Peter Sobczynski

The only notable aspect of the film is that it marks the feature directorial debut of Anna Foerster, a rare example of a woman being allowed to direct a reasonably large-scale franchise film. Alas, all it proves here is that a female director can make a film of this sort that is just as listless, derivative and perfunctory as one made by a man.

Incarnate is such a pointless bit of hackwork that it almost makes the recent horror dud “Shut In” seem focused by comparison.

While it may not quite be the modern-day “Casablanca,” it is nevertheless a grandly entertaining stab at old-fashioned storytelling...buoyed by smart and stylish filmmaking, a good performance by Brad Pitt and an even better one from Marion Cotillard.

The kind of lazy genre hackwork that will inspire more yawns than screams—at least until the final reels, when the sounds of incredulous laughter will no doubt take over.

A wildly inconsequential action comedy that contains a couple of genuine laughs but which otherwise feels like an extended version of its own television ads.

What should have been a solid B-movie thriller with a premise torn from today’s headlines is instead as arid and desolate as the land between the United States and Mexico in which it is set.

This decidedly dark and super-violent South Korean crime drama from Kim Sung-su tells a tale so jam-packed with betrayals, double-crosses and alleged authority figures that even the most dedicated of genre buffs may find it too unrelentingly grim and cynical for their tastes.

The end result is a sturdy and frequently dazzling version of the material that should leave audiences swooning with delight.

Imperium proves to be a depressingly familiar (when it isn’t just depressing) thriller and the casting of Radcliffe only contributes further to its failings.

While moviegoers desperate to see anything that doesn’t involve a superhero may be willing to overlook its shortcomings, others will undoubtedly be disappointed to find that it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

The one major problem with Into the Forest, the one that keeps it from making that final leap of good movie to a potentially great one, is that the final third is just not quite as strong as the stuff that precedes it.

Lights Out has been made with a certain degree of style—enough to make you want to see what Sandberg might be capable of with a better screenplay—and it does contain one great moment that pays sly homage to the most famous moment from the classic thriller “Wait Until Dark.”

Little more than an extended version of the kind of political screeds that can be found online with only a minimum of effort, this is just a terrible movie.

The film as a whole just never quite overcomes the inherent familiarity of its premise to become its own unique thing. Those looking for a story equal to Cranston’s contributions to it are liable to come away from it feeling slightly disappointed.

The latest film to attempt to find the lighter side of bloodsuckers and it even adds a reasonably inspired idea into the mix. Alas, the result is a thoroughly mediocre movie that is never as amusing as it should be.

One of the essential documentaries on Hollywood.

The Darkness is pretty much a total bust—it isn’t scary, it isn’t exciting and it plods along at such a snails pace that even though it clocks in at just over 90 minutes, it plays like it runs at least twice that.

None of the actors are able to find a way to rise above the material, instead just plowing through in the broadest manner possible while trying not to look too obviously embarrassed.

You will be hard-pressed to remember anything about it even only a few minutes after watching it, which should come as a relief to everyone involved with its production.

The Measure of a Man may be a hard film to watch at times, but with Lindon's great performance at its center, it is one from which you cannot look away.

Criminal is the kind of dunderheaded enterprise that leaves viewers reeling from the idiocies they have just endured, wondering how something like that could possibly get made in the first place.

A horrible and wildly unnecessary follow-up that might actually be worse than its predecessor.

Nina Forever subverts audience expectations at every turn and develops the kind of genuine emotional power that keeps it from being just another gory goof.

Jane Got a Gun has its good points and less demanding fans of the Western genre may find some value in it, especially considering how few films of its type actually get made these days.

For the most part, it is a solid film that bolsters its innately compelling narrative with effectively low-key performances, some genuinely thrilling sequences and only a few moments here and there that lean towards hokeyness.

Depressingly universal and even more depressingly contemporary more than two centuries down the line.

As an action movie and as a historical document, it is a bombastic and wholly inauthentic mess that displays precious little interest in the men whose actions and sacrifices it purports to honor.

Although nowhere near as obnoxious as such recent faith-based offerings as “God’s Not Dead” and “Do You Believe?,” The Masked Saint is still kind of a chore to sit through, even for those predisposed to like anything that brings together Christian faith and sleeper holds.

The idea of remaking "Point Break" was not necessarily a bad idea, I suppose, but whatever charms that film might have had, they are utterly lost on the people behind this embarrassment.

Despite the occasional rough patches, there are still some things about Krampus that I did like quite a bit. Although the humor is not always successful, I liked the fact that Dougherty played the material in a relatively straight manner and resisted the urge to go for a more campy approach throughout.

A film that has some promising elements and which often seems as if it is on the verge of evolving into something wonderful but never quite manages to turn that particular corner.

Not that anyone watching #Horror is likely to care in the slightest about who is doing the killing and who will survive.

It is baffling to discover that for her third directorial effort, By the Sea, she has produced a film that is such a borderline unendurable exercise in vapid self-indulgence that it almost feels like an exceptionally straight-faced parody of empty-headed star vehicles.

Loud, repellent, badly written, indifferently directed and almost completely devoid of any genuine laughs, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is essentially a film for 12-year-old boys who can still derive some kind of basic entertainment for the mere sight of spurting blood or a bare breast, all the better if they can appear at the same time

The sixth time is not the charm with this load of hooey that tries to make up for its lack of legitimate scares or basic narrative clarity by adding the alleged miracle of 3-D into the mix.

Conventional and easy-to-follow narratives can be found anywhere, but very few of them occur in films that are as visually ravishing and formally graceful as what Hou has cooked up here.

Even by Maddin's standards, it is a pretty wild ride in all aspects, starting with its very concept.

The film is constantly undercutting its own ability to generate any real suspense because whenever one of the stories begins to generate any real head of steam, viewers are jerked into another one and the whole process starts over again.

The result is an occasionally strange, occasionally brutal and occasionally lovely work that goes up on the shelf with "The Ocean of Helena Lee" and "Girlhood" as one of the more impressive coming-of-age tales of recent times.

One of its greatest pleasures is seeing how filmmaker Francois Ozon manages to find just the right note for such challenging material. He transforms what might have been a tonal nightmare in other hands into a wildly entertaining work, one that manages to be simultaneously funny, touching, slightly unnerving and undeniably sexy to behold, regardless of where your predilections may lie.

An intelligently staged and executed creepfest that takes one of the most universally compelling of notions — the unbreakable bond that exists between a mother and her children — and approaches it in such a formally and narratively bleak manner that it makes the works of fellow countryman Michael Haneke seeming almost benign by comparison.

What this film may lack in terms of visual flamboyance, it more than makes up for in telling its simple and direct story with a raw, emotional power that doesn't need lavish spectacle in order to get its point across.

To be honest, this storyline is not noticeably stupider in theory than any of the other "Transporter" films.

Films don't get much dreggier than No Escape, a dreadful and creepily exploitative would-be thriller, low-grade trash that it is too silly and stupid to be as offensive as it frequently comes close to being throughout.

Alternately idiotic and boring horror thriller.

Dreck of the lowest kind — a sleazy exploitation film that is all the worse because it has somehow convinced itself that it is thoughtful and profound.

A wildly ambitious and frequently fascinating film that moviegoers of all ages should find both entertaining and provocative in equal measure.

Most of this is interesting enough, although a little too self-congratulatory at times, but A LEGO Brickumentary never really goes much deeper than that.

When one considers how good this material might have been if placed in the right hands, to see it squandered this way makes it almost more painful to view than the typical Sandler stinker.

While Lila & Eve is not supposed to be funny — indeed, the central topic is about as unfunny as one could possibly imagine — but nevertheless inspires huge laughs, albeit of the unintentional kind, thanks an idiotic screenplay and a supposedly "shocking" plot twist that even the most inattentive viewers should be able to figure out within the first fifteen minutes or so, tops.

A ridiculous fusion of "Paranormal Activity" and "Glee" that is so incredibly dumb that it is almost, but never quite, scary to behold.

That is actually one of the key problems with the film as a whole — there are times when it tries to embrace its silliness and times when it wants to be treated as a serious action film and the clash of tones is simply too jarring.

An odious stew of murder, revenge, casual racism and overt misogyny that is all the worse because of its apparent celebration of those ingredients.

This is one of those movies that is as dull as it is well-meaning and man, is it ever well-meaning.

The problem is that while it never lapses into complete cartoonishness, it never does much of anything else either, and pretty much plays like a film made for basic cable that is buoyed for a while by a couple of relatively strong central performances before eventually succumbing to terminal mediocrity in its silly final scenes.

I could not see it as anything more than a giant bore that presents viewers with the most familiar plot devices imaginable but fails to present them in a way that makes them worth sitting through once again.

While the results inevitably pale in comparison to "The French Connection" — which could be said about virtually every other film currently in release — they do make for an above-average work that offers viewers a new perspective on a familiar story.

One of the more unique, evocative and deeply felt coming-of-age films to come along in quite some time.

Hyena is such a nasty and brutish item that even the hardiest of moviegoers may find themselves repulsed by some of the sights that Johnson has in store.

It is nowhere close to being the worst thing that he (Travolta) has ever done, but it never for a single moment makes a plausible case for its own existence.

It tells a not-especially-interesting story about a not-especially-interesting couple from two different worlds that goes on and on before reaching its not-especially-interesting conclusion.

A smart and strong genre work that makes up for a relative lack of gore and viscera with plenty of tension and suspense and a number of impressive performances.

The result, though not without flaws, is an invigorating and interesting observation of the man, his work and the entire medium of photography.

A film that starts off on a reasonably restrained note but which quickly grows so ridiculously ham-fisted that it almost makes its predecessor seem reasonable and open-minded by comparison.

The Gunman isn't the worst action film that you will see this year — you will be lucky if you even remember anything about it a couple of weeks after seeing it — it will probably go down as one of the more dispiriting ones.

Most of the rest of the film surrounding it is a conceptually weak and dramatically muddled mess that has acquired a game and good cast and then given them precious little to do.

While it does have a few things of interest going for it, this low-budget effort ends up arriving at its necessarily predictable conclusion in too many unnecessarily predictable ways.

An exhausting slog through overly familiar cliches that is nowhere near as profound or touching as it clearly thinks it is and is utterly lacking in the kind of intelligence and artistry that it so often pays lip service to in the dialogue.

This isn't a real horror movie — this is the kind of horror movie that the characters in a real horror movie watch in order to comment on the lameness of the genre before their authentic terrors begin.

On paper, Wild Canaries sounds like it has all the ingredients for a reasonably diverting comedy, but they just never quite pull together into a cohesive or entertaining whole.

If Hot Tub Time Machine 2 accomplishes anything — and it really doesn't — it is that it too never manages to find a way to justify its own existence.

While it has some good performances and noble intentions, it doesn't really bring anything new to the conversation and ultimately fails to give viewers any compelling reason to wade through all the bleakness and misery that it has to offer.

It sounds fun in theory, I guess, and there are some entertaining moments of rude irreverence here and there but the giddiness gets a bit tedious after a while.

This long-delayed would-be erotic thriller is a shabby bore that promises viewers any number of kinky thrills and then proceeds to deflate those expectations.