The fact that the sequel is a messy, dull, instantly forgettable trifle somehow makes it the perfect follow-up to the original -- it's just as horrible.

Another romantic comedy in a long list of contemporaries which, despite scant traces of effort, fails in making its title character anything more than second fiddle to the couple who should rightfully take his place.

Watching Russell Crowe as a genuinely frightening villain sounds entertaining, but the bitterness and contempt seething through “Unhinged” is repellant enough to make you want to shower afterward.

Despite its sometimes questionable jokes, provocative cultural trolling and a shaky plot, Shaft isn’t either a full-on misfire nor blaxploitation rejuvenation. Instead, Shaft is a decent, if slightly tepid, action comedy anchored by a hilarious performance by Samuel L. Jackson.

Despite having a lead that can fend for herself, and a fun ensemble of co-stars, In the Blood runs dry.

Suicide Squad isn’t a terrible movie per se and judged against its forbearer, ‘Batman v Superman,’ it resembles a shining beacon of coherence. But Suicide Squad isn’t a very good movie either, a mediocre effort with commonplace ideas of rebelliousness and salvation.

Heralding the arrival of Seth Fisher as a voice to watch, Blumenthal is much like its characters: a frankly funny and original piece of work.

While the first two-thirds of the film gets the job done, it’s the third act where 65 goes all out, and it sticks the landing perfectly.

Perhaps the pieces could have held together with the right leading man as glue. Elgort is, assuredly, not that.

While those looking for a few midnight movie scares will find themselves very disappointed, the film is funny, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

3 Days to Kill might not be art, but it's better than most of the overtly violent action fare that litters the multiplexes these days, thanks largely to the fact that its heart is almost as big as its explosions.

What could’ve been a fun little sci-fi horror transforms into something that deflates any remaining tension and engagement in one fell swoop.

Based on the story of a man beaten so mercilessly he had to construct a fantasy world in order to survive his great pain and suffering, Robert Zemeckis’ insipid Welcome To Marwen is a painfully schmaltzy misjudged disaster, and superficial retelling that dishonors a layered and agonizing story about trauma.

Message from the King isn’t a chore to watch by any means; and there are moments that suggest the more colorful neo-noir that might’ve been.

The result is a melodrama where any sense of tension fades the longer Nina and Tito speak.

In Bana and Ramirez, who share a palpable bro-mantic, odd-couple quality, the film finds its most charismatic element... but shoves it aside to deliver a movie that will dully meet the barest of expectations instead of trying to exceed them.

There is a sense of exhaustive familiarity that permeates throughout Taylor Hackford’s new dramedy The Comedian.

Given that this isn’t the extended TV mini-series that the subject deserves, Salinger does an effective job of making the writer seem alternately more mundane and more mysterious, almost at the same time.

The film’s half-hearted politics — which do make a statement, regardless of intent — are perhaps less egregious than a movie that’s simply going through the motions for the bulk of its running time.

Aloha is bittersweet overkill. Familiar and unwieldy, the dramedy is one long, sustained and ultimately overwrought note of happy/sad wistfulness that loops itself into an echo of strained feedback.

Why, besides a stellar opening weekend, does this extended narrative exist?

Out of the Shadows’ barrels forward like such a rampaging beast that it decimates everything – plot, character, emotion, basic visual lucidity – in its wake.

It’s not unpleasant, thanks to the energetic dialogue and songs, but it lacks the fun and focus that made “Pitch Perfect” such a surprise hit worthy of repeat viewings.

Trying to find a middle ground between an action packed Statham vehicle, a '70s style mood piece, and a '90s era, character-actor packed crime tale, Wild Card is not surprisingly an unsuccessful marriage of those ill-fitting genres.

Your time would be better spent staring at a postcard for two hours. No, not even the presence of the usually magnetic Marion Cotillard will stave off the boredom of Garcia and Jacques Fieschi‘s screenplay.

This newest Sandler vehicle is inspired and warm-hearted where his other recent movies are lazy and soulless. Does that make it a winning success? Hell no, but it’s good to see Sandler put his heart into his work again.

In trying to include as much as it does, ‘Outlaws’ finds itself as more of tonal soup than a cohesive narrative feature.

There is an emptiness that lingers around Jupiter Ascending. From the lack of original thought in its conception to the expensive excess in its execution, the directors' usual bag of tricks can't manage to fill the void.

Ultimately of course, this is Statham’s show, and as always he doesn’t disappoint.

Given how poorly made, poorly written, and poorly crafted “The 355” is —with action that is casually visceral, but actually borderline incompetent and super sloppily staged—the final product reeks of superficial vanity project intended to “let girls be badass” rather than trying to circumvent, better, or elevate the genre (or women for that matter).

This movie, a forgettable indie aside from who directed it, offers sentiment, and its existence. That’s about it. Whether one is revolted or delighted by another C.K. production, Fourth of July is a dud.

It promises a minute character study, but Franny, though embodied by a game Gere who in all fairness does visit places in his performance we have rarely seen him even stop by before, is less a person than a collection of quirks.

Perhaps worst of all, the movie is light on the laughs meant to come from trash-talking; the comedy just doesn’t have the crispiness it needs.

There turns out to be no actual book in Spiral: From the Book of Saw, but it does define what makes an intricately bad movie, with flaws that can sometimes be earnest, unintentionally hilarious, or disappointing.

With both Garner and Shahedi providing voice-over, the small-town stakes and the big thematic ideas, Butter feels like someone trying to create the lemonade tang and quenching zest of, say, Alexander Payne's "Election."

Lawrence’s latest is fine for its don’t-over-think-it standards, and while it’s glossier than it is deep, it’s at least charted through with a roller coaster’s engineering. There’s something comforting about a movie that has the true ease of a fantastical dream, and for “Slumberland” that fleeting excitement may be enough.

In Brick Mansions Walker is understated and tough, a continued testament to his frequently overlooked accomplishments as a performer. You just wish the movie surrounding him was better.

He's a romantic and a psychopath and creature of the night. Sadly, Dracula Untold, with its humorless aura and been-there-done-that feel, doesn't allow Evans to inhabit many of these aspects. Instead, Dracula Untold feels largely uninspired.

The little action in 'Percy Jackson' wouldn’t be out-of-place in a superhero film, which is to say it’s mostly functional, and sometimes quite diverting.

Without the spiky irony of Flynn's first-person writing (the enjoyable Jim Thompson-esque noirisms that pepper the novel, like "I have a meanness in me, real as an organ" occur only rarely) Paquet-Brenner shears the text of any richness, to have it unfold instead in a relentlessly grim manner, less intriguing and evocative than straight-up dour.

Oplev composes shots with grace and an understanding of where everything is geographically and how scenes relate to each other in the multi-threaded plot. Like everything else in Dead Man Down, his direction is beautiful and brutal at the same time. Whoever thought that this movie would be as entertaining as it is existential is either lying or psychic.

Lacking real zest or fun, it’s a middling effort, if one with ample heart and good intentions, that happens to star two actors who can rise to the occasion when necessary. Working together, it’s a shame that they serve both as this frustratingly mediocre comedy’s most reliable pleasure and most consistent disappointment.

The acting and the direction shows enough promise to keep it from being buried alive, but it might not be the worst idea to put it out of its misery and ignore it.

A monologue delivered by a senator played by Richard Dreyfuss is so clunky, that he might as well have broken the fourth wall in order to make sure the audience understood that his speech was supposed to represent the a major theme in the story.

Need For Speed possesses eye-rolling, tone deaf dialogue, passable performances (unless you’re Dominic Cooper or Kid Cudi) and plotting so conventional, there’s not even one surprise U-turn anywhere.

While Dirty Weekend may not quite live up to its title and is certainly his least tart effort to date, the film's milder flavor and less acidic aftertaste is mostly a pleasurable switchup.

Despite some great character work, the film's journey comes across as pedestrian at best.

Though the film attempts to introduce a future laden with fascinating social implications, it maddeningly ignores them in favor of an overwrought, plodding, and inherently sexist romance.

It's such a disappointment when you consider the wild portraits of pioneers that Herzog has given us before, that he's so reverent here. Isn't he the director who can locate the madness in everything he sees? Where is Bell's madness?

Thankfully, as the movie goes along, he tempers his bloodlust, instead engaging in sequences that up the suspense and terror while not exclusively luxuriating in the bloodshed.

Peter Farrelly’s “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” isn’t so much a bad movie — though it’s certainly that — as an inexplicable one, a comedy/drama set in the Vietnam War that somehow believes it’s saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times already about that conflict, and far more skillfully.

By seesawing between tired performances and hellish visuals, Vitthal never delivers on the rage his premise initially promises.

While the poor, urban setting of The Deliverance is a little bit unique for the supernatural genre, the way the suffering and dreariness within the backdrop collides with the ghastly misery of the unrelenting horror of it all is just several steps out of bounds.

Make no mistake, most audiences will find ‘Believer’ revolting, but that’s also the point. It’s fascinating in the way it swings for the fences, is full of conviction, and is overflowing with stimulating ideas about acceptance, denial, community, and more, many of them engaging, many of them handled with no sense of taste (to which Green would probably argue is what Friedkin’s film did; good taste be cast out!).

Moonwalkers takes a brilliant idea and runs it to the ground thanks to a confused and illogical screenplay, an atonal execution, and a bizarre addiction to Tarantino-level gleeful ultra-violence awkwardly crammed into what was obviously supposed to be a biting satire.

The Strongest Man isn't flashy, moves to it's own unique rhythms, and glides along with a very specific sense of humor. But to the observant eye, and patient viewer who decides to hop along with the film's welcoming tone, they'll witness the voice of a filmmaker bursting with ideas and a number of ways to share them, even if he hasn't quite found his storytelling footing just yet.

The choking pictorialism of the sets and CG backgrounds, coupled with the barely-there performances, contribute to an inescapable sense of lifelessness and sterility.

It offers a handful of effective moments and some characters that are fun to watch squirm through muck and bones, but not much more than that, especially when the films spins out of control towards its conclusion.

It is an old-fashioned case of vision overstepping budget constraints and unchecked creativity exceeding much-needed limitations.

It's a testament to the movie's lack of creativity that Anderson can't even rip off "Aliens" and have it come across as anything less than totally boring.

A dumb, loud action movie that aspires to forcibly entertain and provoke thought but fails miserably.

Tammy is a boring, unfunny road movie that limps along idly, consisting of a string of nonsensical set pieces and halfhearted stabs at character development that come across as off-putting and odd.

Call it “naïve-core,” perhaps, as the film so thoroughly loses touch with reality by avoiding conflict of any kind. His empty platitudes like “humans help humans” are rendered useless and risible inside a work that seems to lack even a basic understanding of humanity in 2008, 2025, or any time at all.

The film is not unlike a classic rock supergroup reuniting to play all the greatest hits, with the payday at the end as the only true motivation, rather than returning with something new to say about their work.

Frankly, the musical, with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and book by Steven Levenson, itself is where the fault lies. There were few redeemable qualities to begin with, and Chbosky’s dreary, washed-out direction adds nothing to its already bleak, vapid existence.

For being a kids-centric film, the picture is relatively slow and joyless.

If you want to relieve some of the MJ magic, Jafar, Fuqua, and those timeless bangers will quench a nostalgic thirst that will make you want to forget all that “negative stuff.” For a few moments anyway.

The Intruder is a blunt but effective instrument. This thriller lacks subtlety and craft, but it succeeds at what it’s intending to do: keep the audience stress-eating popcorn for 100 minutes and leave entirely satisfied with the experience they just had. It’s not a good movie, but boy, is it fun.

Filmmaking craft is not the issue here, it’s the timidity of the storytelling that sits in sharp contrast to the boldness of some of the visual and sonic experimentation.

This is ninety minutes of comic actors having a genial go at middle-of-the-road material. It doesn’t have any guts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.

When Planes really takes flight, it can be boldly transporting. Other times, though, it feels like it's running low on jet fuel, full of limp characterizations and questionable set pieces.

One Shot is merely an experiment in filmmaking chutzpah, and a failed one at that.

The Dirt is ultimately supposed to be an unapologetic tribute to living the fast life, but in the end, it’s just painfully dated and pointless with zero depth or insights.

Another lifeless live-action adaptation from the factory that’s inside the Disney vault.

The biographical and fictional afterlives of Monroe are particularly interesting, and probably tell us more about the authors who choose to dedicate their lives to researching her than anything new about Monroe, herself. One wishes that Cooper, and Summers, would’ve realized this.

With Phantom Halo, Bogdanovich, an actress who’s been playing bit parts since her first uncredited appearance in her father’s “The Last Picture Show,” shows that she has a knack for directing actors and building a visually appealing story.

When the laughs fade, the tone feels all too familiar. Despite superb work behind the camera and some picturesque Estonian locations, “Bubble” is less original than it wants to be.

A laughably bad film.

Trimming the film’s manipulations and inessential qualities would only improve it, but judicious editing would leave very little meat on its bones.

Earnestly aiming to land with the weight of an Important Film married with Big Ideas, the more Submergence tries and strains to find connections to contemporary issues, the more those beats ring hollow. “Submergence” not only leaves the talent involved underwater, but the audience also longs for anything of significance to cling to.

The whole thing is overstuffed with enough narrative threads that it should require a feature film-sized outing to answer them all, but Entouragemerrily skips over whole chunks of vital narrative in order to give it a glossy Hollywood ending, the kind that would seem forced, well, even in the movies.

The fifth installment of the Terminator series cannot overcome the weight of its convoluted time travel leaps, its strained attempts at injecting twists everywhere, a clunky opening, and a painfully clumsy finish.

Packing a promising first act that quickly goes south and and a select few fun action beats, Ang Lee may be a disciple of technology, but if he’s going to trade the potential of meta-commentary on aging, youth, an actor’s legacy and more, for something meant to be slick entertainment, he’s still going to need a more convincing sermon.

In many ways the film feels like a regression -- it's more juvenile, less polished and feels less labored over than his previous efforts.

It’s sillier and more free-wheeling than you’d initially expect, but it never quite finds a sense of drive to give it purpose.

Whatever the case may be, MIB International is a failure on just about every level, and instead of 3D glasses, movie theaters should be handing out the neuralizers at the end instead to help us all forgot the cringe-worthy memory of what we just watched.

Tupac’s legacy deserved a better story, and hopefully, one day he will be rewarded with one.

Ultimately, neither Squire nor Roberts nor Gallagher Jr. really puts a foot wrong in this movie, but that’s chiefly because the whole thing is standing still.

The film is effectively scary, filled with plenty of jump moments and a few slow-burning scenes, but the scares aren’t enough to balance the poor writing and lack of imagination.

A preposterous, monotonous action saga primarily notable for boasting a miscast lead and advancing a less-than-tolerant geopolitical fantasy.

As far as the spy genre goes, Pierce Brosnan’s The November Man is more filler than thriller.

Overall, it's not that Neil's directorial debut is boring or even disappointing, it's that it's just unexceptional – almost exactly the sort of dime-a-dozen growing-up story that's become a Sundance/ independent film world cliché.

By the end of the film it seems that even Frears has given up. Lay The Favorite places a bet but comes up empty with a comedy that won't make you smirk, with a gaggle of characters and actors who bounce and riff with very little rhyme or reason.

It’s just dull, deeply bland, and unsophisticated, with little to say about any of its themes of intolerance, fear, misogyny, and gaslighting, other than these feelings exist.

Waters’ comedy — like its forerunner — comes impressively close to elevating cursing to an art form, especially when wielded by Thornton and Cox, who spit and sneer vulgar invectives at each other like gutter-trash virtuosos.

Here is a film about truly extraordinary events that is mostly autobiographical and true to the lives and experiences of writers and directors Joe Syracuse and Lisa Addario which never manages to feel personal, and instead is reduced to coming off as just another raunchy comedy.

There’s some interesting ideas floating around about identity, manhood, and what it means to connect with someone in an over-connected world, but A Case Of You (named for a Joni Mitchell song that’s not actually in the film) never actively explores them. Instead, it delves into generic rom-com and ropey cliché to little comic effect.

If ‘Dying’‘s main issue was a surfeit of ideas, ’Sound’ feels like it suffers from a paucity.