Give it up for Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. You’ll never see them work harder at a comedy than in The Heat, a stumbling, aggressively loud and profane cop buddy picture where they struggle to wring “funny” out of a script that isn’t.

A slight and somewhat demure romantic comedy/friendship comedy built around two mildly interesting characters.

The resolution to this puzzle is so botched it’s insulting, as if they’re daring us to laugh at the notion that this is merely “the beginning.”

Neeson is the rock anchoring all this, making the incredible at least passably credible as he lurches into the frame with his limping boxer’s gait. But you get the sense that he is no more “Taken” with this than we are.

In this not-even-faintly scary, rarely funny horror comedy, Smith is still sucking down big gulps of empty calories and hoping we’ll laugh at his belch.

Walker has few “big” scenes, no memorable dialogue and plays up the exhaustion, which tamps down the emotions of his performance. So even an action packed finale can’t rescue this dramatically thin exercise in one-man showmanship.

“Magic” lacks too many things to rank among Allen’s better recent films — the come-uppance and zeitgeist currency of “Blue Jasmine,” the frivolity of that don’t-think-too-much-about-this lark “Midnight in Paris.” But the biggest shortcoming is right there in the title, a tease if ever there was one.

It's a junky, crowd-pleasing movie of sidekicks – Guzman and Knoxville – bad acting, over the top shootouts, and catch phrases.

Late to the game, blandly cast and scripted with every Italian American cliche in the “How to Make Spaghetti” cookbook, it is Eastwood’s worst film as a director.

In Let Me Explain, you’re never NOT aware that you’re watching a gifted, rubber-faced/rubber voiced performer (his “Laugh at My Pain” concert film was a surprising hit in 2011) work too hard to make inferior material go over.

The absurd turns the story takes to serve up streetwise and bloody "life lessons" for the kid will make any parent blanch and any movie lover roll his or her eyes.

A tragic quasi-musical that never quite finds its way.

Yes, the technology has improved in the 27 years that have passed. But the ensuing years have also produced first person shooter video games which utterly preclude the need for this as a movie. Visceral, violent toys that they are, they still have more heart than this.

Whatever its intent, White Bird in a Blizzard misuses most everybody involved, especially the dazzling young star of “The Descendants,””The Fault in Our Stars” and “Divergent.”

It’s preachier, more diverse in its casting. All of which make it more specific and limit it. Throw in generally lackluster performances and illogical plot twists and “Anarchy” is seriously crippled.

Like Vin Diesel, it has bulk, lumbering clumsily along as it repeats Diesel’s greatest hits — the ones that don’t require him to drive a fast and furious car.

A bloated all-star melodrama with none of the lean, mean legalese of a John Grisham adaptation, it’s a showboat’s movie cast with a lot of actors each promised “a big, cool scene.”

There’s no reason the missionary-recruiter turned stalker idea couldn’t work. But this one doesn’t.

Choppy and bordering on incoherent, Bullet to the Head is Stallone's answer to Schwarzenegger's "The Last Stand," an action exercise in "Here's how we used to do it."

Minor moments of slapstick may tickle the kids, but anybody older, especially those who remember what Williams was like in his prime and how funny Stiller was just two “Museum” movies ago, will wish this tomb had stayed sealed.

For all the fun these folks could have had with Hercules maintaining the supernatural assistance facade, or denying it as his handlers gild his lily testifying that it’s true, the movie is content to just go through the motions.

It’s too bad the script lacks the sight gags or one-liners that could have made this good looking picture more animated.

Rock is a poorly written and ineptly directed genre piece that lacks tension, suspense, fear, all those things that make’ a “thriller” thrilling.

Though it rarely looks as malnourished as say, “Europa Report” or “Moon,” Last Days on Mars does show how starved of new ideas sci-fi cinema is.

The entire affair feels malnourished, under-rehearsed and starved of energy.

The best that can be said for “Step V” is that it has some sparkling moments of choreography, clever gimmicks as themes for the dance-offs and lovely costumes.

Seth MacFarlane wants to be a movie star in the worst way. A Million Ways to Die in the West is result of this longing, a long/longer/longest comedy with long waits between jokes and longer waits between those that work. Thus, does his leading man career begin and end with a “worst way” Western.

A graphically violent, sexually explicit teen horror tale, it was close to being ahead of its time, in its time. Now, it plays like a quaint, fairly obvious period piece — from 2006.

If you’re going to commit to a blasphemous stoner comedy mocking the New Testament prophesy of the coming Rapture, you’d better go all in. Because halfway isn’t funny.

It aims for that “Hangover” blend of the sick and the sentimental. And it doesn’t work.

If it weren’t for the well-intentioned moments of pathos — a tear or two, hear and there — Tio Papi would be a complete waste of time.

For all the heists, chases and shoot-outs, it's a sluggish picture. Characters feel the need to stop the action to explain themselves. Thoroughly.

Still waters may run deep, as the old saying goes. But Beside Still Waters there’s nothing deeper than “The Big Chill.”

This thoughtful but windy and winded sci-fi thriller shortchanges the science – understandably - and the thrills. The directing debut of “Dark Knight” cinematographer Wally Pfister is a mopey affair with indifferent performances, heartless romance and dull action. It transcends nothing.

Despite an epic fight or two, Parker robs us of the revenge, the suspense of the hunt, of Parker's methodical way of tracking down those who betrayed him, one by one.

It’s never more than a theme park that isn’t worth the price of admission.

Mostly, it’s just a clumsy lecture about who we’re becoming, haves vs have-nots, with the haves armed to the teeth.

A little Kevin Hart goes a long way in Ride Along, a dull buddy picture engineered as a vehicle for the mini motor mouth and the perma-sneering Ice Cube.

An odd, unpleasant 2011 thriller from Austria only now earning limited U.S. release. It’s a reminder of why so few filmmakers experiment with visual-only storytelling. It’s hard to pull off.

Watching this head-slappingly stupid movie is an exercise is seeing David Ayer sucked into the drain that Arnold’s been spiraling down ever since his “comeback.”

It’s a load of horrific hooey.

Deliver Us from Evil takes a very long time to deliver us from dullness.

The Jason Statham vehicle Homefront is such a generic tough-guy-against-the-odds ’80s style actioner that you’d swear Sly Stallone starred in it. He did, back in the day. Or versions of it. This one, Stallone just scripted.

Rapace is all over the place with her performance — needy, then self-assured, enraged, then in love. The always feral Farrell seems as dismayed by her as the rest of us.

It’s more unpleasant than scary, and ever so slow in getting up to speed.

As horror musicals go, Stage Fright is never more than an out-of-town tryout.

Planes looks, sounds and feels like a direct-to-video project, which in an earlier age when people still bought DVDs it would have been. In theaters, it’s nothing more than a laughless 90 minute commercial for toys available at a retailer near you.

A humorless, muddled, bloody and generally unpleasant thriller.

By the time we reach the third act, which is where the trial we’ve been teased plays out (at great, boring length), The Citizen has exhausted its supply of immigration cliches and our patience.

This generally mild-mannered comedy sinks or swims on Hart’s back. And as one scene makes clear, Little Man can’t swim.

Frozen, undercooked and sorely lacking much in the way of “all the trimmings,” this turkey isn’t ready to serve.

Hot Flashes don’t generate much heat — comical or otherwise. A pity, since that rare menopause comedy is a terrible thing to waste.

Affleck? You never believe a word he says, not a gesture. This is the sort of acting he did in the sort of movies he made before he started writing and directing his own movies — bad.

Truth be told, I was never a fan of the first “Dumber,” but the stars made it endurable and convincingly stupid. Here, they’re sometimes funny, and sometimes just sad. They’re better than this, no matter how good they are at hiding the fact that they know it.

Part II is every bit as cheap and far more generic, nothing more than a run of the mill ghost story masquerading as The Devil Made Her Do It.

Take Care manages, more often than not, to rise to the level of pleasant time killer, a rom-com with just enough surprises to justify getting those New York filming permits.

Filled with Smurf wholesomeness, Smurf puns and posi-Smurf messages about never giving up “on family,” The Smurfs 2 still sucks Smurfberries.

As “found footage” horror movies go, The Possession of Michael King is more unpleasant than scary.

The dialogue is dull, the performances perfunctory and while it is novel to leave out “the explainer” character — that slim hope that a priest, an expert on the Occult or whoever, can give the characters answers — common to this genre, leaving that character out robs the film of pathos and urgency.

Color City is thin gruel, even by recent, weaker Pixar standards.

An undemanding, childish adventure picture.

It is as slow, slick and superficial as the director of “21″ and “Killers” can make it.

It’s not art. But The Human Race does manage to take a worn out formula and nonsense story and finds a few novel touches, a little humor and hints of pathos in between the exploding heads.

Perry has made better movies, and perhaps worse ones. But never one as dull as this.

Slow-witted and slowly paced, with characters kept at arm’s length, our biggest concern is not whether Ricky will indeed be Hit by Lightning, but whether anybody will find a spark of life in this corpse of a comedy.

These days, Adam Sandler is a bottle of beer that’s lost all its bubbles — cheap, mass produced domestic beer. So let’s focus on what works in his latest, Blended, because he sure doesn’t.

There's nothing thrilling about summarily dispatching everybody who isn't meant to survive to the credits, nothing entertaining about meathook, hatchet and chainsaw murdering that we've seen scores of times.

As instantly forgettable as the pleasant but unremarkable tunes Miller, Sagal and assorted soundtrack artists sing during the film.

The humorless, generic, and chatty Frankenstein served up here makes you wonder if the good doctor, in all his patching-together of parts, didn’t forget the brains.

"What's the worst that could happen?" The answer to that is, you could end up in a summer comedy that's barely funny enough to warrant — ahem — release in the summer.

There are interesting story elements and locations. But the claustrophobia of the car works against it.

The Best of Me plays like the worst of Nicholas Sparks.

Loud and tedious, “Die Hard 5” is a shaky-cam/Sensuround blast of bullets and bombs, digital explosions and death defying feats of defying death.

It’s a movie of pointless scenes.

Rage lets us see where all the money was spent — on Cage, and on a noisy, metal-rending car chase through scenic Mobile. It’s head-slappingly dumb, it’s dull and even the novelty of filming outside of the over-filmed Los Angeles adds nothing.

A lump of cinematic coal Perry’s shoving into America’s stockings this holiday season.

Cranking out two formulaic movies like this a year show the Atlanta mogul’s true ambition — replacing all those soap operas TV is canceling, two hours at a time.

Would No Good Deed have anything worth talking about without the Ray Rice sucker punch tie-in? Barely.

It’s coherent enough, but entirely too long and unpleasant when it could have been one brutishly edgy hoot after another.

No One Lives has to give away its biggest, best secret (the killers have messed with the wrong guy) far too early for its own good.

“Obama’s America” flutters to the ground like so much GOP convention confetti, all assertions, few facts and little substance other than the conspiratorial right wing talking points that are how D’Souza’s makes his living.

A stylish, moody and atmospheric tale contorted into a young adult horror story, it never works up a decent fright.

A musical mashup of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis biography and myth, The Identical plays like a failed faith-based “Inside Llewyn Davis.” And that’s the closest thing to a compliment it will get.

A harmless but almost charmless adaptation of a book by L. Frank Baum’s grandson.

Mom’s Night Out sets itself up for laughs that it rarely delivers.

The worst comic book adaptation since “Jonah Hex.”

It’s a film of limp police procedures — stake outs that aren’t really clandestine, generic prison scenes, interrogations by underlines that suggest the leading players weren’t available on set for the entire day.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is more Gatling guns and grenades than The Brothers Grimm.

At times, with its stiff, charisma-impaired cast, its digital sets and slo-mo slaughter, The Legend of Hercules has a whiff of the Augean Stables about it — if you catch my drift.

Maybe they all took a gander at that random, ridiculous scenario and hoped that the car would be cool enough to bail them out. It isn’t.

An indie comedy whose primary virtue is its cast, well-known actors who took small roles on a lark — a chance to play against “type.”

For 85 rude and raunchy minutes, he does his best to drive a comical stake through the heart of horror's hottest franchise and the "found footage" genre. He doesn't exactly succeed.

It’s another pointless romp through Sandlerland — where the women are buxom, the kids have catch-phrases and the jokes are below average.

The performers are more competent than compelling, a common failing of faith-based films. Blame the edge-free, freshly-scrubbed characters that they play. Sadly, even as a safe-for-seniors saga ready-made for The Hallmark Channel, this is pretty thin gruel.

First-time director/co-writer Tim Garrick has little sense of timing and the movie mainly just lies there, never percolating to life, never living down to its lowdown and lewd promise.

About a third of the short films land a few laughs. But even the weakest material is lifted by the actors.

The pace is stumbling, the characters are broad, the makeup and the performances uneven, though Sorbo dives into his tactless, unethical indoctrinator role with Satanic glee.

What he’s doing, it turns out, is lowering the viewer’s standards of proof for a vigorous return to “2016″ territory, a hatchet job on Obama and Obamacare that tries to tie everything to a 1960s “radical” organizer who might have influenced the president.