A blast from the 1980s, when the idea that men were essentially rapists and women rapees was a popular way to score chicks on campus.

Tries to be a gay version of "Sex and the City," which was pretty gay to begin with.

Lifetime movies have their pleasures, and so does this film. Chief among them is the cast, a group of over-45 actresses who really are better than ever; in the cases of Brooke Shields and Daryl Hannah, remarkably better.

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo of “Avengers: Endgame” fame, the well-worn drama gets high marks for style and proficiency, but you don’t have to be Nostradamus to know exactly where it’s going every step of the way. At the movies, stories like this one are a dime bag a dozen.

Takita could easily trim 30 minutes of flab and oceans of tears from Departures. It still wouldn't merit an Oscar, but it would be a lot more watchable.

A melodramatic import from Algeria, is so relevant in this age of global terrorism, it's a shame it isn't much better.

Many of Kampmeier's characters are either ill-defined or clichéd.

A fine cast headed by the underrated Greg Kinnear lifts this year’s third major religious movie, the fact-inspired Heaven Is for Real, somewhat beyond its Hallmark Channel-caliber script and visuals.

Treads water.

Unless you're already into this stuff, it'll be hard to stay awake through the documentary, which was made on a low budget with technical values that are decidedly amateurish.

Tries, with much less success, to do what "Witness" did in exploring an Amish town.

Ranges from exquisitely sensitive to crass, but overall, it's an interesting effort.

Ultimately, this film reveals the Israeli self-image, but not much more. The people with the cameras pass by Arab neighbors, and what the Palestinians’ home movies might look like remains unexplored.

The book is a fascinating, insightful, touching window into a unique community with immense struggles. On-screen, it’s exploitative.

All of the actors are enjoying themselves, and the movie is stuffed with history, atmosphere and vivid characters. What's in short supply, though, is laughter.

Though it comes from a director whose résumé includes "Flashdance" and "9 ½ weeks," these smoke-filled interludes are less erotic than today's average car commercial.

A harmless celebration of idiocy that is the cinematic equivalent of an overeager, block-headed puppy chasing its tail.

Bursting with the usual colorful pop music numbers and lighter-than-a-soap-bubble quandaries, the film is a typical Bollywood entry, not likely to win over many new converts

Best advice: Wait for Two Men Went to War to go to the small screen.

The film is too low-key to be the farcical rock-and-roll jape it sometimes seems to strive for, yet too lighthearted to be affecting.

Portman is always consummately watchable, and she tries her best to telegraph the utter existential confusion engulfing Lucy at work and in love. But the film around her is simply not up to her level.

Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel have great chemistry together as the lovers, and the scenes of their lovemaking and frequent battles bring the movie to life. Outside of those moments, however, the film is too stagey, talky - and long - for its own good.

Since the thing is increasingly impatient to jump forward to the next big torture set piece, there isn't any time to establish anyone's character. Butcher shops are bloody, too, but they're not scary.

The extra money has bought a professional crew for scripted sequences, in which Jonathan and his mother too often mug for the camera.

The demand for her services is so great that she suffers from "penis elbow," but her popularity also brings self-esteem and a possible boyfriend in her boss (Miki Manojlovic) in this lethargically directed comedy.

Novak’s forever-skill as an actor is likability, and that approachable magnetism is on display here. What doesn’t work in this otherwise naturalistic movie are the punchlines he’s written for himself. Too planned and stilted, not terribly funny. The huge size of all the actors’ humor never matches the intimate way the film has been shot.

The tales mostly drift along and wrap up unresolved. If this is an accurate slice of Paris life, I'll take the relative excitement of Topeka.

Half dark, deliciously topical political satire and half somber portrait of a flailing counterinsurgency effort. The two don’t mesh well, and given the number of modern war movies already out there, it should have stuck with the former.

Detour does a fine job of giving drivers yet another reason to stress out, but that anxiety doesn’t extend to its hero’s fate.

The only really believable character ends up being Bilson's chaste Laura, who snags herself a slot on the reality-show competition "America's Last Virgin."

If you've come to appreciate Hal Hartley's idiosyncratic style through films like "Flirt" and "The Unbelievable Truth," his take on the monster movie genre will intrigue you. But, ultimately, disappoint you.

Audiences will laugh, mainly to prove they're awake, but the humor is pretty thin.

The film - dimly lit and with an ominous soundtrack that verges on overkill - is largely a showcase for the heavy-lidded Renner.

Has some entertaining moments, thanks mainly to Bullock herself, who is surprisingly glamorous as well as endearing.

The next time Siddig plays a man of intrigue, let’s hope he’s chasing something more interesting than a clueless kid.

The hippie heroine of this wacky Aussie comedy cheerfully theorizes that Australia was actually originally settled not by convicts but by mental patients — which may possibly explain the antics of Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, among others.

This cliché-filled labor of love is staffed with some fine performers - Jennifer Holliday sings at a juke joint and Frances Sternhagen plays an older version of Emily's sister.

Lee may not want to let anyone in, but it’s hard to engage fully with a film that doesn’t seem to want to, either.

It’s refreshing to see a nonwhite lead, and the husky-voiced pop singer is likable as a brave-hearted kid searching for her mother. But man, is there a lot of Rihanna in this movie: She also provides what seems like the entirety of the film’s soundtrack, making it feel like a vanity project (is “vanimation” a thing?).

Gandolfini acquits himself well in a rare big-screen lead as the depressed operator of a rinky-dink amusement park in the waning days of winter.

Little more than a series of sketches, tied together by Joe's on-air interrogation by a nasty shock jock played by Dennis Miller.

Director Adam Green's genuine affection for the genre helps make Hatchet a cut above average.

Suffers even more than the Harry Potter films from a compulsion to be faithful to the source material, including cramming in a head-spinning assortment of characters and subplots.

At times, writer-director Cedric Klapsich seems to be trying to copy the frestyle of "Amelie," but L'Auberge achieves only a fraction of its charm.

Teen house-arrest thriller Dark Summer gets out ahead of any ripping-off-“Disturbia” talk with an early Shia LaBeouf joke. But its sleepy, hallucinogenic aesthetic is an entirely different — and rather less engaging — style, anyway.

If this movie were a teenager, you'd put it on Ritalin right away.

It's mindless entertainment, so take it or leave it.

Manages to create a creepy atmosphere, even if the plot itself is somewhat unfocused and the scares scarce.

Certainly nails the era, right down to a lengthy pan across a none-too-appealing dinner buffet.

Sort of a poor man's "Rent" - minus the music and the AIDS - and much blander than the title would have you expect.

At the film’s most entertaining heights, it recalls the novels of Ray Bradbury and the Matt Damon flick “The Martian.” But its final twist is an extremely implausible, easy way out.

No matter how charmingly loopy she is, Faris can't transcend the stale gender clichés and rehashed rom-com set pieces.

Watching this yoga documentary mirrored how I feel about taking weekly classes: The ancient Eastern tradition is demonstrably beneficial for both mind and body, but its execution can be so boring and its teachers so painfully earnest.

Gregg, who previously directed the very dark comedy “Choke,” never quite settles on a tone; from the opening scenes, in which Molly Shannon plays a neurotic stage mom and Allison Janney a chilly casting agent, it seems he’s going that way again, but a dramatic twist sends the film into less plausible territory.

Even for a movie about complying with USDA regulations, Dolphin Tale 2 is a little lacking in excitement.

Allied is slow-footed and tepid, its plot twists dopey and soapy. I was rooting for things to get interesting, but I would have settled for a few surprises.

While the latest installment avoids the nonstop parade of potty jokes, it never rises much past the level of mediocrity.

The will to live is missing from Netflix’s not-quite-sequel Bird Box Barcelona, and so is our will to watch.

Occasionally funny but more often hackneyed, schmaltzy, predictable and overdone fairy tale that seems longer than 100 choruses of ''Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

A thoughtful, old-school documentary.

I think what Tarantino is going for is brazenly manipulating historical events to suit his style, and turning a well-worn genre on its head. But in so doing he’s made an everything bagel of a movie: Part satire, part bear hug, part fictional bromance.

An inoffensive but bland ode to the talky high school movies of John Hughes and Cameron Crowe.

Anchorman 2 is like watching “Anchorman” being re-enacted by semi-professionals trying to cover up their lapses by being extra-emphatic, super-doofy: 2013 Steve Carell does a lousy impression of 2004 Steve Carell.

Visually striking but gets bogged down in supernatural clichés.

There's really nothing new here, though, and lacking the drama and humor of "Fahrenheit 9/11," it is even more likely to be preaching to the converted.

Sporadically funny, dumbed-down version.

Possibly because Heigl is one of the producers, the most beautiful woman in the film -- the stunning Christina Hendricks of "Mad Men" -- dies in an off-screen car crash barely before the opening credits are over.

More perplexing than any of the supposed mysteries of Terminal is what Mike Myers, of all people, is doing here, playing a train-station janitor with a creepy “Danny Boy” whistle.

Despite real actors, CGI and brand-new material, “Mermaid” is the studio’s latest flesh-and-blood cash grab that’s more lifeless than far better two-dimensional painted drawings.

Carell's frantic mugging as a modern-day Noah barely keeps Evan Almighty afloat.

An occasionally amusing but strained fable about the dangers and delights of sibling rivalry that asks us to believe (for instance) that soccer scouts roam Mexico looking for 30-year-old recruits.

Wrath of the Titans suggests a franchise that isn't trying very hard, and I don't really expect a sequel. But if it does happen, I fear it'll be even less of an event: "Tiff of the Titans."

Alas, the film’s relevance — and ultimately sane upshot — is buried beneath a meandering and oftimplausible plot.

As reactions to budding sexuality go, it’s a little extreme. And it’s also contrived; Isabelle’s decision never makes any emotional, let alone logical, sense.

The movie teaches us that you can flip your car down a mountain 15 times and walk away from it with two Tylenol.

An interesting addition to a genre that tends too often to disregard artistic technique.

There is not a second of “Grey” that isn’t totally predictable. You’ve seen every frame before, and done a lot better.

Too unfocused to make any point worth taking with us into the 2004 presidential campaign.

At more than two hours, Cherry Blossoms could do with some pruning. And do husband and wife have to have rhyming names?

Algenis Perez Soto was a baseball player in real life, which helps to explain his sensitive, understated performance as Sugar. But he's let down by a manipulative script recycled from dozens of sports and immigrant movies. At least it dispenses with a Hollywood ending.

Too bad the film around Brody is fairly by-the-numbers, with a mean-spirited kicker that doesn’t imbue much originality to its imperiled-female plotline.

It’s a disappointment as a movie, though Shannon is especially fine in a rare sympathetic role.

The siblings react with humor and horror to what they discover. So will many viewers of this self-indulgent but engaging work.

Sweet and funny — largely thanks to James Corden in the lead role — it’s never particularly surprising.

It's a drawn-out look at politics that's largely devoid of the trademark humor that long ago got New Wave veteran Chabrol labeled the Gallic Hitchcock.

Sexploitation and art blend uneasily in Crazy Horse.

Starts out promisingly, but quickly sinks under the weight of its own plot twists, ponderous pacing and Val Kilmer's monotonous performance as a ruthless special-ops agent.

Boasts a stellar ensemble cast and some priceless one-liners -- but those pearls of acerbic wit have been strung together on a cheap piece of thread which almost inevitably breaks in the third act.

Technically competent. What it needs is an original script.

What could have been an intriguing look at a bizarre and complex woman plays like just another cog in the Annabel Chong publicity machine.

The sort of enigmatic movie that many critics embrace because it's open to endless interpretation.

The contrived script lacks subtlety, rendering most characters as stereotypes.

The densely plotted Generation War sweeps past implausibilities and offers the can’t-put-it-down qualities of a superior airport novel; its last third is affecting. But a bold confrontation with the past? Not so much.

The doc consists of interviews with the absurdly grandiose Jodorowsky (whose fans include Kanye West) plus acolytes like current director Nicolas Winding Refn and film nerds, all of whom walk us through storyboards and tell us how awesome this “greatest film never made” would have been.

The character of ZigZag is not sufficiently developed to support a film constructed around him.

Skarsgård is dangerous as ever here, but writer-director Dan Krauss’ drama offers very little insight into the minds of these men, and we’re left with no satisfying takeaway. It’s just one upsetting scene after another.

This is hardly reinventing the wheel, but it is serviceable, if you're looking for a few shivery communal scares.

Although Hill failed to derail Thomas’ career, she seems to consider her testimony a success: She remains a highly sought public speaker about workplace sexual harassment, which in large part thanks to her is much less tolerated than it once was.