There was bite and outrageousness and a touch of the surreal to the excesses of National Lampoon's Vacation (in which Chevy Chase and Harold Ramis humanized Hughes' cartoonlike material). This was writing whose springboard might have been awful firsthand experience. European Vacation feels as though it were dreamed up to cover the rent on the beach house for the summer.

While writer-director Megan Freels Johnston makes some unusual choices that set her film apart from run-of-the-mill low-budget horror, too much of her movie feels warmed-over.

If the film is affecting, it's due to Quaid's dark, committed performance as an incredibly troubled man.

Because of the talent involved, every now and then Holmes & Watson hits on something bizarrely inspired.

A misfiring comic fantasia on business success in the Reagan era. [10 Apr 1987, p.1]

As writer, director, producer, star, editor and more, J. Van Auken brings a cool central concept and strong visuals, but the film ultimately never finds solidity.

Welcome to Willits has a loopy energy that in short spurts can be pretty amusing. More often than not though, the film is clever to a fault, packing in too many characters and gimmicks.

The problem with “Five Foot Two,” which arrives Friday on Netflix and in theaters, is that it’s a disjointed pastiche of generic pop-star clichés.

Not every historical drama has to be a masterpiece of verisimilitude, but in a movie about intelligence professionals whose very job is to analyze every detail and sniff out damning discrepancies, instances of visual and narrative sloppiness stand out all the more glaringly.

Despite the considerable physicality of the movie, with its impressive cinematography and Radcliffe’s believable, all-in disintegration, it’s more earthbound slog than psychological deep-dive.

Frost memorializes his experience of this day, but it’s just not enough to make a significant comment about the event.

Tolerating Pablo might have better suited this unremarkable picture in which the wealthiest criminal of all time’s reported charisma takes a back seat to his badness.

Directed by Michael Achilles Nickles, the movie can’t maintain a consistent tone, veering from earnestness to silliness like a bad slice.

Alicia Vikander, Eva Green and Charlotte Rampling pump some energy into writer-director Lisa Langseth’s overly static, chatty drama, but are let down by a movie that keeps promising — and failing — to blossom into something more.

The directors get some melancholic atmosphere out of their visuals but don’t have the scene sense to build their actors’ committed performances into compelling through-lines of seaside personality disintegration.

Regarding Henry is a breath of stale air, an unconvincing rehabilitation of 1960s values for a 1990s audience that is bound and determined to take the easy way out whenever possible. Which is really too bad, because there are signs along the way that this could have been a less manipulative, more genuine exploration of what really matters in life instead of the slick Hollywood shuffle it turned out to be.

Beyond Skyline is a boldly bonkers film, and it leans into its genre goofiness with a straight face thanks to Grillo. But more humor would have gone a long way in sustaining interest and entertainment, as it’s not quite funny, and too low-budget to take seriously.

Psychopaths is too random, too kitschy — too immature.

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill! is just dumb enough to be a potentially fun candidate for someone’s “bad movie night.”

Despite frequent self-seriousness, a melodramatic third act and a seeming fixation with Islamic State, this unevenly acted, Alabama-shot film is not without its stabs at humor.

Without anyone to care about, Cobb's script problems become increasingly intractable. Confronted by Cobb's volcanic personality, the film is completely nonplussed, unable to decide if it should be amused, piteous, reluctantly admiring or just plain disgusted.

Cutthroat Island is a bloated, jokey production whose motto, no doubt tattooed on the back of some poor assistant director's neck, could well be, When in doubt, blow something up.

This capably acted, if unevenly paced film often lacks focus and depth.

With its uninspired ending, Alien Invasion: S.U.M.1 squanders its cool concept and a compelling, nearly solo performance by Iwan Rheon.

A creaky recount of the relationship between affluent, New England-born painter Catharine Robb (Julie Lynn Mortensen) and her rural-Canadian artist husband, Peter Whyte (Juan Riedinger).

Art Show Bingo might be sweet, but it's dramatically inert.

My Fellow Americans is a gang-written comedy that doesn't have a political bone in its body, or much evidence of a funny one, either.

Granted, it’s all pretty stimulating. But when the jolts subside, there’s not much for viewers to cling to, to steady themselves.