Yes, there's some spectacular footage. But there's also an awful lot of filler for a 40-minute movie.

Works just fine as a generic but fast-paced - and rather ugly - cop buddy flick.

Aspires to be a scary suburban satire like “Get Out” or “Hot Fuzz.” But watching adults murder or attempt to murder toddlers, teens and even a newborn baby just isn’t funny. At times, it’s downright sickening.

Providing a hint of redemption is Edgar-Jones, a naturally vulnerable actress who can turn the shallowest of material into something deep. We like Kya and are with her every step of the way, even though at over two hours there about 50 steps too many.

Isn't as relentlessly vulgar or cartoonish as "The Ladies Man" - nor is it a whole lot more realistic.

There was no need to edit it in overly slick ways that often make the story line seem contrived, accompanied by gag-laden narration that frequently made me want to gag.

The acting is, at best, serviceable; the sound track is too often unintelligible; the direction is often over the top; and the script relies heavily on stereotypes.

The more serious Potter gets (there are several earnest soliloquies about dirt), the harder it is not to laugh.

The finest 1947 boxing picture of 2015 is here: Southpaw, a film that’s gruntingly insistent on its clichés.

Really, though, it is just another tiresome and impenetrably brooding Gerard Butler movie in which no event seems to matter any more than the next one — and grimaces are mistaken for drama.

It feels as shopworn as a dusty VHS tape of "Less Than Zero."

So moron-friendly they should have called it "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Checkers." The skill level in the script is elementary school, my dear Watson.

The preachy “Showman” argues that Barnum should be celebrated for bringing “freaks” like the bearded lady and others out of the shadows and into his shows, but those characters are sketchily drawn.

Nicely photographed and has impressive sets; too bad there's so little going on that it seems long even at 78 minutes.

The film mangles its twist and fails to deliver an interesting coup de grace or a sharp line of dialogue.

Such a comedy cannot depend solely on its supporting cast, especially when they’re tasked with lifting up subpar material.

Rappaport does a yeoman's job in this tonally confused oddity. The wonder is that Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore's Special is making it off the festival circuit and into theaters at all, however briefly.

A sincere but underwhelming dramatization of one of the biggest news stories of 1956.

It's supposed to be about a Kafkaesque experience. Instead, it IS a Kafkaesque experience. Why are we here? Is everything absurd? Is anyone in charge?

This pursuit farce is harmless (if stale) entertainment, but the sledge-hammer attempt to appeal to the country's fastest-growing movie-going demographic makes for a clunky narrative and one-note characters.

Overall, the rambling Jayne Mansfield’s Car is almost as big a wreck as its namesake.

Attempting to fill Dudley Moore's top hat in Arthur, Russell Brand rapidly descends the rungs of the comedy ladder from "unfunny" to "irritating" to "vulgar" to the bottom one - "Andy Dick."

Disappointingly, Bourne never resurfaces in this less-than-satisfying series reboot. The film is more a talky, convoluted, action-starved two-hour subplot.

The teen movie The Spectacular Now begins like “Say Anything” but soon turns into “Drink Anything.”

Remember the old Ben Affleck, the one who made 28 consecutive bad movies before he turned out to be a pretty good director? He’s back! Behold, the second coming of . . . Badfleck.

It contains no poetry. It simply conjures up a horrible feeling -- and then sits back awaiting congratulation.

For most adults, and kids raised on "South Park," the painfully earnest story won't hold much interest. And the comedy is tame.

There’s a fine horror film inside Tusk, but it’s only 20 minutes long. The rest is just blubber.

The animated, Hanukkah-themed musical is, in fact, 75 minutes worth of belching, barfing and poo-jokes braided into a Grinch-meets-Scrooge-meets-"It's a Wonderful Life" storyline that's as stale as last year's potato latkes.

Their misadventures in the Big Apple, including Giamatti’s involvement with a Russian house sitter (a bizarrely cast Sally Hawkins) are neither funny nor touching, just tedious.

Follows a narrative arc as choppy as a messy windswell, and the result is a dog's dinner of profiles, repetitive narration, safety tips and banal "insights" into the joys and dangers of cresting waves that sometimes reach 70 feet.

It raises tangled questions about whether it is better to live humiliated or arm yourself, yet for the most part it's dramatically inert, talky and directionless, and it ends quietly without saying much of anything.

The inferior second part, short but not nearly short enough, proves just how ill-prepared its creators were for the original’s success.

As Franco dilutes the drama with first-year-film-student gimmicks, like split screens and slow motion, it just seems like a dull collection of pointless monologues from actors who can’t even be bothered to match up their accents. Franco is a dilettante, and it shows.

Dumb Money, with a predictable script by Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and Ben Mezrich, rambles on and on with an unwaveringly lethargic tone and zero buildup of energy or anticipation. All the while, the audience has little investment in this dud about investing.

With “M3GAN 2.0,” the filmmakers have employed a bold strategy: Take a $180-million formula, shred it and forget it.

Peter Krause, the fine actor from "Six Feet Under," gives a one-note performance that seriously undermines Civic Duty, a thriller mining minimal dramatic payoff from the potentially potent subject of post-9/11 paranoia.

This Alfie has been castrated.

This loopy farce has the feel of a wacky off-off-Broadway play with more energy than wit, but it has its moments. And the laid-back acting of Hoffman (son of Dustin) just about holds it together.

It’s a royal chore.

Like the lovely indie "Weekend," this small-scale story focuses on a couple of days in a possibly blossoming romance. Unlike that movie, it's full of gender stereotypes and all-around bad behavior. There's no one here to root for.

There are probably enough moments to satisfy hard-core fans, but for the rest of us, this amounts to the Middle Earth equivalent of “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones,’’ a space-holding, empty-headed epic filled with characters and places (digital and otherwise) that are hard to keep straight, much less care about.

Picture "Fargo" played with no sense of comedy, and you'll get some idea of the absurdity of this drunken floozy, clicking and wobbling on high heels, often with bits of her anatomy hanging out, trying to pull off the perfect crime.

This one-joke comedy vehicle is flying through a laugh-free zone.

If it has a genius for anything, it’s disorganization: What promised to be a Super Bowl of villainy turned out more like toddler playtime.

As bland as the Kenny G-style smooth jazz its hero listens to in moments of distress.

A cast almost talented enough to distract you from Ted Griffin's gimmicky screenplay.

Cavanagh, the always-engaging former star of "Ed" (with whom I am friendly), and the adorable Faris (whom I don't know -- but feel free to look me up, Anna!) make the non-animated scenes amusing, as the ranger and the documentarian fall in love and fight to save the park. But the script doesn't give them a lot to do.

If you're wondering why this movie must stretch past two hours, it's because it takes that long to read every item in the cliché dictionary.

Jacques Rivette's film is full of painstaking historical detail, but the behavior of the two nonlovers is mired in inaction and emotionally incomprehensible.

Amateurish in the extreme, the film is a feast of bohemian cliché, bad writing and worse acting.

It's hoary and clunky even by the low standards of contemporary thrillers.

Unpleasant as it is, you can't exactly call Sherman's perspective misogynistic, if only because the protagonist hates himself every bit as much.

It’s Olsen’s emotional frailty that helps pump up a bad movie into a mediocre one.

One part cabaret, one part travelogue, one part comic heist, one part romantic tearjerker -- and all pretty tedious.

What follows is very gruesome indeed, though the footage of people being chased by hideous ghosts soon becomes rather dull.

Can’t somebody come up with a monster that does something more interesting than run at you screaming, “Yeeaaaarrrrgh”?

Strong contender for the weirdest movie released this year.

Situations get increasingly ridiculous, and none of the characters ever seems like anything but a screenwriter's sketch.

You'd think it would be hard to make an uninteresting movie based on the true story of Bethany Hamilton... But the terminally bland Soul Surfer comes perilously close.

Will go down in history as the movie that showed a turtle getting an enema. It also features a hot performance by Marguerite Moreau.

Let’s say you wanted to have another go at “Red Dawn” but you think more like Redford. Voilà: You’d have The East, a cockamamie valentine to eco-terrorism.

Autumn wants to do for Jean-Pierre Melville what "Reservoir Dogs" did for Hong Kong cinema, but this new film is a joyless exercise in film appreciation.

Dennis Rodman isn't half bad as a blond, multiply pierced Interpol agent.

A sluggish meander through the life of the man considered by many to be a deity of golfing.

Like many first films, Boricua's Bond is wildly uneven.

First-time writer-director Mark Hanlon lands only glancing blows in this grim black comedy.

Recycles every cliché of the genre to sleep-inducing effect.

A shaky effort to make a point about art triumphing over all.

So patchy in its laughs, so calculated in its grossness and so lacking in genuine comic exuberance, it makes you look at "Road Trip" in an admiring new light.

When the villain is revealed, you are neither surprised nor scared. You just think, "That guy?"

The cacophonous ending sets up a sequel, but I hope it never sees the light of day. Actually, considering it’s about vampires, maybe I do!

What dooms Never Die Alone even as amoral pulp entertainment is the screenplay by neophyte James Gibson, which combines clichéd characters and a contrived plot with stale dialogue.

Sillen drags out generic talking heads who say generic things about Bernstein, a generic boho. The film might suffice if you're looking for something to watch on cable TV some early morning. But it isn't worth the hassle and expense of going to a theater.

Behind the glitz, Hollywood is sordid and disgusting. Quelle surprise!

Strictly summer schlock.

A bad film with some oddly charming moments.

In Pay the Ghost, Nicolas Cage investigates a supernatural abduction, but has no solution for the maggot-eaten zombie that is his undead career.

Devotes most of its energy to its costumes and makeup, which are fabulous. But that and a tabloid-worthy star just aren't enough to revisit this sordid tale as a kind of twisted comedy.

Colpaert makes nice use of blue and green hues, and he makes some valid points about the Iraqi war. But the script lacks coherence and ends with a 180-degree flip that lessens the impact of what has gone before.

So beautifully filmed (as if through a gauze curtain), it is especially sad that the script doesn't measure up.

A windbaggy film of Phillip Roth's novella "The Dying Animal."

The movie has the feel of a weary business trip.

A mild, slow-moving drama that belatedly tries to argue that graffiti writers are political artists, not an urban blight.

The apolitical and well-meaning Home of the Brave is predictable and maudlin.

This mild drama plays out like one of those dull message movies that TV networks used to crank out almost weekly, but the earnestness is at times almost appealingly old-fashioned.

Hokey, inept tear-jerker.

There’s a secret at play in After, which director Pieter Gaspersz communicates via many side-long glances. I won’t give it away, but it’s a fairly far-fetched twist that feels out of place in this realism-based drama.

The cast includes Oscar winner Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched herself) and Henry Thomas of "E.T.," and the special effects look like they were executed on somebody's laptop.

The NYU film grad steals liberally from Woody (especially "Annie Hall") - from camera placement to body language to plot twists to the whole Ingmar Bergman thing. That's not necessarily bad, if the project works. This one doesn't - it just annoys.

Is nothing sacred? In the schizophrenic war epic The War lords, Jet Li, the hunky action hero, cries -- no, make that sobs -- several times. What will his legion of young male fans think?

Markopolos repeatedly tells us he was scared for his life -- accompanied by hokey archival clips and music -- though nothing actually happened to him.

DiCaprio and Connelly give off the sexual tension of pickled herring.

Well, nobody said The Grand was another "Best in Show."

About as exciting as watching someone else's home movies -- albeit, beautifully photographed ones.

Boynton isn't interested in telling a story, only in the atmosphere of political consultancy.

It makes "Top Gun" look like the work of Orson Welles. At least the Tom Cruise movie remembered to cast actual actors.

It's "The Postman" on a pitcher's mound.