If you enjoy watching barrel-penned fish get got with a BB gun, you're bound to love Vicious Fun. Vicious Fun courts that kind of glib dismissal since so much of the movie reassures viewers that its creators are also addicted to the formulaic slasher movies that they kind of, sort of mock.

This is a bleak nugget of a film that is trying so hard to take the typical sports movie narrative and unleash its darker and more nightmarish side that it runs out of steam long before arriving at its frustratingly oblique conclusion.

Sappy, slow, and mostly effective.

The film, unfortunately, is poorly acted and offers Hallmark Channel-level craftsmanship.

With Clerks III, nostalgia is its own convenience for Smith. It’s cheap and fleeting, but it is comforting.

It comes down to filmmaking. And this is a bad film, filled with awkward reenactments, poorly designed graphics, scripted interview segments, ominous music and enough jumping to conclusions that I’m surprised someone didn’t throw out their back.

Although it's gorgeous to look at (especially Joan Bergin’s costumes), Disenchanted fails to truly rekindle the magic, or the biting wit of its predecessor.

Partisan, Cassel’s latest movie that smartly keeps his innate menace on a slow, low simmer, isn’t nearly as convincing or compelling as its star.

Though many bad movies are simply depressing, Adam Smith’s Trespass Against Us is so exceptionally bad that it at least has this bright sidelight: Unless 2017 turns into a truly disastrous time for movies, it may be the worst of the year is already here.

Kung Fu Yoga doesn't feel like a young man's film. Normally that would be a cause for celebration, but in this case, Chan's latest doesn't just address, but rather shows his age.

I walked away from My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn having enjoyed the time spent with Refn, his family, and Ryan Gosling, but without any further insight into the production of “Only God Forgives,” filmmaking in general or this particular talent.

Ride On isn’t a generic beat-em-up but a stingy elegy to a bygone era of filmmaking and an unbelievable melodrama about an older artist and his estranged daughter. A lot of emotional baggage is attached to Ride On, and very little of it gets unpacked.

Studio 666 is the kind of broad horror-comedy that could certainly stand to be a little scarier, a little funnier, and more clever overall. But then again, no other horror-comedy stars rock band the Foo Fighters as themselves, which is the main pull for this special Foovie event.

It has so little to inspire conversation that I joked at the end that it was a cautionary tale about the mental and physical toll of being an unemployed writer. There’s something primal in all of us. Just not in this movie.

It’s all just really bizarre, limp copies of better films.

For much of its overlong running time, “Waiting for Bojangles” depicts mental illness as an adorable personality quirk, a source of good-time party vibes, even a glamorous quality. Then, once this frothy French romance evolves into a more serious drama, it turns turgid, causing a jarring tonal shift.

The filmmakers do seem frequently flummoxed by the scale of the narrative, and you get a sense of them trying to cram a lot into a two-hour running time.

Parents will appreciate the way the pups tackle problem solving, working together to make the best use of each character's talents, coming up with alternative strategies when the initial plans are not working, and understanding the mistakes made by team members.

If this mess is what they ended up with after erring with the best intentions, I feel bad for them. If this is actually the end result they were going for, I’d be inclined to use the legal system myself, to file an injunction against them ever getting near a soundstage again.

The cast is terrific, and there are a couple of sequences that made me laugh out loud, but the movie as a whole is baffling.

None of these characters or their stories is nearly as engaging as the movie’s many gonzo action sequences, though.

It doesn’t help that neither Yeoh nor Thompson play a character that remotely resembles real people in a film that only brushes over the anxieties of immigrants in the still-early days of Brexit.

The film's fuzzy mystical undertones are irksome as well. They seem less aligned with 19th century representations of Christian or Muslim spirituality than with fond childhood memories of "Star Wars."

To its credit, the “Now You See Me” trilogy, about magic experts tricking powerful bad guys, understands this principle and conveys it with humor and a light touch. That understanding, plus a strong cast, is the only thing preventing the films from turning into jumbled, giant bags of arbitrary plot twists, eager to outsmart viewers into nonsense.

It brings me absolutely no joy to report that The Marvels is terrible, and the worst film yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The result is a dreary and derivative thriller that is nowhere near as smart or controversial as it clearly believes itself to be.

A.C.O.D. is a sharp, dark-ish character comedy, settling for a dry tolerance in its point of view that is very appealing and even admirable.

Not bad enough to dissuade prospective viewers' from their curiosity. In fact, the whole feather-light affair is practically redeemed by a single entry: writer/director Anthony Scott Burns' superbly spooky Father's Day segment.