Stephanie Merry

The Bye Bye Man had a relatively modest budget, and it shows in the special effects, which tend to be more funny than scary.

The film is artfully shot with eye candy galore: sumptuous dresses, beautiful people and scenes from Pierre and Yves’s time in Morocco. But for all its visual stimulation, the story does little to awaken emotions.

The story takes a couple of sharp turns, ultimately revealing that it isn’t a romantic comedy after all, but a shambling drama with a few mildly amusing pratfalls.

The romantic drama is painfully contrived and insistently predictable.

Along the way there’s a sprinkling of humanizing moments.

Paul W.S. Anderson, best known for the “Resident Evil” franchise and 2011’s “The Three Musketeers,” creates harrowing simulations of the disaster. It’s enough to make you want him to ditch the story altogether.

While some of the stories are interesting, the film is much longer than it needs to be. For his part, Salerno tries to get creative with solutions for the lack of visual stimuli, but most attempts fail.

Like an elaborately decorated wedding cake, the kid-friendly Walking With Dinosaurs 3D may leave you wondering how something so stunning could end up being so bland.

For all its intimations about finding one’s true self and the complicated setups for a big misidentification, The Pretty One is just another romantic dramedy.

All of The Last Days on Mars feels like it’s been done before.

The movie’s editing mishaps, unbelievable scenarios, overuse of music and computer-generated fakery distract from what should be a great ad­ven­ture.

Morality is hardly the main concern of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Instead, it’s content with hackneyed romance and soaring strings.

A rarely funny spoof that's heavy on bone-crushing and blood-gushing.

Flower can’t quite nail the necessary tone, aiming for dark, but missing the comedy.

It’s John Goodman who steals every scene. As a scary loan shark who might cough up cash to get Jim out of his pickle, Goodman elevates the material, showcasing the dark humor that Wyatt was clearly going for. But, overall, that comedy just doesn’t land.

The big thrills and few laughs are no match for the cumbersome, convoluted story, not to mention the nonexistent chemistry between Cruise and Wallis.

Director James McTeigue frequently collaborates with the visionary Wachowski siblings, and he directed V for Vendetta. How the man who blew up Parliament in such memorably spectacular fashion can’t add some originality to Philip Shelby’s script is the movie’s only real mystery.

Just a series of familiar scenes unfurling toward an inevitable conclusion.

Ultimately the movie feels like an empty exercise. Sure, it’s a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of fame. But when the one figure most worthy of our sympathy is nothing more than a beautiful blonde robot, what’s the point?

The movie winks and nudges its way through a lighter, modernized variation of the classic, proud of its own cleverness every time Gemma’s life mirrors Madame B’s. But imitation for the sake of itself isn’t brilliant, especially when the elements most worthy of copying — Flaubert’s precise narration and telling details — don’t make the cut.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies delivers what its title promises: a little romance and some undead villains, plus a bit of comedy. But this overly busy riff on Austen’s winning formula doesn’t justify all the tinkering.

It seems that Andy and Lana Wachowski have never lost that childlike ability to dream. But they also haven’t mastered the grown-up power to rein it in. The story they tell in Jupiter Ascending could probably occupy an entire television season. There’s way too much here for one movie to hold.

Mortdecai succeeds more as a talky farce than an action-packed adventure. But it would be even better if Mortdecai weren’t about Mortdecai at all.

Pan doesn’t deliver on its own promise. The movie doesn’t so much enhance our understanding of the flying boy as it demonstrates how little thought went into crafting his back story.

In the world of Freedom, slaves and the people who help them are Christians, and the bad guys don’t believe in God.

People don’t go to Sparks movies for subtlety; they go to warm their hearts by bearing witness to true love. Of course, that requires a story that rings true. In The Longest Ride, authenticity is in short supply.

The problem is quantity. There are so many action sequences related to so many story lines that midway through an epic fight, you might find yourself wondering what exactly started this particular battle and what the objective is other than destruction for the sake of it.

You can make a movie that’s both sweet and crass; just look at Judd Apatow’s comedies. But the mix doesn’t work here, maybe because both the vulgarity and the cheesiness are so amped up.