Sure, it's nifty enough to see dust particles swirling or hands swooshing at you, but mostly the 3-D muddles the invention and exquisiteness of the film's raison d'être: the dancing.

Hall Pass has half the right idea: Scratch out "Hall," and just … pass.

Racing junkies would be better off browsing the myriad of online drifting videos where the camera doesn't cut and the people don't speak.

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

There’s a naivete about the film that only a teen at heart could love.

Because “all in” – to me, at least – suggests a certain standard of enthusiasm, of emphaticness, and what this latest Step Up movie indifferently chunks out falls far short of that standard.

Often too slick and too posh for its own good, there’s nothing really enjoyable about The Invitation. It’s technically fine, but fine is not want you want from your lusty vampire genre. There’s no glitz or glamour to set it apart from the pack, and that’s ultimately its demise.

When she's (Dunst) off the screen, Elizabethtown goes dark and broody, stranding us with the morose Bloom during a third-act road trip that goes everywhere and nowhere at once.

By the time The Statement comes to its inevitable conclusion, you'll be hard pressed to remember much about it, sadly enough. In other words, The Statement doesn't make much of one.

It's a film that you can take home and chew over later, both abrasive in its loudness and reflective in its fleeting, feminine moments of silence. Well done.

One personal pet peeve is the music. A movie about evil reincarnation could pave the way for any of a hundred different song choices, but The Prodigy’s score is focused on a dissatisfying blend of danger chords and a single shapeless Hungarian folk song.

Given its can’t-miss potential, you’d think this would be one kick-ass movie. So why is The 15:17 to Paris such a trainwreck?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least among Janeites, that we’ll spend long hours scouring every streaming service out there, hungering for a corseted drama to watch. In that respect at least, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is fresh meat, if a tough cut.

Surrogates' morality is less Asimov than asinine, although it's bizarrely reassuring, in a nihilistic sort of way, to believe that in the future, when the world is ready to play The Sims for real (so to speak), our avatars are all going to look like generic porn stars with shitty airbrush jobs.

Much like the behavior of Sheriff Ambrose as he investigates the murders occurring around him, the story is best served as something to be glanced at rather than examined too closely. If you stare too long at fool’s gold, it loses its fleeting appeal.

It comes as no surprise that the film is less about fandom as it is about the community fans create with one another – who else to turn to when the object of your affection, your enduring obsession, blows big chunks? – and Fanboys, a likable, shaggy picture, pays nice tribute to that community.

This film is a mess. It’s so grim and inept. There are a million plot holes at any given moment, that you must constantly pick up your eyes from rolling on the floor.

The movie feels out of whack, as if big chunks were excised to ensure its relatively short 90-minute running length. Clearly, Emily and Linda aren’t the only things that go missing in Snatched.

Works just fine for the first half hour or so, but quickly devolves into a case of too much affection and not enough affliction.

Perry tosses everything at his disposal into his movie gumbo, even a completely gratuitous appearance by his signature, self-performed, alter-ego in drag Madea – most likely to set up the premise for his next film "Madea Goes to Jail."

Fails to create a seamless and believable web of measured performances and period color.

Given his lackluster performance, even Martin, who is no stranger to sardonic humor, seems unsure about the film's tone.

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.

It seems nothing is left out, and the movie makes us begin to feel as though we've witnessed every swing the man ever swung.

It’s hardly the most original teen comedy we’ve seen, but, again, Schaffer, working from a script by himself, Alec Berg, and David Mandel keeps things borderline sweet throughout.

We need gentle comedies like this in the world; we certainly need more movies that remind us of why we fell in love with Owen Wilson in the first place. Like the work of Carl Nargle, history will hopefully be very kind to what McAdams has created.

Roughly as entertaining as watching your neighbor's kid's soccer game, not because you want to, but because you have to.

Hesher is a muddle of inchoate feelings that never really grasps the clichés to which it raises its middle finger.

When you've got Maya Angelou and Cicely Tyson in the kitchen, laying on the sophomoric laughs is just plain stupid.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife may not change cinema in the way the original did, but it’s a worthy next generation.

Half the time the movie wants to be balls-out weird, and it is. But the other half – the half with the good guys – is plodding procedural fare.

The gentle lift you feel in watching Defying Gravity is propelled by the earnestness of its emotions.

Lyne has the stylized talent of a soft-core pornographer; he choreographs his movies like languorous sex scenes.

Julia Roberts is the only central character whose appearance is drastically different in the two time periods, and it remains to be seen if the pretty woman with the million-dollar smile will be accepted as a character bearing a pinched face and dead eyes or whether it will seem like stunt casting despite a solid performance.

International intrigue has rarely been less intriguing.

Everything is a puzzle and it's as though Lynch lost track of his reasons for making this prequel and got hung up on filming the sordid details that TV won't allow: shots of peeled-back corpse fingernails; close-ups of oscillating uvulas; visions of strange-looking, backward-talking, gyrating weirdos; and uncensored whiffs of sex, cocaine, and families undone.

 Angel Has Fallen attempts to tell a slightly more mature story. Waugh seems to barter for creative control by the act: As long as the studio gets a respectable pairing of intro and outro set-pieces, Waugh is free to explore unexpected elements of trauma and masculinity.

Hedlund's got a hell of a voice, rotgut-ragged, and whether he's crooning or wooing, whatever he's selling, and no matter how cornpone, I'm buying.

Much as he did with his 2016 feature debut (at the age of 23), the love-triangle drama As You Are, Joris-Peyrafitte tells this story with welcome subtlety and a keen attenuation to his actors.

This crazy-gleeful adventure jumps between grisly and cartoonish.

It's big, it's loud, it's dumb, and all things considered, it's not completely un-fun.

Drained of much of its presumed power by a distinct "been there, seen that" vibe.

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.

In the end, we know Andie and Ben will kiss and make up -– how could too alliteratively aligned pretty people not? -– but first we must wade through the protracted and wholly unwarranted period in which both huffs about the other’s deceptions.

A lightweight, intermittently engaging comedy.

McAulay has crafted a terse, bleak drama. It's reminiscent of the portrait of a corrupt male friendship in Super Dark Times, but with the added pressures of kinship and family. To describe Don't Tell a Soul as a story of toxic masculinity is both accurate but, in a time when every film with a flawed or unpleasant male an/protagonist gets that tag, almost glib. There's something rancid between the boys.

They are all part of a great American tradition. Hate them if you want to, but you might as well hate gated communities, "The Real World," and the war on terror while you're at it.

If you've seen the 2006 Nick Nolte vehicle "Peaceful Warrior," then you've pretty much already seen this. Capturing the essence of surfing – or any sport, for that matter – is more often than not a fool's errand. A more fitting tribute to Moriarty's legacy? Go buy a board and hit the deep blue yourself.

It's amazing the filmmakers never really concern themselves with satisfying the audience's rules of engagement.

For all the swords 'n' sandals hoodoo that makes up the wilting backbone of Jonathan Hale's script, the Rock is, nevertheless, fun to keep an eye on.

It delivers commendable entertainment value.

Suffocates under its own good intentions and inexorable sense of doom.

I wish that movies, like scholastic football, could be judged on a "no pass, no play" basis.

Save glancing asides (guns sure are easy to buy, the courts sure treat Black and white people differently), Gaudet and Pullapilly skip the social satire to focus on a more personality-driven story. Alas, the personality at the center is so very flat.

Similar to Wan’s The Conjuring universe, Insidious has long overstayed its welcome, reaching the point where its spark has quelled and there’s nothing interesting buried within these characters anymore. We have reached the end of the Further.

The camerawork, which relies heavily on shots of picture-perfect vistas and not enough on human beings and their place in this world. When we do see the characters, we primarily see their beauty.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone draws a lot of goodwill from the basic likability of its star performers.

Cherry is a small-scale tragedy, one repeated over and over again in broad sweeps, but still specific to this one instance. The issue is that, when the audience knows the inevitable path, there are limited opportunities for surprises – especially since the Russos set the entire story as a flashback.

They’re not all hideous, the men who sit for interviews with a graduate student (Nicholson) and unload their dirty laundry. Sometimes they’re just feckless, or crass; some are even pitiable.

As Christy, Garner gives an earnest performance, her perpetually worried expression put to good use here as the Beams grapple with the unimaginable possibility of losing Anna.

School for Scoundrels varies between taking itself seriously and not, leaving the viewer alternately confused and disappointed.

The split screen is distracting enough, but it is the choppy scenes representing the passage of time that make the story hard to follow. More American Graffiti is not without its moments, though, and Cindy Williams' moment of realization -- when she defies authority to lead a police wagon full of women in singing Baby Love-- is a joy.

An indie grab bag.

There's nothing terribly wrong with Kate & Leopold -- it's just an awfully conventional upmarket romantic comedy.

There is also a lot of good supporting work in this movie, including the performances of Irma P Hall, Tom Bowser as Evie's clueless dad, and Bruno Kirby as Kiddie Acres' gruff impresario.

A reasonably enjoyable, if utterly predictable, romp.

Oz the Great and Powerful vacillates between visual wonders and earthbound duds. Is there enough here to make viewers believe? Most probably. Even though the film has no ruby slippers, we all know there’s no place like home.

The film feels about as genuine and spontaneous as its evident lip-synching.

It just signals a series that's plainly out of gas.

That’s not to say that MacFarlane’s film isn’t funny, but rather that his creative talent could benefit from more judicious editing and focus. MacFarlane’s id runs rampant with no signs of a superego (internal or external) to rein it in.

Director Miner (Friday the 13th, House) executes some of the scary scenes competently (one in which Sands gives his male host the ultimate French kiss is grossly memorable), but he never takes the material beyond its rather limited parameters.

From Lloyd Ahern's breathtaking, earth-toned cinematography to Freeman Davies' uncommonly graceful editing, Last Man Standing is a real class act, an old-fashioned thriller propelled by wildly violent, decidedly modern action sequences.

Graham maintains a casual charm throughout it all, but she lacks the kind of emotional depth that might have pulled this hodge-podge together.

Kaplan's lustily awful film is to be avoided if at all possible, and if not, well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Most of the actors seem to have been issued one facial expression at the beginning of the film, along with pain-of-death instructions not to change it under any circumstance.

The script negates anything heartfelt with its flippant, almost vulgar tone.

A crowd-pleasing blockbuster if ever there was one, features as its centerpiece a jaw-droppingly vivid re-creation of the Japanese attack on the U.S.'s fabled (and extremely vulnerable, as it turned out) Pacific fleet.

This is a more hardscrabble, beaten down version of Neeson’s iconic revengers than most of his action roles, with Hanson coming across as sympathetically appealing despite the cliched storyline.

Visually, The Jacket has a lot of flash, but it hardly compensates for the fuzzy story.

Still, every generation deserves its own coming-of-age cinematic snapshot; if this is that, though, things are tougher than I thought.

Like its predecessor, everything about the stylized Kingsman: The Golden Circle teeters just a little over the top: the elegant international production values, the perfectly tailored Savile Row attire, the hyperviolent action sequences, the depiction of something more than just an innocent hint of sex.

"When you race with the devil, you'd better be fast as hell." (And you, angry driver, are not that fast.)

It makes you wonder, ultimately, how the carbon footprint created by the film will stand up to the test of time.

There is great material here and ample food for thought, but the presentation is lacking.

I’m told Bella’s helplessness is true to the spirit of the novels, but so what? It’s almost 2010 – let’s get hip, people.

Ultimately, City of Lies is more James Elroy than docudrama, resulting in a tired police thriller that hitched its wagon to an untenable star.

Turturro-Nelson-Smith come across as nothing more than three strangers with an out of synch, watered-down routine that flounders as a pale imitation of their hallowed predecessors.

As it turns out, The Legend of Tarzan isn’t half-bad, and the film deftly put most of my fears to rest by creating animals and jungles that serve and enhance the story rather than detracting from it.

Won't ever be accused of breaking new ground; it's too busy entertaining to worry about being original.

The plot of Kidnap is bizarre and frustrating.

All that's missing from the director's new vision of the world is the pipe organ and the choir of angels.

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.

This is Baron Cohen’s worst film, period.

The third and final chapter in Araki's teen-angst-run-riot-in-L.A. triptych is as gorgeously messy as the first two opening salvos (Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation), but this time Araki employs a far broader and more complex character canvas than previously.

Channeling your inner child, you may find solace in Hotel Transylvania 2, but in the end it has no bite, doing continued disservice to the Universal monsters it scabs out, and adding another soiled feather to Sandler’s cap of mediocrity.

There is no denying that being parentless during the Great Depression called for a lot of resilience, but 12 Mighty Orphans’ underdog story unfortunately plays out to farce levels of entertainment.

It may be an elevator pitch stretched to 90 minutes, and never aspires to more than that, but it's a fine and distinct funhouse ride designed to elicit cackles, then be forgotten about by the next ride.

Landis has a lot to work with here and he misses few opportunities for sly commentary, but he blows it on a much grander scale. Innocent Blood is way too long. It loses steam and coherence about midway through, leaving us rooting for it but doomed to disappointment. Combining comedy, horror, romance and chase scenes, Innocent Blood finally begins to collapse in on itself but not before we've had more than a few good laughs and a frightened yelp or two.