This material cries out for big-budget treatment by a real master like Paul Thomas Anderson or Martin Scorsese.

Though darker elements loom in the shadows, nothing in this painfully sincere film is remotely affecting; just think of it as “My So-Called Strife.”

Silly enough for you? Did I mention that the immortal Ken Jeong of “The Hangover’’ plays God, who gets mighty pissed when hubby accidentally shoots Jesus out of the sky?

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

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.

A dull drama about domestic squabbling that hopes to be mistaken for a thriller.

There is something both mischievous and moving about a world-famous director who, closing on his 10th decade, designs a movie that celebrates his actors: their varying ages, their versatility, their heart.

The best compensation for sitting through this silliness is Alice Taglioni as the primary cop.

The first filmed Shakespeare comedy in decades that’s actually funny.

After a wickedly promising start, this pointed political satire quickly deteriorates into a fairly routine, if sporadically quite effective, home-invasion thriller.

It seems more likely that a dumb movie will lead only to a time-wasting surge in applications from dummies. Maybe The Internship was secretly funded by Bing.

Sirius requires a religious faith in the notion that the same government that can barely get it together to raise the debt ceiling can suppress all evidence of aliens, via means such as engineering 9/11 as a distraction when Greer got too close to proving his case.

Less a movie than a checklist of indiecinema clichés. Youth on a journey of self-discovery? Got it. Dead mom? Uh-huh. Wounded and entitled when it’s trying to be soulful, plotless, laden with indie rock and entirely overhyped at Sundance? Checkarooney.

Someday, when gay Americans enjoy full equality, we can all hope their sexuality will finally stop being used as fodder for dopey, hopelessly contrived dramas like I Do.

It’s a truly interesting slasher fest; in this one, the heroine gets to be both beauty and beast.

The Wall winds up as a captivating fable, an end-times scenario that’s more about the survival of the spirit than the body.

Still, the proceedings move so quietly and thoughtfully as to be occasionally somnolent, though they’re punctuated with spasms of the violence that marked the Troubles.

It’s involving, as biopics go, but the shattering debates that still swirl around Arendt’s view of the Holocaust are relegated to walk-ons.

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.

None of these seemingly plot-rich questions are explored; instead, we’re stuck with a greasy-haired Mark Ruffalo, as his detective character flounders along in their wake, muttering that he doesn’t have time for this magic crap.

Basically, this is Smith and his real-life son, Jaden (both affecting ridiculous mid-Atlantic accents) talking the audience to death for something like 90 minutes before the closing credits.

Trouble is, while the social milieu is nicely realized, other parts of the drama are not. Too often Burshtein cuts off a scene prematurely, darting away just as the crucial moment of emotion or confrontation appears.

Daunting though it may be for the aspiring pick-up entrant, this is a fun and worthwhile ode to one of New York’s greatest summer pastimes.

It is a remarkably unattractive-looking movie. I don’t know when people voted that the seasick look of an iPhone video is now a desirable style.

Despite Gibney’s best efforts to put a halo on Manning, the enormity of what the soldier did towers over what has been done to him.

Making a movie this warm, funny, and rigorously truthful about lovers trying to remain partners is even harder.

I had the sensation of sitting through a fourth-grade school play that contained no children of my own: the very definition of a nightmare.

For my money, Furious 6 is more fun than “Skyfall" and a lot more fun than the deadly dull “Star Trek Into Darkness,’’ both of which ask you to take their silly plots way too seriously.