Steve Davis

One can't help but wonder how much better this film would have played straight, without its characters in seemingly constant song. God help us if there's a film version of "Cats" in the works.

The central conceit in 3 Days to Kill – the family man moonlighting as a gun-for-hire – is hardly a fresh one. It worked in films released 10 or 20 years ago (see True Lies or Mr. and Mrs. Smith), but here it feels played out, clichéd.

The mutilated, slobbering, howling possessed in Deliver Us From Evil crawl on all fours like animals, and furiously dig into surfaces until their fingers bleed, but they’re nothing more than a sideshow, freaks on display for your perverse enjoyment. It’s unsettling, but never terrifying.

While occasionally engaging, The Comedian isn’t very funny.

The entire movie has a creepy aura of self-consciousness. In addition to the aforementioned definitions of aloha, the word also doubles as a coming-and-going greeting in the Hawaiian vernacular. Here, it regrettably signifies the possible goodbye to a once-promising career of a filmmaker who had us at hello.

A serviceable cast of unfamiliar actors (the exception: Thompson as the family matriarch, Marmee); a serviceable script that takes few if any chances, with occasional wordless montages of shiny happy people; and serviceable direction that gets the job done and nothing more.

Director-screenwriter Dearden, who wrote the script for Fatal Attraction, does a terrible job of making the pieces of the who's-he-going-to-kill-next narrative stick; jumping around with an unnerving frequency, this film self-destructs before your very eyes.

The exquisitely precise direction by Seligman (making an impressive debut here), the trim editing by Eric F. Martin, the gorgeous nighttime cinematography by Matthias Schubert – all contribute to an eerie otherworldliness in this beautifully executed opening sequence of Coyote Lake. As you witness it, you wonder: Is this a real place in a real time, or some metaphysical state of mind? The movie has barely begun, and you’re utterly intrigued.

It’s hard to take your eyes off Walker in his penultimate film appearance, cognizant of his mortality and the way he was gracefully aging much in the same way as another fair-haired, blue-eyed actor named Paul.

The jaunty score of musical numbers (yes, there are songs) sounds vaguely familiar and yet instantly forgettable. Its only contribution to the film is to extend its running length unnecessarily by about a quarter of an hour.

You could fault A Madea Family Funeral for its many other shortcomings. It runs about 30 minutes too long; the tempo of the numerous dramatic scenes is on par with drying paint; characters lack consistency from scene to scene; the dialogue sounds like a first draft that needs major editing; its occasional technical sloppiness; and so forth.

Luckily for Franco, Cranston makes for the perfect comic foil in Why Him?.

In the end, you feel like you’re the victim of a cruel bait-and-switch, lured into thinking Nobody’s Fool would be a crappy but nevertheless entertaining Tiffany Haddish movie, only to have it turn out to be a crappy but nevertheless crappy Tyler Perry movie. Talk about mixed feelings.

From the start, Need for Speed smells like a movie in search of a franchise. On that count, it’s somewhat fast but seldom furious.

May not be best chick flick around, but it's the flick with the best chick by far.

It’s overwhelming, but there are a few nice touches that aren’t completely lost in the bedlam.

Borrows from other movies almost shamelessly.

Cassel’s feline visage, covered in a velvety layer of fur for most of the movie, doesn’t fare much better. At times, he resembles an angry cast member from Cats rather than the tormented fiend trying to find his human self once again. It’s beastly.

When Bardem is onscreen, the emotional stakes are high, engaging you in a way the principal storyline fails to do. It’s a masterful turn by a masterful actor, one that’s blissfully on-target in The Gunman.

No doubt, the under-10 crowd will love this bathroom vulgarity, even more so when their adult chaperones experience a flush of embarrassment.

Movies like The Vatican Tapes are by nature sloppy and derivative, seeking to evoke a thrill that’s long gone.

Although the scares in this movie are minimal, Ernest Scared Stupid nonetheless offers the frightening prospect of yet another installment of the Big E's misguided antics.

With the exception of the handful of scenes in which the Flubber does its stuff, however, the youngsters will no doubt be bored by it all.

The script is replete with filler inserted in the name of “real life”: bad jokes and silly riddles, spontaneous songs, and improvised scenes in which conversations go around in circles.

Certain scenes play as if Reiner forgot to show up on the day of filming, so the actors and cameraman just winged it. Perhaps his embarrassing (and pointless) turn as Leah’s clueless accompanist with the bad toupee distracted him from his principal responsibilities behind the camera. What a Meathead.

Ultimately, one has to chalk up The Pink Panther to the good old traditions of Hollywood greed and chutzpah. Nothing this slapdash and badly executed is done for the love of movies.

A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.

With the exception of Kroll’s gravelly-intoned Uncle Fester, the voicework is sketchy, with Theron’s Seven-Sisters elocution bordering on sacrilege.