Has no inherent laughs, so an extremely versatile and talented cast struggles mightily to make something funny that simply isn't.

Ultimately involves a highly contrived, melodramatic ending that wouldn't have been out of place in a '40s-era film noir.

Although cheap looking and amateurishly acted, Flesh for the Beast, which features a music score by the eccentric guitarist Buckethead, doesn't invite huge critical derision, if only for the palpable enthusiasm of both the cast and filmmaker for their gory shenanigans.

Several respectable actors offer dicey performances here, but Rappaport's screenplay is the real villain, expecting thin references to real-world financial peril to paper over gaping holes in credibility and plain-old drama.

Acts of Violence evaporates from your mind while you're watching it.

Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother?

After a while, you give up trying to make sense of the plot and sit there gaping at the car crashes, fight scenes, and shootings. The problem is that even the mayhem quickly becomes repetitive.

With a frost-bitten script whose skeletal plot cuts and pastes bits from innumerable other survival yarns, the biggest surprise the film offers is that four people were required to write it.

Infinite is a soulless grind. Juiced up with a succession of CG-enhanced accelerated chases and fight action interspersed with numbing bursts of high-concept geek speak, Antoine Fuqua’s sci-fi thriller isn’t helped by a lead performance from Mark Wahlberg at his most inexpressive.

The story's final, intended aha moment falls woefully flat, but capping this flawed valentine to artistic independence is a closing-credits nod to Easy Rider, especially poignant so soon after Peter Fonda's death.

Moshe, who wrote and directed, creates a boldly Expressionistic alternate reality to background this heavy-on-the-action story, but neglects narrative and character beyond the most basic strokes.

A horror film that relies on a silent child to adequately convey terror is starting off with a significant handicap, one that The Unspoken never manages to overcome.

Chauncey Page (Jason Woods) is no Michael Myers, and this Homecoming killing spree is far from "Halloween" in almost every respect. Notable only for a cast consisting solely of people of color (and for the involvement of RZA), the pic fails to deliver what its title promises.

A half-sequel, half-remake of the Brooke Shields surprise hit from 1980. Once more, a pair of tanned teens have fun in the sun on the beach, though with less nudity, more discreet sex, and an increase in environmental consciousness. [31 Jul 1991]

Unfortunately, John Moore has directed these sequences in a way that makes the incidents look so far-fetched and essentially unsurvivable that you can only laugh.

Unfortunately, the themes don't resonate in sufficiently powerful fashion to compensate for the film's sluggish pacing and strained melodramatics.

Dolan has labored hard to yoke together these tricksy, time-jumping, intertwined plots, reportedly editing down a mountain of material over two years. In the process, a whole character played by Jessica Chastain was surgically removed. But however long he tinkered, Dolan has not quite salvaged a story whose default setting seems to be mirthless, ponderous navel-gazing.

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

Despite its serious subject matter, Mob Town assumes an oddly comic tone for much of its running time, coming across almost like a spoof at times. Unfortunately, nothing in it is particularly funny, and the deadly pacing makes the movie seem much longer than it is.

It falls short on character definition, emotional involvement, narrative drive and originality.

A modern cinematic equivalent of the sort of tired sex farces that used to populate Broadway with regularity, If I Were You simultaneously exploits and squanders the talents of its star, Marcia Gay Harden.

While not nearly as elaborate, nor as visually sophisticated as the last Mission: Impossible outing or the most recent Bonds, London Has Fallen is actually more plausible at its core, if not in its details, which is partly why it succeeds in laying claim to an audience's attention for the entirety of its swift running time.

An appealing cast and well-executed mood of foreboding would seem to hold some promise commercially, but the script grows silly in the third act, letting the picture down.

Tries to be too many things, none very convincingly: plea for tolerance, docu-style character study, old-fashioned weepie.

To paraphrase a famous line from an old political debate--I've seen Carrie, I love Carrie, and Some Kind of Hate is no Carrie.

The mixed-gene pool of talent doesn't quite jell, but a saving grace is Korean sweetheart Jeon Ji-hyun.

Rollins' villain is a deliciously deranged, compelling character, but the problem is that there's not enough of him in this otherwise routine B-movie clearly shot on the cheap, with low-grade CGI effects making the shootouts and gore mostly laughable.

Ultimately a less-than-satisfying cinematic meal.

This lame effort represents international collaboration of the most mediocre kind.

In the climactic team rollerblade race down the "devil's backbone," this Warner Bros. throwaway tries to combine "Rollerball" and "Breaking Away" for a wow finish that will leave audiences awestruck and cheering. Skaters crash into fences, hit their heads on spittoons, smash genitals-first into trees, jump over cars, slide under semis and battle each other. But this absurdly contrived hokum, poorly shot and edited, is the final insult in what is overall a new low for teen-targeted, big-screen pulp. [20 Sept 1993]

Representing one of Robin Williams' last films, A Merry Friggin' Christmas lives up to its bah, humbug title. Not only because it's terrible, although it is, but rather because one desperately hoped that the beloved actor would go out on a high note.

A puerile combination of raunchy sex comedy and bland action vehicle, CHIPS will likely manage the difficult feat of simultaneously alienating fans of the original series and newcomers who will wonder why a buddy cop comedy displays so much homosexual panic.

Whatever sociological interest it engenders is smothered by its hamfisted execution, including stubbornly lugubrious pacing, overly self-conscious performances and awkward dialogue and voice-over narration that all too bluntly lays out its themes.

Squanders its timely illegal alien theme with a predictable and unconvincing story line that makes "Green Card" seem a classic by comparison.

There’s scant emotional, aesthetic or intellectual gratification in this grainy, flat-looking portrait of the artist as a young nut job.

Mirren always brings a touch of class, of course, even to deluxe schlock like this. But Clarke is something of a blank leading man while the secondary characters are mostly pale phantoms sleepwalking through a thinly drawn plot.

Passion is spoken of and clumsily envisioned in The Aspern Papers, but not a drop of it is felt.

Its largely Hispanic cast and extensive Puerto Rico locations lend a unique quality to Paul Kampf's prison drama starring Laurence Fishburne as a morally corrupt warden. Unfortunately, those elements are the only original aspects of this turgid exercise in prison movie clichés which doesn't even manage to be convincing as melodrama. Although certainly well-meaning in its condemnation of capital punishment, Imprisoned is too dully executed to achieve its desired impact.

Relentlessly unpleasant and nihilistic in its approach and execution, The Divide is best appreciated as a virtual instruction manual on how not to behave during a crisis.

Claustrophobic, tedious sci-fi thriller.

The fact that the three actors who do most of the fooling around — Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon — have a combined age of 202 pegs this as a sex romp for the Viagra crowd.

Dirty Deeds is as feeble as a teen comedy can get.

While the 1986 edition was no classic, it's light years better than this update, which naturally opened without being screened for those ultimate villains, the critics.

Featuring stereotypical characterizations and painfully awkward dialogue, the film treats its dramatic themes with a wince-inducing shallowness. Virtually nothing in the drawn-out proceedings works on any level, and the characters are so inherently unlikeable that being in their company is as painful for viewers as it is for them.

It's certainly a moving tale.... Unfortunately, the film tells the story in the most prosaic fashion imaginable, missing nary a single faith-based film cliché with its one-dimensional noble characters, banal dialogue and requisite sermonizing.

Playing somewhat like a juvenile version of "Rosemary's Baby," this inept, incoherent attempt to cash in on young girls who can't buy a ticket to the R-rated "Saw V" (or are too lazy to sneak in) will be out of theaters long before the Halloween pumpkins start to rot.

While hardly sophisticated in its approach and certainly not polished in its technical elements, the film does get its heartfelt message across with undeniable sincerity.

Best viewed as a glossy advertisement for the venerable military academy that is its focus, Field of Lost Shoes doesn’t exactly score points for objectivity.

The endless parade of parodistic gags displays no semblance of wit, with the filmmakers content to perfectly ape the silliness of the era's music videos and such fashion statements as wearing a single cross earring.

With filmmaking roots in horror and other genre fare, Taylor invokes some interesting cinematic choices but sometimes seems to be uneasily straddling the line between serious, intense drama and outright exploitation.

What the film doesn’t have is anything resembling a compelling narrative.

The best that can be said about When I’m a Moth is that it is not lurid, although it does seem pointless.

With such an in-house cast of extended Coppola family sparklers, one would think things couldn’t go too wrong in the comedy department, but they have little chance to oil the wheels of a creaky script written around Sheen.

The central battle between fearsomely independent corporate mavericks and hostile big government has been updated in a half-baked, unconvincing way that's exacerbated by button-pushing TV-style direction, threadbare production values and blah performances except for that of Taylor Schilling in the central role.

Cage supplies energy but no depth in his portrayal of a disillusioned knight. Ditto that for Perlman, who never feels comfortable in the sidekick role so he pretty much goes through the (exaggerated) motions.

Misses nary a single cliché in its visually disorienting and narratively confusing proceedings.

A lazily written and generically directed Fatal Attraction knockoff.

Like a frumpy version of "Knocked Up" playing out in a sadder, stranger world, Barry Munday offers two icky humans and hopes that, by the tale's end, we'll be happy they're procreating.

The funniest bit involves a particularly sadistic brand of torture that he inflicts on Hannah.... She quite rightly screams in protest, as should anyone forced to watch this movie.

A romantic comedy depends, of course, on the chemistry between the leads, and here the film is more successful. Both Heigl and Butler find the appeal in very flawed characters.

The sheer nastiness of the jealous one-upmanship and angry sabotage puts a damper on the yuletide comedy. You're much better off watching a DVD of "Bad Santa."

Has little to offer besides unrelenting strangeness.

There are some good ideas struggling to be heard, but they're drowned out by the contrivances, the gunfire and the screaming.

Cory Monteith in one of his last screen roles may be the best thing going for McCanick, a tired cop drama that recycles predictable narrative elements almost to the point of meaninglessness and then substitutes wildly improbable developments in place of actual originality.

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.

The computer animation proves competent if uninspired, and somehow manages to make even its presumably fail-safe puffins devoid of cuteness.

It's all largely incoherent, with the screenplay's twists and surprise revelations having an utterly artificial feel.

The clunky narrative doesn’t ring true for a second, and the hackneyed dialogue is even worse.

At isolated moments a tolerably amusing send-up of alien invasion disaster movies in which the attackers are video arcade-era renegades arrived to gobble up as many famous landmarks as possible, this one-note comedy runs out of gas within an hour (it is based on a short film) and should have been trimmed to a neat 90 minutes.

A no-budget "Alien" ripoff with little reason to exist beyond the few creature-effects shots its design team now can add to its reel, Roger Christian's Stranded might leave viewers yearning for the director's "Battlefield Earth" -- a film that, terrible though it was, at least couldn't be accused of a lack of ambition.

Unfortunately, settings alone don't make a movie, and this cliché-ridden effort feels indistinguishable from the countless similarly themed horror films that have preceded it.

Monotonous, unimaginative actioner.

After a promisingly tart start, the strident satire stumbles and falls into a sitcom-y hole from which it never emerges, despite the game efforts of its dynamic ensemble.

It's a chick flick with a vengeance but even in its most sentimental moments, stars Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear make this feel-good-about-yourself movie feel ... well, good.

Neither the dramatic nor action elements are remotely compelling, with the nearly two-hour running time feeling interminable.

Unlike that widely appealing picture with the giant green ogre, this one's strictly for the kiddies.

Mortdecai is an anachronistic mess that never succeeds in re-creating the breezy tone or snappy rhythm of the classic caper movies that it aims to pastiche.

A certain integrity and seriousness of intent gleams through, but Nina is just too big a subject, and talent, to be compressed into such a small package.

It's more than funny enough, packing lots of genuine, if frequently tasteless, laughs into its relatively brief running time

In terms of real horror, nevermind sexual-politics provocation, "Grave" can neither re-create its predecessor's impact nor compete with stranger new beasts like Lars von Trier's "Antichrist."

Runs 96 minutes but feels like so much more. There is only one gag.

Instead of improving on the original's visualization of the liminal state between life and death, director Niels Arden Oplev turns the conceit into just another excuse for rote haunting, making this Flatliners often indistinguishable from its 2017 thriller peers.

So even if Sex and the City 2 consisted of nothing but a two-hour fashion show, it would draw crowds. But it also has the returning cast members in fine comic form, and it has more cutting-edge humor than the first movie.

Not even the estimable comic chops of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker can lift it above the level of ordinary.

The result is not the train wreck one might anticipate from surfing the Net. The catfights, overacting and Berry's swagger in a skimpy, tight, leather outfit that would be right at home at a Hookers Ball make for campy fun.

Does offer a few deeply felt moments.

Lacking a high concept or memorable central character, the film is a by-the-numbers actioner that coasts on its star’s soulful gravitas and low-key charisma.

The technical barrage of visual and digital effects, quick cuts and strobe lighting does produce something akin to the sensation of playing a video game. So why, one wonders, don't potential viewers simply play one instead of watching this pale imitation?

Clearly qualified in the physique department, Crews is an actor with enough charisma and range to carry either gritty genre adventures or more cartoony showdowns; but Forbes' tonal uncertainty and a stiff script leave him stranded here, in a world that lacks the gravity to put his conscience-driven reticence in context.

With its clever premise and quartet of appealing comedic star turns, Wild Hogs is a step above the typical comedies rolling off the assembly lines of the major studios.

It’s all an overstuffed mess, but that was true of the previous entries as well, and audiences obviously don’t seem to mind.

Inspirationally impaired and dramatically retarded.

Most of The Spy Next Door is pretty tired stuff from "Pacifier"-style slapstick to comic relief delivered by, of all people, erstwhile country star Billy Ray Cyrus.

Amid the rarely very creepy buildup to the Amityville-ish showdown to come, the screenplay piles on more unrelated domestic drama than the picture can take.

A love story that veers uneasily between mysticism and melodrama.

The film’s only real draws are Gibson and Penn, who come at the material from opposite ends of the acting philosophy spectrum...It's simply confounding, much like the rest of the movie.

Ultimately, the film staggers under the weight of its pretensions, its plot spiraling into murky illegibility.

Such an utterly routine, formulaic and forgettable example of its genre that watching it becomes an exercise in endurance. Even the always welcome presence of veteran actor William Fichtner, terrific as usual, isn't enough to save it.