Neil Genzlinger

Comes close to being that rare film that is perfectly bad -- i.e., that has not a shred of social, entertainment or even curiosity value. But it misses out on this dubious honor by having one tiny redeeming attribute: it answers the question "Whatever happened to Edgar Stiles?"

The sci-fi premise that drives the thriller Reversion is probably close enough to being a reality that the movie should raise goose bumps. Instead it’s uninvolving, thanks to uninspired acting and a script that doesn’t take the central idea very far.

If you can choke down the implausible notion that the doughy Kevin James would last more than five seconds in a mixed martial arts ring, Here Comes the Boom is a moderately enjoyable, nontaxing sort of comedy.

Though the young actors...are appealing enough, you keep waiting for a boatful of humor to come along and rescue them. The whole film is a campy put-on, right? Apparently not.

The excitement factor only intermittently carries from the arena to the screen.

Scott Derrickson, the director, and his special-effects crew really deliver the creepy goods here, providing an apt climax for as taut and credible a movie involving demonic possession as you’re likely to see.

Has its share of funny moments. But it also has its share of tired ones, like the subplot involving the inadvertent swallowing of a ring.

It’s possible to make a great movie out of family dysfunction, but this one is too short on insight to rank with the best of the genre.

Scott Glenn handles the balancing act required of him in “The Barber” with his usual skill... The film, though, delivers its plot twists muddily and doesn’t really distinguish itself from the countless other creepy-killer tales out there.

The movie, directed by Steven C. Miller, doesn’t hold a lot of surprises, but there is worse terror-in-the-woods fare out there — rather a lot of it, in fact.

Sprinkled with moderately amusing comic moments, but basically your enjoyment of this film will be proportional to your tolerance for the one-joke phenomenon of air drumming.

Though Mr. Grint and Mr. Perlman both come off credibly, the movie is practically laugh-free.

It’s as thinly written and unoriginal as made-for-television seasonal filler, and why it isn’t on the Hallmark Channel or Lifetime is a mystery, but fans of the singers in it might get a kick out of seeing them.

The computer-generated world is visually rich, but short on the droll humor that makes good children's films bearable for adults.

Unfortunately, the fresh blood has been saddled with a tired story, the family road trip that goes outlandishly awry, and the result is another forgettable film.

Planes is for the most part content to imitate rather than innovate, presumably hoping to reap a respectable fraction of the box office numbers of “Cars” and “Cars 2,” which together made hundreds of millions of dollars (not to mention the ubiquitous product tie-ins).

Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but the script, by Sheldon Cohn and Gary Wolfson, is tepid stuff, and Michael Manasseri, the director, doesn’t find a way to enliven it.

All of the characters here are underwritten, and Mr. Cage and most of the other actors don’t seem to be putting much effort into them.

The film grasps for credibility with scenes of a support group (featuring some real veterans) and cryptic voice-overs that strive for profundity but achieve only pretentiousness.

The storytelling becomes muddled in the middle, and the suspense doesn’t build as well as it ought to, but the winking undercurrent keeps the film watchable.

The film reawakens long-repudiated notions of white supremacy and such, but Mr. Roth is surely not trying to peddle them. He’s merely seeing if he can replicate the formula of the subgenre. And he does, fairly slickly, in fact.

The film doesn’t have the focus, pacing or plotting of the best of such bromance tales.

A lot of the weight of selling the story falls on Ms. Chen, and she’s not entirely up to the challenge, but Mr. Lim is able to build suspense anyway.

Isn't quite savvy enough to compete with the slyest entries in that genre or madcap enough to run with the zaniest.

Mr. Fuller is working on some kind of redemption theme, but he sabotages the story with underdeveloped plot threads: a bartender with cancer, an old car crash, sibling rivalry. Everything is annoyingly oblique; why?

This might have made a good children’s film.

The film, a comedy without much comedy in it... clumsily tries to merge road trip humor and beauty pageant parody.

The movie looks great, the writing is peppered with moments of wit, and there’s even an educational component built in as dinosaur facts are displayed on the screen.

The worst thing about the animated film Delhi Safari isn't that it's awful. It's that it shamelessly rips off much better animated movies.

Big Significant Things is a cute idea in search of substance.

The actors work hard to make us feel their fear of a creature that, for much of the movie, we don’t get to see. We don’t really need to see it, because we’ve seen it or something like it before.

Ariel Vromen has directed a decent, fast-paced action movie, and Mr. Costner is enjoyable to watch as Jerico Stewart.

Cess Silvera, the film's writer and director, doesn't find any of the humanity or inner demons that would allow the characters to rise above B-movie exploitation.

If "Wall-E" pushes the boundaries of what can be done in an animated movie, Space Chimps proves that the old formula is still pretty effective when executed well.

The film, directed by Michael Mailer, wanted to be a steamy romance, but it ended up leaden and occasionally laughable.

Michael Ealy has a very ominous stare and Sanaa Lathan sells her inconsistent character pretty well, but The Perfect Guy is still just a boilerplate stalker story that proceeds more or less as you suspect it will.

Ms. Ryan’s muted approach may be what we’ve come to expect of looks back at this period — nostalgia always comes with a lot of browns and grays, and with plenty of voice-over (in this case, Marcus’s letters to Homer). But she executes the formula well.

Somebody must think Joe Swanberg's mumblecore mush is worth the time it takes to watch it, because he keeps making it. But anyone who sees his insufferable Art History and doesn't wish for the 74 minutes back has an empty life indeed.

Ms. Harden is fine in a role that requires little, but her character is a lazy stereotype that ought to make real librarians wince.

Starts out feeling a little too “inside Hollywood” and only grows more so as it rolls along. By the end, this small film about scriptwriters ends up being mostly for scriptwriters, despite appealing performances from the two leads.

The effort is commendable, but the execution is rocky.

It’s a net broadly cast and woven of implications rather than of indisputable evidence, but — especially given the tobacco industry’s credibility problems — you’ll probably be inclined to think there’s some truth to the film’s allegations.

The film, directed by Conor Allyn, is rarely more than a few minutes away from a gun battle or a tedious chase, and soon you cease to care who is shooting at, or running from, whom or why.

Escape From Planet Earth makes a tolerable diversion for a winter’s day or evening, just not a memorable one.

A decently executed creeper built around a convincing performance by Natalie Dormer.

Though the tale, based on a novel by Harold Frederic, remains relevant to our time, the film is too self-conscious and tedious for the message it delivers.

If you’re watching this film and waiting for something funny or insightful to come along to assuage your annoyance, you’ll wait a long time.

It ends up being largely just another story about a rebellious American teenager.

To make the premise of a 30-year-old who acts like a 15-year-old work, Mr. Pollak has made everyone else in the film act like a 15-year-old, too. It doesn’t quite click.

Any wilderness ordeal has to help some character clarify something, and for Ben it’s his relationship with his girlfriend (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence), which gives the film a modest side interest. But mostly this one is for fans of desert scenery and of Mr. Douglas in cranky, crazy mode.

The film, though, has some redeeming qualities, including the presence of Idris Elba as the obligatory good guy, who encourages Johnny to get Danny into the protective custody of a religious order.

A new, not very engaging movie featuring a lot of blue skin and household-name voices.

Angels in Stardust ends up being too tidy to be a great coming-of-age movie, but it’s a decent one.

You can get away with this sort of thing if your humor is sharp, but here it’s mostly sophomoric and rarely surprising.

Jessica Goldberg, who wrote and directed the film, prefers showcasing the somewhat treacly soundtrack to fleshing out back stories.

Several varieties of creepy run through As Good as Dead, a gruesomely alluring tale of long-simmering revenge.

Nowhere does Mr. Core’s film approach the action-movie chops or psychological smarts of Ms. Bigelow’s original or, truth be told, benefit from actors displaying the same charm as her stars. But for a number of liberating airborne seconds, none of that may matter.

The intent is perhaps some kind of dark tone poem, and the cinematography (by Jody Lee Lipes) is lovely. But oh, the tedium.

Aging Gen-Xers, it turns out, aren't all that witty, and Ms. Hillis and Mr. Grinnell don't have the kind of chemistry that might make this setup work.

With its underwritten characters (especially Walter) and scenes, it seems like a generic ABC Family plotline melded to a commercial for Facebook, Twitter and Skype.

Strengthening of brotherly and marital bonds is the real agenda, of course, but happily the movie never stays on these laugh-killing themes long.

The movie briefly picks up some warmth when John and Louis encounter a mother and daughter (Lynn Collins and Emma Fuhrmann) who are also in the midst of some self-discovery, but the movie seems unwilling to linger too long on it for fear of becoming rewarding.

[A] sweet if not very credible film.

The film delivers the standard upbeat message about family, along with one particularly outstanding and incongruous cameo that — sorry — won’t be spoiled here.

Although Language of a Broken Heart, a romantic comedy written by and starring Juddy Talt, eventually drowns in clichés and predictability, it has a few decent moments of humor and some appealing performances that make it marginally better than most vanity projects.

A lightweight comedy aimed, presumably, at tweeners and fans of World Wrestling Entertainment.

Considering that the fate of humankind is at stake, War of the Worlds: Goliath is remarkably uninvolving.

It somehow manages to feel more like a Hallmark Channel romance than like a serious film.

My Lucky Star, a spy-caper romance from China, is sweet and harmless, but it’s also a little disorienting.

Cedric the Entertainer's artless performance deadens what could have been a much funnier comedy.

A sometimes amusing sex farce.

A bit more editing to remove some of the airiness would have made for a better film.

It’s all too dumb and ribald for most tastes, but if you liked all the zombie comedies that came before, well, here’s another one.

A film that tries to be both titillating and suspenseful but is neither.

It’s all light as a feather, with Jeremy Leven, the writer and director, landing some good multinational jokes along the way.

There’s no way to prepare yourself for how awful The Secret Lives of Dorks is.

Allegories involving astronomy, baseball and sandwiches are hinted at but are no better developed than the characters.

The Viral Factor wants to be both an action movie and a soap opera. But the merging of the two genres by Dante Lam, a director based in Hong Kong, is clumsy, and so is the film.

With songs about shoes and dogs, Lucky Stiff couldn’t be sillier, but Mr. Marsh and especially Ms. James make it an enjoyable curiosity for fans of musical theater.

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Lively are both pretty good, and with a more nuanced approach could have made this a powerful film.

The film, a first feature from Gillian Greene (wife of the director Sam Raimi, a producer here), has to settle for “sometimes amusing comedy” when it was probably aiming for “cult hit.”

It's the kind of stuff an amateur screenwriter reaches for when he has nothing original to say, because he's seen it work in other movies. It sure doesn't work here.

The six actors in the central, edible roles seem as if they could have pulled off a "Scream"-like satire, but since they weren't asked to, there's nothing much for them to do but follow the clearly visible paths to their doom.

The story, too, undercuts the actors.

The film is occasionally amusing but rarely feels genuine.

Delivered with sloppy, gleeful confidence, the movie is smarter than most gross-out comedies but isn't afraid to inspire an "Ewww."

A slight movie that could have been significantly better with a little story doctoring.

The film, directed by Mario Van Peebles, brays the story in broad strokes and clichés as if the horror of it didn’t speak for itself, which it most certainly does.

This film overstays its welcome and has pacing problems. But its eclectic characters certainly linger.

Sure, Smurfs are blue, but who knew that they actually work blue?

If the Boy Scouts offered a merit badge for inept filmmaking, Todd Rohal would certainly earn it with Nature Calls, an unwatchably bad movie about a camping trip gone haywire.

The horror movie The Gallows starts with a decent if improbable premise, and it ends with a pretty good jolt. But in between, the film sure wears out the already tired found-footage device.

Mothers and Daughters is full of recognizable stars and heartfelt conversations. Unfortunately, it’s largely devoid of the kind of character development that can give such conversations real impact.

This one is well photographed, yet it’s still just a lot of cars and noise.

Nurse 3D isn’t nearly as fun as a movie about a homicidal, sex-obsessed, clothing-averse health care provider ought to be.

Some fine performances and an embrace of understatement make Matthew Leutwyler's oddly titled Answers to Nothing a respectable entry in the multiple-stories-that-interlock genre.

Welcome to Happiness is an airy fantasy of a film, cute but also frustrating. It’s a little too determined to be eccentric.

It may not be classic sci-fi like the original “Alien,” which it has in its DNA, but it’s a perfectly respectable next step in the series.