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.

I fully endorse the message blatantly expressed by Beemer’s picture, but as a work of cinema, it drove me nuts in how its style was antithetical to the principles its numerous subjects were championing.

It’s a strangely aimless film with some good ideas but it never follows through.

The characters are not people, but rough drafts of simplistic character-traits, and the actors (game as they all are) cannot create something out of nothing.

[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.

It’s not a film so much as a lecture punctuated by a patronizing moral, and more importantly, it’s not much fun.

Irritating film.

"Unnecessary Roughness” is a more apt title for the scuzzy serial killer procedural Night Hunter.

All I Can Say feels much longer than it actually is. Hoon struggled with addiction. He was arrested many times. It's a cautionary tale but one we've heard so many times before. Fans of Hoon will thrill to all of this footage. For others, it'll be a pretty tough haul.

The end result is the kind of vaguely distasteful Yuletide concoction that viewers normally find playing on cable channels that they don't even realize that they have.

Winter's Tale probably won't please anyone: neither fans of the book nor those who have never read it. It lacks visual splendor (except for one or two scenes). It lacks emotional depth. It lacks scope and magic.

The Tribe would be a hopelessly banal arthouse wallow were it not for its setting: a school for the deaf.

The two-hour-plus “Ride,” No. 10 in the series, at least offers a few intriguing new variations on the usual Sparks formula of pretty bland people falling in love against a backdrop of verdantly green landscapes most often located in coastal North Carolina.

What is harder to achieve than building a hospital? Producing a realistic movie about coping with grief by helping others – at least for the filmmakers behind Louder Than Words.

The Cloverfield Paradox is a bit of a scam job, promising to reconcile entries in a series that have little in common save for a shared genre. It fizzles so badly at the end that you might legitimately wonder if it ever had anything to do with the other two films in the first place, or if it was produced independently of the series and retroactively added.

The result feels strained and slapped together, crammed as it is with silly mistaken identities and misunderstandings, adolescent jealousies and slapstick jokes. It’s a sitcom in a sari.

A comedy with no laughs. A drama disconnected from any known reality. It’s tempting to diagnose Are You Here with schizophrenic genre disorder.

It’s the presence of Gibson and his co-star Sean Penn, who give the project a stuffy sanctimoniousness, as it so transparently yearns to be the definition of “powerhouse acting.”

One doesn’t need perfect vision to quickly surmise that this sudsy affair among Manhattan swells is a glorified Hallmark Channel melodrama.

The first act of Cabin Fever: Patient Zero is so defiantly stupid that I imagine most who rent it or struggle through it in a theater won’t care that there’s actually some material in the final act that clicks, mostly due to some incredibly strong makeup work.

It's just a frantic, flash-cutting frenzy. Even the slower, more intimate family scenes feature so many swooping-up-from-below shots and so many sudden inserts that moments (emotional or physical) are never given a chance to land.

Writer-director Francesca Gregorini's film just feels tonally off like that most of the time, and the inclusion of magical realism elements — while attractively photographed — only muddle matters further.

By widening the scope of their based-on-a-true story, the makers of Revenge of the Green Dragon make their subjects look like the products of unimaginative cultural assimilation.

Taurus isn’t meant to lionize its protagonist. But even in offering a cautionary tale, all it can deliver is shallow provocation and monotonous cliché.

Captain Fantastic treats the situation (and Ben) so uncritically and so sympathetically that there is a total disconnect between what is actually onscreen and what Ross thinks is onscreen.

Means to make fun of romantic comedies the way "Airplane!" goofed on disaster movies and the "Naked Gun" films spoofed detective flicks. The result is actually more in line with Gus Van Sant’s ambitious but ill-advised shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho."

Despite a premise rife with potential dark humor, there’s too little edge in Let’s Be Cops. Director/co-writer Luke Greenfield chose wacky over witty and the result is a film with no sense of danger, no reason to care and not enough laughs to make the sitcomish handling of a strong premise forgivable.

Misguided effort to once more stage the fateful stormy summer night at Lord Byron’s Lake Geneva villa in 1816 that would give birth to a tale that continues to spark our imaginations today.

In the end, the biggest problem with Slumberland is its utter innocuousness. Because it is bright, noisy, and things are constantly happening, little kids might like it as a momentary distraction—but it certainly won’t inspire them to check out McCay’s original work for themselves.

Luce is the worst kind of provocateur; it tosses out all manner of outrageous ideas and then, like those pathetic dudes on Twitter, it yells out “DEBATE ME!” As soon as you accept the challenge, the film folds like cheap origami. And this film has a lot to toss at you.

Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly is a dour, depressing drama, a movie that gets so lost in its lethargic structure that it feels like a chore.

8-Bit Christmas may have a more grounded approach to gamer culture than you'd expect, but it’s constantly beat by its own limited imagination.

Paradise Hills wants so badly to be a sci-fi movie with a message for right now — perhaps to tap into the feminist anger out there now or to cash in on the interest in women filmmakers — but it feels like a rushed draft. There are a few good ideas, a few good twists at the end but not enough to make up for the rookie mistakes that undercut its potential.

These characters possessed far more soul in the prior film: they walked through every scene with centuries of baggage and loss; they spoke of times gone by with wonder and awe; they cared for one another. None of that is present here.

There are simply too many moments here in which the characters, who we are supposed to care about in some form, are conveniently dumb.

When it leans hard into the inherent absurdity of its wacky, mismatched buddy antics, “Venom: The Last Dance” can be a total blast. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Whatever difference Zada's relatively minimalist approach to scenes might make, it does not outweigh the overarching feeling that the movie falls into a predictable, repetitive routine.

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

There are few surprises here after the narrative’s turn to survival horror as the film plods to its inevitable conclusion, and even that final shot feels unearned.

Its goal is to be a feel-good film, and it sort of accomplishes that. But from the predictable plot structure and series of overt zingers to the eye-rolling litany of on-the-nose needle drops, The People We Hate at the Wedding is awkwardly executed.

Pair Fathers and Daughters with a bottle of wine and a friend on a rainy night, and it will work just fine.

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

The bad news is that, as movies go, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising barely qualifies as one.

The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but I Wanna Dance with Somebody lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

Terrible and insane, and will surely end up being one of the worst films of 2019. But it’s also such a wildly ambitious roller coaster ride that it must be experienced, preferably with friends, to laugh together at its cheesy dialogue, over-the-top performances and multiple, major plot twists.

Upon taking in the gorgeousness — and it is really something; the production design of this movie, by Luca Tranchino, is exceptional (as is Daniel Aranyó’s cinematography, which shines when he’s shooting in the natural world) —Lillie observes, “It’s like being inside God’s thoughts.”

The problem is that writer-director Adrián García Bogliano can't decide what kind of horror movie he wants it to be.

Too shallow to project real charisma, the film is instead questionably sincere from start to finish, as if it's trying to head off questions about why the filmmakers wanted to tell this particular story, especially from the grossly underrepresented but often-manipulated perspective of a person with disabilities.

Neither erotic nor thrilling, but rather reliant on cheap nudity and multiple mistaken-identity switcheroos in hopes of keeping us on edge.

The filmmakers were able to pay his fee, and so Hopkins shows up for another rubbishy, misbegotten project and shames the whole enterprise with his open and volatile face, his incisive voice, his mere ultra-soulful presence.

With a movie like this, it’s hard to tell where the good idea ran out, as it seems to have been lost many drafts ago. 2:22 really just wants to be seen as clever, which often renders something not very clever at all.

When does a bad, cheap horror movie becomes something more offensively horrible? When it pegs its generic nonsense on real-life tragedy and becomes exploitation. Ben Ketai’s Beneath, not to be confused with the Larry Fessenden film of the same name from last year, is the kind of mediocrity one finds on The Movie Channel on a Saturday night and pretty easily dismisses.

Black Butterfly communicates all of its empty-headed ideas idiotically, but still retains a knowing smugness regarding its intentions, like it’s pulling a rabbit out of a hat while acting like no one’s ever seen such a trick.

The lack of a solid narrative means Stardust cannot compensate for the production’s modest budget, which lacks a noticeable amount of Bowie songs and includes many scenes filmed on the cheap.

Criminal is the kind of dunderheaded enterprise that leaves viewers reeling from the idiocies they have just endured, wondering how something like that could possibly get made in the first place.

Into the Grizzly Maze is bad where it counts, and tedious throughout.

Director Young shoots his unimaginative opus with an eye of getting all the value of the gore makeup department’s work on screen. In this respect, he does a bang-up job. As for everything else, well, this movie does answer the question “What if Eli Roth’s ‘Cabin Fever’ had zero sense of humor?” very satisfactorily.

The arbitrary value of life in I Am Not a Serial Killer makes its nature as an ostensibly character-driven mystery that much harder to swallow. Don't bother with this nonsensical time-waster.

They don’t make movies that seem to purposefully waste the talents of current “SNL” stars much any more. Well, except for this one.

Here is a film so devoid of thrills, excitement, or purpose that it seems to have been custom-made to play in empty multiplexes during the traditionally dead last weeks of summer.

An utterly lifeless and profoundly unoriginal animated effort that is desperately lacking the very thing in its title.

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 film is shot in a pretty stock manner, with jokes falling flat (when one does land, it feels like a miracle) and musical cues guiding us toward appropriate emotional responses.

Its plot is an unholy blending of “Taken," “The Searchers” and "Angel Heart." As befitting a January release, it’s also an early candidate for the 2016 worst movies list.

Like the worst kind of voyeuristic, heterosexual swingers, the film dabbles in non-monogamy and same-sex attraction solely as a means to heteronormative ends.

Lost Girls and Love Hotels is too vapid to work as a psychological drama, too silly to work as a passionate romance, and too tepid to work as a sexy guilty pleasure.

The problem with Pawn Shop Chronicles is not the fact that it is a clone of "Pulp Fiction." The problem is that it is a lousy clone.

More wearying than frightening, Rings is a total non-starter.

All goodwill from that first hour is dead and buried by the last scene, abandoned by a screenwriter and director who had no idea where to take this story.

Somehow, the film’s 1674 is more convincing than its 1969, and the ideas being worked out in that brief segment are more compelling than the ones that make up the core narrative. But then it’s buried, and it doesn’t come back. Pity, that’s one time when resurrection would have been helpful.

This is the kind of movie that leaves you with the impression that more thought was put into catchphrases and fan service than into a compelling plot, thoughtful characterizations or imaginative action choreography.

The movie is inescapably lifelessness, unintentionally dumbing itself down while desperately hoping to be profound.

Rarely do I find a movie that is so appalling if not outright insulting to all of humanity (and particularly, in this case, womankind) that it gives me a stomach ache.

What’s unclear is whether this project is clumsy, but earnest, or a cynical attempt to sell a shoddy film to the “DVD section at Walmart” crowd.

As Roger Ebert noted in his review of "Grown Ups," they are "well-meaning people you don't want to see again any time real soon." My guess is we won't.

Joe Dirt 2 is wildly inconsistent, often feeling like it was slapped together quickly before someone changed their mind and put a stop payment on the financing check.

Director Nick Stagliano doesn’t help matters much by presenting the material with a poky pace that does not exactly bring the narrative to vivid life.

Imaginary is utterly forgettable, bland, and directionless, ironically so, as for a film that lauds the power of imagination, it shockingly neglects the very element of its own ethos.

The unappealingly named comedy Eat Wheaties! is a tedious exercise in patience that, like a bowl of soggy cereal, I would not recommend to anyone.

Summer of 85 plays like a bad parody of movies like Love Story and Summer of ’42, stories where some undeserving male learns a valuable lesson from a love affair and death.

Out of the Dark never leaves much of an impression despite character actor Stephen Rea's endearingly cocky performance, and an exotic—though largely under-utilized—South American setting.

A potentially interesting premise is handled so badly that what might have been a provocative drama quickly and irrevocably devolves into the technological equivalent of the old anti-dope chestnut "Reefer Madness," squandering the efforts of a strong and talented cast struggling mightily to make something of the ridiculously trite material.

The Death & Life of John F. Donovan is rife with melodramatic moments and insufferable characters.

One of the problems with this My Cousin Rachel is that it’s hard to come up with any issue or reason relative to its creation, I’m afraid.

Wolf Warrior 2 lectures you, pummels you, and then expects you to cheer.

Although Vanquish is otherwise as forgettable as can be—that may be the closest thing that it has to a virtue—there's still one thing about it that I cannot immediately shake, and that is the presence of Morgan Freeman in a role that requires so little effort it's a wonder that Bruce Willis didn’t take it.

There’s not enough cold sweat ambience here, and that makes it even harder to root for a modestly budgeted chiller whose creators clearly started their project from a place of cinephilic affection. Even sympathetic genre fans will have trouble finding something new about such old hat material.

Blink Twice sucker punches the audience with its sexual violence and then fails to find intelligence or dexterity in its handling of it or any of the themes running adjacent.

So hackneyed, tired, labored and overstuffed with contempt not only for all of its targets but also its own self that one gets the feeling that the talented Mr. McDonagh has gone mad with rage. Possibly during dealings with the American film industry.

When the inevitable finale with a thoroughly sign-posted twist arrives, you might realize you’ve already spent all your goodwill towards Milburn’s stylistically over-bloated film that chases one cliché after the next over the course of an overstretched running time.

Viewers are not privileged with a more thoughtful, specific view of the institutionalized problems that Sudanese natives face because Sauper's not interested in making that kind of film.

One of the dumbest variations of the weather-based action thriller subgenre that I have ever seen, you can be rest assured that I know what I am talking about.