Gregorini didn’t commit to the synthetic; paradoxically, that’s what makes the film feel false.

Though it runs a mere 76 minutes, it can’t maintain its muddled thesis for even that brief period.

The whole thing comes across as a movie star’s anti-vanity project, just an opportunity for Bullock to demonstrate her ostensible range. Okay, she can be hard and stoic and affectless. Noted.

A deadly combination of enfeebled comedy and maudlin melodrama.

In the end, there just isn’t much of a movie here; Almost Human clocks in at a mere 76 minutes, and that includes what may well be the slowest end-credits crawl in cinema history.

Cotillard tries hard to fashion a credible human being from this collection of shallow adolescent impulses, but the movie infantilizes Gabrielle at every turn.

The main problem with Outlaws And Angels, though, is that it lacks either a sense of authenticity or a streak of playfulness to give shape to its relentlessly ugly worldview.

The whole movie is encased in air quotes, and its sole purpose, apart from that winking, is to argue that even artsy-fartsy grumps secretly identify with Hollywood wish-fulfillment. Would Guerschuny the film critic have liked The Film Critic? If so, he’s a soft touch.

For all the scary refrigeration on view, this is a concept that’s long since gone stale.

Don’t get too excited: Not only is there nothing especially dirty about Dirty Weekend, the latest and lamest film by erstwhile provocateur Neil LaBute, but the movie doesn’t even occupy an entire weekend.

Part of what made Edgar Wright’s "The World’s End" so refreshing was the way that it feinted at being a certain tired sort of movie before suddenly making a wild leap in another direction. Growing Up And Other Lies, is exactly the mediocre movie that The World’s End was pretending to be.

Intruders ultimately comes across like basic-cable schlock (or is it Netflix schlock now?), slightly redeemed by the germ of a great idea, even if said idea never truly germinates.

Both Rockwell and Clement are back for the latest Hess production, Don Verdean, which can’t even work up enough comic energy to be considered bad.

Frequently charming. Marion-Rivard, who won Canada’s equivalent of the Best Actress Oscar earlier this year (the film itself won Best Picture), gives a strong, sophisticated performance, even as she’s disarmingly open in a way that would be almost impossible for an actor without Williams syndrome to fake.

As contemporary romantic comedies go, it’s by no means an embarrassment, ranging from politely bland at its worst to very nearly inspired at its best. It could have been so much more, though, had its makers been prepared to grapple with the genuinely thorny, surprisingly incisive idea at the movie’s center.

While many of the individual storylines are ludicrously melodramatic, building toward emotional meltdowns (and one suicide attempt), it’s the cumulative fear and loathing of everything digital that crosses the line into absurdity.

There’s absolutely nothing new or innovative to be found here, but sometimes it can be almost comforting to watch a movie do an unironic tour of the classics.

Given the level of sophistication at which the movie operates, they might as well have called it Motherlover, after the Lonely Island video in which Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake sing about the exact same taboo foursome. The only significant difference is that the comedy in “Motherlover” is fully intentional.

This feels more like porn than any solo feature Clark has ever made, in part because his non-pro cast is unusually wooden even by his standards.

Automata approximates the look and feel of idea-driven science fiction, but it doesn’t have any actual ideas. That future looks bleak.

Apparently unsure whether to go with the lazy idea of a disastrous beauty pageant or the equally lazy idea of a zany road trip, Raphael and Wilson lazily combine the two.

As Walter White, Cranston proved he possesses more menacing charisma than anyone would have previously imagined, but that doesn’t mean he can fill a complete vacuum with his penetrating stare.

Beautiful people living in beautiful houses surrounded by stunningly beautiful Canadian landscapes dominate the aptly titled An Eye For Beauty, which unfortunately also demands a stomach for tedium.

Stranded isn’t a for-the-ages howler—just a terminally stupid, monotonously unimaginative rehash of umpteen space-horror classics.

Unfortunately, Nettelbeck also strives to make Last Love a genuinely complex drama rooted in recognizable human behavior, and fails utterly in that effort.

The first words spoken in Victor Frankenstein are “You know the story,” and anyone who simply mutters “Yep,” gets up, and heads back to the box office for a refund will be well ahead of the game.

Early in The Hot Flashes, Brooke Shields is seen reading Menopause For Dummies, and it doesn’t take long to realize that’s precisely what you’re watching.

There’s no reason whatsoever to watch the entire thing; just skip to the end, which features a series of bone-crunching fight sequences that suggest Lee was just getting warmed up when he left.

Let’s place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the moronic premise. Groundhog Day but he’s naked? Why?

Lumpy is the nickname of a significant character (the eponymous best man, in fact), but it’s also a fair description of the movie itself: an earnest-bordering-on-sappy serving of dramatic oatmeal with ungainly chunks of broad comedy thrown in here and there.

What’s most frustrating about The Captive is that it includes all the elements for a potentially great Egoyan movie—they’re just buried in the mountain of schlock.

Most of the pleasure in Green Dragons comes simply from the opportunity to watch some underused actors dig into meatier parts than they’re usually offered.

Awake becomes the saga of a mom’s redemption. Rodriguez works hard to make this personal angle compelling, exhibiting mama-bear ferocity, but the film’s ultra-bleak premise doesn’t cooperate.

Movies about female friendship are rare, so it’s dispiriting when one comes along, then hauls out the same tired plot in which both women fall for the same guy. Very Good Girls can’t even blame rampant film-industry sexism, as it was written and directed by Naomi Foner, making her directorial debut after many years as a screenwriter.

Of all the possible ways Diablo Cody’s directorial debut might fail, perhaps the least likely was that it would be innocuous enough to potentially bore the audience into a stupor.

While Blash intends The Wait to be a study in stasis, depicting emotional paralysis in various forms, the thin, amorphous nature of both this film and Lying suggest that he simply doesn’t have much to offer apart from uncontextualized moodiness.

This film adaptation, however, never succeeds in settling on a tone at all, veering ineptly from flippant goofiness to maudlin sentiment and back again.

Nearly every superficial element of the movie is badly misconceived; it was doomed before the first scene was shot.

There’s a pleasing kernel of genuine warmth glowing at the heart of this movie, but it’s been heavily insulated—almost buried—by juvenile silliness. One could argue that this merely echoes the family dynamic, but your tolerance for buffoonery will still need to be quite high.

Aggressively derivative though The Longest Week is, however, it’s clearly the work not of a lazy thief, but of a raw talent who’s still struggling to find his own voice. In the meantime, his impressions are pretty darn impressive.

Watching Bill Murray go through the same scenario over and over is one thing. Experiencing the same feeble dick jokes over and over is another.

It’s hard to tell who’s who; it doesn’t really matter, because they’re all equally bland, and the threat these ciphers face is almost certainly nonexistent. It’s just about the perfect formula for tedium.

While it’s generally above-average for this sorry genre, it’s so derivative, in both style and narrative, that there’s still an overwhelming sense of plodding inevitability to the whole affair.

Duhamel and Fogler play off each other nicely in the early going... The arguments and contrasting worldviews are banal, but the relationship feels genuine.

Bell is too inherently sympathetic to turn Leigh into a credibly flawed protagonist, and first-time writer-director Liz W. Garcia seems more interested in indulging the fantasy of the jailbait fling than in seriously interrogating her heroine’s psyche.

Had this moronic part been given to almost anybody else — including folks as talented as, say, Robin Williams or Jim Carrey — the result would very likely have been an unmitigated disaster. Greenwood, however, commits to it wholeheartedly, much the way that Naomi Watts’ struggling actress character treated her hackneyed soap-opera dialogue in Mulholland Drive.

This sort of global co-production is becoming more and more common, but it’s rarely quite so calculated; you can practically see the scale being used to ensure that each location receives equal narrative weight, as characters take actions that make sense only according to that metric.

The real problem with Open Grave is that screenwriters Eddie and Chris Borey have no game plan for getting from their mysterious premise to their big reveal, which isn’t all that shocking or unexpected anyway.

It can’t be faulted for its noble intentions. Like many an after-school special, however, it can be faulted in virtually every other department, including stilted performances, turgid dialogue, flat direction, and a general ignorance regarding human nature.

The film isn’t remotely funny or insightful enough to justify spending an hour and a half in such intensely disagreeable company.

This isn’t a terrible film, by any means. It’s a completely forgettable film, which is arguably worse—especially for Lautner, who at this point is on the verge of vanishing down the memory hole with it.

First-time director Justin Barber, who cowrote the screenplay with T.S. Nowlin, builds his narrative around the Phoenix Lights, but sticks so close to formula that they might as well be called the Blair Lights.

One can make a creepy demonic horror movie, or one can make a sorrowful exposé about a real-world phenomenon that destroyed multiple families, but it’s exceedingly difficult to make both at the same time.

One hires Cage for a generic timewaster like this in the hope that he’ll make it at least a little more interesting on screen than it was on paper, by virtue of some crazed facial expressions and off-the-wall line readings, but he evidently wasn’t in the experimenting mood.

It’s bracing to see Basinger take on something this dark, even if the darkness is empty.

The movie’s ludicrous narrative continually forces its characters to behave like cretins, and even when Leven’s dialogue is tolerable, it can barely be heard over Craig Richey’s aggressively sprightly score.

Nicolas Cage at least manages to bring the occasional jolt of electricity to disposable genre tripe like this. Travolta is practically comatose.

It’s arguable that the jocks and cheerleaders are this movie’s true heroes, without whom those pathetic dorks would never be able to find one another.

So terminally bland is Brightest Star’s protagonist (played by Chris Lowell) that screenwriters Maggie Kiley (who also directed) and Matthew Mullen couldn’t be tasked to provide him with a name — the closing credits refer to him simply as The Boy.

Very loosely inspired by Chopra’s 1989 feature "Parinda," this wan crime drama plays like the equivalent of a Hindi novel that’s been run through Google Translate. Everything feels rudimentary and slightly awkward, though it’s possible to discern how the material might once have been powerful.

Hit By Lightning might have worked as black comedy, but Blitt clearly lacks any instinct for genuine darkness.

The only thing worse than useless trash is useless trash with delusions of grandeur.

With a cast this talented...Get A Job is never painful to endure, but neither does it ever rise above lazy mediocrity.

The film’s whimsical specificity, random though it frequently seems, is the main thing it has going for it.

Punk may not be dead, but this picture is D.O.A.

Asano and the rest of the Japanese cast provide baseline credibility, but they can’t generate excitement from this morass of clichés.

Kill Me Three Times is reasonably absorbing while it’s in progress, if only because it succeeds in inspiring curiosity about where it’s headed, but the finale is such a blood-soaked shrugfest that it retroactively makes everything that preceded it feel like a waste of time.

The film is an empty shell, reducing a complex lament to a shallow portrait of wealthy hedonists behaving badly.

Viewers who enjoy a big rug-pull will want to keep an eye out for this one, as it essentially combines the surprise endings of several notable films into one all-encompassing “Gotcha!”

Jamesy Boy has its heart in the right place, and first-time director Trevor White shows some skill with actors, but the film lacks a compelling reason to exist, except perhaps as a public-service announcement.

After all the ponderous heavy breathing, it has nothing more profound to say than “artists should not neglect their families in pursuit of excellence.” Which might not ring so false if Bentley didn’t constantly look on the brink of devouring his family alive.

Doesn’t even remotely qualify as flavorful. Among other demerits, this is the rare foodie movie that doesn’t seem to care much about food.

In any case, what remains of John F. Donovan is a barely coherent mess, and so eager for your approval that it’s hard to feel anything but sorry for it.

All of the actors, including Franco, do excellent work, given the limitations imposed upon them by a scenario that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Were he a struggling up-and-comer rather than a movie star, the perception of an ambitious misfire like this one would probably be quite different. It’s not a good movie, but it deserves better than mockery.

The Bag Man plays like a film from the years right after "Pulp Fiction," when the indie market was suddenly flooded with quips, guns, and hollow affectation.

Rage actually has something to say about the futility of vengeance, though that doesn’t become apparent until a climactic revelation re-contextualizes everything. Unfortunately, getting to that sorrowful ending is a real slog.

Morse, at least, may get better chances to strut his stuff in future. For Monteith, this mediocre last act will have to do.

Nina has been so thoroughly misconceived, on virtually every level, that the only less interesting portrait imaginable would be one that takes place entirely when Nina Simone was in utero.

Flatliners 2017 is the same dumb movie as Flatliners 1990, minus most of the surface charisma.

Officer Downe isn’t overly concerned about viewers exercising many brain cells.

The film never seems hectoring or preachy. Unfortunately, it never seems funny either, coming across like a sanitized remake of some raunchier laughfest.

Dupieux might have done better to construct an entire movie around his best idea.

A thriller that takes a long time to get even remotely thrilling.

Scorsese goes to the trouble of making his antiheroes charismatic and exciting. Gotti, by contrast, inadvertently argues that John Gotti and his namesake son are too dull to be evil. It’s DrabFellas.

Director Victor Salva tries very hard to make this seem creepy, but there’s just nothing about chatting with central heating that’s gonna prompt gooseflesh.

Come third-act time, however, Enter The Dangerous Mind goes straight into the toilet, transforming into Jim: Portrait Of A Schizophrenic Serial Killer.

Katherine Heigl has exactly one funny moment in the dire black comedy Home Sweet Hell, which is still one more than anybody else has.

It’s never fully clear whether Daisy is a severely damaged woman with the mental development and social skills of a 10-year-old, or just a wide-eyed, unconventional waif in need of some tender loving care. Barefoot vacillates between the two almost at random, depending upon the needs of its hackneyed screenplay at any given moment.

Butler sleepwalks through his thinly written role, and the ostensible tension between the two brothers, flaring up whenever the energy starts to sag, never feels like anything but a bald contrivance.

Ghost Team One may be the scariest picture this Halloween season, demonstrating that material so blatantly offensive can still be acquired by a major studio, and released mostly without comment.

Accidental Love isn’t very good—and might never have been very good, judging from the general air of desperation—but much of it is identifiably Russell’s work, and its scattered best moments recall Huckabees’ inspired loopiness.

Director and cowriter André Øvredal (Trollhunter, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe) gets credit here for “original story,” but every single element has been borrowed, and precious little else of note about Mortal remains.

A dismal erotic thriller that was originally called "Boot Tracks."

But that’s nothing compared to the sustained tone-deaf fiasco that is Penn’s latest feature, The Last Face — a movie so monumentally miscalculated, right from its opening explanatory text, that the audience at Cannes, where it (inexplicably) premiered in Competition last year, started laughing at it within the first 30 seconds. All one can really do is gape in wonder and puzzlement.

If Persecuted wasn’t such a dire thriller, its sweaty fear of pluralism (Obama’s “We are no longer a Christian nation” speech gets handed to Davison’s evil senator here) might at least be amusing.

Underdogs isn’t painful to sit through—the silver lining to well-worn clichés is their comforting coziness—but its antipathy to risk, even if that only meant straying momentarily from the path of least resistance, is more dispiriting than outright awfulness would be.

At its best, Losing Ground suggests a wobbly filmmaker who was robbed of the chance to steady herself. At its worst, it’s still a fascinating time capsule.