Six Million and One suggests the need for both a more ruthless editor and a well-trained family therapist.

This informative but scattershot documentary about the Occupy Wall Street suffers from a surfeit of facts and figures.

This thriller about child sex trafficking is well-intentioned but dramatically stilted.

Other than providing yet another meta-theatrical examination of the ever-blurring line between reality and artifice, Janeane From Des Moines emerges as a pointless affair.

The Prosecution of an American President demonstrates that you can be deeply sympathetic to a film's arguments and still come away feeling unconvinced.

This tale of an elite military unit assigned to rescue a war correspondent kidnapped by the Taliban is as frenetic and ultimately mind-numbing as a "Call of Duty" videogame, only without the thematic depth.

Not quite able to make up its mind whether it's a parody or homage, this tired exercise wastes both its gorgeous visuals and a first-rate cast.

This Chekhovian-style comedy about a group of neurotic actors endlessly kibitzing during a weekend at a country house might have some appeal for self-absorbed thespians, but "civilians," as they're derisively referred to in the film, will find little of interest here.

Least Among Saints has the strained feel of a basic cable television movie, with modest production values to match.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber adequately manages the mechanics demanded here but adds no finesse or grace notes.

Eventually, though, Waiting For Lightning suffers greatly from the absence of Way himself.

About as subtle as its subtitle, Gloria Z. Greenfield's documentary attempts to be both a comprehensive exploration of anti-Semitism throughout the ages and a forceful alarm about its modern-day threat. Not fully successful on either level...

Interweaving clumsily staged action sequences with endless pontificating about evil mega-corporations privatizing public resources, the mediocre environmental-themed thriller A Dark Truth wears its good intentions on its sleeve.

A novel cultural focus, highlighting Guyanese citizens of Indian ancestry, isn't enough to sustain interest in the lifeless film, which will attract few outside the Indo-Guyanese community.

A bankable cast, a hint of controversy and high production values may play in their favor commercially, but Bosch and her producer-husband Ilan Goldman have come dangerously close to making a feel-good movie about the Holocaust.

The film never achieves any real depth in its unabashedly admiring portrait. What might have made a mildly interesting short feels vastly attenuated even with its brief 72-minute running time.

Aggressively quirky but lacking any real wit - unless you consider a lengthy monologue about the taste of semen to be side-splittingly funny - the film based on David Gilbert's satirical novel is a non-starter.

Sadly, this film's POV conceit -- in which all scenes are shot by the characters, whether they have a plausible reason to hold the camera up or not -- quickly becomes as grating as Kelly herself.

Mixing soap-opera melodramatics with pithy one-liners, the film never achieves a coherent tone, with the uneven performances by the ensemble adding to the problem.

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.

This meta-theatrical attempt at creating a comically subversive film is far too self-indulgent to provide insight into its important themes.

Patience-taxingly boilerplate.

Unfortunately, Allegiance is less sure-footed in the filmmaking department, rendering its potentially suspenseful storyline stilted and uncompelling.

Essentially "Alien" set in a self-storage facility, the British low-budget horror flick Storage 24 doesn't manage to rise above the limitations of its bare-bones concept.

Trying to be amusing and respectfully serious at the same time, Austrian director Wolfgang Murnberger's film remains in limbo, saddled with an over-worked story, characters and setting.

It has hypnotic visual style and a dense, driving soundscape. But it’s also too monotonous and thematically empty to be seriously provocative.

Unfortunately, while director/co-writer Ed Gass-Donnelly displays an admirable restraint in his general eschewing of gratuitous gore, quick editing and flashy visuals, the results have a generally soporific feel.

Scodelario, of the Maze Runner films and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, is just about the only member of the cast who seems to believe she's expected to be more than a thin generic functionary or flamboyant scene-stealer.

Aims to be a cutting-edge portrait of cutthroat political machinations. But it's a mostly toothless affair that, like so many of our current political figures, proves alienating.

A few smart laughs hint at what might have been, but thanks to sitcom-y mugging and a tepidness beneath the intended hilarity, David E. Talbert’s romantic comedy is stuck in a holding pattern for much of its running time.

Considering the importance of the still active 93-year-old poet’s art and social activism, the film seems slight and discursive, more of an introduction than a definitive portrait.

Designed as a family film adventure promoting positive values, it’s a sort of teenage "Raiders of the Lost Ark" that will provide mild diversion for very young audiences.

There’s a crucial shortage of heart here, from the messy storytelling to the hit-or-miss humor and unattractive visuals.

Although directed in effectively creepy fashion by Roberto Buso-Garcia, the film’s leisurely pacing and overall restraint will likely leave genre fans dissatisfied even as its lack of depth will turn off art-house patrons.

Paying slavish homage to culty genre predecessors from the sixties, seventies and eighties, this steamy tale of a hunky screenwriter, his ethereal blood-sucking paramour and her bad-girl sister can't quite decide whether to be seductively stylish or knowingly cheesy.

A mockumentary obviously inspired by his landmark 1990 series The Civil War, misses the Christopher Guest mark by a mile.

For all the earnestness with which the filmmakers replicate the muted colors and attitudes of the post-war era, they ultimately fail to say anything truly interesting about either the past or the present, resulting in a work that feels as superficial as it does slick.

The action is practically non-stop from beginning to end, but is never remotely exciting due to the Cuisinart-style editing that reduces it all to an incomprehensible, messy blur.

Setting aside the movie’s tediously lame dialogue, self-conscious performances and frequently predicable scares, the narrative’s compulsively shifting chronology intermittently manages to engage, although it does little to obscure the distracting shortcomings of both plot and character development.

Part adventure saga, part elaborate home movie, the documentary showcases both the emotional and physical pitfalls faced by this emotionally fraught crew.

An amusing premise yields few yuks.

Even with all its familiar action tropes, less-than-fresh special effects and loopy plotting, the most depressing element in the Wachowski siblings' latest sci-fi mash is that, as they conceive it, human society has been around for more than a billion years but is still presided over by a rivalrous British-style royal family that treacherously behaves as if it were the 1550s.

Features a winning performance by Sara Rue as its titular heroine but otherwise has little to recommend it. Playing a wallflower who blossoms when she finally meets the right guy, the actress has charm to spare.

Pretty, occasionally witty and not believable for a moment, Sophie Lellouche's Paris-Manhattan is suffused with fannish love for Woody Allen's films but hardly lives up to their legacy.

The strained results eventually prove wearisome, although the sexy Winter is effectively scary and at times even moving as the psycho femme fatale.

The ideal animated film for Ron Paul to watch with his grandchildren, the bizarre Silver Circle certainly deserves points for sheer eccentricity.

Playing it safe with a script that offers Riddick up as a lone avenging hero, Twohy passes on the opportunity to effectively shade the character’s distinctive dimensionality.

The Story of Luke suffers all the flaws associated with disability films and more. Familiar faces in the cast may attract notice in niche bookings, but no one involved will benefit from the exposure.

Attempting to be a meditation on the nature of creative passion and the emotionally liberating effects of physical labor, Triumph of the Wall is as much of an exercise in frustration for the viewer as for its hapless protagonist.

The impression is that De Palma is indulging himself with homages to his own Hitchcockian greatest hits, with results that veer close to self-parody on occasion and emphasize just how far this once-outstanding director's creative star has plummeted.

Embodying the same wholesomeness that has informed most of his screen work, gross-out comedies included, it feels like a tentative next step in Sandler’s evolving screen persona, one that has gone from good-hearted dolt to bumbling man-child to middle-aged father.

This farcical romantic comedy lacks the charm and star power to compensate for its contrived plotting and only mildly amusing situations.

Drift paddles aimlessly between plotlines, only finding its groove out beyond the break.

It’s too blandly acted and directed to make much of an impact.

Banks succeeds in mining a few laughs from the otherwise strained, contrived proceedings.

The outcome is usually fairly tiresome, but on occasion reaches levels of moderate originality.

Begins as a marginally fun diversion before proving to have nearly no interest in the possibilities of its premise.

Its basis in reality is undermined by Gupta’s overly stylized approach and too many camera tricks, though the ‘80s costumes are striking and the actors wear them well. Performances are broad, but effective, throughout.

Straining for a quiet poeticism and, to its credit, occasionally achieving it thanks to the beautifully photographed scenic environs, Pilgrim Song fails to involve us in its central character’s introspection.

Equal parts thriller and feel-good inspirational tale, 33 Postcards succeeds mainly in provoking the viewer’s sense of disbelief.

A female solidarity adultery comedy that's three parts embarrassing farce to one part genuinely comic discharge.

Lacking the objectivity or contextual analysis to more fully examine the important issues it raises, it’s a minor chapter in an unfinished story.

By the time the proceedings reach their "Paranormal Activity"-style violent conclusion, the viewer’s interest has long since waned.

Heli is undoubtedly made with serious intent, but it is also relentlessly depressing and curiously uninvolving.

Halfway between a guilty pleasure and a missed opportunity, it makes the crucial mistake of treating curious viewers like deferential subjects, demanding far more sympathy than it deserves.

An old-fashioned, Robin Hood-style revenge tale that favors self-serious storytelling over action and suspense, Arnaud des Pallieres’ Michael Kohlhaas provides a few quick thrills and some beautifully photographed landscapes, but never really convinces as an intellectual’s swords-and-horses period piece.

Tonal inconsistency, lethargic pacing and a shortage of fresh insight dilute the storytelling efficacy of this quartet of loosely interconnected episodes involving ordinary people pushed over the edge.

Omirbaev fails to invest either the murder plot or its political subtext with much suspense or conviction.

Featuring a plethora of unsavory characters, undeveloped subplots and a confusingly jagged narrative, this extremely low-budget effort is mainly notable for its willingness to get down and dirty.

The film will attract the attention of a public that's increasingly educated about gourmet matters, but leave the most serious viewers unsatisfied. Fatally for a film of this sort, it doesn't leave the viewer wanting a drink.

It's not a trip of ''Nashville'' sweep. In fact, it's closer to Dullsville. [13 May 1996]

Familiar faces in supporting roles don't do much for the commercial prospects of this modest film, which feels like a made-for-TV version of the prototypical Sundance-aspiring quest for identity.

Unfortunately, writer-director Scott Walker's film is a muddled and strangely inert one, generating little of the suspense or anguish its subject requires; despite its high-profile cast.

The execution, however, leaves something to be desired, as this effort seems more visually muddled and choppier than previous installments.

Babbit's flat direction has none of the lurid appeal or humor that (along with a much more appealing cast) sustained John McNaughton's notionally similar "Wild Things" through crazy plot contrivances.

Obvious parallels to "Thelma & Louise" do little to raise the dramatic stakes here.

While this is indeed a likeable enough group, watching them interact with each other over the course of 80 minutes becomes a bit wearisome.

Tiny Times certainly offers fantastical lifestyles which is nearly unattainable for most of its viewers. But what makes the film even more beguiling is probably its inability to create empathy, as it goes without accounting for where these individuals came from and why their friendships were so rock-solid.

Watching your friends’ actual wedding videos, however painful, would be a more edifying experience than sitting through Breakup at a Wedding.

The visual images are manipulative and simplistic; like the verbal ranting, they are devoid of depth.

Solid performances are undercut by lack of storytelling integrity in this plodding biopic.

Annette Haywood-Carter’s slow-paced film features a plethora of colorful characters and incidents that register with little dramatic impact.

The film’s facile message of cross-cultural unity owes more to fairy tale than reality, but the action is slick and the story gripping.

Though full of material that will move sports fans, some questions of emphasis and lack of polish make the film less galvanizing than it might've been.

It doesn’t really add up to much, beyond a timely reminder that it would be better for everyone to stop uploading and downloading and just unplug and be human.

The fight sequences are staged with admirable proficiency despite the often cheesy special effects.

A technically polished but mostly unmoving example of a genre (the watch-kids-do-something-hard doc) assumed to be inherently charming.

A formulaic comedy that displays as much subtlety as its title.

Writer-director Shaka King clearly knows this world, perhaps too well, but making pot use, or denial, the focus of nearly every scene becomes tedious.

With a running time of nearly two hours the overall silliness wears thin rather quickly.

The film unfortunately depicts black female sexuality, a topic rarely portrayed onscreen, with all the depth and subtlety of a late night Cinemax offering.

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

There's little in the way of genuine depth, complexity or nuance here, Diaz instead seeks to convey the illusion of profundity by having various characters throw around weighty social and philosophical verbiage in thuddingly sophomoric fashion.

Glossier and more lavishly produced than most faith-based films, the film directed by Steve Race is ultimately undone by a relentless preachiness that gives it the feel of a two-hour sermon.

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.

A highly homogenized and sanitized remake that's little better than its 1981 predecessor.

The film manages to generate only mild shocks and surprises.

Its hopelessly stodgy execution will test the patience of even the most enthusiastic audiences for faith-based films.