Ghost in the Shell is a slick but plodding recycling of tired cyberpunk clichés that adds nothing new to the genre.

For those unfamiliar with the notoriously camera-averse philosopher and his thoughts, Derrida will most probably prove to be an unenlightening bore.

Michael Lehmann's "Heathers" followed the same sort of story line to much better effect in 1989, and Clueless leaves you itching to race over to the video store in search of just that.

In contrast to its great title, Mad Hot Ballroom is anything but: Let’s just say I was not spellbound.

Such an important and tender subject as assisted suicide deserves more than this mawkish, soapish nonsense.

It's manic and wearyingly predictable, and as soon as it begins, you know exactly how it's going to end: with a hard, fast crash (and the requisite yakkety epilogue).

Despite the filmmakers' efforts to humanize Wilson, however, Bill W. still dabbles in hagiography, valorizing the man while also painting him as a reluctant hero.

Not even the rich and nuanced performances of stage veterans Smith, Gambon, and Birkin can save this British period drama from languishing amid the story's unfocused longings and unrealistic musings.

Lin’s F&F films are operatically dumb, which was what makes them so much fun; maybe if Star Trek Beyond were stupider it wouldn’t feel like such a chore.

The real problem with For Your Consideration is that it's just not funny.

Come True aims to explore the layers of the dreamworld, and the terrifying monsters that lurk in the depths of our minds. Yet the unconscious world writer/director Anthony Scott Burns dissects appears to evade him as well, with layers that lead to empty answers and a leading woman who is paper thin.

Don't believe the hype: Paranormal Activity may be a lot of things, but the words "scary" and "movie" are not among them. It is instead nothing more or less than an excruciatingly tedious YouTube gag cleverly marketed to go viral in the broadest and most box office-friendly way.

It's this overstuffed storytelling, mixed with lackluster pacing, that renders No Time to Die a torturous misfire, and an utterly disappointing exit for Craig's Bond. I hate to say it, but this is Bond's Rise of Skywalker.

Shot with the creative energy of a mediocre sitcom, the scenes play out predictable plot devices with minimal creativity and even less risk.

The Blackening feels like a cash grab, a film so blatantly made because “horror is so hot right now.” There’s no love for the genre, and if you don’t admire something to some degree, it’s hard to properly satirize it.

"By practicing his art, he revealed himself to us." Fellini: I’m a Born Liar provides proof positive: The art indeed reveals far more than this pedestrian documentary ever does.

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.

Holy hell, having to sit through nearly three hours of M:I making like Ethan Hunt is the Messiah is not just exhausting: It’s a total misread of what makes these movies so fun. What a bummer.

The emotions are turbocharged and the topic is eternally relevant, but that's not enough to save Two Girls and a Guy from being a whiny, snoozy bore.

At times it's almost like "Lord of the Flies," with the camera serving as the flypaper dipped in the honey of the promised land of celebrity.

Perhaps vice isn't what it used to be, or maybe Crockett and Tubbs just aren't all that interesting when removed from their appropriate time slot, but this may well be the dreariest and most monochromatic time you'll have at the movies all summer.

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.

Unfortunately, after those first 10 minutes it’s all downhill for I Am Legend, as the film descends into a monster-movie malaise starring a horde of balding CGI monsters that look like refugees from a video game and that will scare absolutely no one, save those who worry that green-screening is ruining the movies.

If sex, gangsters, and killing Nazis are three of the most enlivening topics in the movies, then let us count friendship as one of the most tiresome, right up there with grooming horses and sharing for sheer thrills.

This Italian import may have greater resonance for the men of Casanova's native land than it does internationally, but it definitely hits on truths infrequently addressed in the movies.

It's confused and confusing, by turns hilarious and off-putting. In short, it's awfully hard to love I Love You Philip Morris.

America undoubtedly needs serious artists to explore the brain worms that the pandemic era gave the body politic, but Eddington most definitely ain’t it.

The comedy is often harsh and cruel.

Buscemi and Miller do their best with what they have, finding at least some small redemption in two dislikable characters written into an improbable situation, but emotional honesty in the service of nonsense is still nonsense, no matter how many scabs it manages to pick at.

And come on, guys: There’s nothing cinematic about Googling.

With every bit of sliced flesh and every punctured skull I found myself wondering who exactly this movie is for. Its unflinching violence has earned it an R rating, meaning its desired demographic – teenage boys – is out of contention. That raises the question: Are there really adults who want to sit through this kind of mindless, bullying mayhem?

Unlike its multifaceted director, the film never stretches its boundaries.

In all honesty I'd advise you to go rent the stunning (and brand-new) DVD of the director's great "Le Mépris (Contempt)," which seems to me to be much more Godardian and much less hopeless.

Sirens, is unable to rise above its intrinsic prurience.

A stiff drink or maybe some pharmaceutical assistance might have made me overlook the film's sour tone, or the unremarkableness of its direction.

It's all infuriatingly simplistic, and the performances help matters little. Quinn and McTeer are wholly uncompelling.

Consider this yet another nail in the Eighties coffin.

A dead-chamber misfire, a hollowpoint dud.

The trailer for the film is more gripping than the feature itself.

Faces of Death is dull and thoughtless, its attempts to smash influencer culture into voyeurism feeling artificial.

Quirky and undisturbed, unaffected and unaffecting.

Totally in the distance is the memory of "Swingers," whose hipster goof has been replaced by a stupid goof. This may be what is meant by the “dumbing down of America.”

It's inoffensive and sports a positive "be yourself" message that’s obvious enough to be seen from space without benefit of hero-vision, but really, there's very little that's super about it.

It’s maddeningly unclear sometimes, the whole doll/possession/ghost story, as the filmmakers play extremely loose with the film’s internal logic. Couple that with the stale scent of well-worn dialogue. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Usually, I am not so persnickety about such things, especially with first-timers, but the accumulation of mis-matched shots is so great that you have to wonder why some of the more experienced crew members weren't climbing the rafters to say “Whoa, Mel.”

The Boxtrolls feels rough-and-tumble and not as much fun by half.

A white-trash riff on Little Red Riding Hood, the oddly titled Freeway is a road movie that hits a dead end.

Connery didn't want to play Bond anymore, and it shows in this forgettable picture. From a stirred, not shaken, martini to the ninja training school to the "surgery" to make Bond Japanese (by shaving his chest hair), there's nary a moment of this film that doesn't make any viewer cringe.

A reprehensible movie from just about every perspective, Ransom tries to justify the behavior of its lead character as something grounded in principle, but make no mistake about it: This is the act of a man who can't bear the thought of losing, a man who will turn the tables on his enemy at the risk of a beloved's death.

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey isn't much of a trip. In a word...NOT!!!

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.

If you've got money to waste and enjoy pain, go ahead and see this movie. Or just play a round of golf. Six of one…

Allied is so full of itself it forgets to entertain most of the time. Here’s so not looking at you, kid.

At best, Goosebumps is a who’s who in the Stine literary oeuvre, featuring characters who were terrifying on paper but rendered toothless here.

Like rocky road ice cream, The Rundown is chunky stuff, full of calories and easy to take in small doses. Also like rocky road, it’s bound to attract flies if you leave it lying around, and, more to the point, too much of it is likely to make you gag.

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

As a satire this film would be hilarious, but writer Robert Harling's ("Soapdish") script doesn't quite hit the mark.

Mr. Holland's Opus is the kind of movie that only a person who really doesn't like movies could love. It's a movie whose grandiose swagger is meant as compensation for its message about the resignation of the human spirit to smaller gratifications and vistas.

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

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.

All icing, with a few crumbs devoted to the notion that it is futile to resist the heart's desires.

The gang's all here for Spin Me Round, and hopefully the ensemble enjoyed the filmmaking process, as the end result is an odd, laughless, meandering comedy that's not entertaining enough to be engaging, or gifted with enough character insight to justify its aimless length.

Despite a title change from "The Boat That Rocked" to Pirate Radio, this British import exudes about as much outlaw swagger as Tom DeLay in a dance competition.

Kids who can stomach mixed holiday fare should be able to ride out this stereoscopic superstorm of snowglobes, Easter eggs, magic portals, enchanted crystals, moon worship, fruitcakes, matryoshka dolls, and lost teeth. Others may be confused.

You come away from Splinter feeling it would have made a far more effective short than the feature-length drag it is.

Less extraordinary and considerably more banal, given the sci-fi/comedy subject matter, is Men in Black 3's story, which jumps the ectomorphic shark in high style but with a deficit of actual belly laughs.

A film about Geronimo and about the great feared Chiricahua Apaches would offend, should offend our sensibilities. We should be forced to confront and understand a different way of thinking. This is a more civilized movie, a more noble movie, a remarkably and consistently boring movie.

A shot-for-shot remake would have had more school spirit than this.

Davies and Affleck are affecting and engaging as the callow young men on the verge of independent adulthood. One wishes that we had seen more of their personal drama instead of Going All the Way's myopic male gauntlet of shrews and Jews.

A forgivable error, but an error nonetheless.

No doubt the most devoted horse lovers in the tween set will get their fill, but parents should sneak out for a very long popcorn break.

What's fundamentally uninteresting about Love and Thunder is Waititi's inability to recognize any character development over the last decade, or to move Thor forward.

But most damningly, Shut Up Little Man! fails to convey what was so hypnotic about the original tapes, and Bate's decision to re-enact the transcripts with actors seems weirdly contrary to the spirit of the thing.

Branagh might as well have opened a can and dumped it on a plate, the ridges of a factory-line production still perfectly hatched on a gelatinous cylinder of crud.

Hideously directed with all the comic subtlety of Oliver Stone on speed, A Very Brady Sequel misses almost every single mark it sets for itself, from the disastrously ill-conceived animation that marks Roy's hallucinogenic mushroom trip at the family dinner table to the persistent background hiss on the film's soundtrack. Even Sherwood Schwartz would've hated this dog.

Ultimately, it's a bore. Don't see the movie – read the book, play the game.

Across the Universe will have ardent defenders, but in the long run, it will do nothing to infuse life into the current mini-revival of movie musicals and is as soft-headed as the wishful refrain “All You Need Is Love.” Maybe that works in real life but not in the movies, sister.

In this brightly colored world, Trost makes images pop and vibrate, making this latest in the beloved series easy to watch in a way that seemingly evades most modern multiplex fare. Sadly, that’s one of the few areas of clarity in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

This is the kind of movie in which every other line of dialogue feels like a metaphor – and from there on, the film seesaws between the uncomfortable extremes of glum and twee: an overwrought dirge keyed to a xylophonic ping.

Miami Connection is the sort of film that rarely sees the light of day anymore – a really bad, totally inept mess that reeks of more ambition than talent.

Feels more like Barry Levinson's "Tin Men" on Prozac.

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

An adaptation of Kody Keplinger’s YA novel, The DUFF is exponentially dumb.

The chemistry between the leads is nonexistent. Cavill unsuccessfully tries to channel Cary Grant, while Hammer’s Kuryakin has so much inner conflict, it becomes a joke that isn’t funny.

Seeing what St. Andrews’ greens must have looked like in their native days before all golf courses became zealously manicured is refreshing. The film’s action, however, is rarely filmed in a way that highlights the action, and the story’s biographical elements lack dimension and drama.

The most lackadaisical thriller I've ever seen, overly infatuated with not only the inexplicability of random evil, but also its mundanity.

The supernatural elements brush up against some heavy topics, some actual real-life horrors, but like any encounter with a ghost, Angelica is likely to simply leave you cold.

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

A work of near-existential pointlessness. It's true to the anarchic, silly spirit of the original clowning, but there's very little else to it.

I've had mosquito bites that were more passionate than this undead, unrequited, and altogether unfun pseudo-romantic riff on Romeo and Juliet.

The movie's bright touches belong primarily to Brooke Smith.

To be fair, at least Old captures the sense of time passing past too fast: Rarely have I felt more like my life was slipping away in the cinema.

Loud, abrasive, and featuring performances seemingly calibrated to be heard over the cacophonous roar of Travolta's mad, bad overacting.

Camp has also been compared to Alan Parker’s "Fame," which operates with a similar love of behind-the-scenes melodrama and youthful idealism, but different in that it doesn’t induce brain-swelling revulsion in the viewer.

There’s nary a hint of the original Troll dolls' disconcerting unearthliness in this utterly tame although vibrantly animated feature.

Everybody’s tantalized by the store’s exclusivity because next to nobody makes the cut. Thus the title’s morbid connotation rears its ugly head: Having somebody sprinkle your mortal remains on the marble floor is the only way you’d ever fit in.

A character-driven piece with a character who seems somewhat hollow.

Ninjago’s sprawling team of screenwriters – nine credits in all – throw every joke they can at the screen, but few of them stick in your memory for longer than a moment.