It's big and it's loud, but ultimately not much more than that.

Using the horror genre to tell a faith-based story is an interesting idea, even if it doesn’t really work in the end. And then Beck shows up, and that’s the scariest thing of all.

All pleasures in Last Christmas are as slight. Like the Christmas shop and its baubles, it’s shiny and attractive and intermittently distracting, but it’s all just so much glitter on cheap plastic. It’s angling hard for holiday cheer, but there’s nothing more joyless than forced whimsy.

Movies like this are supposed to be ridiculous on some level. It's part of the fun. But, dang. Falling through space, popping your parachute and landing on the one empty stretch of freeway in some bustling future city? C'mon. We all have our limits.

One kudo to this lazy effort: The climax does have a real end-of-a-trilogy feel, making further sequels less likely. Silver linings, folks.

It’s an awkwardly constructed movie that doesn’t really gel.

The movie, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer of “Twilight” fame and directed by Andrew Niccol, is just kind of dumb. Like the more famous books and movies, about a love triangle between a vampire, a werewolf and a human girl, it often plays like a teenage girl’s idea of how literary romances play out.

It aims to match the mythic gravitas of “The Lord of the Rings” — even throwing in a nod to the Book of Exodus for good measure — and the results fall paint-by-numbers flat.

Ultimately, the movie is really boring. Any charm or spark it might have had is quashed by a lack of strong direction and writing.

Procedural and uninspired, the Vietnam War-focused melodrama The Last Full Measure isn't as strong as its real-life hero.

The cast is intriguing, with Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci and Kristin Scott Thomas as the targets of Pattinson's ambitious amour. But they're not given a whole lot to do -- at least not much that's interesting.

A lackluster second effort that mines a lot of the same jokes. Only no joke is as funny the second time around, even when it's being delivered by really funny people.

I can give the filmmakers — director Dito Montiel and screenwriter Adam G. Simon — the benefit of the doubt on good intentions, but their approach doesn’t tug at the heartstrings so much as it pistol-whips the audience with its grandiose and (ineptly) manipulative storytelling.

The trouble with a movie like Jungle Cruise is the comparison it invites. And in this case, the ride is better.

There are some good ideas in there, even timely. But eventually, like everything else in the movie, they’re washed away in a sea of blood and a hail of bullets.

The gags are stale, the characters uninvolving and bits meant to titillate don’t.

The idea of dropping in on characters at different points in their lives can work - see "Same Time, Next Year" for how it should be done. Here, it simply puts a distance between the audience and two characters that aren't that interesting to start with.

The problem is the movie itself – the script, the editing, the construction, all of which combine to make the whole thing feel flat, lifeless and confusing.

The jolts are of the jump-out-from-behind-the-door variety; you can see them coming from a long way off, too. Shyamalan seems to no longer have the confidence to let audiences figure things out or the patience to allow them to.

The most interesting parts of Father Stu, an OK film in which Mark Wahlberg plays a rough-hewn man who finds redemption in an unexpected place, are not the ones you — and possibly the filmmakers — would expect.

Like nine out of 10 faith-based films, it lets the message crowd out the other elements of good art: character development, thematic complexity, even basics such as a compelling conflict.

Director Wes Ball's film is a mad dash from one place to the next, with little time in between for rest, recuperation or plot development.

Diggs does what he can with the part, as does Patton. There are some funny moments, because most of the cast is so charming. But not enough to make up for the Stone Age attitude about women and marriage.

Unfinished Business is a jumble of half-baked ideas, none particularly interesting.

The handling of the faith aspect is actually one of the stronger parts of the film. Some movies like this lay it on thick, basically existing as a religious recruitment video. Here, and here alone, Ellis lays off and lets the audience think things through. The message is more effective this way.

The story has potential and the acting is good, but the buildup is thrown away as the movie draws to a close. It feels divided, as if it were two different films.

Comparisons are unfair and inevitable. But even when taken on its own terms, the new Carrie rings hollow, a horror movie that is unsure of itself, with little to offer the uninitiated and less to offer fans of the first film.

Black or White is more remarkable for what it isn't than for what it is. For example, it isn't ripe with drama. It isn't a thoughtful exploration of racial identity in America. It isn't a compelling look at judicial bias and class conflict. It is, instead, a movie that's every bit as oversimplified and obvious as its title.