The film becomes a hodgepodge that will enlighten few viewers.

Nirmalakhandan attempts to pull off this whirlwind display of staggeringly dysfunctional family dynamics with a lightness of tone that’s often at odds with events in the film.

The film rings false at almost every turn despite its naturalistic performances. Lacking emotional substance, it comes off as far too studied in its subdued intensity.

Gruesome violence, in which throats are slashed and heads are split open in realistic detail, is the sum content of Friday the 13th, a sick and sickening low budget feature that is being released by Paramount. It’s blatant exploitation of the lowest order.

Aaron Zigman’s score provides reassuring downhome uplift — perhaps a necessary element in a tale of impossible, perfect love, where everything happens for a reason and is as it should be, even when it’s terrible.

The reductionist plot eventually forces both the protagonists and the filmmakers into a blind shaft without a productive exit strategy.

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.

Filmed in permanent twilight with a static camera and no music, it is gloomy and unrewarding with an oblique and uninformative script.

Here is one more dubious piece of agitprop that will delight the author’s fans and have very little impact on his opponents.

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

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.

Gary Dauberman’s haphazard screenplay merely piles on the cheap scares, with director Leonetti cranking the volume up to 11 to accentuate the frequent jolts. It all adds up to a compendium of horror movie clichés.

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

Fails to rise above the inherent sordidness of the subject matter. It’s indifferently acted and directed, though it generates a measure of suspense and queasy fascination.

And to be fair, Cusack doesn’t phone it in. He gives the part his all, displaying his usual expert deadpan comic timing while delivering the weak quips in Carmine Gaeta and Luke Davies’ screenplay. But it’s disheartening nonetheless to see him working so hard to enliven such inferior material.

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.

Misguided, diminished and dismally done in every way, this late-summer afterthought will richly earn the distinction of becoming the first Ben-Hur in any form to flop.

The overwrought, uncontrolled sci-fi thriller Automata is a disappointing example of a film which lacks the imagination to follow persuasively through on its engaging initial premise.

This film’s thin charms lie not in its authenticity but in its zippy energy, good-looking cast and mild sprinkling of action.

The rather routine imitation of reality TV-style camera and editing techniques, along with uninspired special effects associated with Carson’s spiritual affliction, don’t attempt to break new ground but gain little by repeating familiar formulas.

Co-scripters and directors Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath never seem quite sure which horror subgenre the film should favor, as the supernatural elements demonstrate little synergy with the serial-killer procedural plotting.

Although ultimately far too muddled in its concept and execution to be anything more than a curiosity, The Scribbler does manage the dubious feat of being one of the strangest films you’re likely to see this year.

A seemingly well-intentioned but deeply flawed film about dementia that becomes as erratic and misguided as its protagonist, Sharon Greytak's Archaeology of a Woman does no favors to those afflicted with cognitive disease or those hoping to understand them.

Has there ever been a Hollywood adaptation of a major novel as faithful and yet so misguided and downright strange as the three-part version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged that now comes to a conclusion with the third installment?

Despite the presence of Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer, both sprightly and appealing in the lead roles, this misfire of a cornball romance is so tone-deaf, so utterly lacking in screwball snap and visual punch, that viewers will find it hard to care whether or not the aging lovebirds end up in each other’s arms.

The filmmakers attempt to inject some life into their dubiously thin narrative by incorporating sequences shot at actual haunted houses that favor more elaborate shock tactics.

Not bad enough to be a guilty pleasure, but plenty bad nonetheless.

While Isaac Feder's raunchy comedy gives the "Sixth Sense" star the opportunity to roll a condom over a banana and talk really dirty, it offers precious little to even the most undemanding audiences.