You can either be sentimental or bitter about the movies, but you can rarely charm people by being both at once. Unfortunately, the people behind the Indian moviemaking comedy RK/RKAY took that risk, and wound up making a mawkish, inert fantasy about a filmmaker whose protagonist escapes his movie within the movie.

Vincent N Roxxy is a nasty little piece of B-movie trash that lacks both the verve to grab you as a guilty pleasure and the artistry to be taken seriously as a dramatic thriller.

Man Down is a bad film, but it’s made even worse by the taste it will leave in your mouth regarding its silly handling of a very serious issue.

My most basic litmus test for whether a comedy is working is whether it makes me laugh. I groaned, maybe, but no chuckles emanated from me or from my lone fellow patron.

You might come to Camera Obscura expecting nothing more than a kite-high concept like "camera that photographs future murders." But you too will be disappointed if you expect anything more from the film since its creators do not offer satisfying cheap thrills and/or thoughtful consideration of a veteran/artist's tortured post-war psyche.

The biggest difference between the two films is that "Unfriended" is dynamic and cruel while Unfriended: Dark Web is unbelievably stupid and sadistic. Neither movie is especially smart or incisive about the Way We Live Now, but they don't really have to be.

Superficial, dull.

Too bad The Djinn is often as plodding as it is impersonal. This movie crawls whenever it needs to sprint.

In Profile, the images mix real documentary footage with fictional social media and news organization posts. And meaning is elemental—a simplistic rush meant to induce viewer panic. While also being incredibly on-the-nose.

Only really comes alive when cars are being used as battering rams and computer-generated explosions proliferate like fireworks.

There aren’t many surprises here, because the bread crumbs that lead to the movie’s big finish are plentiful and very stale. Seriously, the plot twists in this movie are so obvious and unappetizing that you couldn’t miss them if you tried.

Such a spectacular misfire on every imaginable level—and even some you haven’t begun to imagine—that there are times when one might mistake it for an especially clever and relentlessly deadpan satire of the type of film it's desperately trying to evoke.

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.

Best Man Down is billed as a "warm and funny comedy," a subjective description with which I do not agree. I would not consider this a comedy, let alone a warm and funny one. There are no laughs, and most attempts at humor are mean-spirited or embarrassing.

The movie ventures into the realm of pure grindhouse sadism. It’s borderline reprehensible, in spite of Kumar’s intentions.

Hitman: Agent 47 is aggressively awful, the kind of film that rubs its lackadaisical screenwriting, dull filmmaking and boring characters in your face, almost daring you to ask the theater operator for your money back.

The film looks like a rushed production that a few friends got together and made over a weekend. Performances range from tolerable to horrendous, and the script needed at least another rewrite to figure out what it was trying to say, and, preferably, buff out a ridiculous twist ending that would make M. Night Shyamalan go “nah.”

It has a reasonably strong lead performance for micro-budget horror, but writer/director Jeffrey Reddick can’t come through with the thrills, resorting to cheap jump scares to hide shoddy editing, low-grade cinematography, and the kind of clunky storytelling that’s more reminiscent of a Creepypasta tale than a feature film.

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

The non-stop, navel-gazing, faux philosophical dialogue about love starts to feel like some strange experiment itself. It reaches points of near-parody, not unlike overhearing drunk college kids talk about dating apps and the meaning of love at 3 AM at a party you really want to leave.

Granted, it’s meant to be a fantasy film, but not a single moment rings true in A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting — not the teen angst, not the little-kid nightmares, and definitely not the sense of fun and camaraderie meant to fuel these Halloween adventures.

It isn’t creepy, but it isn’t terribly plausible, either. It’s just another movie in which a 30ish white dude finds purpose and learns how to live life again through the love and support of a younger woman who’s more of a concept than a real person.

Though the picture is admirable on a conceptual level, its execution is incoherent, interminable and a colossal strain on the eyes.

Wan’s never been the most technically adept or sophisticated storyteller, but his weaknesses as a filmmaker are especially apparent throughout.

It certainly doesn’t help that Tobias and Elin are entirely banal characters with nothing to define them but their loss.

Throughout the film, you can see Hawke trying to bring resonance and truth to a movie that is plotted like a “Crank” sequel and has dialogue that sounds like it was written by a teenage boy. Watching the actor fight against the deep flaws of the film he’s in is almost more interesting than the plot itself. At least it’s more entertaining.

The film rarely comes to life because Rollins, the only compelling actor in the otherwise amateurish cast, is underutilized, and virtually everything else underdeveloped.

The laughless mess of Sextuplets proves that Marlon Wayans still has a big obstacle in the way of his comedic greatness — himself.