With leaden performances and puzzling camerawork, it’s hard to feel in tune with the movie’s frights outside of the occasional jump scare.

Actors of the caliber of Brolin and Winslet can do nothing but the best with what they're given, struggling to find nuance and humanity in romance-novel archetypes.

Maybe this is a product of the movie’s nature as an adaptation, but there’s never really a moment in There’s Someone Inside Your House that suggests its protagonists are real enough to be worth rooting for.

You may think it unfair that I make comparisons between "Starbuck" and Delivery Man. Truth be told, my rating is higher because I'd seen "Starbuck." Had I not, Delivery Man would have been intolerable.

What went wrong? How did so many talented people devote their time and energy to a film that came out this generic, dull, and flat?

Baggage Claim is so archaic in its depiction of feminine self-worth — and, frankly, so insulting — it's amazing that it's coming out in 2013, not 1963.

Carnage Park is an extremely empty experience.

In choosing Neil as the center of Ella’s story and uplifting heavy scenes while skating through more grounded moments, “A Bit of Light” relies on artificial emotional investment and neglects the nuance and power of mundanity.

While the 2009 book played this genre mash-up for dry, sly laughs, writer-director Burr Steers’ film amps up the thrills and gore. And that’s a problem—not necessarily as a narrative choice, but from a technical perspective.

Ultimately, “La Dolce Villa” is about as authentic an Italian experience as a night at the Olive Garden.

There are serious movies about the Christian faith, about the persecution of the faithful, and about the intolerance that goes both ways. God's Not Dead 2 is not one of them.

All of these potentially effective elements—as well as a stellar cast that includes Charlize Theron, Kerry Washington, and Michelle Yeoh—get swallowed up by the overwhelming reliance on CGI-infused action sequences. They’re both empty and endless, and too often leave you wondering what’s going on and why we should bother.

It has a lot of the flaws that are common to super-low-budget movies produced outside of the system, such as it is, including hit-and-miss performances and a look that falls somewhere between a “Saturday Night Live” short and a student film.

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.

Kim’s Video reaches so hard for quirky profundity that it falls on its face. It’s a real shame because there’s an interesting story buried in this frustrating film.

The ultimate invasion of its subject's privacy.

But what might seem innocent enough on the written page is often downright silly if insulting on the big screen.

The Long Night wants to create a sense of encroaching fear and unease in viewers but cannot inspire much of anything other than boredom and apathy.

There are a few nice moments of performance and filmmaking (including the elaborately choreographed final shot), but not enough to redeem a film that seems to flinch from the harsh truths it was presumably created to address.

As revisionist as it might aspire to be, Never Grow Old is rife with clichés, Cusack’s philosophical villain one of the most conspicuous.

Medieval is a bleak and visually oversaturated allegory about the 15th century revolutionary Czech soldier turned military leader Jan Žižka (Ben Foster). There's blood and chainmail, yes, but it's also a self-serious allegory about duty and faith during miserable times.

Merely being violent and unpredictable does not make a film like Jackpot funny. Therein lies the biggest problem here: the laughs don’t come nearly to the degree required to make the complete lack of morality or interesting characters palatable.

Making good absurdist cinema is a lot tougher than good absurdist cinema makes it look. This movie, a stab at absurdism that results in a swampy wallow in affectation, testifies to this fact with sad eloquence.

A wild whirlwind of a mess, without any coherence, without even a guiding principle.

Even for a picaresque plot comprised of incidents and moments, it's a flat and disjointed effort that lurches forward and stops and lurches forward again throughout its brief running time—a labor of love that doesn't deliver.

Umair Aleem’s script is so paint-by-numbers familiar that it leaves you wishing you’d watched one of the better movies it’s ripping off.

The bar is just so low, people. It’s just hovering there above the ground.

This idea of shopping local takes new meaning and adheres to the heartstrings as the credits begin, but much of the detail fails to make an impact, and “She Rises Up” becomes largely forgettable.

Anyone who’s dealt with a teenager can relate to the baffling surliness that emerges out of nowhere — but like needless sequels, this, too, shall pass.

Steeped in Southern Gothic melodrama, Jessabelle is interesting in some of the small details, and in its strong sense of the Louisiana bayou atmosphere, and then it completely falls apart when it starts being a horror film.

I could not see it as anything more than a giant bore that presents viewers with the most familiar plot devices imaginable but fails to present them in a way that makes them worth sitting through once again.

To get at the heart of what’s wrong with The Face of an Angel all you need to do is consider the professional stones it takes to adapt the Amanda Knox case into yet another movie about the existential/amorous crises of a white male filmmaker. (And then have the nerve to dedicate the results to the memory of the murder-victim in the real-life case!)

This isn’t just a mediocre movie — although it is most definitely that — it is a wasted opportunity to fulfill the promise of that opening line from 35 years ago.

The result is a disappointing, shambling piece of melancholy with a few interesting scenes here and there that never cohere in such a way that allows the legendary actor to disappear into the character.

The whole thing ultimately collapses in a heap of unintentionally hilarious melodrama.

If you can fend off the recurring bores of Happy Death Day 2U, Landon and Lobdell have some chuckles reserved up their sleeves.

Yes, Burying The Ex, I thought as I watched, I AM on your side conceptually already. Now could you start being genuinely funny? Or scary? Or something?

There is simultaneously too much and not enough going on in writer/director/co-star Josh Lawson’s feature debut. He crams in too many people and plot lines but offers too little in the way of character development and credible emotion.

It would have been one thing if Alone with You at least worked as a genre outing on some level. It doesn’t—the film’s chills and scares are nearly non-existent; plot, stretched to the seams, unable to sustain a feature's length; and camera work, amateurish.

Not dunking on social media teens is a refreshing angle, enough to make you want to care about their inevitable deaths. But the movie's by-the-numbers horror will make you feel otherwise.

Unfortunately, Words and Pictures fails at portraying both titular nouns.

There is absolutely zero tension in “You Can’t Run Forever.” It all feels like a lark, a project that would completely dissolve if not for the Oscar winner at its center.

There’s clearly a biopic in Morrissey’s true story. You can hear it in the timbre of his voice and the wit of his lyrics. However, it is not in England is Mine, a flat, disappointing drama that casts Morrissey as a mopey teenager. The man who wrote “How Soon is Now?” deserves better.

At least, director Gille Klabin tries to amp up The Wave with aggressive visual style, but it’s still a movie that’s rotten at its core because it suffers from the same problem of all those “American Beauty” clones in that it never satisfactorily answers the question “Who cares?”

A frantic jumble of retro kitsch and random pop-culture references.

While I like the laid-back attitude the filmmakers apply to the theoretically devastating situation, it quickly becomes apparent that attitude is the only thing the film really has to offer to viewers. Although there are a few amusing moments here and there, the comedic situations are too droll for their own good and too often seem to waste potentially interesting ideas.

A depressingly rote piece of corporate product that has so little on its mind other than presumably making hundreds of millions of dollars that you half expect the ticket sellers to hand out copies of Comcast’s latest earnings report along with the 3-D glasses.

Throughout Clara’s Ghost you can’t help but think that you’re watching a quaint home video that would appeal to the members of the subject family only — the unnecessary square aspect ratio certainly doesn’t help with the amateurish feel of the whole thing.

The actors never once seem engaged with the material beyond the surface. Thus, Crooked House feels as lifeless as the corpse at its center.

A numbing and soulless spectacle of 3-D, computer-generated imagery run amok, Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings presents an enduring tale by pummeling us over the head with it.

For better and worse, Gone in the Night feels like the directorial debut of a podcaster, somebody who knows the value of storytelling novelty and has a gift for narrative economy, but also suggests more by the grace of good casting than their own singular talents.

Slapstick mishaps and—ultimately—feel-good triumph of sorts ensue, with plenty of perky training montages in between.

Locked starts promisingly, and then almost refuses to really go anywhere, trapped by its own concept and unwillingness to do anything thematically richer than “wealthy people be crazy.”

At least it's admirable that Donohue manages to do almost all his shooting with either web cams, phone cams or surveillance cameras. But that does not translate into an entirely enjoyable viewing experience. Plus, there are almost no real shocks or scares to rattle you out of the stupor that inevitably develops from observing someone else fiddle with their laptop for much of the running time.

Nothing is compelling about these characters, and Bennett and Riley have little chemistry with each other playing them, even though they’re supposed to be estranged exes experiencing an unexpected spark.

While "Red One" may scratch at some interesting ideas about lamenting the world's cruelties, it lacks the narrative depth and commitment to fully explore its angst.

There are movies about ugly, vile people, and there are ugly, vile movies. Triple 9 is the latter.

A mediocre film that's unaware of the poor choices it's making is much harder to watch than a bad film that relishes its stupidity and poor taste. At least the second kind of film can be fun.

Five Nights in Maine is as evasive as a corrupt politician. Its coyness about what’s truly in its heart of darkness is either cowardly or lazy, or some measure of both.

What's missing is any genuine personality from the robot (or the human characters, for that matter).

Turgid even in its brightness, overwritten in a way that does nothing to camoflauge its first-draft quality, jaw-droppingly overacted by all but one of its central cast members; it’s a Woody Allen disaster that elicits both a cocked head and a dropped jaw.

It’s a B-movie with a blockbuster attitude, and not in a fun way.

The dull Suburbicon lacks in witty dialogue, interesting characters, or even visual flourishes. It is as flat as the well-manicured lawns in the idyllic neighborhood that gives it a name.

The film is clearly sweet and well-intentioned, but Mexican director and co-writer Analeine Cal y Mayor has trouble transcending the confines of her meager budget, which leaves “Book of Love” looking and sounding distractingly chintzy.

There are two scenes in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Best Night Ever that work: they are screwball and goofy which, unfortunately, only serve to highlight the fun film it could have been.

The film is a disappointingly empty experience.

Merv is heartwarming, in the abstract, but the heat generated is strictly lukewarm.

If this all sounds rather dull, that is because it is.

Lack of specificity in the writing aside, the opening of Brightest Star — which had its title changed, to no avail, from "Light Years" — tells the viewer loud and clear that this trek is not going to lead anyplace new.

Co-written with Harald Kloser and Spencer Cohen, “Moonfall” is a lumbering, long locomotive of one cliche attached to another, making time pass slowly even though there is so much juggling of these different one-dimensional relationships.

Uppercut feels like it’s two different movies, or maybe two short films, jerry-rigged together into a feature.

When “Revelations” isn’t investigating signs, it’s a dry, psychologically driven ghost story.

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.

A stunningly drab take on the life and legacy of a photographer who merged pornography with grace, Mapplethorpe doesn’t have an artistic signature of its own, so much as a name it doesn’t live up to.

I’m not sure the movie knows what it wants to say. Perry’s maltreatment of his morally ambiguous character feels excessive, and if Melinda is mentally ill, then that treatment is cruel.

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.

Nothing in An Ordinary Man rings true; not the location, nor the performances nor the story.

I am probably indulging in a rather obnoxious form of criticism-as-parlor-game-psychotherapy by positing that each of the three main white male characters in director Denis Henry Hennelly's Goodbye World is meant to represent a facet of the director himself. Unfortunately, such activity is about all the movie is any good for.

The film misses the chance to offer an original artistic or sociopolitical take on the 1969 riots that sparked the U.S. gay rights movement.

The problem with Samson is that while it cannot be faulted for its sincerity, it can be faulted for its sluggish pacing, inconsistent performances and lack of cinematic style that gives the proceedings a tacky feel throughout.

Dickman's film reeks of pot smoke and non-seriousness.

On the plus side, director Ewing displays a better-than-competent command of cinematic space, so some of the suspense beats produced aren’t entirely ineffective. Here’s hoping she develops better taste in scripts.

Ultimately, this film attempts to set up the future through Shuri. Wright is a talented actress with the ability to emotionally shoulder a movie when given good material. But she is constantly working against the script here.

Burman's film languishes on the chaos of the events, and it can never be accused of not having some ideas about fatherhood and legacy. But the humor of this rambling film runs dry to the point of unpalatable.

Arizona might have worked better as a smart-ass social commentary if its tsk-tsking of consumerist myopia wasn't so consistently on the nose and its plot didn't swiftly devolve into slasher movie cliches.

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

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.

After the forced bursts of energy, nightmarish dream sequences, and a strained bit of self-absolution recede, you soon realize that writer/director Niclas Larsson’s “Mother, Couch,” a morose, nonsensical family drama is about as interesting as the lint between the cushions.

Such a muddle right off the bat.

The Last Victim plays like a bet between the filmmakers and some sadistic bully who triple-dog-dared them to fit all its disparate plotlines into a cohesive whole.

The entire thing feels like it's happening underwater, sound distorted, movements impeded. A lot happens, but without any urgency inspiring it.

It took me a while to realize she actually IS Shania Twain, because I initially thought “What does Shania Twain need this kind of low-rent enterprise for?” Maybe she really wanted to meet Travolta.

Even those who admired the “Raid” films for their style and heedlessness might find this to be little more than an accumulation of action movie cliches that they have seen enacted to much greater effect in other and certainly better films.

Sleazy Australian kidnapping drama Hounds of Love will make you wish you were watching a more traditionally nihilistic horror film.

The movie’s relentless one-note tone makes its final twist, such as it is, entirely predictable and pat.

It’s about both fellatio jokes and falling in love all over again, but it’s so rushed and the characters are so underdeveloped that the film feels frustratingly slight.

It's not about the hard work that's intrinsic with all of wrestling, so much as the WWE's open willingness to sacrifice its core values for lazy family-friendly amusement.

While Double Lover is as squeamish as most Cinemax-style wank material about a certain male organ, it’s more than charitable about its female counterpart. One can’t be faulted for expecting greatness from a film that opens with a close-up of a stretched out vagina morphing into an eye.