Sara Stewart

The Wedding Ringer is not so much a rom-com as an anatomy lesson. And the lesson is this: Men have balls. They must have them, or grow them, otherwise they are not men. They are little girls.

This flaccid comedy tries to spark your interest by undressing two of its four stars down to their underwear for significant periods of time. More outrageously, neither of those people is Jon Hamm.

Aloft is less like a story than a dream, populated with gorgeous people and symbolism you can interpret any way you like.

It’s well-executed but familiar territory, with a dearth of jarring moments. Those of us who aren’t friends and family of the crew could use a little wake-up shove here and there.

Nothing in this movie would actually happen, so what’s irritating is that it presents itself as a savvy, “Am I right, ladies?” dating commentary.

My All American would have done better to dig deeper in its portrayal of a man who set such a high bar for the intrinsic character of a football player. Because he’s actually the kind of example the sport could really use right now.

The plot swerves around just enough to make you think something more complex is going on. Ultimately, it really isn’t — certainly not enough to make up for the clichés and sexist tropes that litter Lucas’ path toward a confrontation with the bad guys.

You'd hope a political-insider indie reuniting "West Wing" stars Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff, and informed by the experiences of an actual former spin doctor, would be a small delight. You would be wrong.

Adapting the author’s cornball formula for a second time around is once-ambitious director Lasse Hallström (“Dear John”), who delivers a cinematic valentine you’ll be reasonably content to watch on a flight in a year or so.

Feels both deeply rote and way overpacked with characters.

Alas, the film’s relevance — and ultimately sane upshot — is buried beneath a meandering and oftimplausible plot.

For parents of very young children looking for a weekend distraction, “Color City” is passable fare — and will at least inspire kiddies to finish what they start, coloring-wise.

Director Peter Chelsom (“Hannah Montana: The Movie”) and screenwriter Allan Loeb (“Collateral Beauty”) squander countless opportunities to make this fish-out-of-water story intellectually curious or even much fun.

A horror movie with an anti-globalist bent that’s more interesting than its halfhearted scares.

There is virtually nothing in Mac Carter’s horror flick that deviates from the standard haunted house plot (or, in this case, plod).

Thankfully, director Miguel Arteta (“Beatriz at Dinner”) gets a solid half-hour of funny out of this thing before clunkiness sets in.

There is a limit to the redemption Nicolas Cage can grant a terrible movie, and Primal is it.

This erotic noir is about as substantial as one of its female lead’s string bikinis, but it’s an enjoyable trifle nonetheless.

Overall, the insubstantial Lucky Stiff feels like community theater with an extravagant budget.

The bloodshed is artful, at least.

Sunk by too much schmaltz (even for the Lower East Side).

Heavy on quirk and light on wit, first-time director Gillian Greene’s comedy leans too heavily on the badly wigged Kranz.

As an exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder in US war veterans, the psychological thriller Jacob’s Ladder was ripe for an update. As a piece of enjoyable ’90s shock schlock, it maybe should have just stayed where it was.

From its uninspired, sitcom-y look to its phoned-in dialogue (“I love you plus infinity”; “I love you plus double infinity”) to its creaky plot, Hit by Lightning is anything but electrifying.

Janet McTeer, Octavia Spencer, Diane Kruger and Jane Fonda brighten the screen momentarily, all in too-small roles.

Witherspoon’s charge, Sofía Vergara as a recalcitrant witness in need of police protection, is an adept slapstick comic likewise hamstrung by director Anne Fletcher’s sluggish pacing, which reliably stays with a scene for three beats beyond the punch line.

Yes, there are the requisite jump-in-your-seat scares, many of them false alarms, and it all plays out basically exactly like any other horror movie, but Lawrence does elevate the proceedings.

Teen house-arrest thriller Dark Summer gets out ahead of any ripping-off-“Disturbia” talk with an early Shia LaBeouf joke. But its sleepy, hallucinogenic aesthetic is an entirely different — and rather less engaging — style, anyway.

Aside from these curious role reversals, though, Alex Cross is a mess. Drawing on every conceivable '80s B-movie action cliché and treating its beleaguered female characters like pieces of meat (literally, in one scene of butchery), director Rob Cohen squanders a surprisingly recognizable cast on a half-baked plot adapted from James Patterson's series of novels.

“Gatsby” meets “Gossip Girl” in this outsider-among-the-wealthy story set, like Fitzgerald’s novel, on Long Island.

Leong’s film isn’t particularly stylish, but it makes the most of the climactic Knicks footage, as well as showcasing a sweetly goofy side of the 25-year-old, now playing for the Houston Rockets.

Shooting in South Africa and Botswana, director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee never lacks for atmosphere, but his film is painfully awkward in execution, from the stiff dialogue to the time-padding slo-mo sequences and glaring CGI.

Most damning of all, the dark mystery hinted at throughout is revealed so lazily it lands with zero impact. It’s long been clear that Cage has opted for quantity in his movie roles, but maybe a little quality control wouldn’t hurt.

At the risk of sounding 100, I think it’s regrettable this film had to be shot in digital 3-D. Both those formats actually do a frustrating disservice to the depiction of the action, making them look choppier, more flickery and occasionally blurrier than they would otherwise.

The considerable comic talents of Alison Brie (“Community”) are squandered by this exhaustingly quirky indie romance.

Like the artificially sweetened junk food it is, this all goes down pretty easily.

It’s clear why this indie was shelved for so long: It’s a mess.

Director Christian Charles gets some comic mileage from the inimitable Walsh and Rae, but it’s ultimately hard to care too much about a caddish protagonist like Norman — or, for that matter, about the clichéd “women are crazy!” sentiment that hums nastily under the antics of Dori’s unorthodox family gathering.

There’s little sense of urgency, or — oddly, given the film’s title — of scale. You never really think that the 47 are truly outnumbered, and the large action scenes are often just incomprehensible.

This blathery, misogynist indie from first-time director David Grovic — which seems to be aiming for “Pulp Fiction” territory with its blend of crime, banter and the mysterious contents of a bag — falls far short, rife as it is with noir and gender clichés.

This ponderous drama from director Kazuaki Kiriya quickly gets weighed down by its own blood-drenched armor.

The whole endeavor seems like a bad idea badly executed, and one can only imagine that Simone, a fierce advocate of black pride and empowerment, would be aghast at this cheesy rendition of the later years of her life.

More perplexing than any of the supposed mysteries of Terminal is what Mike Myers, of all people, is doing here, playing a train-station janitor with a creepy “Danny Boy” whistle.

Heck, between this and “Cats,” maybe Universal is now just specializing in confounding talking-animal movies. At least this one leaves you feeling kindly toward other species, rather than freaked out by them.

The Poison Rose doesn’t aspire to transcend any clichés, and judging from the flagging energy level of the actors, everyone involved knows it.

There’s a secret at play in After, which director Pieter Gaspersz communicates via many side-long glances. I won’t give it away, but it’s a fairly far-fetched twist that feels out of place in this realism-based drama.

Director Mark L. Mann seems to be searching for the meaning in aimlessness, and in lowered expectations. But too often the narrative left me feeling the titular “um.”

The awkwardly titled Unfreedom clearly waves the flag for acceptance and nonviolence — but it would be more effective if it invested as much in some cinematic nuance.

This adaptation is so sloggy it feels like wading through thigh-deep snowfall, stained scarlet from all the gratuitous gore.

A vague, syrupy soundtrack plays across scenes both current and past, making the whole thing feel like a bad soap opera.

This overlong drama plays like a threefold infomercial: for Christianity, the cheesy resort chain Sandals and Jeff “Ja Rule” Atkins, the rapper-turned-actor playing drug kingpin Miles Montego.

Dreadful, misogynist slog of a film.

With any luck, this’ll be the death knell of the idiot-savant rom-com.

This crowd-funded — and overcrowded — collection of interwoven stories, directed by John Herzfeld, plays like an amateur-acting exercise in which each participant picks a name and a couple of defining props.

The jovial, hyperverbal comic has played against type before, but his presence feels like epic miscasting in this underwritten dramedy.

If I wasn't already convinced of this movie's obnoxiousness, its rendering of Graham's character sealed the deal.

Would you rather . . . watch this movie, or spend an hour and a half having your arm hairs plucked out with a rusty pair of tweezers? I’d have chosen the latter if it’d been on offer.

This cynical rom-com subgenre has been done to death.

The movie lurches from one gross-out scene to another, flipping the bird at continuity and logic. It honestly seems as if Sandler and his team descended on a random suburb, halfheartedly improvising and moving on when they got bored.

James Purefoy (“The Following”) makes a pretty decent bad guy. Olga Kurylenko (“The Water Diviner”) is passable as an action heroine. Neither of those facts makes Momentum any fun to sit through, crammed as it is with leaden dialogue and predictable plot turns.

The cinematic equivalent of a paper plate with macaroni and glitter haphazardly glued onto it, Mother’s Day is a film only its creators could love (and even they must be having some misgivings).

This female revenge thriller starts out promisingly, but squanders its girl-power capital quicker than you can say "Rihanna."

It makes so little sense on-screen that all you can do is nod along vaguely sympathetically at its sheer creative bravado.

Is it never funny? No, it’s not never funny. It’s just not funny nearly often enough.

Director Anthony Leonardi, in his feature debut, litters the film with inconsistencies.

It’s not great art (in fact, it’s pretty low-rent CGI), but it’s passably entertaining.

This retrograde sex comedy is embarrassing for just about everyone involved, but I do think a special endurance shout-out should go to Reid Ewing (“Modern Family”).

Tedious, amateurish and hilariously ill-timed film.

Only in his early 20s, Zephyr Benson makes a remarkably assured debut as writer, director and star of Straight Outta Tompkins, his tongue-in-cheek title for his past as a middle-class drug dealer in lower Manhattan.

Whether you dig this aggressively campy horror-comedy is, to some extent, dependent on your squeamishness.