Wonderful World feels like a modern-day half-baked riff on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

The main problem with Coach Carter can be summed up simply: too much sermonizing.

A thrill-less thriller that uses gore to obfuscate its inability to generate tension, this motion picture has the profile one might expect from a direct-to-video release.

As disaster movies go, Greenland is neither exceptionally good nor exceptionally bad.

Although For Love or Money is a marginal film by any standards, it isn't unwatchable, and it does fit nicely into the "date movie" niche. I can't honestly recommend the movie, but it isn't completely without redeeming qualities.

It's an orgy for disaster porn devotees.

This is a rare time when young ones will get more out of a Sandler movie than their parents, who may have grown up with him when he was on "Saturday Night Live."

The movie may attract some attention from horror/thriller fans eager for a post-Halloween fix but this is no better than a direct-to-video production masquerading as a theatrical release.

At its best, this could have been a passable distraction and at its worst, it could have been unwatchable. Barrymore manages to bring it in somewhere in between those extremes.

In the end, Conspiracy Theory fails to work as an action film, a romance, or a mystery -- all of which it aspires to be.

Unfortunately, the final act (the Mexico sequences) illustrate where to take a ghost story if you want to exchange old-fashioned horror for a grilled cheese sandwich.

The movie doesn't come close to the family-friendly comedic pseudo-incest flirted with in "Back to the Future." That, apparently, is deemed too unsettling for today's audiences. So 17 Again none-too-cleverly tap dances around these issues.

The Lazarus Effect begins with an intriguing premise then proceeds to squander all the early goodwill through a slow, inexorable descent into cheap horror gimmicks.

The film's main problems are script-related. Most of the stories aren't merely perfunctory; they're superficial.

The problem is, the characters don't grab me, and the story meanders too much.

On balance, I think I'd rather have seen Rocky 15.

At best, this film is strictly cable fare.

Dennis the Menace is basically innocuous -- creatively barren but offering the kind of light, undemanding entertainment that the under-ten crowd finds so appealing. Most children will get a kick out of it, although adults roped into accompanying their offspring may find themselves yearning to escape through the nearest exit.

In the final analysis, The Expendables is little more than an ordinary, uninspired action feature.

One of Mindhunters' strengths is that it's difficult to guess who the culprit is because Harlin and his screenwriters don't play fair with the audience.

With a cast featuring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Robin Williams, and Ricky Gervais, one has a right to expect something amusing from Night at the Museum. Oddly, not only is the movie unfunny, but it rarely tries for laughs.

If the idea of spending 90 minutes in a movie theater seeing gorgeously rendered versions of a hugely popular gaming world and its characters going through the motions appeals to you, then The Super Mario Galaxy Movie will scratch the itch.

The Man from Toronto is derivative and forgettable; nothing about the venue in which it is seen will change that.

Perhaps it's the lack of sex or perhaps it's the incessant, banal chattering of the characters, but this movie is more likely to inspire sleep than interest. Breillat has done something I never expected from her: made a boring film.

It’s another comedy that falls prey to two common problems: (1) predictable, uninspired humor, and (2) inept attempts to inject drama into the proceedings during the last act.

Actually, the more distance the studio places between the two films, the better, because the 1997 production can't hold a candle to the 1973 release, and an attempted comparison only makes the new Bruce Willis/Richard Gere vehicle look worse.

First-time director Jonathan Watson crafts a film that’s neither funny nor exciting, although it often seems to be straining to be one or the other. It’s a tonal mess and its inconsistencies make it a frustrating viewing experience.

Why bother with wit, intelligence, and emotion when children will be equally entertained by pretty images, colorful action, and the obligatory poop joke?

To be fair, there are occasional moments that succeed dramatically. These are typically the quieter, less histrionic ones.

The problem with Rampage is that it’s not content to be mindless fun. There’s too much exposition and too many needless human villains. Plus, the tone is more lugubrious than the flippancy suggested by the trailers.

The movie falls into the category of something a viewer is likely to stick with once sitting there but it lacks anything sufficiently unique or compelling that would make it worth seeking out.

The movie is uneven in the extreme, to the extent that it feels like two imperfectly wed pictures. The first, while not extraordinary, at least contains some interesting ideas. The second borders on embarrassing: an overblown melodrama complete with coincidence building upon coincidence and plot threads that are left unresolved.

Overlong and at times tedious; the taste is gritty and lingers unpleasantly.

The promise of an intriguing premise results in expectations that the film, which rarely diverges from the familiar feel of a post-apocalyptic road movie, is unable to capture.

The content is actually pretty bland -- it's not incisive, it's not daring, it's not uproarious, and it's not very good.

Even those approaching Megalopolis with an open mind and fully expecting to see an expensive and expansive art film may be disappointed by the result. The more I reflect on the movie, the more convinced I become that the things Coppola does well are dwarfed by missed opportunities and outright missteps.

Contraband is the kind of thriller that offers just enough in the way of effective elements to assemble a two-minute trailer. When it comes to a 110-minute feature, however, the sketchiness of the plotting and the director's lack of sure-handedness sink the project.

The film provides ample opportunity to attack the MPAA's hypocrisy. Max Payne is a bloodbath, yet it manages a PG-13 rating by keeping the explicitness of the killings just a whisker shy of what would be necessary for an R.

This is yet another early 2025 movie where there’s just enough material in the film to assemble an intriguing three-minute trailer but not enough to make the other 120 minutes of more than passing interest.

Okay, Wanderlust has its moments. It's sporadically funny - funny enough to deliver a good laugh or two. The problem is, it doesn't do more than that, and the comedy is inconsistent.

Suspension of disbelief is an oh-so-tricky hurdle for a movie like this to overcome and The Book of Henry fails to achieve it.

The movie isn't so much bad as it is formulaic and uninspired. In some ways, that might almost be a worse sin.

The mismatched blending of Hirschbiegel's low-key horror and the Wachowski Brothers' anything-but-low-key action sequences results in a cinematic dud.

Evans' goal is to do for high school baseball what "Hoosiers" did for high school basketball, but to mention both titles in one sentence is almost an insult to a picture that many rank as the first or second all-time sports film.

A cheesy production with underdeveloped characters that feels more like a TV pilot than a self-contained motion picture.

Smith has infused this final chapter of the accidental trilogy with an odd tone. It’s a comedy that wants to be serious but has trouble finding the right pitch.

The film clearly wants to be more than just a run-of-the-mill horror-thriller but the allegorical aspects are half-baked and the attempts to mimic Kubrick’s "A Clockwork Orange" and "Eyes Wide Shut" feel more like campy satire than an homage.

Swing Kids has a multitude of problems, the most glaring of which is its loose treatment of history and the Nazis.

This time around, however, the magic has fizzled. Based solely on merit, Now You See Me 2 is a sequel that should never have been made.

It's easily the weakest entry into this ever-expanding category and is inferior to its subtitled source material. Quarantine implies "stay away" and that's not bad advice.

It would be disingenuous for me to claim that Ted 2 isn't funny. Although I was often bored by the plodding direction of the story, I laughed from time-to-time.

The movie ends with a bizarre and unsatisfying denouement. The epilogue, which is designed either to set up a sequel or lampoon "Halloween 2," plays like a sour last note. I suppose someone thought it was clever, but it doesn't work.

Aside from being a showcase for up-and-coming action star Jason Momoa, it offers little else of note.

Today, it feels like a parody and at times slips into “so bad it’s enjoyable” territory.

Transporter 3 is the most frustrating entry into a series that has never set the bar terribly high.

For the most part, its characterizations are so weak and ambivalent that the audience finds it difficult to develop much sympathy for anyone, regardless of whether they're white or Native American.

While the film does deliver a few solid laughs (though none that truly hit an 11), it ultimately falls flat, feeling less like a theatrical mockumentary and more like an overlong streaming special.

"Twister" is a rush. Dante's Peak, on the other hand, is a bore. Oh, it has its moments, but most of them are concentrated in the final forty-five minutes. The first hour, which is all typical disaster movie setup, is interminable.

There's only so far a movie can go on loud music, nicely-framed shots, testosterone, and adrenaline. Bad Boys takes the often-traveled road, and leads the audience to a dead end.

Whether the core flaw lies in the script or is the result of overly aggressive editing, the final result is offers only sporadic glimpses of the compelling thriller Broken City fails to evolve into.

Robert the Bruce is too long by at least a half-hour for the surprisingly slight tale it has to tell.

Crash has a couple of concepts which are, admittedly, fascinating and original, but not a whole lot more.

Aside from a powerful performance by Ron Rifkin (reprising his stage role) and a few quietly effective scenes, there's not much reason to subject yourself to a film this off-putting.

Dreamer is a kids' movie. It offers the simple black-and-whites of innocence, with no grays to add complexity.

For a mostly brainless movie, The Expendables 3 has a surprisingly dense plot, which is part of the problem. The 2-hour running length is unnecessarily long.

Jamie Foxx, compelled to take the role for personal reasons, turns in what could arguable be the best performance of a varied career. (Others might say that the distinction belongs to his work in Ray.)

Some players will enjoy the flashes of familiarity but others will find the production to be lacking. “Cringey” might be too harsh but this is unlikely to become the next video game-to-movie classic.

Lacks both a focus and an edge, making it an amorphous mess.

It’s a big-screen cartoon and, although it may work for its target audience – video game-consuming pre-teen boys – other viewers may find the production to be lacking in anything beyond a little visual razzle-dazzle.

Spider-Man and the first sequel were breezy adventures - easy and fun to sit through. Spider-Man 3 is a chore. The effective moments require a lot patience to uncover and some of what has to be shifted to get to them is not worth the effort. People love trilogies because it's said that good things come in threes, but this series would have looked better and felt more satisfying had the filmmakers stopped at two.

Your reaction to Double Team will probably depend largely on how you feel about concussive action films. While this one is better than most, it still falls considerably short of what I consider to be a "good" movie. One thing's for sure, though: like most flicks that boast more stuntmen than cast members, Double Team is unlikely to function as a Sominex. You may not enjoy it, but you won't fall asleep. And that's the best thing I can say about this loud, brash, ultimately pointless morsel of eye candy.

For a movie being touted as a sophisticated farce suitable for family viewing, North turns out to be surprisingly immature.

Warcraft provides the shell of a great fantasy adventure saga but never effectively goes beyond that. This is much more like the bad fantasy of the 1980s and 1990s than the better brand we have recently become accustomed to.

The product is akin to a mediocre '80s sex comedy (with minimal nudity) and "daring" is a descriptor only the most naïve and puritanical would employ.

At 2 1/2 hours, the movie is actually too short to adequately tell the full tale (The Ten Commandments is 70 minutes longer) but that doesn't prevent Scott from presenting multiple, seemingly endless scenes of people crossing deserts.

Captain America: Brave New World, the fourth title to co-opt the “Captain America” name and the first to star Anthony Mackie in the role, is another example of how badly unmoored the MCU has become in an era of unfamiliar heroes and stalled storylines.

Although there are occasions when individual set pieces are effective (such as a short bit involving a locked bathroom door), the film as a whole seems more like a series of missed opportunities than a “return to form” for director M. Night Shyamalan, who continues to trade on a name he made two decades ago.

The Producers is a movie based on a play based on a movie about a play. And that's probably the funniest thing about it.

Because of the potential of the idea and Cronenberg's reputation as a film maker, it's a real disappointment to watch eXistenZ fall apart the way it does.

The Last Witch Hunter feels like the first episode of a would-be series although, unlike some similar endeavors, it tells a stand-alone story.

Were it not for the high profile names of "Hanks" and "Kasdan", this would be a perfect candidate for a direct-to-video release.

For those who do not consider themselves to be among the Sex and the City faithful, this is a painful experience, perhaps the longest 148 minutes likely to be spent in a movie theater this year. Watching grass grow is more dramatically satisfying.

Lisa Frankenstein obviously wants to be different and it at least succeeds in that aim. However, as a story of female empowerment with grand guignol overtones, it has the great misfortune of coming out in too-close proximity to the vastly superior Poor Things.

My reaction is that I could learn a lot more about Winehouse by listening to her music than by watching this by-the-numbers sketch of her adult life.

Jumanji takes approximately one-hundred minutes for four people to play a board game. The result isn't much more fun or involving than watching a few friends play Monopoly.

The movie makes a variety of changes to Jeffrey’s story to make it more cinematic, but without the kind of narrative reworking needed to streamline the material, the result feels unfocused and shapeless.

Polanski abandons all attempts at subtlety. The resulting production ends up far too heavy-handed to be considered powerful drama.

The movie wallows in remorse. Not only is the main character paralyzed by it but the filmmakers seem to believe that every Caucasian member of the audience should face up to White Guilt for the way in which the Industrial World has encouraged unrest in Africa so resources could be strip-mined. How's that for an uplifting action movie premise?

One of the least effective comic book-to-movie stories to have come along in the past few years. Without a viable screenplay, there's nowhere for the character to go, and no way to avoid making her look silly.

The result, while not horrifically bad, is as mediocre a motion picture as you're likely to find in a multiplex this season. It's tough to hate the movie because it doesn't generate enough emotion for that kind of passion.

There’s enough suspense to keep an itchy trigger finger from changing the channel but viewers hoping for more won’t find it here.

This movie is sloppy and disjointed - an unsatisfying melodrama built upon a shaky foundation of contrivances, coincidences, and plot holes.

When the Game Stands Tall is one of those cliché-riddled feel good movies that, by trying too hard to be inspirational, ends up as cloying and overly sentimental.

To work, The Professor demands that the viewer believe in Richard and, from about the 15-minute point, I didn’t.

The final result is an unnecessarily-long thriller that contains far more talking than action. Pakula's direction is lackluster, showing little of the style that permeated his two most impressive pictures, "All the President's Men" and "Presumed Innocent".

In his latest diatribe, Moore throws everything at the viewer including the kitchen sink and hopes something – anything – will stick. Sadly, not much does.

This is made-for-TV material dressed up by Eddie Murphy's participation into a theatrical release.

Although Drag Me to Hell mostly fails as horror, it achieves sporadic success as a comedy.