For a movie focusing so intently on personal faith, it doesn’t much trust your independent capacity to find religious, spiritual, or other meaning in what is truly an amazing story.

If Affleck stumbles, Smith's script does nothing to catch his fall. Surprisingly, Smith's truest talent – that of writing – is Jersey Girl's weakest link.

Delgo is a dud.

A movie designed without a proper foundation -- it feels as though it might crumble at any minute.

Rising Wolf gets so caught up in the idea of a supposed potential franchise that it forgets to make you care about the film you’re currently watching.

It's all a bit of overkill.

It's never a good sign if you're watching a thriller, and your first thought is, "Is this supposed to be funny?" So goes the comically overblown The Vanished.

It’s cheesy and contrived, but even the most watered-down stories retain elements of the original masterpieces.

Coppola never manages to get his themes to coalesce into anything terribly coherent.

It's not just that this is poorly timed: there would never be any good time for this level of monstrous clumsiness and obviousness.

Surely something more original than this could have been mined from the history of North America’s largest and most professional police force. As it is, though, Johnson’s film is just firing blanks.

There’s something earnest and forthright about the movie, despite its misguided execution.

Those obsessed with first-person and screenlife films may want to explore Profile from a strictly technical standpoint, and they are welcome to do so. Everyone else can avoid it entirely.

Unfortunately, it's also graceless and predictable, with absolutely no surprises between the start of the family's off-road adventure and their inevitable rescue by park rangers.

The third time is definitely not the charm.

A mildly diverting comedy but has little of real substance to recommend it.

The fictionalization of their journey is simply not that engrossing, nor are their alter egos, with their tightly scripted character arcs.

How much better this would have been had someone like Brian De Palma stepped behind the camera.

These elements fail to rescue Multiplicity from its moronic plot devices, orchestrated by husband-and-wife writing team Chris Miller (National Lampoon's Animal House) and Mary Hale. Despite my better judgment, each movie with Andie MacDowell makes me think that she'll have improved her acting skills. Unfortunately, Multiplicity proves me wrong once again.

Franco Zeffirelli's contrived autobiographical film about his youth in fascist Italy has little social grace -- it's embarrassingly awkward, like a dilettante playing the doyenne.

The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil."

Across-the-board, the kids are extremely adorable to watch (not an easy thing to pull off) and will appeal to the other kids in the audience who might identify with them and see the story from the kids’ point of view. But looking at this film from any other perspective, will give you brain rot.

Stuff the cork back in: This wine movie was sold before its time.

Not even this sprightly cast can buck the privileged sense of entitlement that bedevils this movie. Don’t count on the impish humor that Simon Pegg has unleashed so successfully in other movies to save the day.

The sequel is not as bad as the original, but it doesn't have to be much to accomplish that small feat and it isn't.

This pseudo-Phildickian actioner is chum for the bigger fish to come this summer; for Moore, it's a slummer.

There's not much spunk here.

The best that can be said for this one is that we’ve seen plenty worse of its kind.

The problem lies with the unimaginative story premise and the quip/reverse quip dialogue that just may be better-suited to half-hour television shows than this nearly 2½-hour movie feature.

Fails because it takes itself so seriously, and because it is itself so seriously dull. Soderbergh's straining to give us a wink -- come on, guys, this is fun -- but really it just feels like some awful eye twitch -- a spasm of yawning self-indulgence in a mostly captivating career.

I'm beginning to suspect there's some sort of ancient, or at least post-Pearl Harbor, curse in play that stops genre-oriented Asian filmmakers from creating anything of all but the most negligible merit once they hit the California shore.

Collateral Beauty is ultimately as mushy a movie as the phrase itself, whose definition is never fully explained by the script. It’s another example of something sounding good but meaning little.

He is meant to be brooding, I think, but Tatum’s vague features read more “meathead” than anguished young lover. He has to carry the film, but he’s the least interesting thing going on here.

Sex may, indeed, be all in the mind, but Romance fails to score in the mind's eye.

In the wake of the debacle known as Showgirls, Striptease has had to fight to establish its separate identity and credentials. In retrospect, it appears to have been wasted energy.

It’s not the unmitigated disaster early reviews suggested. Instead, it is a blandly competent and doggedly uninspired redo of material adapted a half-dozen times already.

While the compelling Plowright competently flexes her well-trained muscle, the film's melodrama too readily evokes a Lifetime Original Movie rather than subtle sentiment.

Loud, frenetic and facile, Super Mario Bros. is full of noisy sound and cartoon fury, signifying… a sequel.

This one has the feel of being penned on rolling papers, with room to spare.

It's a call to action with no banner behind which to rally, sanitized to the point of being anodyne.

Utter rubbish compared to its 2013 precursor. Enter with low expectations and you might just have some rock ‘em, sock ‘em, let’s-ravage-Tokyo fun.

Split Second turns out to be one of those dreaded “so-bad-it's-good” debacles, and a marginal one at that. Ed Wood, where are you when we need you?

These thugs, needless to say, are pulverized as effortlessly as so many Easter chicks. This is a problem I've always had with Seagal's martial arts sequences; there's seldom a nanosecond of suspense, and the fight choreography has all the sophistication of Seventies drive-in fare such as Billy Jack and Walking Tall.

"Avatar’s" Worthington is adept at playing a tortured soul, but his American accent and dramatic range are both wanting in this movie.

Super Troopers 2 is a movie out of time and out of sync with comedy in 2018. It might have managed the success of its precursor, if only it had been released in 2002.

Madame Web is a fender bender – nothing calamitous, just a time suck. An annoyance. A waste.

As far as Pfeiffer's performance goes, she's got charm and pep to spare, but next to zero substance when it comes to exploring her character's particular hypocrisies and pretensions.

Noble intentions, ignoble results.

In short, there's nothing remotely real or appealing about it.

An equally tired and wearisome buddy-cop movie that might as well be a forgotten leftover from the era of "Turner and Hooch." Now there's a film with classic Kevin Smith scrawled all over it.

The actors do a fine, if unsoulful, job, but the real problem with A Love Divided is its unwillingness to unromanticize its heroes.

Delivers sinister atmosphere but few shocks.

Phoenix Forgotten is borderline generic, desert-set found footage that apes the aforementioned Witchiness and genre constraints to a snooze-worthy T.

The 3-D angle is the only one I can identify to justify Alpha and Omega not going straight to DVD.

My advice? Grab Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and recast with Jimmy Dean.

Despite an A-list cast and director, it's astonishing how bad this movie is.

A mildly entertaining reworking of the Farrelly Brothers' superior micro-sport parody "Kingpin."

A swing and a miss is too timid a dismissal. It’s a sumptuously dressed table that ends in a wet fart.

This is the feature-length equivalent of an R-rated gag reel from a mainstream Muppets feature. While it might be fun  – and maybe even cathartic  –  for the puppeteers to cut loose with some sophomoric humor, the film never finds that next gear to locate these jokes in contrast to something, anything.

In short, the character is a lot like the way Stan Lee first envisioned him, but the trilogy's screenwriter Steve Ditko would probably loathe this new, unsatisfying, and hollow-feeling entry into the new cinematic Marvel Universe.

Aside from the committee-written script with no coherent perspective, the trouble with Like a Boss is that it never crudely outrages. It’s a bust in so many ways. The halfhearted gender and cultural political incorrectness of Hayek’s ridiculous character makes for halfhearted laughs, and that’s being generous.

It’s DC Comics playing rough, but not rough enough, but maybe that’s too much to ask. Where is the fucking "Hellblazer" movie already.

Jawbreaker has all the heart and soul of last week's mystery loaf (a dish that made the weekly rounds at my alma mater, sadly). And like that unidentifiable bovine by-product, the film is a chilly, messy anti-treat, sweet on the outside, sickly on the in.

The Parts You Lose captures the wintry isolation of North Dakota well, and the actors involved ensure that it’s never unwatchable. Yet this is the worst kind of bad movie: a film with absolutely nothing to say.

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.

Ultimately, it's a long, incoherent mess of a film, enlivened only by the sure knowledge that the great Will Eisner's original is available to one and all at your nearest comic-book shop.

Perhaps with a more adventurous creature design – or stakes that rose above the film’s mild ‘PG’ rating – A.X.L might have referenced better films while still finding its own voice.

An orgy of mindless violence, a random collection of bloody bodies, alien misanthropy, and slobbering carnage designed to bore straight into the pleasure centers of 13-year-old boys and leave the rest of us wondering when the movies got so damn loud.

Neither as adroitly funny as Franken's comic routines, nor as notable as his conversion to the fine art of politics, this is a 90-minute "What If?" with no discernible answer.

Breaks down before it gets out of the driveway.

In another universe, the juxtaposition of family and tragedy might’ve produced something unique; instead, it feels like a pastiche of borrowed story beats from better movies.

Even though it’s fair to say that Pixels is on steadier ground than most of Sandler’s recent comedies, the film is nevertheless flat-footed and grows tedious after the first hour.

Moonfall is bad – the wrong kind of bad – because everything in this formula fails to hold up its end of the bargain. The effects are muddled; the supporting cast is terrible. The only thing Moonfall delivers on is the big ideas, but by the time the movie begins to layer in the sci-fi absurdity, the film is already three-quarters of the way home.

A dead-chamber misfire, a hollowpoint dud.

There will be blood in the ultraviolent Rambo, a movie that depicts both heinous acts and righteous reckoning with equal degrees of flying body parts and arterial sprays.

Though well-researched and competently acted, At Any Price doesn’t risk much, having neither a thesis nor a resolution. Like an awkward hug between estranged relations, there’s a lack of confidence in the execution.

What hath "The Sixth Sense" wrought? These days, it seems as if every psychological thriller has a surprise finish.

Although it's great fun for the under-8 set and for those of us monitoring the chaos theory that is Nolte's career of late, this film is otherwise mediocre and features some of the most uninvolving 3-D CGI since "Clash of the Titans" earlier this year.

Even at 82 minutes in length, Superstar feels uncomfortably stretched.

One wants to reach through the screen at the end of this narcissistic exercise, grasp his shoulders and give him a good shake: “Get a grip, man. You’re Clarence Thomas.”

All singing, all dancing, all color: Rio 2 is a modern, studio animation blockbuster spilling all over the place, rather than arching into the sky.

A moment, please, to appreciate that 47 Meters Down: Uncaged contains a landmark in shark attack cinema (which is a genre, don't question me). Finally, a film has dethroned Deep Blue Sea for the title of "dumbest and most hilarious chomp-chomp moment."

A 119-minute trailer.

It's hard to deny that [Lundgren] deserves better than being the most entertaining element of a poorly executed and infuriatingly predictable fight flick.

The rescuing of our public schools is a national necessity. I just don't know that we are aiding that cause by sending out oversimplified and dogmatic messages about not backing down.

Despite some briefly breathtaking, computer-generated special effects, Virtuosity is 95 minutes of unsubstantial firefights and meandering plot twists.

It is frustrating to watch Fear carelessly oscillate between creature feature, haunted house movie, and folk horror.

It works only sporadically, and more as a comic outing than as a vicious battle of sexual predation.

What's interesting about typical Hollywood Christmas movies is that regardless of how crass, vulgar, or mean-spirited they may be, by the last scene they will inevitably try to wrap viewers in a blanket of warm seasonal cheer.

The title, The Last Song, may be wishful thinking for some, but the best they can probably hope for is the close of the era of Hannah Montana movies.

There's no getting around this dumb script that's just too silly for words.

The film is eventful and full of suspense, but also obvious and completely contrived.

The conventional plot and absence of character dimension will most likely get the better of even the biggest Uma fans.

If LaBute wants to plumb the depths of human unkindness, have at it -– only dig deeper next time.

Another casualty of the uncomfortable branding so common to the teen genre, the same branding one sees in a film starring Hilary Duff, or Amanda Bynes, or the next sweet but bland blond actress that comes down the assembly line.

Spottily directed and lacking the dubious merits of even the Friday the 13th franchise, this is one slasher film that should die a quick and lonely box-office death.

What's saddest is that this was a wasted opportunity to adapt an era-defining comic arc into something with weight, meaning, and visual flair.

Unimaginatively filmed and of a misbegotten construction, Tammy goes all in with its namesake character (played by McCarthy), hanging the entire movie around a person who is immediately and irreversibly established as being thoughtless, unperceptive, destructive, and uneducated.