It’s not enough merely to tell stories about different aspects of how drugs impact society – the connections have to be stronger and the narratives have to go deeper that what Jarecki has provided here. Crisis is well-meaning but ultimately unsatisfying.

Cyrano is a disappointment. The set design and camera work are first rate, as are the performances of Dinklage and Bennett. It causes one to wonder whether, had the songs been excised in favor a straightforward telling, Cyrano might have played better. As it is, however, it’s merely a handsome looking period piece with too many mediocre songs and a major downer of an ending. Not exactly a great way to ring in a new year.

The way it has been presented, with forced and artificial junctions, keeps the viewer at arms-length from the story and creates questions about the historicity of some scenes.

Instead of being respectful of Bram Stoker's creation, it attempts to remake him as a tragic figure with superhero powers.

Morbius is the kind of bland, by-the-numbers origin story that shows comic book movies at their least innovative.

There are no real characters in Mary Magdalene – only icons. Actress Rooney Mara does what she can with the role but she isn’t helped by a one-dimensional script whose sole purpose seems to be to turn Mary into a first century feminist crusader.

The Amityville Horror fails as a movie, but, if you are searching for are a few good scares, you'll find them here.

It's compelling in the way many B-movies are - cheap, sleazy, and lacking the depth we have come to associate with this director.

This film, which places yet another actor in the batsuit, has all the necessary hallmarks of a sorry sequel -- pointless, plodding plotting; asinine action; clueless, comatose characterization; and dumb dialogue.

Black Adam embraces many of the worst elements and tropes of the superhero genre, resulting in a loud, discordant experience replete with fist-fights, pyrotechnics, and an overdose of CGI.

There's little here that's new or interesting; the movie is for hard-core Romero devotees only.

I usually give writer/director Tony Gilroy the benefit of the doubt because he has scripted some of my favorite films but Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a few steps too far in the wrong direction.

Those who love to cry at movies will doubtless get their money's worth from The Man Without a Face. Others, I imagine, will discover in this movie what I did: a curious mixture of scenes that work and situations that seem hopelessly contrived or overly-sentimental. I didn't hate the film, and after the jarring first half-hour, it kept my attention, but The Man Without a Face never strays far from familiar territory.

There’s nothing in Paint to excite fans of the late painter and even less for those who don’t know anything about him.

Kandahar is one of those movies that exists without having a compelling reason for doing do. As a war movie, it’s not especially insightful or gut-wrenching. As an action film, it lacks energy, momentum, and consistency. As a drama, it feels artificial and manipulative.

Quickly causes viewers to lose patience, then interest.

The problem with the film is that it's frequently more tedious than funny.

Transforming Persuasion into something generic and pitching it to viewers seduced by the likes of Bridgerton and Mr. Malcolm’s List illustrates not only a lack of imagination but a betrayal of the source material.

The clumsy and obvious byproduct of the financial success of its predecessor last Halloween, this movie has no reason for existing except to provide Paramount Pictures with a few extra shekels.

Eternal isn't that bad. Actually, it is. But it's kind of fun, too, in a way only cheesy exploitation films can be fun.

This grim, joyless motion picture is anything but fun. It’s a chore to sit through, with all the blazing, noisy pyrotechnics proving unable to lighten the mood.

Four Christmases is waste of time and a disappointment, but it's also relatively painless.

It lacks the simple elegance and intelligence of the earlier film, and employs special effects and pointless action scenes to replace passages of dialogue.

The end product feels trite and unfinished, with the romantic plot being awkwardly and unconvincingly shoehorned into a production that lacks focus.

The limp movie seems to be an attempt by an Australian to mimic a bad American romantic comedy, and, unfortunately, he succeeds admirably.

The Dilemma downshifts from slapstick to melodrama and back so abruptly that it is at times jarring.

Mechanical and artificial, and tells you what to think.

Those who love Robert Rodriguez's over-the-top Grindhouse-flavored spoofs will delight in this one but, ultimately, this is probably one Machete too many.

Dominion argues that not even the return of three beloved characters can rescue a franchise that has fallen and can’t get up.

Doomsday tries to cram so much into its limited 105 minutes that aspects end up feeling rushed and confused (especially the political situation in England) and the ending is perfunctory.

For a movie about magic, that’s one element sorely lacking in this retread.

It gets props for kinetic energy, bursts of suspense, and a couple of bravura performances (Will Smith & Margot Robbie). But pretty much everything else is either mediocre or substandard and that makes it hard to champion this bloated and cheerless monstrosity.

A blend of lackluster comedy and lazy plotting, the film feels a lot like bad Hitchcock.

Looking back at Psycho Killer as a whole, the missteps in the final 20–30 minutes easily overwhelm some of the earlier, better material. It's tough to recommend this even as a streaming time-waster.

Ron Livingstone plays his part relatively straight, and, as a result, comes out unscathed.

Had Home of the Brave presented credible stories about believable characters, it might have been a powerful drama.

Taken 2 is more of the same, except a little bigger, a little dumber, and a little less invigorating.

The film's disappointingly black-and-white approach robs characters and situations of badly needed ambiguity.

Not an abomination, although it is uninspired and insipid. As such, it's perfect television fare.

The Intern is a romantic comedy without the romance.

Science fiction fans will feel gypped, disaster movie fans will appreciate about 10 minutes of screen time and be bored by the rest, and no one else will care.

There’s nothing in this third Fantastic Beasts installment that will grow the audience. In fact, the plodding pacing offers little to excite anyone outside the dwindling core fandom.

It’s a 99-minute commercial designed to drive sales of merchandise. Okay, it’s not as bad as "Super Mario Brothers," but that’s damning with faint praise.

"Compelling" is a word one could apply to Jobs - he was a magnetic figure - but it doesn't describe this movie. "Average" might even be a stretch, and that's something of an insult to the man whose story it tells.

Just because it's not boring, that doesn't mean it's worth plunking down the price of admission.

Call Project Almanac a "shaky-cam special", and it's a damn shame. The resultant production, both shaken and stirred, transforms a potentially entertaining pulp time travel story into a misbegotten exercise in frustration.

Never boring. It is, however, frustrating.

Artificial in both its dialogue and its construction, the film only works - on those occasions when it works - because of the sincere performance by the underrated Toni Collette.

What we get is a mediocre remake of a mediocre original – not exactly must-see cinema.

A grim experience, with too little wit and humor to compensate for its faults, and the upbeat ending feels like a cheat. Thornton is good, but not worth the price of a ticket.

There's nothing in Alex Cross that argues another installment is warranted, but much will depend on whether Tyler Perry's audience crosses over and continues to follow him in this new, very different role.

The premise is inherently interesting, but the screenplay (by Glen & Les Charles) is unwilling to take chances. Instead, it uses stock events to push events forward.

It’s a surprisingly flat bio-pic of King’s life between 1972-73 with little attempt to make Riggs into anything more than a two-dimensional caricature/foil.

It's a muddled, meandering affair without a thesis or a point to prove.

The root problem of The 33 is that, in attempting to do too much, it succeeds at too little.

The Santa Clause isn't an unmitigated disaster, but it's also a whole lot less impressive than it could be.

The resulting finished project is a series of skits performed by famous people doing favors for a friend, and it works about as well as one might expect from such an endeavor.

About as frightening as Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion.

The humor is typically sitcom-ish, tending more toward sophomoric gags than genuinely funny material.

Designed with Underworld fans in mind. Others need not apply.

The Clone Wars is the last nail in a coffin that has been propped up ever since George Lucas sold his creative soul in the quest for a few more pieces of gold.

This is the film to watch when pretty much everything else has been sold out and the only remaining choices are The Back-Up Plan and the latest Rob Schneider opus.

As a movie, On Stranger Tides would have to be considered a failure. The story does not engage, the characters are stick figures, the action sequences are perfunctory, and the whole enterprise reeks of being a money-grab.

The movie consists of a bunch of random events and, if you pause long enough to consider things like plot and motivation (something you’re not supposed to do), it becomes evident that most of the movie doesn’t make any sense. Add to that an anti-climactic ending, scattershot editing, and too many extraneous characters and the last Star Wars movie is the most bloated and least satisfying of all the main-line adventures.

There are lengthy stretches during this movie when it's deadly dull. This is the kind of film that's ideal for DVD viewing. Judicious use of the fast forward button will greatly increase The Ten's appeal.

This time, it's not because mainstream movie-goers in this country lack taste but because the film isn't worth buying a ticket to see. Mr. Bean's Holiday is no vacation.

The result is a poorly-focused motion picture characterized by limp satire and capped off by a final fifteen minutes that could send half of the audience into sugar shock.

From that point on, the movie becomes distressingly predictable, with nary a surprise to be found.

Allen almost seems to be going through the motions – his jokes are flat, his stories are poorly focused, and the sense of zany energy that characterized his best films is absent.

In crafting an insider's perspective, Jaglom has done an effective job. It's too bad that nearly everything else fails.

Gods of Egypt is often sloppy and fails in many ways but the cheesy momentum is hard to resist.

When the movie goes “boo!” and the viewer tries hard to stifle a yawn, something has gone wrong.

A sloppy, poorly focused comedy.

The result is not entirely uninteresting, but it suffers from some ill-advised decisions. In fact, the film's "hook" may be its greatest detraction.

The storyline is at times muddled and incoherent. This won't bother readers much since they have the "inside track" on what's happening. Then again, the narrative is so predictable that maybe it doesn't matter.

Spenser Confidential is a perfect Netflix movie – a mid-budget action/thriller featuring a recognizable star and not requiring much in the way of attention or dedication from a viewer.

Criminally underwritten characters result in actors like Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) having little to do.

Those who have seen Richard Lester's '70s tongue-in-cheek version of the adventure should avoid this one, lest they feel compelled to hurl popcorn and invectives at the screen.

Despite its name, Beautiful Girls is actually about a group of irritating, twenty-something males whose adolescent attitudes have remained with them well into adulthood.

The Midwife has two things going for it: Catherine Frot and Catherine Deneuve. There’s no disputing the quality of acting in this film, at least insofar as the leads are concerned. Unfortunately, almost everything else in Martin Provost’s staid character study falls considerably short of the bar set by the two Catherines.

One of the year's most uninspired inspirational stories.

Confetti is an excellent study of what happens when someone botches Christopher Guest's mockumentary format.

Instead of being truly awful, it’s simply mediocre, although one could argue that’s the last word a comic book movie wants to have applied to it.

Mortal Kombat II falls victim to the same problems that have derailed many a game-to-movie translation: overemphasizing fan service and spectacle over a solid narrative.

This is a character we have seen a million times before and Eastwood brings little that's new or original to the part. The movie as a whole can be labeled with the same criticism.

12 year old boys will love the result. That’s not a good sign for anyone who has passed beyond their teenage years.

It worked once, but the novelty factor is gone. The cheese is still there, but this time it's overlaid with a cynical sense that the only reason the movie exists is because the first one made so much money.

People who are addicted to romantic comedies will find something to like about this movie, with its theme of fate brining two unhappy people together. More cynical viewers will point out that nothing in this film makes enough sense to warrant such a lofty interpretation. For the most part, I agree with the latter group. The Night We Never Met is best remembered as the movie we never attended.

Unfortunately, because of a variety of missteps, Bushwick never achieves what it sets out to do. It’s undone by a litany of bad decisions and the underlying weakness of the core material.

For me, this is as deflating a movie as I have seen all year. Not the worst, to be sure, but a project so utterly unnecessary that it made me want to gnash my teeth in frustration.

Striptease is a curious mix of eroticism, comedy, and drama that, instead of blending into a pleasing whole, has a tendency to separate and curdle.

The film is too light and juvenile to be viewed as some sort of darkly subversive satire in which the director is laughing at those of us who take it all semi-seriously.

Everything about director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s film is bright, garish, and peppy. Although watchable as a sort of mindless flashback, it doesn’t work as a movie.

Most of the movie involves Rogen interacting with Rogen and this is problematic on a number of levels. First, neither version of Rogen has a good feel for the shifting tone of the movie. Secondly, without another human to play off, Rogen is frequently stiff. Or, to put it another way, he has zero chemistry with himself.

Aloha is Crowe's worst film-to-date, eclipsing "Elizabethtown" for that distinction and raising questions about whether the director has lost his touch (á là Rob Reiner).

This is the kind of movie that isn't even worth renting when it comes out on video because, with the possible exception of Michael Lerner and Omar Epps dancing to show tunes, you've seen it all before.

Comes across as a cheesy, fundamentally unsatisfying experience.

It's dull, childish, and uninspired.