Indeed, all this teeters closely to all-out tastelessness, but what makes 3.0 even more unbearable than its predecessors is the sheer ineptitude beneath the glossy surface: the laughable narrative, scatterbrained storytelling and inconsistent characterizations basically magnify the previous film's flaws to an improbable extreme.

A clumsy high-school sex comedy which tries too hard to be both shocking and endearing, falling short on both counts.

Has some clever ideas up its sleeve, but otherwise fails to provoke much interest in the travails of its 40-something central character.

The wistful pleasures are stretched awfully thin at almost two hours in a film that blurs the line separating self-irony from tiresome self-consciousness.

Magic in the Moonlight does have a not-disagreeable expensive-vacation vibe to it. But the one-dimensional characters are mostly ones you’d want to avoid rather than spend a holiday with.

Despite what sounds, and sometimes plays out, like a working-class soap opera, Pagnol’s genius is evident in the way emotions are often distilled through the characters’ winsome Southern attitudes, creating an atmosphere infused with playful humor, innate wit and an endless flow of alcohol.

Fanny is definitely a worthy companion to Marius, although it’s also more claustrophobic in terms of staging, confining the action to a handful of interior sequences that feel less like a movie than like filmed theater, albeit of a rather high order.

Featuring unlikeable characters, preposterously contrived plotting, ham-fisted dialogue and strained attempts at poeticism, Among Ravens is a misfire on every level.

The not so fair and balanced film might have made its religious themes palatable if it worked reasonably well as a thriller. But director/screenwriter Lusko shows no flair for the genre, his muddled execution lacking any sense of pacing or suspense.

The Purge: Anarchy efficiently exploits its high-concept premise while delivering far more visceral thrills than its predecessor.

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.

Thomason delivers a strong performance as the stalwart hero, and Furlong... makes for a highly convincing jerk. But their efforts aren’t enough to prevent the end of the world, at least as depicted here, from seeming awfully dull.

It is unlikely that a lot of viewers come to see a Step Up film for convincing dialogue or psychological insight into a group of young things trying to make it big in a ruthless industry. But there’s barely any humor that doesn’t feel third-rate and most of the plot threads are so thin that All In occasionally feels like a satire of a dance film.

Sex Tape is sexcruciating.

Klinger is clearly aiming at a hardcore of filmmakers and cinema students, but even that niche audience will only glean incomplete insights into the methods and motivations of his subjects.

A fable-like horror mystery with strong comic and romantic tendencies, Alexandre Aja's Horns draws on source material by cult scribe (and son of Stephen King) Joe Hill to deliver something much more beguiling than the straighter genre fare (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) that made his name.

The use of sign language, deafness and silence itself adds several heady new ingredients to the base material, alchemically creating something rich, strange and very original.

Aside from the ponderously contrived narrative, however, which mines a long list of supposedly relatable female insecurities and neuroses, much of the characterization relies on one-dimensional stereotyping.

Deng and Yu have delivered a ceaseless juggernaut of incoherently-strung together gags like a lightweight Stephen Chow; this could make Adam Sandler, who could easily be imagined dabbling in something like this, look like a nuanced artist.

Though cheerful and highly polished, the doc's storytelling is less effective than it might've been, a failing balanced by the likability of its lead characters and the scrappy spirit of their project.

Commercial director Bruce Macdonald’s first feature film feels curiously inert.

No one who sees the film will feel it breaks any new ground, but as a cinematic equivalent of comfort food, it goes down easily.

The Battered Bastards of Baseball is not just about baseball. It transcends the game and is a charming anti-establishment yarn.

Straining mightily for a mythic quality and reaching a predictably melancholic, violent conclusion, Road to Paloma mainly comes across as a vanity project star vehicle.

Less music-stuffed but more conceptually ambitious than the average music doc.

An uneven mix of serious issue movie and sensational thrill ride, Honour is no masterpiece, but it is an accomplished debut.

A slight anecdote expanded to slightly beyond its natural length, The Empty Hours is nevertheless time well spent.

Director Overbay, working from an effective screenplay by his wife Ginny Lee Overbay, slowly ratchets up the tension in quietly compelling fashion.