Having such a small number of characters, like the limitations caused by budgetary constraints, might sound like a recipe for creative claustrophobia, but Gentry turns these givens to his advantage, almost as if using Synchronicity to articulate a less-is-more filmmaking philosophy.

A B-movie that turns its violent rage on corrupt Los Angeles cops should be better than Body Cam. Unlike so many cheap horror films that show their flaws most explicitly during the scare scenes that are overly reliant on loud music, quick cuts, and attempts to make you jump, it’s really everything but the big moments in Body Cam that falls apart.

The Deliverance would have worked just fine if it had functioned solely as a domestic drama infused with the thorny, real-world issues of addiction, poverty and racism.

The Exorcist: Believer is a pretty good movie that's so stuffed with characters and not-quite-developed ideas that you may come away from it thinking about what it could have been instead.

The movie has an aura of indie navel-gazing that kept me at arm’s length.

Evocatively moody atmosphere, a timely subject, and a fine performance by Josh Hartnett cannot help Inherit the Viper overcome its clunky dialogue and formulaic storyline.

It’s a promising start, but one that ultimately doesn’t quite deliver. The movie’s plot feels scant, as if it’s only skimming the surface of what it’s like to be a child who has no one to trust or turn to in this world.

The result is a promising film that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like a meal well-presented on the plate that just doesn’t fill you up.

It’s not bad. It’s just not very good.

You can soak in the movie’s basic premise and overacting just as long as you know this pool’s shallow.

The end result is a sturdy and frequently dazzling version of the material that should leave audiences swooning with delight.

Novel enough to be worth the price of admission, but you'll think twice before getting back in line for a second visit.

Koontz’s command over the material is so absent that it is at times hard to distinguish his film from a spoofy Western-themed fair where a group of friends play dress-up for amusement.

The Gunman isn't the worst action film that you will see this year — you will be lucky if you even remember anything about it a couple of weeks after seeing it — it will probably go down as one of the more dispiriting ones.

The movie ambles along amiably enough for a while; it’s better if you are a fan of one or more members of the cast.

It's ambitious, but with such hand-holding dramatic direction and a dreary visual palette that never creates terror out of random corn stalks, it couldn’t be more dull.

Three Christs opts in for frustratingly broad characters that feel like half-considered caricatures and Jeff Russo’s sentimental, strings-heavy score that flattens whatever modest edge the movie might have had.

Trouble is, Cassavetes — working from a script by Melissa K. Stack — veers wildly between cautionary tale, revenge comedy, scatological raunchfest and female empowerment drama.

The film runs out of ideas so quickly that Atkinson literally resorts to dropping his pants to get a laugh from his saggy bare bottom.

McCarthy is aggressive and foul-mouthed while Sarandon is sensible and laid-back. And they’re clearly destined for trouble, which leads to solid if scattered laughs.

It is a movie of moments. But some of those moments are so good, its optimism is so refreshing, its dialogue so bright, and its characters and performances so endearing, it well rewards a watch.

The Bieber fans aren't going anywhere. And Justin Bieber's Believe is best when it shows us why.

Emperor is lousy in the same way that many other mediocre slave narratives are: it re-presents a dark period in American history without being inspired or insightful enough to be worth your curiosity or emotional investment.

Those who go to see “Dead Men Don’t Tell Tales” might just recognize that hollow feeling as they leave the theater.

It’s an emotionally manipulative, overlong dirge composed of cloying songs, lackluster vocal performances, and even worse writing.

Meh and double meh on this movie. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Divorce Corp is directed and edited at roughly the same level of imagination as a network newsmagazine story: talking head, talking head, talking head, cut to a chart, exterior shot of a courthouse, cut to another chart, talking head.

A well-meaning and sometimes interesting effort written and directed by brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist.

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.

At a scant 84 minutes, you’d think it would move fast enough to make you forget its massive lapses in logic in favor of chills and thrills. Alas, that’s not the case here.

The dream — or the drug-induced hallucination, or whatever this is — can only last for so long.

Like a magpie, it takes bits and pieces from better films and cobbles it together with some paper-thin characters into something that is a movie in definition only.

Jettisons everything that’s honest and worthwhile about the books in favor of hackneyed misadventures and gross-out scatological humor.

It has all the gloss of a Pottery Barn catalogue and all the depth of a "hang in there" greeting card, but if you are in the mood for a sad story about very attractive people learning to get the most out of the time they have, it will do.

Like a bad '80s flick, Stage Fright, could have been so much fun.

You don’t get entirely skilled comedy from the Impractical Jokers, but you do get to see four guys who have turned forcefully messing with each other into a welcoming, idea.

The couple doesn’t quite light up the screen with their chemistry, and the writing feels much too basic, given these are meant to be characters in a literature degree program. Thankfully, there are moments of levity, a number of cross-cultural jokes, and supporting characters to lighten the mood.

This movie's makers haven't met a formula cliché that they don't like.

I kept thinking one thing during most of Don Verdean: What would Christopher Guest do with his company of ace ad-libbers with such material? And the answer suddenly came to me — probably toss it in the trash and start all over again.

Love, Guaranteed is the kind of movie you leave on the TV because you’re lying on the couch with a cold, and the remote control has fallen off the blanket onto the rug, and you don’t feel like going to the trouble to reach down, grab it and change the channel.

Planes modestly succeeds. Very modestly.

The Runner squanders at least one great performance (Fonda’s) and delivers a dispiritingly inert cinematic experience.

This message is preaching to the choir, much more likely to reassure those who are already believers than to engage those who are seeking answers.

A depressing, cynical slice of nihilism, a movie that thinks it’s saying something about gratuitous violence and exploitation of real tragedy but is even more hypocritically hollow than the films it purports to criticize.

You could listen to Dr. Feelgood two full times during the run time of The Dirt and learn just about as much about the band as you do in this R-rated Wikipedia article of a movie. And you’d have way more fun.

The movie’s incredibly irritating characters made me remember why I only ever needed to watch “The Blair Witch Project” once, and its hobbling, dopey, drawn-out plotlines and xenophobic thematic threads made me think very, very kind thoughts about Eli Roth’s “Hostel” movies, which at least have ruthless efficiency going for them.

If the action and espionage elements were executed at the same level as the dramatic and comedic exchanges and the observations about the types of people drawn to this life, Ava might've been a cult classic.

The result is a muddled mixture, offering some moments of exuberance and humor without ever being singular or exceptional.

The angst it spreads throughout feels all too mild and forgettable to cast an unnerving curse. You know, the kind you’d crave from a horror film with lasting scares.

It is too touch-and-go, too speculative about her life and mysterious death, to be of any genuine purpose.

Hilarity ensues, but so do the lessons. . . In this raunchy little escapade, actions have consequences.

There isn’t a single moment of this film that borders on belief as it winds toward a cheap, bloody final freakout that is tepidly filmed in a way that makes you wonder if Tipping believes the horror he’s selling.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

The script's interest in the past becomes a dead weight, which leads to boring emotional monologues from the adults and later a typical referencing of every supernatural movie's guidebook about how to deal with the demon in one's house.

This is not a particularly fascinating movie, unfortunately, despite being well-done in most of the superficial ways.

Without Piven and Dillon to keep it entertaining, it would be absolutely dreadful.

Irritating film.

Schwarzenegger has turned into your elderly uncle, dancing like a goofball at your wedding after a couple glasses of champagne. He knows he’s being silly, and he knows that you know, and that alone is supposed to be good for a laugh. But it’s not. It’s just sad. He has essentially become McBain.

Gemini Man never pretends to be anything but a time-wasting contraption hoping to entertain its viewer. I can’t reasonably be mad at its honesty, and despite the horrendous dialogue its actors are often forced to speak, I found myself enjoying a fair amount of it.

The Green Inferno is not exactly a feel-good film, but it gets a very particular job done.

The Pickup is as generic and forgettable as its title suggests: a bland action-comedy that will surely end up being one of the year’s worst movies, if only for the egregious way it squanders its talented cast.

Mechanic: Resurrection suffers from a storyline and script that strains credulity and insults intelligence even by the low bar set by the majority of contemporary action movies.

Many fans wished to see these two actors trade witty barbs once again, but the pair’s new movie, Men in Black: International, strips away just about everything fun from the duo except their on-screen presence.

All Eyez on Me is one of the most useless music biopics ever made — it’ll be too confusing for newcomers and too underwhelming for those familiar with the work and the life of rap prophet Tupac Shakur.

Just another unimaginative rip-off.

Instead of ratcheting up tension, Squire seems content to sustain a minor-stakes atmosphere that, well, abandons his leading lady in a film that doesn’t do anything interesting with her predicament.

Thankfully, some climactic fight scenes, featuring strong action choreography and a clear overall presentation, give “One Spoon of Chocolate” the great emotional release it needs after so much dramatic buildup.

In the current economy, Monopoly makes a more appropriate board game upon which to base a horror movie, but for what it is, Ouija is better than expected.

Films don't get much dreggier than No Escape, a dreadful and creepily exploitative would-be thriller, low-grade trash that it is too silly and stupid to be as offensive as it frequently comes close to being throughout.

The November Man wants to be taken seriously, except when it doesn't. This creates viewer whiplash. The movie is confused and often untrustworthy.

As it sits in this passenger’s estimation, “Flight Risk” is a supremely bumpy ride that doesn’t quite justify its logline.

One of Bress’ greatest strokes comes with casting — he’s collected five faces you might recognize from younger, more innocent roles, and who are compelling to see here as men who have matured rapidly due to the wartime experiences eating away at them.

Once you're immersed, it's a powerful experience that lingers in the mind long after the film's many disappointments have started to fade.

Particularly in its portrayal of Thurman, who here isn’t so much misunderstood and unloved as he is dumber than a bag of rocks, this sequel actively devalues the compassion-on-the-knife-edge-of-misanthropy that distinguished the original in favor of a mainstream gross-out cartoon. The market demands nothing less, apparently.

Park coats the big heart he has for these people with warm LA lens flares, and finds energy from sharp cuts and wall-to-wall music. It’s the performances that prove to be spotty, with flat line-readings all around and displays of emotions that struggle to reach from the script to the audience.

All these folks are pretty bland, really; then again, even gorgeous, charismatic actors like these can get steamrolled when Hart is around.

You might find yourself forcing a laugh during one weak sequence to pretend this is all supposed to be fun.

It features one good performance from Dennis, who struggles to show us a real woman doing her best to live up to her expectations for herself and accept love into her life again. But Dennis can't save the whole thing. It's too big of a mess.

Pretty much everyone in this movie is annoying all the time, and Spindel yanks us around in tone from one moment to the next: wacky, then romantic, back to wacky, then dramatic, before ending on a disastrously wacky note. Every new situation, whether it’s shopping at Toys “R” Us, a school field trip or a pre-natal therapy workshop, provides the set-up for wild humor that doesn’t land.

The film meanders somewhere between comedy-ish and drama-ish, never managing either.

Everything about Free Birds feels perfunctory, from its generic title and holiday setting to its starry voice cast and undistinguished use of 3-D.

The desperate straining for laughs isn't nearly so off-putting as the abrupt tonal shift Girl Most Likely makes as it trudges toward its conclusion.

This is Allen’s 48th movie (a 49th, “Rifkin’s Festival,” premiered last month) and while he has certainly made worse films than this one during that time, rarely has he come up with something as utterly inconsequential as this collection of rehashed themes, characters, and punchlines.

Most true crime fans know that the real stories that have enraptured them in film and television are much crueler and grosser than their fictionalized counterpart. If Akin’s goal is merely to pull away that curtain, it ultimately feels like a hollow unveiling.

It's an anti-romantic biography about a great artist, one whose central themes are basic, but whose energy and execution is irresistible.

Two Jacks is finally more of a curiosity than a viable dramatic event, but its bringing together of Danny and Jack Huston in a pair of tales related to their filmic legacy makes it a pungent if small addition to the legend of the Huston family.

While “Oh. What. Fun” has an excellent director, Michael Showalter, who also co-scripted, some nice music, and top performers, including Danielle Brooks as a delivery driver Claire meets on the road, and the exquisitely lovely Havana Rose Liu, very appealing as Jeanne’s daughter, it keeps undermining our sympathy with off-kilter stakes and inert efforts at humor.

As conventional and stiff as Max Rose itself is, Lewis’ performance in it is full of virtues: he’s committed, disciplined, and entirely credible.

Is this all well-acted? It certainly is, especially by Langella. But all things being equal, I’d prefer to see him in a revival of “The Man Who Came To Dinner.”

And So It Goes does what it needs to do for its target audience in thoroughly sufficient, mediocre ways.

There was little reason to expect such a horrendous drop in quality as there is to “Viral,” a film that contains some of the sloppiest, most ineffective filmmaking I’ve seen all year.

The three lead actresses also produced the film, presumably because there are not enough good roles for women over 35. They need to look a little harder.

Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller bring that non-stop energy of their other projects like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. the Machines even if the writing sometimes feels bizarrely dated.

The action/competition scenes have some dynamism, but the overall look of the film is unimaginative.

A plainly affable romantic comedy that’s not too powerful with its romance, and certainly not its comedy.

It’s such a non-movie that it actually becomes difficult to review because there’s so little to hold onto that it dissipates from memory while you’re watching it. There are no laughs. The plot is inane. The action choreography is insulting. It is such a lifeless piece of product creation (not filmmaking) that even writing about it feels like a waste of time, much less watching it.

There are plenty of perfunctory jump scares as well as some especially cheesy visual effects. But there is exactly one inspired sight gag and one funny line of dialogue, so you have those to look forward to, should you land on The Curse of Bridge Hollow while absent-mindedly scrolling for timely holiday fare.

This layered melodrama strains for emotional impact with only occasional success while eventually blurring into an overlong and contrived parlor trick.