The third and weakest book in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy should never have been split into two films, but since that’s become money-grubbing standard practice for young-adult adaptations (“Twilight,” “Divergent”), here we are.

The trope of horror-suffused female friendships is a fertile one, but despite a screenwriting credit from the very capable Nicole Holofcener (director of “Enough Said,” among others), Every Secret Thing comes up short.

Directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly overload their too-long film with subplots. Yet the actors — including a terrific Aiden Gillen (“Game of Thrones”) as Casper’s no-good father — perform as though unaware that any of this is a cliché.

Borrowing liberally from the "Exorcist" and "Omen" movies, and with little regard for credibility, The Ring Two has a familiar ring to it.

The documentary equivalent of a Southern Gothic novel.

They probably should have called it "Beneath the Dignity of the Planet of the Apes," but Rise of the Planet of the Apes is tolerable if you'll just keep in mind that the original feature was an overachieving B-movie.

Ignore the furiously overplotted, headache-inducing story -- derived from a series of comic books -- and focus on the exquisitely drawn Japanese animation.

The first half-hour of Jeepers Creepers is so frightening that it's almost a relief when the movie subsequently collapses into silliness.

Its faults -- banal dialogue, ludicrous and uninspired plotting, dull but vicious fight scenes -- make you realize just how much the summer action movie has declined in the last few years.

The Tomorrow War, in trying to become the new Independence Day (this release date is not arbitrary), throws Alien, The Terminator and A Quiet Place in a blender. And, like that gross kale smoothie you made once, the result is gray goop.

Long-winded and often over-the-top Italian soap opera about a neurotic, middle-class Roman family.

Pleasant but lifeless love story.

Why doesn't anybody just buy a gun? I guess the female characters spent all their money on tight tank tops.

If you were wondering what “12 Years a Slave” might have been like as a two-part episode of “Masterpiece Theatre,” you might want to check out this unsatisfying but not uninteresting oddity. It renders another historical story about race with exquisite taste but not much in the way of passion.

There is probably an amusing movie to be made about camps that try to "rehabilitate" homosexuals - but this thuddingly stupid satire isn't it.

A toe-tapping, booty- shaking look at Cubans' love of music that gets bogged down in political thoughts that go unexplored.

That idea was fun once, maybe even twice, but by the fifth outing the formula has given way to preachiness and predictability.

The more dramatic revelations and tragic inevitabilities that turn up, the harder it is not to laugh. Give credit to its maker for directing with an earnestness suggesting a pretentious 22-year-old. Having passed through the phases of Interesting Apprentice, Mad Genius, Chastened Bankrupt and Shameless Wage Slave, Coppola at 70 may be the world's oldest student filmmaker.

Probably would have yielded a more interesting documentary than this sugary feature.

Scott Thomas sounds like she’s about to pull out a shiv and knife her new boss right then and there. The actress is so good, you wish she could reprise the role in a better film that actually deserves her.

A schmaltzy filmed record of a Nashville concert given by the legendary former rocker, who has morphed into the new Kenny Rogers.

Director Greg Berlanti’s romantic comedy, which imagines that Richard Nixon’s administration really did film a fake, backup moon landing in 1969, is a mystifying misfire all along the way from initial concept to end credits.

Sporadically hilarious but more often just plain crass and contrived.

Trimming half an hour from this bloated, 143-minute blockbuster would have highlighted the film's treasures, not the least of which is Johnny Depp's endearingly eccentric performance as Captain Jack Sparrow.

The Grudge offers a bit more exposition than did "Ju-On," but the plot is still wispy.

The fine supporting cast includes Steve Buscemi, as a cynical American doctor who at first doesn't get along with Rabe; and Anne Consigny, as the French head of a local school for Chinese girls.

Hard-core chick shlock, weakened by odd shifts in tone and a slack pace, but elevated by a luminous performance by Natalie Portman.

A good cast and disciplined direction add some distinction to Ric Roman Waugh's Felon, which is basically the old tale about an innocent man corrupted by a stay in prison.