The film occasionally pokes fun at itself, although not nearly as often as it should. I don't recommend it for anything more significant than a bottom-of-the-barrel rental or a desperation cable choice, but it delivers what it advertises, and I suppose that could be considered a virtue.

I’m not predisposed to like movies focused on hollow characters floating in their own bubble of self-absorption, whether they’re men (Entourage) or women (Sex and the City), and as soon as I realized that’s what Home Again was offering, I knew I was in for a long 97 minutes. Unfortunately, I was right.

As for Venom, the potential inherent in the creature has been wasted and squandered over the course of three movies and this final installment is the worst offender of all.

The movie doesn’t exactly do Philip Marlowe a disservice but neither does it successfully re-invent the character for a new era and its attendant audience.

The screenplay fails to provide any reason to care about the characters or their circumstances, so we sit in a theater seat, trying not to be hypnotized by all the flashes of light in the muddled brown-and-white environment or lulled to sleep by the inane babbling that passes for dialogue.

This is quite possibly the most moronic motion picture I have seen thus far in 2013 and that's saying a lot.

Offers solid entertainment, it's too uneven to be considered memorable.

Child 44 is a victim of poor adaptation. It is beset by problems related to flow and coherence; the narrative is confusing, the characters are provided with inadequate time for development, and dead-end subplots abound.

At its best, Ride Along is tolerable. At its worst, it borders on insulting.

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.

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.

At best, Without Remorse is a serviceable action thriller but there are times, as in the rushed and unsatisfying final 20 minutes, when such a description is overly generous.

Arguably Sandler's most enjoyable motion picture to date, but it's still far from a masterpiece.

The problem lies in the screenplay which latches on to the few clever and/or funny elements in the film and runs them into the ground via repetition.

There’s nothing worthwhile here; the landscape of wretched banality offers only wasted time and a sense of despair.

The movie as a whole is pleasant, generally satisfying, and has a heart as big as its funny bone. For an early January movie, this is sometimes as good as it gets.

Although the film's real-world credibility is shaky, it works on its own terms.

Tone isn't the movie's sole problem. There's something off-putting about Christopher Mitz-Plasse as the chief bad guy.

The Substitute has its moments, all of which fall in the realm of high camp. One scene not to be missed: Shale, attempting to get his class' attention, roars, "I'm the warrior chief! I'm the merciless god who rules over everything that stirs in my universe!" It's a hilarious moment, and I'm reasonably certain the director intended for it to be so. Nevertheless, aside from a lot of only moderately-satisfying violence, The Substitute comes across as rather lame. It's not boring, but that dubious qualification isn't enough to earn the movie a passing grade.

Stay is interesting, but it's hard to recommend to anyone but the small cadre of David Lynch devotees who will inhale anything with a whiff of similarity to their favorite auteur's scent.

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

Feels a bit like a missed opportunity. It's too bad the motion picture as a whole isn't as quirky and clever as its double-edged title.

The "Apatow formula" is pretty simple: raunchy comedy, likeable characters, and a dash of sweetness (but nothing too sweet). Drillbit Taylor fulfills the third characteristic but falls short in the other two.

At its best, Dumb and Dumber is like an Ernest movie with a scatological bent.

Pompeii is a big, glorious, cheesy mess.

Although Tracy Letts’ adaptation is generally faithful to the source material, this is an example of something that can work well on the written page but loses a lot when condensed and brought to the screen.

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.

Takes the action/adventure story to new heights of preposterousness. In a way, that's not a bad thing, since it allows a certain level of guilty enjoyment.