The viewer is meant to chuckle at the escalating violence-ringed absurdities (the kidnapping of a bafflingly passive drug dealer who winds up becoming a road-trip buddy, for example) and at Ray's brutish philosophies, but the chuckles are few. Though the film starts out modestly amusing, it very, very quickly lists into tedium.

It’s a Rocky movie, just the latest go-round, its story more formulaic, its people less specific, its rhythms as wheezily familiar as a workout you should have changed up weeks ago. It’s a diminishment of Creed, a dumbing down, just as Rocky II was a diminishment of Rocky.

The best I can say about Buster Scruggs is that it seems as though the Coens picked their favorite actors and wrote them a part specifically tailored to their abilities.

A curious, thoroughly reported, handsomely shot, ultimately frustrating portrait of the event.

Sure, it’s kind of entertaining to see the studly, studious Mortensen slap on a few pounds and go way out with the fuggeddaboutit talk as he tries to shoot the shit with Ali’s pedantic, closeted virtuoso. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him ham it up. But the leads mostly are saddled with literal, middle-of-the-road material.

Everything has been watered down: the intensity of the hero, the sense of sexual danger, the violence.

El Angel is a crime spree as improvised reverie, one with a subject who is as quick to give away his loot as the director is to make the subtext explicit.

Jaron Albertin’s mix of crisp realism and oblique dream logic results in a haunting experience.... Still, while his first feature (shot by Darren Lew) may be gorgeous, the characters in this rural family drama prove so amorphous that their struggles engender detachment instead of empathy.

Volf’s refusal to address key choices that Callas made to shape her own career and fight her insecurities suggests that he’d prefer to imagine Callas as a victim of fate — and bronchitis, fame, Onassis, etc. — instead of a strong-willed but human prima donna.

While the movie does address white people’s thorny relationship with rap and cultural appropriation, it demonstrates how delicate satirizing that can be when it gets kind of serious near the end — a long, long end — and suggests that being the best at battle rap can also mean being the worst.

This The Other Side of the Wind has a haphazard “well, he shot it, so we better include it” vibe. One wonders just how much of the existing editing Welles got to oversee himself; the answer is: probably not much. There’s a tight, 80-minute feature trapped in The Other Side of the Wind, one that Welles most likely would have exhumed had he not run out of money while filming.

Early on, sex addiction is called “a gaping hole in the soul” but Unlovable barely has us feel it.

The movie lays on the melodrama too thick.

Director David Kerr engineers Atkinson’s intricate routines with clockwork precision. That said, his first feature film has little to offer anyone not already attuned to modestly absurdist British comedy.

The family squabbles jangle the nerves while not hitting on insights or memorable emotion.

Too often, in this version, Green doesn’t seem to know where to put the camera to elicit that sense of surveilling or being surveilled. Worse, that incompetence often works hand in hand with overwrought comic dialogue. But let’s get to what really works here: Curtis.

Helped along by news clips, the filmmakers do better with the crash-and-burn business story than with the actuality of the Studio experience.

White and Monroe are terrific — their relationship, as well as its dissolution, is completely believable — but they’re limited by a script full of old tropes.

Director Susan Kucera and the film’s guiding spirit, Jeff Bridges, have created a wonkish lovefest, incorporating the diverse ideas of (predominantly white) scientists and academics, philosophers and authors, activists and politicians into a plea for equable reflection and sustained action.

Double-stuffed with kill squads, killer ’80s couture and mood-killing howlers, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s Loving Pablo is more a greatest hits than a story, the kind of radically compressed life-of-a-legend movie where everything happens in a giddy, ridiculous gush — except for when it slows down to dwell on horrors.

Knuckleball mostly fills up its running time by being a twisted, even more ridiculous Home Alone.

Despite valiant effort from the performers — especially Usher, who's onscreen for nearly every scene — this three-hander is no joyride.

Monsters and Men seems as if it was made for the world that existed a few years ago. I honestly can’t tell if my dissatisfaction is with the movie or the era into which it is released.

Bad Reputation comes off more as a fanboy’s declaration of reverence to the queen rather than an interrogation of one of the most iconic women in music.

While sometimes messy, this material is emotionally resonant and cinematically alive.

The problem with Fahrenheit 11/9 is that it’s Trump’s Fahrenheit 9/11 rather than Trump’s Roger & Me.

At times, Morgan's script inspires laughs; but at others, the witticisms seem forced

The result is a hazy, shoegazy visual tone that is both elegiac and eulogistic - that is, at once meditative and funereal.

Punch-drunk, decadently designed slice of eye candy.

It's merely a trivial footnote to the popular franchise - though one that will no doubt satisfy rabid gleeks.

Too lazy (and, it seems, cynical) to give his audiences any more than he thinks they want, Perry appears to have given up on making a coherent movie altogether.

Beautifully designed, sufficiently choreographed, insipid but watchable, Elephants stresses that showbiz is about the maintenance of an illusion by any means necessary.

The book proves proudly indigestible on film.

Fly Away could have been stronger if its antiseptic visual style, which anchors it in old-fashioned TV movie mode, had been more adventurous in shouldering some of the weight of depicting the emotional and psychic anguish of the story.

This remake seems to exist only to zap the original of its minor pleasures.

Though director Jonathan Hensleigh (The Punisher) perks up when filming violence, the atmosphere throughout is past-prime, stymieing any strut.

Devotees of Motorhead frontman/certifiable rock icon Lemmy Kilmister will be in heaven watching this gushing love letter to the man who straddles rock subgenres, but anyone who's not already a fan will cry for mercy long before the nearly two-hour film ends.

It's exactly what you thought it would be: A plagiarized, campus-set "Single White Female" pitched to teens.

The makeup department's glommed-on plague pustules are fantastic, but the concession to modern technology in a badly rendered last-act CGI demon, cut and pasted from a Diablo II screen-grab, is so eminently lame as to cure all fear of hellfire.

Black, looking like an unwashed clothes pile and capering in familiar "Uncle Jack" style, is a good babysitter, his cross-dressing turn in a doll's house a highlight.

The archetypal names are pure Walter Hill, the single-minded grudge mission borrowed from Donald Westlake's Hunter books - fine antecedents, though director George Tillman Jr.'s style is anything but terse, indulging rote slo-mo swagger set to secondhand musical cues.

Sternfield's direction isn't spry enough to handle the abrupt shift in genre when this moves from detective tale to social-problem film, and things bottom out with a town hall meeting tepidly shot as courtroom drama that stops the story's momentum dead in its tracks and leaves Meskada limping through its last half-hour.

The military eventually shows up to nuke the joint (L.A., incidentally), but there's no urgency, suspense or charm with all that back-row rattle.

Where "The Last Exorcism" was sustained by artfully balanced skepticism and a feel for character, Paranormal 2, putatively directed by Tod Williams, can only hold an audience with the understood promise of big jolts around the corner.

In Griggs's eyes, they're all fools. Only old Ronnie, dearly departed though he may be, is worthy of reverence.

At odds with its own lofty and base instincts, Stone ultimately channels neither compellingly.

At least the formulaic race footage itself is vigorous; the schmaltzy mythmaking script, on the other hand, deserves a one-way trip to the glue factory.

A decent primer on the common and often misunderstood disease - in bold digital colors and scored to Sigur Rós and Björk, no less! - the film suffers from the attitude embodied by its self-congratulatory title.

Issues of faith, courage, loyalty, sacrifice and betrayal (the last perpetrated by Soren's brother) are all tackled by Snyder with understated maturity, though a series of slightly repetitive aerial skirmishes can't quite match the inventiveness of Feet's buoyant song-and-dance mash-ups.

Perfunctorily shot and edited, the project hinges only on Rutledge-Taylor's findings, which begin to raise eyebrows once pragmatic activism is thrown out the window in favor of the blame game.

Devil is a Night Gallery reject worth experiencing only to gape at a "spirituality" that falls somewhere between Dostoyevsky and Jack Chick, and to laugh that such daring feats of narrative illogic were undertaken with a straight face.

Abeles sheds little new light on why few parents, teachers, politicians or administrators seem willing to get off the bus.

The film is too broad and tacky to engage on a universal level, or at least Stateside: The choreography is sloppy and lifeless; the outmoded blend of vintage rock, country and Broadway styles doesn't click; and the characters are such caricatures that it's no wonder the entire cast is overacting.

Everything that could go wrong does, but director Turner never musters the requisite manic energy that might get her proceedings off the ground.

Though targeted to the same female filmgoers who flocked to the self-realization via food porn of "Julie & Julia," EPL is a comparative downer, letting viewers experience the rush of self-improvement without having to do any of the work. I cried. Mission accomplished?

Reiner, in very broad strokes, works in issues of poverty, thwarted dreams and family obligation, and almost pulls it off, thanks to Anthony Edwards, Aidan Quinn, Rebecca De Mornay, Penelope Ann Miller and John Mahoney, who impart humor and humanity to thinly sketched characters.

Doing The Most Dangerous Game is, for action directors, what covering "Satisfaction" is to bar bands; if you hit most of the notes, it'll do.

Brad Anderson’s long-running saga of the melty-looking Winslow family and the gangling, interfering Great Dane that should’ve been put to sleep ages ago gets a film treatment.

All of the riffs are twice and thrice removed, but the effect is lively rather than tiresome, largely on the strength of game performances, Sean Lennon's atmospheric score and writer/director Jordan Galland's clear affection for his sources.

Loses focus and sags into a how-we-got-through-it family procedural.

And this may be the only film in history to have someone learn about egalitarianism at a British boarding school (!). Hawaii's dismal onscreen track record continues; bring back James Michener.

Danner, the film's sole strength, does what she can with the material, but it's not enough to offset writer-director Daniel Adams' cliché-ridden script and leaden direction, or the excruciating hamfest that is Richard Dreyfuss' lead performance.

Rock's interventions can't compensate for excessive fealty to dumb gags involving watery poop and designer hallucinogens.

Barely dramatizing off-the-field struggles like visa problems and the boys' first taste of good ol' American racism, the film does a disservice to the community it depicts by rendering an inspiring cultural story entirely uninspired.

With little in the way of story or spectacle to offer nonbelievers, the film itself just preaches to the choir.

"Transporter" director Louis Leterrier is sure-footed when battling Gorgons and giant scorpions, but he muddles the comic-grotesque opportunity of the Stygian Witches.

Even at 43 minutes short, with earnest but marketable narration by Leonardo DiCaprio and one amusing zero-gravity taco-preparation scene, Hubble 3-D's perilous endeavors are about as thrilling to watch as plumbers snaking a drain ... in space suits! If you want an eye-popping cosmic epic, rent "Star Trek." If you want interactivity, take the kids to the planetarium.

Slight comedy, directed by Jim Field Smith, who tries with modest success to blend the sticky-sweet with the plain ol' sticky.

Although Harrelson displays the right balance of sweetness and quiet instability, Defendor’s genial spirit fails to mesh with the filmmaker’s exploration of darker emotional terrain.

Like Percy himself, the film doesn’t have any traits that qualify as having an actual personality. Even so, as long as the kiddies aren’t too upset by the major liberties reportedly taken with the source material, it might be enough to distract them until Harry returns.

For a movie that preaches cultural understanding, it sometimes seems a little too comfortable perpetuating ethnic stereotypes.

Unfortunately, Berdejo doesn't seem to know the difference between "slow" and "suspenseful," erring on the side of the former far too frequently. It's mostly formulaic fare, too.

The camaraderie in the Eagle Shield Transport locker room is strained stuff, despite a capable ensemble cast that includes Matt Dillon and Larry Fishburne.

Merkin tries too hard for stylistic flourishes (as the hyper set-designed, claustrophobically seedy hotel underscores) and winds up almost sinking the noir-ish tale he’s telling.

You see where this is going, but, apparently, kids don’t know the formula.

The direction rarely rises above acceptable, but anytime the camera’s pointed at Grant, it doesn’t matter. Like the currently ubiquitous pop song of the same name says, sometimes it’s a good hurt.

Turning Green is, if nothing else, the world’s loneliest teen sex comedy.

The problem is that Ortega offers only the public Michael.

Corny but goodhearted, the film tries hard not to annoy parents, with animation more fizzy than frantic and nerdy references.

The kickoff is good -- the finale effectively literalizes the expression “broken home” -- but director Nelson McCormick doesn’t keep things “taut” in between. Rather than do scenes right the first time, he tends to déjà vu them (this usually involves Amber Heard, wearing not-too-much).

Economy be damned, lack of originality is the silent killer.

Director Christian Alvart clearly attended horror’s new paint-shaker school of direction (motto: shaky = scary!), but the script’s twisty, end-of-the-world intrigue saves this otherwise leaden film from total self-destruction.

Eckhart has even less chemistry with Aniston than he did with fellow narcissist Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2007’s "No Reservations," going soft and gooey only when he and Martin Sheen, as Burke’s father-in-law, share a big cry.

Ultimately, what’s most noteworthy about this middling effort is how aggressively un-contemporary it is.

If the film's first two-thirds are dreary and preposterous, give Soref credit for a truly -- what's the proper cinematic terminology? -- batshit-crazy finale involving demented religious sects, ridiculously bloody face-offs and a gaggle of cross-dressing Mexican prostitutes.

At its best, this uneven film by writer-director Dave Boyle suggests that going a bit nuts is a good thing for the rigid paterfamilias.

Ellis and screenwriter Eric Bress even go all meta on us with an "Inglourious Basterds"–esque finale set inside a 3D cinema, though their set pieces never quite muster the giddy brio of "Final Destination 1" and "3" auteur James Wong at his best.

The Open Road isn’t an unwatchable howler -- instead, writer-director Michael Meredith’s film is merely dull and obvious.

The few real laughs -- all two minutes’ worth -- come courtesy of Russ Meyer veteran Charles Napier as Dick Lewiston, the angriest macho male anachronism of the year.

Making his directorial debut, Dunstan displays a knack for building suspense. And yet, weirdly, amidst all the requisite blood spray, one senses a reluctance on the filmmaker’s part to linger lovingly over the pierced skins and protruding entrails of the killer’s various victims.

Amping up the "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" formula with a whole A-team of adorable, talking furballs who converse in one-liners and pop culture references (Apocalypse Now and Scarface, really?), the mega-producer’s stamp is on every fight sequence, explosion and ugly stereotype.

Humdrum but marketable comedy.

Life goes far past the boiling point for most of the characters in this hilariously overwrought ghetto soap opera from cult writer-director Buddy Giovinazzo.

Andy Abrahams Wilson builds a decent, if stylistically dull, case that Lyme disease is far deadlier and more neurologically debilitating than most doctors want to admit.

It ends up sagging into a pleasantly undistinguished pudding. The big news is that Matt Lauer, playing himself, can act. A little. Hardly at all, really. But he’s a jolly good sport, and quite handy with a fire extinguisher.

Woodley’s film mostly floats along on its melancholy drift, so well-attuned to the low-key rhythms of its beaten-down characters that it never quite summons up enough energy for the rest of us, who are along for the ride.

The gags themselves only marginally work when they stick to silly non sequitur; the random movie references are forced and flat, and the takeoffs of "Dreamgirls" and "Fame" songs would make "Weird Al" groan.

Between such shots of inspiration, Matsumoto’s mock-doc framework seems a lazy stock device, interviews playing more dead than deadpan and failing to exceed an over-familiar comic-pathetic attitude toward the lives of functionaries.