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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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.

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

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

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."

An undemanding, childish adventure picture.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

“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.

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.

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

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.

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

With villains cribbed from the generations of cheap thrillers that precede it and action scenes that have no novelty to them, Heatstroke starts looking like Adam Sandler’s “Blended” more by the minute — a movie the cast signed up for to get a free working African vacation out of it.

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

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

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.

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.