Apparently unsure whether to go with the lazy idea of a disastrous beauty pageant or the equally lazy idea of a zany road trip, Raphael and Wilson lazily combine the two.

Sorting through the shards of the Ottoman Empire requires a historical complexity that eludes Crowe, who flattens the landscape into bromides on family and country, and the hard-won glories of being Russell Crowe. His on-screen persona could stand to be as modest as his filmmaking abilities.

Theory’s premise dares to interrogate what, if anything, the apparent randomness of life means. Brown and screenwriter Michael J. Kospiah haven’t the foggiest, but they’re willing to unload as many harebrained plot twists as it takes to obfuscate the question.

To the film’s mild credit, it’s the rare woman-in-peril thriller where the woman takes intelligent steps to defend herself.

Rising Sun boasts shiny, shiny production values befitting a big-budgeted Sean Connery vehicle adapted from a bestselling novel, but scratch the glossy surface and Rising Sun reveals itself to be a Cinemax-ready B-movie, complete with a rogue’s gallery of villains, each tackier and more ridiculous than the last.

Momoa does capture some scenes of genuine warmth and beauty that suggest he has the potential to develop a filmmaker’s eye for visual poetry.

Shatkin is trying hard here, but Whaley’s overwrought script keeps the young actor from utilizing his charm; Reggie is simply difficult to be around, even as Meester’s Eleanor is expected to act charmed by all his quirks and issues.

Lewins’ reductively humanist approach is at odds with how distanced the movie feels from any trace of a real human at its core.

As the onscreen moon goes through its inexorable cycle, Late Phases transforms from laughably non-frightening horror film to self-serious family drama and back again, all the while remaining ferociously, ravenously boring. Silver bullets would be a mercy.

Perhaps it was deliberate strategy on the part of McCann and his screenwriter, Anthony Di Pietro, to neutralize the politics of a mass killing and focus more on the psychic stress that triggered it. But even if that was the case, it doesn’t make the film any less crushingly banal.

Despite the parade of pretty images and lovely scenery, Big Sur stubbornly fails to cohere into a real movie; instead, it feels like an illustrated novel full of words, ideas, and images, but devoid of structure or characterization.

The prevailing tone throughout Innocence is as somber as the onset-of-twilight blues and grays that dominate the movie’s color palette. All that seriousness ultimately doesn’t blend well with a narrative that marinates in the preposterous.

The film overflows with inspired comic ideas that fizzle and die in execution like a marathon fireworks display of nothing but duds.

Although the film appears to be aiming for pitch-black humor, it’s all so mirthless that the result is genuinely ugly.

It isn’t just sub-par for Argento, it’s sub-par for virtually any director. It’s a stain on Dracula’s good name, and a waste of time for even those looking for the cheapest of vampiric thrills.

Its suspense is so nonexistent, and its supposed concerns—about the reliability of memory and the nature of truth—are handled so facilely, the film sells its own conceit short.

A rote, unimaginative entry in the found-footage subgenre of science-fiction/horror. It looks better than a YouTube video, but it’s rarely more engaging.

Bound To Vengeance is not necessarily an evil film, or even a hateful one. It’s confused at best, though it’s more likely that the film’s misguided pseudo-feminist subtext is a result of simple thoughtlessness.

The focus is much more on Sarah, Frank, and their repetitive, ugly dynamic than on the giddy elements that made the first film trashy fun.

Wiig’s new comedy sulks limply along with her, unable to bring the kind of energy that might complement her tendency to underplay every scene.

Grant specializes in bastards, but he makes them so charming that viewers can nearly forget, and even forgive, their consistently bad manners. It’s a good skill, and it’s put to heavy use in Marc Lawrence’s otherwise charmless, vaguely offensive The Rewrite.

It couldn’t be a simpler, more workable premise for a good B-movie, but the amount of effort put into making it fast and edgy is inversely proportional to the scant thrills it yields.

A film that could only succeed by sorting through gradually darkening shades of gray works exclusively in embarrassingly bold strokes.

It feels like the series has run its course, and should be relegated to the dustbin of history alongside the hardware it so lovingly pays tribute to.

While a defter touch could have made the marriage between fizzy romance and domestic drama work, All Relative fails to engage because the emotional connection between all parties—Harry and Grace, Harry and Maren, Grace and Maren—is weak to nonexistent.

Plush fails to be a turn-on: It’s all surface and zero substance, with limp attempts at shock value.

47 Ronin is elephantine and lumbering, a wobbly, would-be epic that aspires to the scope and majesty of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, but comes up woefully short.

Mortdecai’s farcical mechanics are actually well worked out, which is a credit to Koepp, an ace Hollywood screenwriter (Jurassic Park, 2002’s Spider-Man) who directed the fun late-summer sleeper Premium Rush two years ago. It’s just the jokes that are astonishingly unfunny.