Simon Abrams

The East is essentially divided into two halves, and neither is more illuminating than the other.

Some exciting moments are scattered throughout “Consumed,” but they’re never as compelling as the movie’s initial promise.

The Lodgers needs to be better than a great mood in need of a decent story and stronger characters.

There are a lot of ideas swimming around in “The Pit,” but most of them aren’t arranged well enough to demand your attention.

The new New York Ninja often feels like a pre-fab midnight movie that was made with apparent love and care but without much urgency or creativity.

Tusk is bearable thanks in no small part to its game cast, particularly character actor Michael Parks's Vincent Price-esque baddy.

The Dead Lands doesn't add up to much, but it is always on the verge of becoming more than just a bed time story for guys that wish "Braveheart" had a biceps-kissing baby with "Ong Bak."

The film's biggest problem is a matter of tone and characterization: the characters constantly talk about how mean they can be, but their actions suggest otherwise.

This movie’s not frustrating because it’s blunt or vicious, but because its creators are only so interested in a world condemning Agnes to a dire fate. Her actions may ultimately be shocking, but her story is anything but.

Villain is the kind of stiflingly reverent genre picture that is so beholden to its main characters’ pity-me worldview that its predictably downbeat ending feels like the kind of hero worship that you often find in either a cloying biopic or a hidebound true crime adaptation.

This may be Goro Miyazaki’s most eccentric feature yet, but it’s also his least engaging. Earwig and the Witch doesn’t move the way it should, and that’s lethal when your last name is Miyazaki.

Not bad enough to dissuade prospective viewers' from their curiosity. In fact, the whole feather-light affair is practically redeemed by a single entry: writer/director Anthony Scott Burns' superbly spooky Father's Day segment.

The director's gifted collaborators sometimes perk up this listless parable, but never enough to sell its second-hand fatalism.

Only the most committed genre fans and academic-minded masochists will want to hang around until the bitter, arthouse-meets-choose-your-own-adventure style ending.

Flawed but genuinely creepy ghost story The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death is disappointing, but only because it comes close to greatness.

Volf’s refusal to address key choices that Callas made to shape her own career and fight her insecurities suggests that he’d prefer to imagine Callas as a victim of fate — and bronchitis, fame, Onassis, etc. — instead of a strong-willed but human prima donna.

So weak on a basic storytelling level that it makes you want to nitpick everything about it, from characters' generically illogical decisions (ex: Why are you running towards mounted guns?) to its cheap-looking, jiggly hand-held cinematography.

It's not a complicated narrative, possibly because the movie’s designed for younger viewers. But the conception of “Drifting Home” is so stunted that its only memorable thing is its untapped potential.

Watching Campbell over her shoulder or in a mirror is frustrating because it consistently limits our view of her character. Porterfield's people can't give anything away beyond their immediate aggression, frustration, and sadness. But it's hard to appreciate an intentionally blurry portrait of a family that's so impressionistic that all you can see of its already-withdrawn characters are their shadows.

With its gleefuly nihilistic and destructive ending, What Lies Below ends on such a flat note that it makes everything before it seem like an inconsequential and/or needlessly convoluted set-up.

Pathological behavior seems to be the main subject of the bitter Ukrainian satire Donbass, an unpleasant, but as-advertised slice of life drama set in the title region, an embattled territory in Eastern Ukraine.

Immoral Tales works best when its creator is focused on surprising viewers with his perverse imagination, and not his misguided cynicism.

At minimum, “A Blind Bargain” will keep you scratching your head throughout, if not to ask yourself what it’s all about, then to wonder if maybe the filmmakers will eventually arrive somewhere unexpected. You can probably guess the answers to both questions, but maybe seeing for yourself will change your mind.

Okazaki gets close to, but never sheds enough light on, Mifune's elusive personality.

Unfortunately, much of Cryptozoo feels like an earnest, flashy genre exercise that’s more eccentric than thoughtful. It looks great on paper, but not so much on a screen.

Both an overstimulated multimedia lecture and an anxiety-stoking conspiracy thriller, “The Grab” urges viewers to follow the money, look at the big picture, and so on.

Five Nights at Freddy’s has most of the right elements for a good post-Amblin kiddy fright-fest, except maybe good dialogue and distinct characters. Watching the movie, one gets the sense that the games’ morbid personality has been sanded down to its most generic jump-scares and banal revelations.

The film's short-comings are especially upsetting since Schwarzenegger is actually rather good in the film, and proves once again that, despite a severely limited range, he knows how to brood.