Stephen Whitty

Sure it’s got big, blurry action scenes, a plane crash, and an army of dusty, mindless zombies. But I think some of them may have been the screenwriters, because the movie’s practically lifeless.

Since Dornan is as dull as a catalog model anyway — he wanders through the movie like an Abercrombie searching for his Fitch — the shopping-list look of the movie makes sense. But Dakota Johnson deserves better.

Rather than including people with their politics, the filmmakers depend on flashy sleight-of-hand, distracting us with a deceptive narrative trick that isn’t nearly as fresh as they think.

Even for a film about time loops, everything feels overly familiar. (Note to filmmakers: Simply referencing the film you’re stealing from doesn’t excuse the theft). And unlike Mark and Margaret’s do-over day, in the end the whole thing slips by without leaving any impression at all.

It's all angst and no adventure, a lot of fury and little fun.

Diesel is the star (as well as a producer), in every scene. And he drags the film down with him.

Remember “Olympus Has Fallen”? This one is worse.

Give Lawrence credit for a seriously emotional performance, at least, and thanks to supporting actors Moore, Sutherland and a sly Woody Harrelson for adding color and comedy.

When the story does wrap up, it's all too little, too late, and far too long. Which given everything stuffed into it, just leaves the super-sized Triple 9 triply disappointing.

Badly cast, broadly directed, and hampered by a book that hasn’t aged well since the musical’s 1981 West End debut, it’s hard to imagine just who this film’s target audience is.

The Dark Tower is simply dim.

For a movie that’s supposed to be about a modern-day Geppetto bringing his dolls to life, the wooden Welcome to Marwen never makes it out of the toy box.

A movie that really mined that story would be worth the gold. This one barely doesn’t even capture the bronze.

Some movies are feasts. Some films are desserts. This picture is cheese in a can, and if it only accepted that, it would be a lot more fun — like “Alligator,” the tongue-in-cheek classic that had a toothy terror climbing out of a city sewer.

Real films breathe, alive with imperfections, accidents, with everything that Lee's worked so carefully to guard against. Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk is long, all right, but only half-alive — as careful as a diagram, as chilly as a statue.

There's noise and movement, an all-out war, and the usual happy ending, but no real blood, no real life. And not much fun.

Inside the endlessly dull, oh-so-serious All I See Is You there’s a short, fun, trashy movie dying to get out. And dying. And dying.

It never stops for a minute, yet it never goes anywhere. And much as it promises to take you to a thousand planets, it can’t find one sign of intelligent life.

Instead of ever getting truly "Magnificent," these multicultural gunslingers remain largely a meh seven.

But the real problem is that the picture feels padded. There are endless, and pointless, scenes of radio hosts debating the vigilante violence. And the wildly mismatched shoot-outs — every criminal Kersey goes up against is slow, stupid and a lousy shot — waters down the thrills.

There are no surprises, and the addition of a supposedly mysterious killer fails to add any mystery.

Slim movies like this live or die based on their personal charm, and the sour Destination Wedding soon wheezes its way into the ICU.

While the first "Independence Day" was genuinely big, dumb fun, its sequel only manages to be a bigger, dumber bore.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Domino dishes it up as a sloppy mess of warmed-over clichés. Instead of his old high style and kinky violence, director Brian De Palma delivers only crude thrills and ugly stereotypes, a soggy bag of junk-food snacks.

Come to Daddy starts out like a nasty drama, ends up as a gruesomely gory, coldly comic revenge thriller – and desperately loses its way somewhere in-between.

Instead of intriguing ambiguity, this updated version – which had a long and bumpy development – offers only maddening confusion...With false endings within false endings, it’s the sort of movie whose final fade-out will leave audiences groaning in frustration.

Quick, what do you call it when a movie takes both of the year’s biggest breakout action stars and wastes them in a bad Kevin Costner movie? Criminal.

The first-time filmmakers have little idea of pace, or imagery. Flatly lit, squarely staged, the scenes just plod on.