Nearly devoid of scares for the casual horror consumer, it will likely elicit a respectful dismissal from genre connoisseurs: "We get what you're trying to do," they might gently say to the filmmakers. "It didn't work."

As Shelby Oaks moves further away from its original conceit, it grows ever clunkier, ever more derivative. Stuckmann’s dialogue is stilted and generic; his storytelling and world-building even more so.

Featuring excellent performances by Forest Whitaker as Tutu and Eric Bana as an imprisoned racist government death-squad assassin seeking clemency, The Forgiven tackles its important political and social issues in an overly talky fashion.

In a simpler form, Mojave might have been a gripping if minor genre film. Instead, it's undone by the sort of pretentious overwriting that might have seemed impressive in the '70s but now comes across as merely forced.

While Van Damme's cyborgian performance in the classic Western role should satisfy the thespic demands of action fans, it will blunt a mainstream crossover. [18 Jan 1993]

There’s a distinctive eye here, and a promising sense of ambition. But in its current form, there’s not enough meat on its (admittedly cool-looking) bones to justify its 106-minute run time.

Easter Sunday earns points for its cultural bona fides, its loving portrait of the community it celebrates and its almost entirely Filipino and Asian-American casting. And Koy reveals himself to be a likable screen presence deserving of more starring roles. But it falls hopelessly flat in its comedic aspirations, more closely resembling the sort of bland network sitcom to which its main character aspires.

This is the kind of film that will leave many audience members groaning with laughter -- and others simply groaning. It's skit/situation comedy that exploits stereotypes with a vengeance and knows no shame in borrowing from much better movies ranging from "Some Like It Hot" to "Tootsie."

Although her colorful life would reach a tragic, decidedly pulpy end, Leo plays it to the absolute hilt.... Unfortunately, the other characters and the vehicle that supports her turn out to be less satisfyingly dimensional.

With unappealing one-note characters, retread concepts and implausible motivations, Chappie is a further downward step for director Neill Blomkamp.

Hop delivers plenty of wit, verve and surreal mayhem to entice even the post-adolescent crowd into this jolly (and strangely Christmas-like) Easter egg hunt.

A strong cast and tightly focused direction make The Unforgivable an engrossing enough redemption drama, though this Americanized feature adaptation of British TV writer Sally Wainwright’s 2009 miniseries, Unforgiven, doesn’t always benefit from its condensed plotting.

The older the actors here the better they are, as pros like Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis have it all over low-voltage young leads Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld. Relativity will be lucky to milk anything more than a moderate take from this pretty but unexciting enactment.

Jonathan Lynn's lamentable black comedy Wild Target again shows that attractive and charismatic actors can do nothing to save a movie that's charmless, pointless and witless.

The film relies on high production values and sense-battering shock tactics to make up for wooden performances and an illogical, silly script. As an exercise in retro pastiche, it impresses. But as a postmodern genre reinvention, it fails to deliver.

A short, dour and stodgy creature feature with average 3D effects that draws on so many film influences from westerns, action adventures and sci-fi tales that what fun there is comes from spotting the many sources.

No matter how tongue-in-cheek, and toothless, the film's sardonic view of mental health care feels unfortunately timed given our mass anxiety-inducing current circumstances. The truth is, we could all use some good therapy right about now; Bad Therapy, on the other hand, is not indicated.

While superbly acted, the dramedy plays out like a tepid "Big Chill" at best.

Acting is similarly routine with the glorious exception of Hilton, who is so bad she steals the show.

It was hard to tell if the resulting groans from the audience were relief or derision. [13 Jan 1997]

Our Day Will Come speeds along for a while on the fumes of its own audacity until it can no longer hide the lack of coherent ideas in the tank.

Quite an entertaining genre piece boasting a terrifically sinewy lead performance from Wanda De Jesus.

Although Graham Meriwether’s film is far less incendiary than such similarly themed efforts as "Food, Inc." and "Fast Food Nation," it nonetheless offers considerable — pardon the pun — food for thought in its exploration of modern-day cattle, hog and chicken production.

The compendium of clichés might have been more palatable if the lead characters were more sympathetic, but it's hard to connect to Arielle's relentless need for attention and the utter stupidity that ultimately has tragic repercussions.

It's entertaining nonsense with major league special effects, larger-than-life characters and inventive monsters that draw on the "Aliens" and "Predator" models, being terrifying but also vaguely sympathetic.

Augurs well for dazzling visual work but struggles mightily on the storytelling front.

Here Today doesn’t fully succeed in any department. But it does provide some alternately amusing and touching moments, thanks largely to the heartfelt performances by Crystal and his co-star Tiffany Haddish.

This sub-Hallmark dreck made by a bunch of hacks that don’t deserve to be named is the first film out of Lohan’s Netflix deal and her first feature in three years. Not to beat up on a former child star who has overcome more than her share of demons, but if this is the best vehicle she could find, waiting another three might not have been a bad idea.

An airless film about childhood fantasies that comes to life only fitfully, Brenda Chapman's Come Away is aimed at children but so pickled in grown-up grief that few kids are likely to connect with it.

Made up of synthetics rather than whole cloth, this lurid concoction superficially gets by thanks to a strong cast and jazzy period detail, but its cartoonish contrivances fail to convince and lack any of the depth, feeling or atmosphere of genre stand-bearers like "L.A. Confidential."

Amusing but not as funny or suspenseful as it could be.

As it moves toward a climax that will require Santa to connect with his inner action hero, the film works better than it should without being as enjoyable as its predecessor, the brothers' much less ambitious Small Town Crime.

The thrill is long gone in Anna, a lifeless and instantly forgettable spy flick whose lead, Sasha Luss, shows zero promise as a movie star.

Yet another ode to the pleasures of overindulgence. The experience of watching this loosely plotted comedy set in the suburbs of New Jersey is somewhat akin to spending a nice summer day playing softball with your friends. Only without the sun, the fresh air, the exercise or the fun.

While the three actresses have an appealing grittiness, they aren't always up to the demands of the roles.

Straight out of the slice-and-dice school of filmmaking, Vantage Point fractures chronology and perspective in a vain attempt to disguise its flimsiness.

At roughly the halfway point, the movie turns into a low-budget gangster picture, which sacrifices character and themes to the kind of action mayhem all too commonplace in studio thrillers.

Fairly mild in tone and riffing -- if not quite ripping -- off a collection of horror classics that includes "The Shining," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Poltergeist," both the franchise's premise and its execution nevertheless remain rudimentary, with the narrative and character backstories representing more of a sketch than a fully realized vision of the supernatural world that Katie inhabits.

This debut feature by Anne Renton doesn't quite find the proper tone to convey its heartfelt message.

Perhaps keenly aware of the short attention spans and the reluctance in the ordinary viewer to countenance long-lingering malice on screen – especially among good-looking, self-proclaimed friends – everything gets neatly resolved sharply and swiftly, so that shouting matches will quickly give way to yet another round of gags and all-round tomfoolery.

While its theme of youthful empowerment inevitably strikes an emotional chord, the film never manages to achieve any dramatic steam, plodding along in mildly diverting but essentially bland fashion.

This static, talky effort ultimately doesn’t justify its feature-length running time despite some strong performances and the occasional moving moment.

Actor and first-time feature director Matt Rabinowitz’s intense focus on a fragile father-son relationship makes for unexceptional developments in The Frontier, an insubstantial low-budget ensembler.

While its emphasis on character dynamics and a slow burn atmosphere is to be commended, Dark Was the Night is too derivative and familiar to make much of an impact.

Those enthralled by the venerable brand will no doubt swoon, but casual viewers will find it little more than a feature-length infomercial.

The determined, gently cantankerous oldster's personality is the main attraction here, in a doc that takes viewers' interest for granted.

It's a peculiar kind of humor, but it does play.

This talky, ham-fisted effort proves particularly disappointing because it should have been much better than it is.

The lack of light irony, refined humor and spontaneity and freshness in the dialogue makes the film feel much more heavy-handed than a tale like this should be. For most of the nearly three-hour running time, it all plays as droningly serious, which makes the already long film feel much longer.

The film begins to sag the deeper we get into Sam’s story, which requires more digging than Peretti can give us. The jokes are rarely the same, but they hit similar notes; the problems with the characters feel repetitive; and the movie circles the same ideas until plot points need to be tidied.

Mixing touchy-feely, sub-Sundance quirk, a studio comedy’s penchant for pratfalls and dick jokes, and unabashed John Hughes nostalgia, the film crowds its leading lady with a busy ensemble and too much plot.

Despite promising opening sequences and some above-average performances from a trio of young actors, the film's points become more elusive as its technique becomes more blunt. [16 March 1992]

Although the film has its undeniably immersive, convincing moments, the merging of dramatic re-creations and on-camera "performances" proves less seamlessly executed than those masterfully coordinated land, sea and air missions.

Its paper-thin characterizations, hackneyed plotting and overdependence on viciously profane humor put this effort more in the minor league of Tammy, McCarthy's previous collaboration with her director/co-screenwriter husband Ben Falcone, than her truly inspired work with Paul Feig on Bridesmaids and Spy.

For all its visual stylishness, The Carpenter’s Son feels like such an essentially misconceived project that it seems destined for future cult status, with audiences at midnight screenings shouting out the more outrageous lines in unison with the actors. Which may not be what the filmmaker intended, but sounds like a lot of fun.

Anders’ well-attuned comic sensibility makes for moments of hilarity in some of the more originally conceived scenes, but bogs down in predictability with reliance on too many stock situations that absorb the bulk of the running time.

The film’s scattershot approach proves more enervating than enlightening, with the barrage of information presented in such a haphazard manner that continuity and coherence become lost.

Without Crowe's brooding performance, Unhinged would just be another forgettable, formulaic, functional B-movie. With the burly Kiwi on board, it is transformed into a forgettable, formulaic, functional B-movie starring Russell Crowe.

To listen to Jackson doing street talk is akin to reveling in Olivier reciting Shakespeare — in other words, it's one of the great pleasures of the language. Edit the film down to his dialogue and you have a wonderful greatest hits collection.

Although the visuals tantalize and the actors providing the voices add a lot of sass, the result is only so-so.

This flaccid psychological thriller keeps spoiling its own surprise by constantly signaling the big plot twist.

A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn’t know what to do with them.

The film has enough originality to interest demanding fans of the genre.

This effort offers some mild amusement but lacks the anarchic wit to make it anything more than a slight diversion.

Making an atypical foray into commercial film territory (the Star Wars films being a notable exception), Driver proves a formidable action movie hero, his imposing physicality (and, perhaps, his former experience as a Marine) serving him well here.

Sporadically funny though less effective at selling its melancholy undercurrents.

What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.

The Wayans brothers manage to squeeze it all in to consistently amusing effect and in a way that just barely manages to stay within those PG-13 parameters.

In the end, there’s too much good stuff missing and yet not enough to serve as a satisfying meal.

One can reflect on what the young Coppola, with his masterful camera work and vivid imagination, might have done with such an opportunity. Unfortunately, the present-day one produces only tepid and tired imagery that would not earn high marks in any film school.

This bloody exercise in camp quickly wears out is welcome, although its copious doses of nudity and gore, as well as its undeniably catchy title, should help it stand out on video shelves.

Beneath gets capsized as much by its knuckleheaded script as by its somewhat risible giant flesh-eating fish.

As much as it’s a joy to watch Statham slinging explosive harpoons from a jet ski, Meg 2 offers only scattershot pleasures. It’s too ridiculous to muster serious scares and too tonally uncertain to convince us that it’s consistently in on the joke.

As with both of his previous works, the filmmaker delivers an undeniably ambitious mind-bender that bites off more than it can narratively chew.

Although this true story (even if embellished a bit by the filmmakers) inevitably builds some emotion, it ends up feeling more banal than spiritually exalting.

Restrained and elegant to a fault, this first feature from co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams is too muted in its catharsis and too overcrowded with superfluous characters to be fully satisfying, but the delicate central performance keeps it watchable.

Audiences attuned to Tim & Eric's weird wavelength will find plenty of guffaws in the first half, but a plot this thin can't sustain comedy based on discomfort; the film is so much of a good thing one starts to wonder if the thing is good in the first place.

It’s all absurd in a way that is typical Besson. But it’s also undeniably entertaining, and it marks a relatively pain-free way to kill, if not three days, at least a couple of hours.

East meets West in a beguiling, old-fashioned romantic comedy set in today's global economy.

There's barely a scene in IO that's performed with pulse or verve. It's Sad-Face Emoji Sci-Fi, with po-faced references to Greek mythology, Chopin and T.S. Eliot, among others, and empirical techno-jargon spoken at a Valley Girl level of credibility.

With many strong elements, it’s frustrating when The Astronaut fumbles in the final stretch.

The story's knotty aspects reverberate under its sentimental-cum-inspirational surface. In the guise of a glossy entertainment, Welcome to Marwen gets at some unnervingly irresolvable truths about humanity.

May have been adapted the 1996 French film "L'Appartement," but pretty much all evidence of what was once an engaging psychodrama has been lost in the translation.

The movie is almost rescued by the wonderful 1930's style songs (written by Reinhardt Wanger and Frank Thomas) that populate its final act.

Paced deliberately in a way that reinforces the tragedy of evil flourishing when good men do nothing, Good may find boxoffice returns slow to build but the film's aim is true and patient audiences will be well rewarded.

Won't win many new fans for the high-stepping dancer. It might even cost him a few old ones.

If you must make another entirely predictable comedy about an unapologetic old white curmudgeon who steamrolls all opposition, you can't do better than draft the redoubtable Shirley MacLaine to keep audiences in her barbed corner while we wait for her inevitable bittersweet humanization.

The scenes between Pattinson and de Ravin exude genuine charm.

With a slick, outsider’s perspective on the City of Angels and some interesting possibilities that are set up early on, this Message gets off to a great start. But the screenplay becomes a muddle and then a mess in its second half.

This B-movie thriller fails to go beyond its familiar underwater peril tropes, providing as nearly a claustrophobic experience for viewers as its characters.

Singer hopes to offer the history of Mendes' career, maturation and emotional journey through memory and imagery instead of hard fact, which renders the film feathery and dull. If anything, I wanted less self-discovery and more straight-up musical performance.

Despite bursts of intelligence, especially when it comes to conveying the fractured quality of trauma narratives, Without Blood’s vagueness ends up blunting many of its lessons.

Despite the world-changing ramifications inherent to the plot, the results are more tedious than thrilling.

A colossal snore.

While the supernatural side of the film suffers a flaw or two — continued references to The Doors are superfluous and sometimes chuckle-inducing — its central conflict works.

The acting in the film is outstanding down to some of the smallest parts, and here director Taylor Hackford (who hasn’t had a major hit in several years) deserves considerable credit for guiding these performers.

Although it is overlong, it manages to be fascinating for much of its running time. But it also disappoints on many counts, providing another example of hype outpacing actual achievement -- a syndrome that Salinger himself would probably have deplored.

Lift doesn’t seem to trust viewers enough to withhold details. It’s too insecure, too eager, too anxious to be mysterious. Its tricks are not so much revealed as word-vomited through clunky exposition.