Perhaps the most damning thing that can be said about Term Life is that it’s exactly the limp, shapeless, and forgettable kind of thriller you might expect from the director of “Couples Retreat” (Peter Billingsley, a.k.a. Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”).

The Do-Over is atrocious, but it's atrocious in different ways than any of Adam Sandler's previous comedies.

Whether or not you adore “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Million Dollar Baby” — or even the “Almighty” franchise, for crying out loud — the Freeman spark that elevated those movies is nowhere to be found, and Freeman minus the Freeman factor is just a lost cause.

This is safe, hyper-conventional stuff, lazy enough to make you feel bad that Middleditch had to free willy for it. The best thing you can say about the movie is that men have taken their pants off for less.

Children of the Corn is clearly one of the worst Stephen King film adaptations ever made — if anything, it seems unfair that it’s included in a category with so many good movies by the grace of a technicality.

The reality is that Passion Play has a few good ideas that simply don't hold together. More of a miscalculation than an outright dud, it takes the form of a wildly surreal western fantasy, something that Chilean madman Alejandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo") could have executed with more rigorous invention.

Even when The Tax Collector finds a steadier purpose as a taut revenge thriller, it’s mostly just a slog of vulgar threats and violent outbursts, trading substance for anger until the credits bring some measure of peace.

By the time this Fantasy Island arrives at its gallingly stupid final twist, you’ll be dying to go home.

By exploring a narrow scenario from one chapter of Kelly's life, Grace of Monaco plays like fragments of an uncompleted biopic that's been art directed within an inch of its life.

Geostorm is terrible entertainment, but it’s a remarkably effective window into Donald Trump’s soul.

Unwatchable even by the subterranean standards of a direct-to-video Nicolas Cage thriller, director York Shackleton’s 211 is the kind of low-grade schlock that leaves you with a newfound respect for the basic competence that most bad movies bring to the table.

Life Itself thinks you’re stupid. Or, if not stupid, unable to understand how a movie should work. It’s a movie made for people who can’t be trusted to understand any storytelling unless it’s not just spoon-fed but ladled on, piled high, and explained via montage and voiceover.

Asking for It puts men and women in their own fringe camps, erasing the real and complex struggle for women to achieve equal rights, have their stories heard, and to see their rapists and abusers prosecuted fairly.

Frankensteined together from the stiff corpses of a dozen smarter movies, Replicas is a cloning thriller so carelessly stupid that it often feels like a mad science experiment gone wrong.

Initially it seems as if Sidney Hall will just be another film about lone geniuses trapped in worlds where they’re misunderstood or undervalued, but the film then unspools into nearly two hours of baffling narrative choices, weak character development, and so many offensive cliches that it would be funny if it wasn’t so, well, offensive.

Lifeless, ugly, and vaguely evil in its gross attempt to offer something for everyone, Mother's Day doesn't feel like a movie so much as it does a cinematic adaptation of Walmart.

Like the original, the most shocking aspect comes from the revelation that Six can actually tell a story.

Unfolding like a microbudget cross between “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” and “The Squid and the Whale,” Peter Vack’s impressively disgusting Assholes is the kind of movie that you wish you could unsee, one you have to watch in your peripheral vision because straight-on viewing would be way too nauseating.

Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween would be tone deaf, lacking in plot, and almost entirely humorless in any year. That is happens to arrive in theaters amid a cascade of sexual assault survivors sharing their stories about sexual assault doesn’t help its case.

Even without its mopey, painfully on-the-nose dialogue and ponderous story, The Last Face sets itself up for failure with its premise, and Penn's apparent inability to recognize it as such. It's his worst movie.

“Blood and Honey” feels like a throwback to a simpler era of filmmaking. Not an era where movies were better — because it’s not particularly good — but a time when a film could be produced, marketed, and turn a profit just by promising audiences an image they hadn’t seen before.

A braindead slog that shambles forward like the zombified husk of the heist movie it wants to be, The Last Days of American Crime is a death march of clichés that offers nothing to look at and even less to consider.

A dismal softcore romance, a sort of film version of a housewife paperback bonk-buster.

Run Hide Fight is a glib, artless, and reprehensibly stupid thriller that doesn’t even have enough on its mind to be provocative. It’s a movie made by someone who’s seen too many movies, and now made at least one too many as well.

The most distressing aspect about The Emoji Movie is that a spectacle this self-evidently soulless no longer feels like a new low. It doesn’t even leave a dent.

Cats may have nine lives, but you only get one, and it’s too precious to waste on this drivel.

No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts.

No, most audiences who tune into 365 Days: This Day are likely not seeking out female empowerment tales or coherent plots, but the disdain with which the film treats both its viewers and its star can’t help but grate.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate resolves as a cheap revenge fantasy that suggests its subjects only died because they couldn’t see the writing on the wall.

The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) is just as repulsive, but far louder, and in color.

As a documentary determined to damn the Democratic Party, “Hillary’s America” is a profound failure of unprecedented proportions, an embarrassment for Republicans, Americans and pretty much the rest of humankind. As a parody of right-wing conspiracy theorists, this knotted spiderweb of ideological garbage is practically “Citizen Kane.”

The meandering and insufferable Death of a Nation is little more than a greatest-hits collection of its creator’s favorite neocon conspiracy theories, which frame the Democratic Party for the fascistic tendencies embodied by Donald Trump.

The Tiniest Place calls to mind Patricio Guzmán's brilliant "Nostalgia for the Light," which focuses on the remnants of Chilean atrocities strewn about the Atacama Desert. Huezo, however, relies more on irony, juxtaposing the wartime setting with storybook images, acknowledging her distance from the events in question.

Think "Death of a Salesman" with demons.

With Smith's memories as the subject, Fetzer constructs a compelling cinematic experiment that turns the actor's monologue into a feature-length movie, and the result holds as much appeal as the solitary member of the cast.

Undrafted is a baseball movie that never wants you to forget that it’s about baseball, even if that reminder comes with lengthy dugout anecdotes delivered to teammates who are surprisingly indifferent to the outcome of a game that’s supposed to mean so much.

The solid performances can’t distract from an overly ambitious and crowded plot.

While it may seem instinctual to want an R-rated “Batman,” especially from a graphic novel that would deserve the rating without alterations, Batman: The Killing Joke is borderline unsettling — and not in a good way.

It amounts to little more than frothy summertime entertainment—occasionally fun, but almost immediately forgettable.

Murugadoss, famously, isn’t one for subtlety or even much logic. However, he may have reached new lows of lazy filmmaking here, delivering on virtually none of his pre-release declarations of celebrating female strength, defying gender stereotypes, or even simply entertaining.

Sincere, intelligent, and moving, it’s a welcome way to cap off a year in which we could all use a little solace like this.

As a director, Harrelson seems to be grasping at elements of far better movies. The live component, while impressively executed, rarely alters the movie in any meaningful way.

In not knowing whether it wants to be a heartfelt, chilling or activist story, Irada ends up being none, suggesting that perhaps good intentions aren’t always enough.

Badrinath Ki Dulhania may hit several faulty notes as a flag-bearer for feminism, but as delivered by this endearing duo, it’s bound to touch more than a few hearts.

It’s all pleasant enough, but falls short of being as genuinely different as Clean Slate claims its films to be. As a romance, Phillauri lacks passion, and as a ghost story, it’s missing some much-needed spirit.

While Muhi develops a remarkable window into its main character’s predicament, it doesn’t push beyond the limitations of its classically cinema verite approach, and the assemblage of scenes from the hospital and beyond fall short of crystallizing into a complete analysis of Muhi’s situation.

Stephanie showcases the best and worst of that cheap model: It encourges an innovative and economical storytelling approach, but the scrappy production values obscure the stronger moments.

While Meri Pyaari Bindu isn’t entirely clichéd, it also never quite finds its footing in terms of tone, narrative, or chemistry between the lead characters, coming off instead as both confused and confusing about where it’s going or what it’s trying to say.

The film’s world-building is more engaging than its plotting, which skews toward the generic as the embattled good guys set out on their last-ditch effort to save what remains of humanity; there’s a sense, while watching Blame!, that there are more interesting stories on the fringes of this tribal future.

Where “Bajrangi” effectively harnessed the actor’s mega-star persona into a simple character that still — in true Salman tradition — had a significant moral undertone, Tubelight struggles to strike that balance, too often veering into naivety and exaggeration both in terms of performance and narrative.

Check It is a powerful and electrifying film, full of characters who exude wisdom, authenticity, and bravado. Their lives beg telling, but this is only half the story.

Simran might put Ranaut front and center, the film proves once again that in Bollywood, screenplays that truly serve an actress’s talent are still woefully hard to find.

Ruspoli’s presence in the film elevates Monogamish beyond the predictable talking heads documentary.

Bad movies happen to good actors all the time, but Pottersville is something worse — not malevolent so much as utterly mystifying. It’s a movie that’s mere existence is infinitely more amusing than any of its jokes.

The drama, as it were, tends to blur together — baby penguins dodge watchful birds of prey, the dad wanders for ages before finding food — but Jacquet has ample footage to ensure the material sustains a hypnotic quality.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and all of the supernatural gobbledygook definitely slows things down. But as an early indicator of the director’s ability to conjure forth wide-eyed wonder, Making Contact is a delightful little romp, and at only 79 minutes, it won’t take up too much of your time.

While the historical backdrop could have made for a compelling metaphor, the clichés and heavy-handedness of “Mercury” ultimately outweigh the novelty of its premise, while its sloppy social relevance angle does more to confound than clarify the disaster in question.

Milch and co-writer Kendall McKinnon don’t actively buck humorous situations — the film is a comedy at its heart, deep, deep down — but there’s a dark underpinning to everything that happens in “Dude,” even when it’s overlaid with bawdy jokes and filthy situations.

Psychokinesis doesn’t leave you with much more than a bittersweet feeling about it all, but it’s an appropriately different takeaway from such a refreshingly different superhero movie.

The patience and sensitivity with which The Rescue List renders the children themselves is remarkable.

The high school-set rom-com is a sexist and regressive look at relationships that highlights the worst impulses of the genre.

Sanju is a reminder that putting a subject on a pedestal isn’t a biopic’s only potential pitfall. Here, it becomes problematic by portraying Sanjay as a victim of his circumstances rather than the master of his own decisions.

If A Family Tour is sweet and more sedate than the dissident filmmaker’s previous work, it might also be the angriest thing he’s ever made. The coiled fury he displayed in “When Night Falls” (and “Taking Father Home” before that) has metastasized into a paralytic rage; his homeland’s betrayal is no longer just the focus of his life’s work, but also the full extent of his life itself.

Cold Skin is Gens’ best film to date, if only just good enough to make you wish that it were much better.

Unformed but deeply understanding, this super lo-fi two-hander is too sketchy to sustain itself all the way to the Pine Tree State, but it finds all sorts of promise along the way.

Tjahjanto is a talented filmmaker with a penchant for messiness and the power to will his visions to the screen, but May the Devil Take You suggests that it might be time for him to slow down, clean up his act, and focus his abundant energy on movies that puke blood with a little more purpose.

To quote a poem that Orlando reads toward the end, the dead are “not gone, but merely within you.” This urgent and beautiful documentary urges us to let them out.

In making Water Makes Us Wet, the filmmakers have embarked upon the noble pursuit of moving people to care about climate change as if their lives — and their sex lives — depended on it.

Bothersome as it can be that we barely get to know the people in Corbijn’s doc, the experience of watching it dovetails with that of going to a live show and being surrounded by thousands of strangers who share your same love: Everyone is on their own trip, but they’re all traveling together.

It’s wild and funny ride, but comes equipped with a pinch of existential dread.

While Wake Up: Stories from the Frontlines of Suicide Prevention is a slim, if deeply well-meaning endeavor, it will likely spark some necessary conversations. That those conversations need to go far beyond simply watching a film is a problem not unique to this film (or in this moment), but Townsend manages to effectively disseminate important knowledge in an economical and sensitive way.

Fun and winsome and always full of life, A Whisker Away naturally finds a way to land on its feet.

Each portion of the story — the formation of the 9to5 group, its ambitious jump into union organizing, and its current aims today — could easily engender its own feature, but it’s the early acts of the film that are most successful on their own.

If the intimate storytelling doesn’t hit viewers where it hurts, the film’s timely exploration of topics seemingly ripped from the headlines are destined to sting on their own.

The well-intentioned and wincingly naive work of a white filmmaker who recognizes the need for change but fails to comprehend the full extent of the problem, “Women in Blue” is most valuable as yet another reminder that defunding the police isn’t a radical position so much as it’s the only feasible way forward; it’s the difference between moving deck chairs around the Titanic and building a safer boat.

While Mouret can’t resist the desire to tie it up into a neat little bundle, just like some of its less inventive genre peers, Love Affairs still manages to end in an unexpected way that feels just right — unwilling to settle on a tidy outcome, and open to the possibilities of what could happen next.

The origins of the room in question are never explained, which is half the intrigue, but mostly the frustration. The core conceit is enough to make The Room a not entirely wasted ride. Still, enter with care. It’s a mixed bag, but upon exit, it somehow runs through the mind.

It’s about nice kids embracing their nerdiest passions, but Magic Camp can’t conjure up enough zing to put on the kind of show they deserve, something weird, something different, something even a little bit magical.

While platitudes about how this is really just about love — not money or industry or good old-fashioned greed — are far too simplistic, at least the movie attempts to make its issues feel personal enough to make people care. Sure, it’s cheesy idea, but that doesn’t mean that the bedrock truth isn’t real. The same logic applies to the film.

aced at the speed of personal growth — it falls somewhere between slow cinema and visual ASMR — The Calming is true to its title in a way that may limit the size of its audience, but the extent to which Song confronts the anti-commerciality of her work (so much as this gentle movie “confronts” anything) provides a meta-textual tension unto itself. From its opening moments to its final shot, The Calming echoes Lin’s uncertainty about how to look at the world, and also see herself reflected in it.

It’s no surprise that Hertzfeldt distills the tragicomic absurdity of being alive in 2020 better than any other filmmaker has thus far (after all, he’s been doing it for the last two decades).

By depicting an environment where rape culture has been normalized due to oppressive assumptions related gender and sexuality, director Kunle Afolayan delivers an unflinching wakeup call that extends well beyond Nigeria’s borders.

The film’s predictable plotting is delivered via a nearly lethal combination of obvious twists and a series of face-offs that would be compelling, if not for the exposition-heavy conversations that take place in between the physical brutality.

Always engaging in broad strokes thanks to the remarkable biography of its subject, A Cops and Robbers Story is at its best in the brief moments when it drills down on the particulars of Pegues’ experience on either side of the law.

An exhilarating postmodern comedy about people fighting for every moment of screen time they’re able to wrest from this stupid world before they have to leave it, Red Post on Escher Street is the best argument for Sono’s vital body of work since 2015’s “The Whispering Star,” and a perfect opportunity for newcomers to get their toes wet.

While its energy starts to flail by the end of its second act, Golden Arm is able to end strong, using the grammar of sports films and the amusement of arm wrestling to deliver a satisfying win worth cheering for.

Half-sketched as its drama can be, Alfred’s feature-length fiction debut is sustained by a complete lack of poser energy and a few new tweaks on some classic tricks; come for Vince Vaughn downshifting into his indie dad phase, stay for the woozy retro vibe that evokes a timeless sense of starry-eyed youth by layering mid-century Doo-wop from the likes of Arthur Lee Maye and The Chiffons over modern skate footage.

The volatile friction between the movie’s wildly conflicting energies works as a curious backstop for this cautionary tale about not giving into grief and despair. No matter how grim things get (in life or in Ghost Lab), you never really know for sure what’s going to happen next.

Awaken was reportedly shot over the course of five years and across 30 countries, yet all that time and globe-trotting effort yielded little more than a dense clip reel of sumptuous time-lapse photography strewn about 70-odd minutes in search of a single unifying idea to justify the journey.

Prism doesn’t provide us with easy answers, because it can’t. This is something that we all must confront together, and that confrontation is on-going.

While the movie barrels toward some tense face-offs between the townsfolk, and more than a few convulsing moments of possessed (maybe?) hysteria, Zalava never quite takes off as a terrifying genre piece, even if Amiri’s attempt to exorcise his own demons is admirable.

The novelty lies in the animation, a “good in theory” attempt to combine the hand-etched texture of traditional Japanese woodblock printing with the maximalist velocity of modern CGI. In keeping with franchise tradition, the results of that intriguing mash-up are close enough that you can see what Netflix was going for, but also so far short of the mark that it leaves you wishing you’d watched something else instead.

Cheeky and inventive in equal measure, with brilliant performances all around, a whipsmart script and sharp pacing make The Trip one of the most fun watches of the year.

Fans will praise this film as yet another brave sacrifice at the altar of artistic vulnerability — because that’s what “A Man Named Scott” wants you to believe. But the authorized film lacks the artistic vision of Cudi’s musical talents, despite its best efforts.

Thorne’s novel might be best known for its hot-and-bothered sex scenes, but she also built a romance with real stakes and big emotion, and Hutchings and his stars translate that to the big screen with ease. Why can’t every rom-com make it look so easy?

Gehraiyaan seldom earns its melodramatic turns. However, the buildup to them proves to be dynamic enough, emotionally charged enough, and above all, honest enough in its approach to infidelity and flawed human relationships that the film remains worthwhile.

Caught in between a love story and a ghost story, the film accidentally disproves the very epigraph that opens it — “Every love story is a ghost story” — because this is one that fails to haunt or to hurt.

Like “Pather Panchali” in the age of AirBnb and TikTok, Fire in the Mountains empathetically dramatizes the struggles that locals face in a place where tourists come to play.