In the end, you can’t help but wonder why the emotions of these characters don’t pack as much of a punch.

Stop! That! Train! is shooting for camp, a style that thrives on an overflowing cup, but as a viewer, our perspective leaves us seeing things as half empty.

There’s respect to be had for films that take big swings, potentially even risking offense to deliver their thesis with gusto, but “Find Your Friends” is a sloppy, party porn massacre of themes.

Written and directed by Madeleine Rotzler, the film is a general wash of generalized muted feeling, where nothing coheres because nothing sharpens into focus.

In every category, this fails to come up with anything witty or imaginative.

These sorts of movies do more damage to the culture than any bloody horror flick you can name, because they make the unforgivable adorable.

Corporate Retreat might be the worst movie of the year, not because it’s unpleasant, cliched, and gory, too, but because its filmmakers seem to have as little regard for their audience as they do for their craft.

During the course of the film, which is directed by Andrew Bernstein in a visually unmemorable, by-the-book manner characteristic of many big-budget action shows, Greer muses on the line separating civilization from savagery and where he stands in relation to it.

There’s no reason for anything in this movie except the wish to make even more money.

The circumstances of “Couples Weekend” are simply too convenient. Its simplicity hinders absorption, shielding viewers from taking in its vulnerability or lessons to heart. And with its similar struggle to elicit its intended laughs, Kirkpatrick’s film is a flat rendering of its jagged proposal.

The problem with “Deep Water” is not that it is a bad movie (which it is), but it’s a gratingly familiar one that doesn’t have a single point of interest to call its own. Instead, it prefers to spend two hours rehashing elements that even newbies to shark-based cinema will find devoid of any real inspiration.

Orwell did not intend “Animal Farm” as light entertainment.

Antoine Fuqua might’ve had some cameras and microphones on hand to produce moving images and sound for this estate-approved King of Pop biopic. But make no mistake about it: “Michael” isn’t a movie. It’s a filmed playlist in search of a story.

Wahlberg should not be cast in any role predicated on the idea that he’s good with words and ideas. Hauser is one of the best actors in the English language and will escape this disaster and do more great work, so there’s that.

Leaning toward unrelenting shock, “Newborn” as a whole becomes something worse in the process: dishonest.

Its worst sin isn’t its stupid characters doing stupid things; it’s that the whole thing feels remarkably lazy, failing to find any tension or even B-movie thrills. You can insult my intelligence within the world of a film, but not in the actual filmmaking, if that makes sense. This movie sure doesn’t.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie moves through you so briskly that you’ll get whiplash by the time the film reaches its deeply abrupt ending. But maybe that’s the point—after all, this is not a movie to be scrutinized, but to allow beleaguered elder millennial dads to sit their tots down for a precious two hours (if you count the trailers) and get some much-needed rest. It’s cute, and breezy, and rock-stupid, and will probably make a billion dollars again.

[Borgli's] mealy-mouthed timidity in addressing genuinely controversial and provocative subjects, especially those that require a radical kind of empathy, not only renders his supposedly edgy provocations dull. It also makes one wonder if he’s at all interested in women as people.

At times, “Alpha” plays like a Cronenbergian after-school special, in which the visual metaphors are overplayed, and the drama is broadly sketched to teach a moral lesson.

There are times when what should be escapism approaches “Hostel” levels of viciousness, just one of the many issues with a film that seems incapable of settling on a tone.

Joyless and dim, the grubby supernatural thriller “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge” often seems more like a filmed rehearsal for a movie than a fully completed feature.

Regrettably botched, despite its bold concept at its core, “Slanted” is too simple to make a statement.

Reminders of Him is so preoccupied with tragedy that the romance becomes secondary. Now, after our third Hoover adaptation, it feels like we’re getting love with diminishing returns. There’s less to enjoy, even if the movie is almost two hours long.

Like many genre films this decade, “Heel” feels glaringly incomplete.

Dragged down by over-explanatory dialogue and tired narrative tropes, Protector brings nothing new to the table–except maybe for a confounding 11th hour twist that I won’t spoil that defies reasoning and frankly, good taste. If anyone needs rescuing, it’s Jovovich from this movie.

Didn’t Die is a zombie movie with no zest. No thrill, no stakes, and no meaning.

Genuinely inept in every way, “Scream 7” is far and away the worst of the franchise, a shallow rendering of things that worked better in other films.

Sykes steps into the role enthusiastically, but Miller’s script (with cowriter Anita M. Cal) is beat-you-over-the-head melodramatic, making Sykes’ committed effort to deliver heartfelt pathos all the more difficult to buy.