The movie doesn't stink. The performances are good, potentially great, especially Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.

There’s a great story buried somewhere deep within the desert that is Head Count – about a brotherly bond, about jealousies that assume anthropomorphic shapes, about a demon that literally reflects our insecurities. Ellen Callahan hints at those stories but ends up telling the most basic version.

The truth is About Schmidt offers only the sporadic laugh, the less frequent original cultural insight and, at best, a craftsmanlike performance from its aging headliner. The truth is there are long stretches in the picture that are unequivocally dull.

Diggers isn't a bad film, but the underlying premise - the longing one feels to escape from a dead-end, small town life - has been so beaten to death in the movies that no amount of accurate 70s design or subtlety in the performances can hide the fact.

Seriously, someone needs to stage an intervention, sit Scott down, and tell him that repeated jump cuts, slow-motion shots, and fiddling around with the exposure don’t enhance the viewing experience.

"The Beginning" is a better movie than the 2003 remake, even if the plot is understandably similar. There are only so many ways hapless teens can get brutally slaughtered, after all, but Liebesman and company keep things appropriately creepy, right down to aping the look of the 1974 original.

It ain't art, and it's dumber than I'd like, but I don't imagine you were expecting Kieslowski.

A Quiet Place: Day One failed to capture what we loved about the original films and instead decided to focus too much of its time on a rollercoaster ride of an alien invasion. Fun is fun, but without proper character development, Day One is more fast food than a hardy meal.

Formulaic and creaky as a Harrison Ford action sequence, but sufficiently gussied up with good actors and a decent director so that you don’t entirely mind.

My Name Is Bruce can be read as a man coming to terms with the career that he has been dealt, or it can be read as simply a trashy B-movie directed by the man who knows best.

Fatima has excellent production design. A lot of care went into getting the period details right. There’s some beautiful cinematography and decent performances all around. It’s just all so mushy and predictable. Faith vs. science, tragedy testing one’s faith – those themes have been explored before, more enticingly. Pontecorvo turns a fascinating bit of history into a by-the-numbers affair, and that may be Fatima’s greatest sin.

Occasionally funny, sometimes inspiring, often boring, the magic is minimal in The Mystic Masseur.

About the only thing that is lucid, in the malestrom of wham-bam effects, is the set-up for a sequel.

At times, hard to stomach. Full of relatively good people doing horrible things to each other, the film never lets up, leaving me with a pessimistic and hopeless view of humanity.

If horror flicks came in cans like fake spaghetti, this would be the kind of can-shaped wormy mess that would slowly ooze out when held upside down and shaken.

There’s a lot of talent up there on the screen, and some authentic laughs, but too much of it is comedy territory that was claimed long ago.

One of the more cheerfully dumb thrillers I've seen in a good long while.

Help! is basically five sight gags played over and over in unimaginative variations. Halfway through, the film literally runs out of steam and the second half of Help! (especially the dismally dull Bahamas scenes) can only be tolerated by the most rabid of Beatles addicts.

A documentary which wobbles and weaves as much as often as it soars.

Confused and dramatically overwrought.

Where Song of the South errs badly is in its regurgitation of the horrible myth that black slaves were always singing and happy and just loved working on massah’s plantation.

The kind of film that requires a lot of work and patience on behalf of the viewer, not to mention a willingness to set aside prejudices and the fear inherent when we meet people different from us. As such, while you may not necessarily like By Hook or By Crook, you won't forget it, either.

A potentially great film stuck inside a not-so-great film. Watching Dog Run is fairly painful since flashes of brilliance peek out and shine at unexpected moments.

It comes off as an amalgam of everything that was cool in 1996, when we first saw the trailer.

The film’s repetitive themes and lack of emotional payoff leave it feeling more like a beautifully acted therapy session than a fully satisfying story.

Barron was the only light in my life,” a character yells at one point. “What am I now – just another dog in your army?” Barron’s Cove could have been a light in the current cinematic landscape, but instead, it’s just another dog in an army of duplicates.

What saves Adrift from an instant wreckage is Woodley’s performance, but still, it’s preferable to read the facts than cope with its cinematic adaptation.

It’s a great story. I’ve read books on the subject and have found it fascinating. But even reading Mandela and Desmond Tutu will not prepare you for the barrage of information Endgame throws at you.