The film slowly builds up to Justin's first appearance at Madison Square Garden, where his show sold out in 22 minutes.

Given its obvious parallels with modern-day events, it’s a shame Felt’s ensuing story is so wanly told.

There are precious few laughs in this poorly written and directed "unromantic comedy" - the sort of dire date movie you'd take somebody to if you wanted it to be a LAST date.

Androgynous Clea DuVall's performance shines through a foggily told, vaguely acted coming-of-age tale.

A bizarre quasi-documentary that more or less tries to rationalize bestiality as a harmless quirk.

This silly extraterrestrial-invasion epic somehow manages the feat of making the destruction of La La Land seem tedious.

Sheen's throwback portrayal is appealing enough, but flat characters, dull revelations and uninvolving complications make this deliberately small film feel nearly microscopic.

Low on raunch but even lower on laughs. It also looks like half the lighting crew failed to show up.

Not very haunty.

Demonstrating the limits of being too clever in a genre movie, the art-house chiller Silent House lets the tenseness of its first act trickle away.

Tender, heartfelt and exquisitely dull, the drama Félix and Meira illustrates the perils of trying to tell an emotional love story with meaningful stares and long pauses.

Predicated almost entirely on the repeated juxtaposition of innocent girlishness and mindless violence, Violet & Daisy could still have been campy fun — instead, it wilts for lack of wit.

There's a line between rogue and jerk, and Reynolds lives on the wrong side of it. As Dusty, Klein is such a smooth operator that he could have been - should have been - the lead.

The potential for suspense is dropped (there's a subplot about the receptionist's flight from her violent husband, but he appears in only a couple of scenes) in favor of lots of hushed interludes in which nothing happens.

Here’s a movie that will test the limits of your ability to watch other people having a good time.

Dumbed down to the point where it's barely recognizable as coming from one of Donald Westlake's John Dortmunder novels.

Director Ferzan Ozpetek's film doesn't break any new ground; rather, it recycles every cliché about gays in what is essentially an extended soap opera.

Now, here’s the trilogy’s second installment, in which the jolly Austrian makes it clear that women of a certain age do not have his permission to overdo it with religion, either.

Although it is a soft PG-13, The Adam Project is stylistically geared toward 5-year-olds who aren’t going to watch a movie about time travel and frayed parent-child relationships. Today’s teens and 20-somethings are too smart for a movie so dumb.

Toomuch of the humor in Not Another Teen Movie is either lame (the school in the movie is called "John Hughes High") or lamely disgusting.

Risen veers so far off the Bible’s path that it might as well be a tale of this 13th apostle, called Marty, who was in charge of snacks and mini-golf reservations.

Should appeal more to those who like to watch stuff blow up than understand exactly why the carnage is transpiring.

Bedeviled by labored writing and slack direction.

This "Alfie" meets "Boogie Nights" bio fizzles because, although Sassoon never stops talking, he never says anything.

No, which has been nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, is largely a gimmick picture: At all times, it looks like hastily assembled news footage shot on grainy videotape in 1988. That means light flaring up to spoil the image, bumpy camerawork, a nearly square picture and all-around grubbiness.

The film is a failure if it can't convince us that these two people belong together. It can't, and barely tries.

This is a cheap-looking lowbrow comedy that likely would have gone straight to home video.

Porno plus Parkinson's don't quite add up to sexy fun.

Hop gives us . . . a bunny who poops jelly beans. That idea doesn't fill you with seasonal joy? Neither will the rest of the movie.

Multiple Sarcasms happens to be the title of the play within the movie, and it turns out to be by far the most interesting thing in the film. Not that many people will want to suffer through the first 90 minutes of this vanity production to get there.

Full of appealing actors mugging like crazy, it’s got amusing moments, but the overstuffed visuals suffocate real emotion.

You know those one-joke "Saturday Night Live" sketches that start to age after six minutes? Blades of Glory is one joke that lasts 93 minutes, costs $11 and could involve sitting next to a guy who retells the movie into his cellphone.

The dull, predictable direction is the perfect match for a watery, nondescript cast.

Visually striking but portentous and pretentious.

A witless and vulgar romantic comedy wrapped inside a mock documentary.

In the end, there's just a roomful of decent character actors in search of a point. For them, the titular Flypaper may have simply been a paycheck.

The story is superficial at best. And the movie is too long.

What happens when several characters' lives intertwine with the maggot-infested corpse of a prostitute in The Dead Girl? A whole lot of crying.

It's not asking much that a thriller be scary or shocking. This one waffles between being predictable and absurd.

After the monster is subdued, then there's a much less humorous, and more mindlessly violent second half.

A mild cross between "The Big Chill" and "Sex and the City," this English-language German oddity is a romantic comedy passing through on its way to video.

You cease to care as they fall back on a catalogue of clichéd shocks, tired camera angles and an ever-mounting gore quotient.

An inferior factory product, cranked out with little care and less imagination, that seems all the dumber because it's pretending to be smart and topical.

Mind-numbing, would-be comic-book franchise, which often seems as blind as its hero -- not to mention deaf and dumb.

What really wrecks Wolfgang Petersen's Troy is some of the worst casting in recent Hollywood history: The lackluster ensemble hired by the director is overwhelmed by the generally impressive sets and crowd scenes, by the task of playing epic heroes and by David Benioff's rambling, tone-deaf screenplay "inspired by Homer's 'Iliad.'"

Copperhead has a more accurate period look, but dramatically it’s inert.

The film by Yasuhiro Yoshiura suffers from many of the same flaws as other anime features — a plodding pace, broad humor, a bland heroine and snarly, one-dimensional villains.

The landscape cinematography is often eye-pleasing, but the script is labored, filled with clichés and never allows for character development.

In this new, totally unnecessary version of Dr. Seuss’ holiday favorite, the mean one (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) isn’t all that scary or cruel.

The Warrior may be mighty of sword but he is exceedingly limp of writing. We never learn why he went bad in the first place, or what causes his sudden conversion. If the audience is expected to do most of the work, we should be paid $10.50 each.

Plotwise, the movie can (like many a Brooklynite) barely be bothered to comb its hair. Just when the pace needs to pick up, everyone sits around discussing fruity drinks.

Much less a satisfying movie than an intermittently funny 90-minute acting audition.

Beautiful but boring.

Baywatch is not nearly as good as this genre’s best entries, like 2012’s “21 Jump Street.” It washes up on the beach like a dead whale.

It's hard to make a movie about moonshiners that isn't entertaining, but the lethargic, generically titled Lawless comes perilously close - at least a third of its two hours is devoted to "arty'' shots of landscapes.

Dazzles the eye, numbs the mind and may cause deafness in some cases. Did I mention to bring along some Excedrin?

Tries to be many things -- romantic comedy, mockumentary, a satire on beauty and aging -- but ends up succeeding at none.

The movie hopes to be regarded as childlike too, but there's a difference between kid-friendly and just regular old dumb.

A lazy and uninspired knock-off of the hilarious 2002 movie "Road Trip."

Tristan & Isolde makes sacking and pillaging about as exciting as the line at the post office.

Lackluster anime.

"Rhapsody” has a shallow script, oversize performances and looks like it was shot in a sauna.

The film begins at ugh and ends at dang. You don’t yell at the screen so much as yawn at it. An intriguing plot then turns into a telltale heart that doesn’t pulse.

Macht is the best thing in A Love Song for Bobby Long, but his intelligent performance doesn't justify a tough, and very long, sit.

Fails to elicit any substantive information from his (Tommy Davis) subjects. And he fails to put their plight into perspective.

Lee gives his childhood hero altogether too much face time to defend himself against the numerous allegations and charges of assault, both physical and sexual.

The movie is neither an affecting romance (Coco even considers marrying Balsan because "I'd achieve social status") nor an inspiring success story. Chanel sold herself to one guy, happened to get customers through him, and took a start-up loan from another lover.

What with the unexciting hand-held camerawork, and the off-putting script and lead performance, Francine remains as frustrating as its inscrutable title character.

Somewhere along the way, Borstal Boy became fatally compromised.

This version, flatly directed and risibly written by Billy Ray, is saddled with endless coincidences, questionably motivated characters and an utterly laughable climax.

Edward Norton plays Ray, a (possibly) honest cop wearing an unexplained scar positioned just so on his cheek. It looks like it was bought in the markdown aisle of Halloween Mart on Nov. 1.

Everything is predictable three scenes in advance, and it's all stale, stuck, stolid.

If the jokes in Get Hard were a set of Jeopardy categories, they’d read as follows: Things Will Ferrell Puts Up His Butt, Butt Rape, Shots of Will Ferrell’s Bare Butt and Satirical Comparisons of Violent and Nonviolent Crime Not Excluding Mentions of Balzac.

Slow West certainly lives up to its title: It’s one poky Western, plodding and perambulating and moseying across the 1870 frontier on a grim march to a pointless ending.

One big hunk of cinematic moussaka with lots of appetizing shots of food.

Liberal Arts comes to us produced by Josh Radnor. Written by Josh Radnor. Starring Josh Radnor. Josh Radnor is much like Woody Allen, except for the talent.

Rarely does a movie go so thoroughly wrong in so many ways.

In trying to straddle both the grown-up and kiddie worlds with this inappropriately sexualized effort - their first theatrical release since 1995's "It Takes Two" - the Olsens have lost their footing.

The computer-generated flying effects are the only reason to see the movie, but at some point somebody left the computer on too long, so it went ahead and spat out the script.

Allah made me funny - not.

Self-indulgent folly.

Beautiful Boy ends up being an endurance test.

Though Cho occasionally connects with her targets, more often than not she seems as intolerant and hate-filled as she accuses them of being - and that's not funny.

Light It Up would be a strong candidate for the year's most irresponsible movie - if it were remotely believable.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, as you'd expect, rubbish, but the word is slightly too kind. The David Fincher film (like the very similar Swedish one - released in the US just last year! - and the book) is not even good rubbish.

It’s as if a ruthless gang of Richie Cunninghams terrorized the Fonzies of the world.

I can’t speak to Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel the film is based on, but the story’s climactic reveal is one of the most predictable in ages. It gets the award for Biggest Duh!

One of the few monster-crocodile movies that simultaneously tries to rip off "Jaws" and "Meet the Press."

It's pretty hard to make a dull movie about Henry VIII and his complicated love life, but The Other Boleyn Girl, a failed Oscar contender, manages to do just that, with yawns to spare.

Like the reanimated corpse of a teen queen, this would-be cult movie looks the part, but has little going on inside.

This is a lazy, careless film that feels strangely unfinished.

This sequel sorely misses the presence of Tom Wilkinson, whose out-of-the-closet character grounded the first film (but died at the end).

Even an engaging performance by Margot Robbie as the proverbial last woman on Earth isn’t enough to save Z for Zachariah from becoming yet another ploddingly pretentious Sundance dud.

The movie is still a mess, stumbling from comic-relief scenes that aren't funny to a job-training interlude in which we learn that, among other things, owls make excellent . . . blacksmiths?

The best drag movie since "Vegas in Space." That's hardly a huge recommendation.

Julian Fellowes would have been far better off writing another relaxed Christmas special to satisfy fans.

When you awake, it may all seem like a bad dream - but why is your wallet missing $11? Scary.

An amusingly preposterous last act keeps you guessing, or maybe keeps you ducking, as it lets rip an avalanche of startling revelations and double-crosses. Nothing is what it seems - unless it seems cheesy.