Ronnie Scheib

Reveling in its provocative absurdity, Impolex is a madly uncommercial head-scratcher that will strike a dream-logic chord in some viewers and leave others in a "My kid could do better than that" mood.

Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.

Woefully amateurish psychological thriller.

The connective tissue between its separate segments is so tenuous and unconvincing that "Cries" almost suggests a failed anthology.

Rain strives for a "Magnolia"-type tapestry of quiet desperation. But after 90 unremitting minutes of badly acted, atrociously written histrionic misery, pic leaves one praying for frogs.

Dustin Guy Defa's Bad Fever takes mumblecore to its reductio ad absurdum, featuring a hero whose utterances border on the unintelligible.

Satirist and "Daily Show" ex-contributor Mo Rocca's faux-disingenuous tone and nonstop jocularity dominate the documentary to quickly grating effect, significantly diminishing its impact.

Culturally falling somewhere between "Sideways" and "Dumb and Dumber," this low-rent road movie similarly rides on principles of audience identification, largely minus competent helming, thesping or scripting.

French actress-writer-director Josiane Balasko plunges in with all the finesse of a hopped-up Pollyanna, her simplistic interpretation of an impaired sexagenarian coming close to outright parody.

Strictly for fans of free-form, DIY hit-or-miss humor (and those who prefer a miss to a hit), pic complacently parades its alienated amateurism in the mistaken belief that half a gag is better than none.

Despite the presence of Glen Matlock, Steve Dior and a handful of other punk rockers, plus a slew of oblique eyewitness who lurked around before and after the fact, the documentary soon bogs down in tiresome minutiae.

A muddled script, spatially confounding direction and four thesps seemingly acting in four different movies are only a few of the problems with the misbegotten political thriller As Good as Dead.

The film replaces choreography with metronomic editing, while one-note overstatement drowns out character development.

One long tease -- not in a voyeuristic sense, since its heroine, as nakedly incarnated by pouty Polish sexpot Natalia Avelon, hides none of her obvious talents under a bushel.

In “The Greatest” (2009) and “Country Strong” (2010), Feste proved herself quite skilled, if not especially innovative, at limning her characters’ emotional travails. But subtlety, complexity and even the slightest modicum of realism elude her here.

Moore and Hill's script plunges Spacek in a mawkish stew of banality and improbability composed of bits and pieces of earlier roles.

Unfortunately, with its unconvincing action, preachy script and flat performances, the picture winds up less moving than most typical journeyman documentaries on the subject.

This transparent piece of propaganda blatantly overplays its hand.

In the absence of actors with the tremendous presence of Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, picture loses its raison d'etre. Yet, directed by video helmer Dave Meyers with a certain fastidious distance from its plentiful gore, picture is also insufficiently over-the-top or corny to incite gleeful audience feedback.

Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp.

Amateurish, half-hearted romantic comedy-cum-heist film twists itself into unconvincing knots to pull off a guilt-free bank robbery.

A flabby, unfunny action-comedy produced, directed and written by former WWE exec VP Mike Pavone, The Reunion boasts one of the most poorly assembled scripts to emerge from the wrestling franchise.

Drearily pretentious, ultra-stagy exercise in middle-age self-loathing.

Grotesquely straining to ridicule and validate its hero simultaneously, A Novel Romance will disappoint even Guttenberg diehards.

Tedious enough to serve as a cautionary example of the pitfalls of DIY filmmaking.

For every engrossing rank-and-file story, there are endless self-congratulatory explanations and podium highlights.

Lacks the delicate tonal control and subtle smarts required for such an intended half-surreal exercise.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, big studio Hollywood hitmakers should consider themselves lauded to the max in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Selzer's Epic Movie, the latest (and epically unfunny) entry in the movie parody franchise.