The 'Burbs tries to position itself somewhere between Beetlejuice and The Twilight Zone, but it lacks the dementia of the first and the wicked intelligence of the second and turns instead into a long shaggy dog story.

Hickok is not without its corny, borderline-cheesy moments of fun — but it eventually loses steam due to the increasingly cliché-riddled story developments, not to mention the awkwardly edited shootouts that sometimes make it seem as if the combatants filmed their scenes on separate days.

It gets to the point where it hardly matters to us who lives and who dies, because they’re all stone-cold killers.

The movie lacks the warmth and edge of the two previous features ("Walking and Talking" and "Lovely and Amazing"). It seems to be more of an idea than a story.

It clearly aspires to be something more than another story about empty-headed teenagers in a remote cabin who get picked off one by one in gruesome fashion — but at the end of the day, that’s pretty much what we’re getting.

Three Thousand Years of Longing actually ends on a creative high note, but the path to that conclusion is filled with muddled adventures that play like something out of a 1980s B-movie. We find ourselves longing for the credits to roll.

Husbands has all the confidence of Cassavetes' masterpiece, Faces, but few of the other qualities of the film that preceded it. It has good intentions, I suppose, but it is an artistic disaster and only fitfully interesting on less ambitious levels.

It is an ambitious, dreamlike, beautifully shot movie (with cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins) that aims for the fences again and again in the course of 149 minutes — but nearly every one of those mighty cuts is a swing and a miss.

Any professional film editor watching this movie is going to suffer through one moment after another that begs to be ripped from the film and cut up into ukulele picks. Never mind the film editor: A lot of audiences, with all the best will in the world, are going to feel the same way.

I prefer "Life Is Beautiful," which is clearly a fantasy, to Jakob the Liar, which is just as contrived and manipulative but pretends it is not.

Disclosure contains an inspiring terrific shot of Demi Moore's cleavage in a Wonderbra, surrounded by 125 minutes of pure goofiness leading up to, and resulting from, this moment.

A pleasant, genial, good-hearted, sometimes icky comedy that's like spending a weekend with well-meaning people you don't want to see again any time real soon.

The flat and uninspired Addams Family 2 is the wrong kind of “twofer,” in that it’s often too dark and grotesque and bizarre for children, but also profoundly unfunny when it tries to appeal to the grown-ups.

Here are people who do not allow the use of their last names, yet they cheerfully have sex in front of the camera -- and even willingly participate in scenes that make them look cruel, twisted, reckless and perhaps deranged.

True, Aniston does maybe her best film work to date in Cake. But it’s definitely not her best film.

Johnny Knoxville, famous for "Jackass,"...is, in fact, completely convincing and probably has a legitimate movie career ahead of him and doesn't have to stuff his underpants with dead chickens and hang upside down over alligator ponds any more.

Eddie and the Cruisers is all buildup and no payoff.

The problem is that Winterbottom has imagined both stories and several others, and tells them in a style designed to feel as if reality has been caught on the fly.

If we don’t care a whit about the characters and their respective dilemmas, a multiple-vortex tornado ripping through a used car lot is just a multiple-vortex tornado ripping through a used car lot.

The outcome of this journey is going to be predictable and disappointing. Mottola does his best to make the trip itself enjoyable.

Finally, a sci-fi action mega-movie filled with CGI battles in which barely distinguishable foes hurl each other about while delivering unspeakably corny lines, as we hear hip-hop hits on the soundtrack.

The movie is harmless and fitfully amusing.

The bloated, bombastic and brain-dead Netflix actioner The Gray Man is a depressingly formulaic waste of the talents of the Russo Brothers and the A-list cast — and a complete waste of 2 hours and 2 minutes of your time, unless you’re content to hit the “Recline” button on your theater seat, soak in the exotic locations, jam your arm into a bucket o’ popcorn and laugh at the hackneyed, cartoonishly violent and utterly ridiculous idiocy of the entire exercise.

"Star Trek V" is pretty much of a mess - a movie that betrays all the signs of having gone into production at a point where the script doctoring should have begun in earnest. There is no clear line from the beginning of the movie to the end, not much danger, no characters to really care about, little suspense, uninteresting or incomprehensible villains, and a great deal of small talk and pointless dead ends. Of all of the "Star Trek" movies, this is the worst.

Either this is a tragic family or a satirical one, and the film seems uncertain which way to jump.

The modern retelling retains little of the charm and whimsy of the source material, in favor of a cloying story, a most unwelcome new character and some pretty cheesy special effects.

It's not just sad, it's brutal. There's an undercurrent of cold, detached cruelty in the way Michael uses the magical device.

A mixed-bag satire with ambitions that veer wildly from sharp political insight to slapstick farce to inspirational semi-autobiography. It never finds solid ground in any of those genres.

As an often cliché-riddled tale of redemption on the big screen, Burnt is the equivalent of a sleek, well-lit, trendy restaurant serving up a mildly creative dishes on an otherwise predictable menu.

Kline's Frenchman is somehow not worldly enough, and Ryan's heroine never convinces us she ever loved her fiance in the first place. A movie about this kind of material either should be about people who feel true passion or should commit itself as a comedy. Compromise is pointless.

Hal Hartley is on his way to creating a distinctive film world, and although Trust is not a successful film, you can see his vision at work, and it's intriguing.

It's all recycled material from other movies - all except for some nice personal touches added by the actors. They bring style to a movie that needs it.

How much more interesting is a film like "(500) Days of Summer," which is about the complexities of life, in comparison with this one, which cheerfully cycles through the cliches.

The Longest Ride” treats us to a twist that’s so ridiculous I think we’re almost supposed to laugh. It’s not quite on the “Are you KIDDING ME!?” level of awfulness as the big reveal in “Safe Haven,” but it’s close. It’s close.

The movie never really comes together, and I think the fault for that begins with Williams. When the star of a movie seems desperate enough to depend on one-liners, can the rest of the cast be blamed for losing confidence in the script?

The Bubble is ultimately a mediocre movie about the making of an even worse movie.

The movie is clearly intended for girls between the ages of 9 and 15, and for the more civilized of their brothers, and isn't of much use to anyone else.

A mild pleasure from one end to the other, but not much more. Maybe that's enough, serving as a reminder that movie comedies still can be about ordinary people and do not necessarily have to feature vulgarity as their centerpiece.

Now comes Foe, which is set primarily in the year 2065 and envisions a dystopian world in which the delicate and dangerous balance between humans and sentient AI creations is the basis for a pretentious and empty cautionary tales with some interesting ideas — but it’s mostly a pile of hokey claptrap.

This movie is all elbows. Nothing fits. It doesn't add up. It has some terrific free-standing scenes, but they need more to lean on.

Maybe Muppets from Space is just not very good, and they'll make a comeback. I hope so. Because I just don't seem to care much anymore. Sorry, Miss Piggy. Really sorry.

Foster, I believe, sees right through this material and out the other side, and doesn't believe in a bit of it.

Who was Joseph Fiennes channeling when he chose this muddled tone? Obviously he was reluctant to gave a broad, inspirational performance of the kind you find in deliberately religious films.

I didn't find “The Jerk” very funny...There's a smarmy undercurrent in this movie that seems to imply that Steve Martin may be playing a jerk, but that we all know what a cool guy he is. Well, if you're going to play a jerk, play one as if you think you are one, or you might wind up looking like a jerk.

Shatner and Smart have a comfortable chemistry, and it IS nice to see a movie romance between two people who remember the 1960s. It’s just too bad they’re in a vehicle that isn’t nearly as impressive as that vintage Porsche.

Ride Along 2 is the movie equivalent of a cover band. We’ve seen it all before, and often in much better films.

The plot in Throw Mama from the Train is top-heavy, but the movie doesn't make as much as it could from its weird characters.

Johnny Mnemonic is one of the great goofy gestures of recent cinema, a movie that doesn't deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis but has a kind of idiotic grandeur that makes you almost forgive it.

It’s often fascinating stuff, but the whole thing comes across as a film new employees would watch on their first day of work, right after filling out all the packets of forms in Human Resources.

There is nothing to complain about except the film's deadening predictability and the bland, shallow characters.

Hicks may devote too much time on hospital errands and bedside moments as Terry’s health declines. But he succeeds at honoring the career of one man who is helping another’s.

At one time or another, Casino Royale undoubtedly had a shooting schedule, a script and a plot. If any one of the three ever turns up, it might be the making of a good movie.

There are moments of surprising tenderness in Fading Gigolo, and Turturro gives us some beautiful shots of a city he clearly loves. But this film is all over the map, veering from pathos to absurdist comedy to romance to weirdness for the sake of weirdness.

Texas Killing Fields begins along the lines of a police procedural and might have been perfectly absorbing if it had played by the rules: strict logic, attention to detail, reference to technical police work. Unfortunately, the movie often seems to stray from such discipline.

Here is a movie that ignores the Model Airplane Rule: First, make sure you have taken all of the pieces out of the box, then line them up in the order in which they will be needed. Bringing Down the House is glued together with one of the wings treated like a piece of tail.

For all the gorgeous visuals in Brighton and Venice, and the scandalous-for-its-time storyline about a married man carrying on a torrid love affair with another man when being gay was literally a crime, My Policeman never really resonates.

The talented writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour raises the crazy stakes with a well-made, sometimes darkly funny and at times bizarrely entertaining film that eventually falls apart due to directorial self-indulgence, excessive grotesquery, a bloated running time, too many half-baked messages—and let’s not forget the distractingly campy appearances by Keanu Reeves and Jim Carrey.

Everything about “Uglies” is average. Not terrible enough to be campy, not deep or provocative or visually impressive enough to merit further chapters in the story.

The movie's not without charm. There's a fresh, sweet relationship between one of the girls (Phoebe Cates) and her boyfriend, in which she is permitted to have the normal fears, doubts and reservations of anyone her age. I'm not sure how that plot got into this smarmy-minded movie, but it was like a breath of fresh air.

The kind of film you can appreciate as an object, but not as a story. It's a lovingly souped-up incarnation of the film-noir look, contains well-staged and performed musical numbers, and has a lot of cigarettes, tough tootsies, bad guys and shadows. What it doesn't have is a story that pulls us along, or a hero who seems as compelling as some of the supporting characters.

Nothing heats up. The movie doesn't lead us, it simply stays in step.

Here is a film that begins with merciless comic savagery and descends into merely merciless savagery. But wow, what an opening.

Despite some admittedly impressive production design and the star-power presence of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, Babylon comes across as a hard-R cartoon that will have you feeling like you need to take a shower once it finally collapses at the finish line with a faux-sentimental, movie-within-the-movie ending that rings hollow.

If you're a fan of Hector Lavoe and Latin music, or Lopez and Anthony, you'll want to see El Cantante for what's good in it. Otherwise, you may be disappointed. The director (Leon Ichaso) and his co-writers haven't licked a crucial question: Why do we need to see this movie and not just listen to the music?

The plot is simple-minded and disappointing, and the chase and action scenes are pretty much routine for movies in the sci-fi CGI genre. The robots never seem to have the heft and weight of actual metallic machines, and make boring villains.

The Navajo code talkers have waited a long time to have their story told. Too bad it appears here merely as a gimmick in an action picture.

The only thing more insane and contrived than the Big Reveal is the epilogue, which contains not one but two maddeningly bizarre developments that are beyond strange and inconsistent, even for a movie that’s been strange and inconsistent all along.

I was pleased again and again by set-ups, camera angles, lighting effects, editing rhythms and the fanciful staging of action scenes. But I never for a moment cared about the characters, and the plot was all too conveniently structured - just a guideline to the action.

A strange mutant beast, half Nickelodeon movie, half R-rated comedy. It's like kids with potty-mouth playing grownup.

There is nothing really wrong with the scenes in the institution, except that they're in the wrong movie.

Problem is, it's so laid-back it eventually gets monotonous. If the style and pacing had been as outrageous as the subject matter, we might have had something really amazing here.

Begins with promise, proceeds in fits and starts, and finally sinks into a cornball drone of greeting-card sentiment.

If I were simply to describe the story of Compromising Positions, it might sound like lighthearted, slightly kinky fun. But the movie has such a bitter core, such a distaste for its characters, that I ended up feeling uncomfortable in its company. I think it's supposed to be a comedy, but I felt depressed by its world of rich, neurotic, bitchy suburbanities.

Even though it is quite likely the longest romance in movie history in terms of the time period covered, the one-point premise is stretched washi paper-thin over the course of just 92 minutes.

Clever, done with skill, yet lacking in the cerebral imagination of the best science fiction.

Home Again has a certain charm and polish. It’s hard not to like people who are so … likable. But it’s also hard not to feel a constant sense of disconnect from these characters and their so-called “crises.”

It's a showcase leading role for Parker Posey, who obviously has the stuff, and generates wacky charm. But the movie never pulls itself together.

Hollow Man can think of nothing more interesting to do than spy on his girlfriend and assault his neighbor.Too bad. Really too bad, because the movie is supported by some of the most intriguing special effects I've seen.

Anything is possible in the world of “The Union.” I mean, anything.

Scanners is a new horror film made with enough craft and skill that it could have been very good, if it could find a way to make us care about it.

The gift of Christopher Reeve, in his best scenes and when the filmmakers allow it, is to play Superman without laughing, to take him seriously so that we can have some innocent escapist fun. Helen Slater has the same gift, but is given even less chance to exercise it in Supergirl, and the result is an unhappy, unfunny, unexciting movie.

The Muppets are a wonderful creation, but they lose their special quality in "The Great Muppet Caper." They behave like clones of other popular kiddie superstars -- like the basic cartoon heroes they once seemed destined to replace.

You can sense an impulse toward a better film, and Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley certainly take it seriously, but the time-travel whiplash effect sets in, and it becomes, as so many time travel movies do, an exercise in early entrances, late exits, futile regrets.

One of the unique things about the original “House Party” from 1990 is while there was an abundance of energetic and exhilarating dancing, the party itself was almost secondary to all the action that took place OUTSIDE the party...Not so much with the massive, bloated, epic, over-the-top bash in the “House Party” reboot, which marks the second time LeBron James has put his enormous clout behind a new take on a beloved 1990s film (after the “Space Jam” reboot) — and the second time the results were underwhelming.

There are a few chuckles sprinkled here and there, but for a movie about football it doesn’t seem to know all that much about football (certain scenes that transpire during the Super Bowl are cartoonishly implausible), and the four primary characters are rather thinly drawn.

Watching MirrorMask, I suspected the filmmakers began with a lot of ideas about how the movie should look, but without a clue about pacing, plotting or destination.

The disappointingly flat and decidedly un-erotic non-thriller Deep Water is the kind of movie that has you thinking about other movies as you tap your toes impatiently, waiting for this great-looking but dumb and bloody mess to swirl around the drain and disappear.

Senior Year doesn’t come across as condescending or cynical; it’s just harmless and sweetly dopey and instantly forgettable.

Somehow isn't as exciting as a duel over a woman should be.

Infinite has some impressive set pieces combining practical effects and CGI, and the terrific cast approaches the material with grim-faced sincerity, but it’s ultimately a big bag of nonsense wrapped in glossy packaging.

Me Before You is a beautifully filmed and well-intentioned weeper marred by an unfortunate performance from one of the leads, and a plot development that leaves us more angry and frustrated than moved in the final act.

The Drop has the feel of an extended improv exercise while spotlighting characters who are thinly sketched and often as boring as they are wickedly boorish, with the talented cast engaging in hit-and-miss dialogue that often falls flat.

Made me feel like I was sitting in McDonald's watching some guy shout at his kids. Price of Glory gives us two hours of that behavior, and it's a miscalculation so basic that it makes the movie painful when it wants, I guess, to be touching.

It says something for Robert Downey Jr. that in a movie where a man becomes a dog, Downey creates the weirdest character.

Ford gives a grounded, quietly powerful performance as a reclusive, regret-filled, self-pitying old-timer who crawls out of a bottle and finds a renewed sense of purpose when he sees the world through Buck’s eyes. If only those eyes weren’t so distractingly incongruous.

You hear some nostalgia, but with most of them you don't get the idea that if they had the chance they'd do it all again.

You know a movie's got problems when you find yourself wishing the heroes would agree with the villain.

I watched the movie with interest, yes, but not emotional involvement, and my appreciation of Moore was based more on her essence than on her character.