Teo Bugbee

Ironically, the film mirrors the callow cinematic dynamics it critiques: It titillates, even as it scolds.

There is a flatness that feels apparent in every shot — and not just because the movie is filmed in bright, low contrast lighting. The film’s experienced cast punches their lines in search of jokes that never materialize, leaving the comedy to nosedive.

It’s a test of patience to watch these glass figurines discuss their romantic entanglements, the doll house on the Riviera that they will maybe rent, the bourgeois marriages they will maybe leave. Even the camera seems bored, as if it might wander off.

The movie presents an eye-catching fantasy of a candy-colored Japanese underworld. But the exoticism feels as cheap as a whiff of a green tea and musk cologne called Tokyo wafting over a department store counter. Even Winstead, stoic in her fashionably boyish haircut, looks bored.

The movie treats illness as a series of contrivances, an engine that keeps the plot pistoning forward, and the result of this approach is a film that feels lifeless, or worse, reductive.

This is a bizarre movie, one that parades confused ideas about care, fantasy and disability with a pride that reads as vanity. It is audacious, in the sense that making it certainly took some audacity.

Bliss fails to engage the senses, resulting in cinematic disappointment.

It’s a buffet of only sour dishes, a rank fete of foulness.

It doesn’t take long to notice that these are earnest, even humorless, women. They are too busy contemplating their daily turmoil to play or crack a joke. As a result, their chemistry never coheres, and the movie flounders under the weight of lifeless sincerity.

The original “American Pie” was tasteless; this version is flavorless.

A film that feels exploitative, not enlightened.

The aimless characters in Almost Love like to talk through their feelings, their aspirations, their disappointments, but there is little substance in their epiphanies, and the comedy is too low key to make up for its absence.

Despite some committed performances, particularly from a refreshingly natural Maika Monroe, Villains is a hackneyed farce rich in gimmicks and poor in substance.

Enzo is a bad dog, and his antics play worse for the film’s lack of discipline.

It’s a period movie with little style and a family flick wholly lacking in charm or warmth.

Vacant in emotion and in cinematic perspective, the movie looks back 15 years but struggles to make an impression longer than 15 minutes.

In absence of either good humor or good set pieces, Blue Iguana is a heist gone bust.

Supercon offers lip service to fan culture, yet it is difficult to imagine who would enjoy watching this ill-conceived satire. Directed by Zak Knutson, who also contributed to the screenplay, the movie is careless with its setting, callous toward its characters and crass about its audience.

Under the limp direction of Scott Speer, Midnight Sun suffocates its sentimental script, portraying passion without wonder, sacrifice without ecstasy.

With little more than the superficial psychology of shallow characters to guide the movie’s squeamish images, Like Me irritates, but it proves unable to provoke more than mild gut reactions.