Laughably inept on every technical level and representing the sort of badness that falls far short of being campy fun, Contract to Kill is strictly DOA.

Benefits from a fresh angle that will particularly appeal to blues aficionados.

While Passengers offers a few shrewd observations about our increasingly tech-enabled, corporatized lives, its heavy-handed mix of life-or-death exigencies and feel-good bromides finally feels like a case of more being less.

What fans will get here is loads of action, great effects, good comic relief, stunning locations (Iceland, Jordan and the Maldives) and some intriguing early glimpses of the Galactic Empire as it begins to flex its inter-galactic power.

Audiences who enjoy smiling through tears, and don't mind having their buttons pushed in the most obvious ways, could probably do a lot worse.

What sets Courgette apart is the constant attention to how each incident and experience influences and builds character, which is how these children can slowly ease themselves into their future grown-up selves.

Almost nothing anyone does registers as recognizably human; it’s all just a pretext for yet another round of envelope-pushing outrageousness.

The fine, spirited work of Taraji P. Henson, Spencer and Janelle Monae as irresistible rooting interests, as well as Kevin Costner’s winningly lived-in turn as the head of Langley’s Space Task Group, deepen a film that’s propelled by sitcommy beats and expository dialogue.

Silence, more successfully than not, artfully addresses the core issue of its maker's lifelong religious struggle.

As lumbering and slow-moving as the vehicle in which most of its action takes place, Nick Gillespie’s horror thriller makes the familiar mistake of confusing obscurity with tension.

Rajiv Shah’s screenplay fails to flesh out its characters and situations in compelling fashion, leaving the actors struggling to bring depth to the sketchy scenario and Mehta’s uninspired direction.

Producers may have envisioned a Die Hard-like cat-and-mouse game between their protagonists and the heavily armed goon squad. But even using the more appropriate Olympus Has Fallen as a benchmark, Kill Ratio is a snooze.

The high concept outshines the execution; it’s easy to see how a significantly slimmed-down and sharpened version of the overlong feature might have been a small-time contender.

Director Conor Allyn’s idea of enhancing a fight scene is employing such stale devices as freeze frames and split screens.

The film is engrossing, thanks to the director’s skill at delivering sustained tension, and the excellent performances.

The film is as vibrant as it is personal and urgent.

There are some thrilling sequences, to be sure, but the whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts.

Though his stories suggest a pansexual curiosity, Neil himself seems only mildly engaged, and sluggish direction keeps both scenes with the nerd's dream girl and the jailbait-courting man from generating much heat.

Despite its frustratingly wandering narrative, All We Had does manage to pull you in, thanks largely to its moving depiction of the mother-daughter bond at its center.

While Bousman's climax is a not terribly original effects-laden haunted house, the house's builder, and his motives, have enough of their own flavor to please a hardened horror fan.

The screenplay finds ways to make this more involving than the average flee-the-monster storyline and, by the genre's standards, direction and performances rate reasonably well.

Defying its somewhat generic-sounding title, Johnny Ma's gripping criminal thriller Old Stone deploys powerful performances and eerie imagery.

Supernatural shenanigans and amateur sleuthing add up to mild-mannered entertainment in Jackson Stewart’s affectionately quirky directorial debut.

It’s a frenetic grab bag of strained shtick, however expertly delivered by ace comic performers.

Rains, who was given an acting award by the Tribeca jury, brings such a sense of purpose to the part that the movie never goes slack.

Incarnate, much like its central character at key moments, barely seems to have a pulse.

Proves alternately inspiring and depressing even while skirting uncomfortably close to voyeurism.

While the doc uses reenactment and plentiful period news footage to chart how Sands withered away, and to capture the mixture of respect and grief his determination to die produced in supporters, the film is always about more than Sands.