What begins as a lush, pulpy gothic laced with intrigue quickly spins into a convoluted web of over engineered and preposterous plot twists.

Surprisingly lifeless monster movie.

A better-quality sequel, but that wasn't really too difficult. The original was one of the worst movies of 2005, and while "Rise" won't win any awards, it's (mostly) less offensive than its predecessor. Faint praise, but I'll be damned if I go any further than that.

It's ironic that a film exploring the mysteries of how people succeed and fail to connect with each other then fails to really connect with its audience.

For an action film, Havoc feels aimless and lacks suspense.

There are pleasures to be had early on in Crush, but they get fewer and farther between. Nice while it lasts, the glow wears off all too quickly.

With The Haunted Mansion, Eddie Murphy continues in a long line of family film stinkers.

For a documentary about drama and all those who love it, director Alexandra Shiva's lukewarm study displays very little of it.

The convoluted movie feels like a bunch of grandiose ideas in search of a connecting thread. Perhaps Cahill needs to reconnect with his indie roots to get his creative bliss back.

Despite the inherently moving story and the respectable work of director John Lee Hancock and the cast, something remains absent throughout the entire film: a certain sense of verve and personality.

More inanimate than haunting, The Little Stranger is Abrahamson’s least interesting feature.

For you guys out there stuck with a lady-friend looking for that "Beaches" replacement, here it is.

Heavy-handed melodrama that rises above its manipulative trappings on the solid performances of the cast.

Longtime fans of John Woo, who have come to accept operatic, lead-slinging death dances as an integral part of the director’s powerful aesthetic, will probably be unsatisfied with this neutered variation on his earlier, superior works.

One cannot deny the historic importance of The Boys in the Band – for better or worse, this is the starting point of queer cinema. But, quite frankly, one wishes the genre had a more dignified and less bitchy way of launching – these are not the type of gay boys you want to take home to mother.

Will ultimately be remembered more for the trademark Anderson look than for any of its characters or any emotional impact.

Whatever distinguished "Riding in Cars with Boys" the book certainly doesn't show up in the movie.

Goodnight, Charlene is decently directed, beautifully lit, and most of the cast do well all things considered. However, two of the leads are quite dull, the script is trying too hard to be duplicitous, and winds up going nowhere all that compelling.

As a movie, I thought Jon M. Chu did an incredible job bringing In The Heights to cinematic life. There’s nothing wrong with the actual production or cast. It’s all great, but my issue is with the source material, specifically the songs.

It used to be that the main allure of features was that they could deliver what cable couldn't, but now it's the other way around and one of the biggest problems with Analyze That is that it doesn't show us anything new or really funny, certainly nothing that we can't get on HBO.

It's damn funny. It's also the best date film I've seen in a long time.

A bizarre flick. It moves a little apprehensively between comedy, drama and then, erotic romance, with the central players' excellent performances (especially newcomer Gyllenhaal) suffering because of the film’s indecisions.

Live Free or Die is a low-fi farce that technically works. But in the end it feels like a pale version of say "Raising Arizona" or even "After Hours."

The drama still does make for an interesting exploration into a deeply troubled main character and has an authentic backbone to reel back the story from absurdity.

For the most part, Fleck doesn't seem particularly intrigued on finding the banjo’s African heritage – the film offers little in the way of historic value in understanding the origin of the instrument.

It’s interesting to watch a movie where some aspects of the production are of such a higher quality than others. The script’s dialogue is wooden, character motivations are often unclear, and it’s hard to infer what we’re supposed to get from some exchanges.... Meanwhile, the acting is all-around excellent.

As it is, Flightplan is half of a pretty good movie. But to maintain that impression, I recommend you take a nap for the last 40 minutes.

I can't condemn it outright, but damned if I can remember anything (aside from Izzard's performance) that would make me recommend it.

Watchmen is indeed gorgeous, with Gibbons' original work reproduced and – in some cases – improved upon by detailed F/X, but even at a healthy two hours and 41 minutes the story feels truncated. Even abrupt.

The problem with Stray is that it doesn’t ever connect with the audience, with the exception of Murphy’s back story. The mystery just unfolds, and we as the audience never engage in the mental exercise of piecing clues together and finding an answer.

There’s nothing new and nothing we haven’t seen, which means every single moment and plot twist is familiar and predictable.

Though the film is about a missing person, unfortunately, it felt like something was actually missing from the plot.

If my moviegoing experience was magical in any way, it was only in that I once or twice nodded off for a spell.

I won't spoil the ending, but if Code 46 is to be believed, women will have it even worse in the years to come.

Can be fun. Just don’t think about it too hard.

Holding the entire movie together, Hall delivers an exceptional performance as a woman grieving, sliding in and out of reality. But her talents are eventually no match for a runtime that stretches things a bit and story beats that we have seen before.

Here's a film that exhibits all kinds of joy in uncoiling a story with no ending, or an ending that's so arbitrary you get the feeling that the filmmakers just threw names in a hat to see who their killer would be.

What prevents Hostel from fully harnessing the suspense factor in its rising action, climax, and conflict resolution is the insufficient impetus to pity or to feel too badly for Paxton and Josh.

The film has good action set pieces, but without a story that has something to say or connects with audiences beyond the surface, it’s just another standard sci-fi action film.

Easily one of the most lackadaisical movies I've seen. Don't get me wrong, the plot is entertaining enough, and there are some genuine laughs, but almost everyone in the movie is half-a--ing it.

There's no question that Meg Ryan is the queen of romantic comedies. Yet for every piece of frothy fluff that works -- there comes a couple where you just want to say, "Enough already." Kate & Leopold is one such movie.

The film is corny, predictable, and manipulative to the point that you feel like there’s electrodes attached from the screen to your brain, but, by the end of this film, I’ll be damned if I didn’t feel genuine affection for it and Lizzie in particular.

The movie is quiet and minimal in its dialogue, and it has flashes of humor and thoughtfulness. However, it's also unbearably slow and hard to empathize with Mikey when we don't really know what his problem is.

Diesel is good in the movie. He gets to dance, cry, romanticise…things we’ve rarely see him do in other movies. There are actually hints of a real actor there.

Murphy doesn't have much of a handle on juggling laughs with pathos, and this makes some of the more touching scenes unintentionally amusing. The film, like Augusten's life, is uneven but not without its charms.

Has a lot going for it, but two-thirds of the way through, things fall apart. The film’s weaknesses are directly tied to the narrative.

Key, Leguizamo, Greer, and Haysbert actually look like their having a good time and investing their acting talent in this silly story without flinching. No one’s phoning it in. John Cena is just a little too cartoony in his straight-laced character and somehow manages to make “normal” feel over-the-top.

The strong parts are the rip-offs of "The Conversation." The worst part is the lack of understandable character motivations.

David Perrault’s Savage State opts for Jacques Audiard’s contemplative mood but fails to balance it out with fleshed-out heroes, a sense of humor, or even a coherent point. What we’re left with is the novelty of a well-worn genre seen through a very French, existential prism; it’s all jaw-droppingly beautiful and sleep-inducingly dull.

Lying and Stealing comes across as the object a thief would replace an art piece to prevent anyone from realizing it’s missing at first glance.

Nothing really works on any level above mediocrity.

The average viewer will be satisfied with the product, even if the film offers hardly any new information. The doc buff will witness a film that can't surface above the steady nonfiction output at the art house.

The Last Breath navigates its time at sea with real skill, and it provides us with a handsome final performance from Julian Sands, but sadly, the drama doesn’t quite float.

It's the curse of overacting and overdone shtick that does them in.

Entertaining and highly watchable but in the end, it just feels trite.

“Syriana's” dumber, louder cousin.

Saltburn just goes too far, and its startling images shocked me out of the story altogether.

A competently calibrated feel-good machine. It's as effective as anything on The Lifetime Channel. Which is likely where this project would have wound up were it not for the involvement of Washington.

I found myself just not engaging with the lead characters and storyline as much as I like. In the end, I was just observing people dealing with a problem, while never able to be in the story as it played out.

Certainly a stylish affair, but also an extremely bleak and unpleasant one.

The premise of Night at the Museum is definitely a bit more creative than the standard family films we are used to at this time of year, but the problem is that the film is marred with many gags that are outdated and therefore feel cheap.

Sigourney gets some good "Rambo" lines, but about halfway through the film her alien super powers go dormant.

The end result is a slow (occasionally glacially) paced movie that relies more on soulful facial expressions than dialogue that honestly represents what the characters are feeling.

You can expect the same defecation and drug humor that crud up comedies of this ilk. Of course, its vacuity is intentional, and maybe we could always use more movies of the women-behaving-badly variety. But there’s also a real danger in perpetuating this type of teenage girl; it propagates the idea that, for women, defiance is power, radicalism is freedom, and being really hot is often all you need to survive.

Well-crafted and, in places, highly informative, but with the exception of some of the original film's hardcore sex scenes and the aforementioned Mob angle, there's little we haven't been exposed to before.

This is a curious example of taking a hair-raising story and draining the drama from every corner, leaving it a bit flat and ultimately forgettable.

You'll either walk away with a headache,or praising filmmaker John Maybury for his unique narrative...and it is unique, but in my eyes, it's also a big giant mess.

The animation is workmanlike in its execution, delivering more seamlessly perfect digital commodity level output.

It features likable characters, and though it may not offend or make you laugh, it ultimately leaves you smiling. However, you can’t help but feel a sense of loss regarding the potential the film and its story had to be truly great.

Given their lack of training, nearly all the young performers do a commendable job. It's the director who slips up by, among other things, dividing his cast into such predictable phyla.

An even bigger issue: things start sinking by the opening minutes.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that the tenor of the movie is almost unbearably cheesy and sometimes verges on infomercial territory.

As a romantic comedy, Definitely, Maybe is an explosion of sweetness and hugs that might cause your stomach to churn if you don't like your sentimentality too strong.

Beyond "Streep camp," Julie and Juila falls into the drone of current historical movies, namely, the time-travel period treatment.

An unnecessary addition to the middling pantheon of pot flicks, Breaking Habits, like mid-grade schwag, is unlikely to get you buzzed.

A sometimes gripping but mostly routine shoot-em-up about Muslim terrorism in American.

Long before you buy your ticket to the new Jim Carrey film, you've already been doomed to disappointment. Several parties play a role in this. Interestingly, Jim Carrey isn't one of them.

It is occasionally a first-rate action spectacle, but it is only the spectacle that merits recommendation.

Only time will tell whether REPO! can live up to its cult potential, but the potential is most definitely there.

The film features several highs but ultimately too many lows to craft a compelling rallying cry.

A series of pretentious social commentary punctuated by windows of excellence that only make it more frustrating.

At 75 minutes, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles goes down easily but lacks a distinctive flavor.

Jared Leto's performance as Maurizio’s cousin, Paolo Gucci, is so over-the-top that it bursts right through the top and swallows up the film whole. Unrecognizable under layers of make-up, speaking in high-pitched, heavily-accented intonations, he’s a live-wire but also a caricature that borders on nasty stereotyping. He out-gagas Gaga (who’s at least partially of Italian ancestry), which is no small feat.

The Darjeeling Limited isn't so bad as to offend those who love Wes Anderson too much, but it is not the triumph that his previous films have been.

Overall, the film will please horror buffs, but casual fans or game purists should look elsewhere.

The last 20-minutes of the entire one hour and twenty-seven minute run time really work and successfully make the case that as much as the humans rescue the cats, it is also vice versa. It is just too bad that the first hour does not reach those same heights.

There's a lot of talent in this offbeat drama about two odd balls from Down Under, but somehow all the pieces don't quite fit together.

The biggest downfall of Relay is the ending.

The type of film I would call eternally frustrating. Boasting a solid cast and an amazing look, the film is a mishmash of film noir, mystery and bluesy big band song and dance numbers that on a surface level play brilliantly.

Full of interesting visuals and illustrations, Tales of the Rat Fink would have made a really great introduction to a film that I never got to see.

It all starts to feel eerily adrift and disingenuous, rather like a sales pitch for crypto. It adds some good insight to an important figure, but it is not the film Buterin really deserved.

A little sentimentality can fuel a lot of action, yet Zwick buries his film in cloying guilt, in the end sinking Defiance with the holocaust film's bait.

The result is tonally-uneven and predictable, down to its lame stabs at exploring xenophobia.

Occasionally fun and constantly deranged, it’s a film that could have been much more with a modicum of restraint. I gave the worms a shot, but I think I’ll stick to eating worms of the gummy variety.

Dreamgirls is a better musical than "Chicago" or "Rent," but then, that isn't really saying much.

On this ride we follow the two characters from casino to casino and from hallucination to hallucination with no real destination.

Screenplays like A Dark Place only get made because they’re familiar. They present intrigue and drama in a way that doesn’t challenge the audience but reinforces their belief of what a movie like this should be. This conformist methodology might make the movie palatable—and marketable—but it doesn’t make it any good.

The film itself is unremarkable, except for its good fortune of presenting John Travolta in his first starring role.