Scott Tobias

Alejandro González Iñárritu is a pretentious fraud, but it’s taken some time to understand the precise nature of his fraudulence.

A deeply off-putting independent comedy.

This Arthur cravenly turns Susan into a monstrous status-seeker, making her less of a human being and thus much easier for Arthur to trample over in securing a meaningful adult relationship.

A tasteless, witless, mindlessly perfunctory bloodbath that has the discourtesy to take itself seriously. Pitting aliens against predators may be the height of frivolity, but God forbid anyone have fun with it.

Since the focus is on the track, the filmmakers aren't out to reinvent the wheel, but for such a simple piece of formula storytelling, they do a remarkably poor job of dotting I's and crossing T's.

Channels Toback in his purest form, which will probably be a treat for auteurists and a headache for just about everyone else.

It’s only fitting that a series that began with the concept of linking the digestive tracts of three people would end by feasting on its own shit.

Virtually nothing happens in the film that enhances viewers’ understanding of the situation. Winterbottom and company merely survey the scene, kick around a few half-assed moments of atmosphere and suspense, shrug their shoulders, and pack it in for the night.

The specific problem with Part II is that a second act of huffery and puffery don't get it anywhere.

The film looks to do for reflective surfaces what "Amityville 4" did for killer lamps.

As the plot unfolds, brick by brick, the structure starts to wobble until it finally collapses into unintentional comedy.

At least White summons the camp energy that Lake Placid is fecklessly seeking.

Gomez-Rejon has erected a gleaming shrine to adolescent narcissism.

Red Dawn without the jingoism is like a pie without the filling - it collapses into splintered mush.

Premature isn’t nearly as inventive and witty as Groundhog Day or Edge Of Tomorrow about finding fresh angles on repeating events, and it overestimates how much the audience might care about the self-improvement of a bland, clueless douchebag.

Debrauwer's characterization is as sharp and incisive as a butter knife.

There are reasons why everyone on screen looks as unhappy as they do, but Llosa puts viewers in a place where they can’t understand precisely why, so the only choice is to sit there marinating in misery and boredom.

Stiller's continued efforts to court the broadest possible audience has taken the edge off his comedy. Whenever he shares screen time with Williams, it looks like the grim future he's mapping out for himself.

Despite her healthy fan base, Notorious C.H.O. looks like the dead-end to a limited repertoire.

The emotions at play in Bella are no doubt heartfelt--and must have resonated with a few hundred people, anyway--but they're so cut-and-dried that the mawkish script virtually writes itself.

Given the creepiest rom-com premise this side of "Addicted To Love" - which at least had the wisdom to reflect on its camera-obscura voyeurism - director McG tries to turn This Means War into a cool pop confection along the lines of his Charlie's Angels movies. But pouring on the douchey hipness and charm only makes things worse.

The only rational explanation for how an abysmal no-budget film like Cavite could get released theatrically is that its makers, co-writer/directors Ian Gamazon and Neill Dela Llana, have come up with a from-the-headlines hook too big to deny.

Awash in cheap shocks and corny sentiment, Dragonfly aspires to be an inspirational thriller about one man's spiritual journey, but it takes little time for him to reach his destination. All that's left for him and the audience to do is solve a riddle unfit for the back of a cereal box.

Directed without a shred of imagination by Denzel Washington -- Antwone Fisher masks a behind-the-scenes story that's far more inspiring than the phony uplift that makes it onto the screen.

Powered by dim bulbs on both sides of the camera, Darkness Falls barrels ahead with unrelenting stupidity, forsaking many of its own rules in search of the next cheap shock.

The movie offers more of the same, only more: more T&A, more conspicuous consumption, more cameos, more Jeremy Piven yelling, and significantly more Mark Cuban than anyone outside the city of Dallas needs to see.

The whole thing is rigged for crowd-pleasing payoffs - a bit about chocolate pie gets more mileage than a Prius - and those payoffs are about honoring white viewers for not being horrible racists. Kudos to them.

The impression left by Harmontown is that the podcast and the tour are feeding the beast, worsening a pathology that casts him as the “mayor” of whatever stage he happens to be occupying at the moment.