Paradise is neither a good film nor is there any evidence it was a good script.

Much like ‘A Child Of Fire,’ “The Scargiver” is exhausting, enervating, and exasperating, frantically flailing around with explosions, lasers, laser lightsaber-like swords, grenades, et al., but always failing to make you give a damn.

With his second feature, Roeck shows that he’s a talented and patient genre storyteller, even though his film’s rather flat cinematography and low budget doesn’t match his obviously more grandiose vision.

A thoroughly dull, conventional tale of two people who can't find a compromise on their individual priorities to be together.

Self/less is brain/less entertainment, but if there’s any consolation, the impression it leaves is so fleeting that you can soon replace it with better movie memories.

Trying something different and playing around with convention is always commendable, but if The Reflektor Tapes proves anything, it's that the result can sometimes fail miserably.

Walter Hill’s legacy of pushing the edges of genre conventions made the prospect of (Re)Assignment, at least on paper, potentially dangerous. But the filmmaker’s touch is completely lost here, and the only danger the film winds up posing is to the time spent by those who choose to watch it.

Keeping Up with the Joneses sometimes clicks, thanks to the commitment brought by the cast, but it’s too often shackled with a tired plot to really make the most of its potential.

The film is awful, but it is not unwatchable.

As pitifully generic as its title, The Forest hews to clichés until its final, dying breath.

A sincere, slow-moving, occasionally successful film devoted to one specific homefront story. That, in itself, is noteworthy.

Aloft and its icy landscapes and feel of gently dropping barometric pressure can only distract so far from what is essentially an overwrought melodrama that here and there tips over into heavy-handedness despite the restrained beauty of its images.

The Dark Tower is a tepid non-starter from minute one.

An irreproachably tasteful, easily digestible but an unsurprising, undemanding watch.

Bright spots are found in the supporting cast, though the less said about Faizon Love‘s portrayal of a black belt grocery clerk, the better. Walken is legitimately great as an old guy trying to be hip, a sort of exaggerated version of what Thurman is doing as the cool but protective mom. They just aren’t enough to pull The War With Grandpa and De Niro out of the gutter.

Berlin gives a good enough picture of its host city, delving into its complicated history and giving glimpses of its beauty. But few of the segments connect us to its inhabitants and visitors in any meaningful way.

A bit slight, often funny, mostly likable, and importantly, a romantic comedy that is not obnoxious.

It's an absolutely horrible, amateurishly assembled comedy that is more offensive than just about anything we've seen lately, a non-stop parade of racist, homophobic bile that would be bad enough from any comedian, but coming out of Ferrell and Hart has the effect of watching a childhood hero committing some horrible act.

Though the plot gets points for originality, there may be a reason why no one has told this story before: it’s ridiculous. But Take Care occasionally succeeds with funny dialogue and performances from Leslie Bibb and Thomas Sadoski.

Brain On Fire is often effective, and at times positively enraging, but one can’t help but lament the much more disquieting film that might have resulted had the filmmakers been more willing to trust the facts of Cahalan’s case to speak for themselves instead of feeling a need to shove them into uplifting platitudes

It’s incredibly soulless, disposable, and as generic as they come.

For a movie that rides on a well-executed, modest and at times playful B-movie engine, the film stumbles in its final third, with goofy plotting... and a turn from the subdued to the hysterical.

There is a better, more contemplative movie to be made with this material, but with Brand and the filmmakers opting for cheap thrills, it leaves the movie, like the passengers on the plane, stuck on the tarmac.

Bad characters? Check! Well-worn, uninventive plot? Check! Forced physical comedy? Check! A big-budget and no oversight? Check! Put all of that together, and what do you get? Another bad Netflix comedy from the makers of other bad comedies. Sorry, McCarthy and Spencer, but you’re better than this.

The Smurfs 2 doesn't even pretend to be anything more but the most base, sugar-coated family entertainment, the kind of things that parents won't even be able to comprehend, much less enjoy.

The off-putting aesthetics of ‘Looking Glass’ are complemented by an equally putrid tale that’s determined to make its protagonist loathsome.

The Man from Toronto could have been sharper with much more care all around, but a glaring problem comes from how Hughes isn’t a funny filmmaker. He might have the self-awareness to slap his name on a food processing plant that hosts the movie’s climactic kill, but his sense of making an action scene comedic is seriously lacking.

No one can top Hooper or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” or even match them. Garcia is smart enough not to put on airs. He just lets Leathersaw rip.

Save for a few inspired moments (usually at the expense of the city of Fresno), Jamie Babbit’s screwball comedy is cringe-inducing and unfunny. Everyone in front of the camera here deserves better, particular Judy Greer in a rare starring role.

If there's a problem that gets in the way of some genuinely scary moments, it's that the filmmakers (all four of them) don't ever give you enough information to invest in the characters.

There’s nothing particularly special about Siberia, but with a winning Keanu Reeves performance, it maintains enough moment-to-moment suspense that it just might be enough to satisfy moviegoers yearning for a throwback genre film.

It would serve its audience better if it paid more attention to a stronger structure and a believable plot, but its flaws don’t keep it from being affecting for those who like their love stories on the lachrymose side.

Ergüven’s sophomore film is a tonal disaster, jerking from shrill melodrama to screwball comedy and always at the most inappropriate of moments.

With a lackluster script, shaky supporting characters, and weightless dialogue, Disturbing the Peace is the rare film that feels void of purpose or direction.

Completely forgettable, Hellions is far less cool, smart, and scary than it thinks it is.

For those of you who felt "Ides Of March" was entirely too cerebral and challenging, here comes the dunderheaded Knife Fight. A political satire that treads no new ground, this name-heavy comedy wastes an engaging central performance by Rob Lowe.

Zoolander 2 is no disaster, but it’s almost worse; a tedious jag that barely works as a disposable and mild, if-its-on-cable-TV, diversion.

For a movie that tries to create and sustain a sensation of wild unpredictability, it's a huge failure. It's not shocking if we've all seen it a thousand times before. With 21 and Over, it's all been there, drank that.

This Point Break doesn’t ever connect with anything, even its own desire to celebrate the extreme.

Erased starts out strong...but for the rest of the running time, we are watching Ben catch up with us, and that makes for uninteresting cinema no matter how kinetic the action.

For Scenic Route, it doesn’t seem to be the journey as much as the destination: seeing two sorta-friends wailing on each other feels like the shortcut a better movie never made.

The Mummy is a dated, empirically dismal, laughable excuse to kick off a franchise, and it should have remained entombed.

Carelessly crass, and yet enthusiastically performed, the film does at least offer the curious spectacle of witnessing strings of jokes energetically thud in a movie that's not worth the commute to your nearest multiplex.

It is a film you won’t fall head over heels for, but one you can’t help loving many parts of. You’ll just have to do your best to fondly recall the good parts, namely Quan and Lynch, while hopefully forgetting all the rest.

A film that takes so many below-the-belt jabs at the idiocy of Tinseltown blockbusters must, at the very least, be a few IQ points higher than the stuff it makes fun of for being stupid.

Lost in the Sun gets most elements right in order to put together one of those gritty and melancholic southern crime dramas, except for when it comes to producing a unique screenplay and direction that rises above mediocrity.

The project seems compromised by a meager budget and limited scale.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken never conveys how a bunch of working stiffs transformed themselves into a coiled — if scrappy and ragtag — criminal operation.

Looking Glass is a hybrid Coen-pastiche and wacky Nic Cage B-movie.

It’s not merely that The Only Living Boy in New York is reductive, corny and uninvolving; it’s that it tries to be something more profound and enlightened than it actually is.

As the film builds up to its climax, we realize Young’s understanding of mental illness lacks any real depth or complexity, betraying the artist’s limited worldview. The Blazing World is female trauma in the form of an amusement park funhouse.

The Wrong Missy is one of those movies that takes a brain-dead sitcom scenario to the outer limits of what an audience is willing to tolerate.

Working at cross-purposes, Colonia tries to have it both ways, wanting to be a shocking true story drama and a riveting piece of moviemaking. But it’s not intelligent enough to accumulate any emotional payoff, and it’s too generic and unsophisticated in its execution to work purely as popcorn entertainment.

This is a saccharine science fiction romance that doesn’t actually concern itself with science fiction or romance; instead, it’s the equivalent of astronaut ice cream, lacking in substance and crumbling to bits at the slightest pressure.

Pulseless, perfunctory and persistently watering down its kookier instincts, Fifty Shades Darker pales in comparison to the first. You might as well call it Fifty Shades Duller.

The film progresses to the point where it feels less like father and son, and more like a young boy listening to an inspirational audiobook.

The critical failure of 37 — because certainly a film is allowed to have disdain for its characters; there is no law that art must care for its subjects — is the fundamental lack of narrative, or even of tension.

No matter how good The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones looks, it's hard to really care about anything that's going on, and not just because we could barely understand it.

Moretz strikes a convincing empowered-badass pose but has no amount of charismatic fearsomeness can energize the illogical latter portions of The 5th Wave, which are driven by revelations about the aliens that, to put it bluntly, make no sense.

Like a Boss is screamingly funny at times, thanks largely to the talented cast.

Can't Stand Losing You lacks that sense of the three dimensional when it comes to documenting the band, presenting a sanitized, bird's eye view of their history

The admirable wit that's on display when it comes to subtle motifs and the poignant conclusion that resonates if you let it, regardless of how predictable or not it may seem, are all things that add up to a satisfactory feeling.

For a film that literally isolates its characters from the rest of the world to confront each other head-on, the drama plays more conventional than challenging.

This is one slow-ass "novel," in which no one ever cracks a joke and potentially melodramatic moments (a fairground ride collapse, the initial accident, a suicide attempt) are so painstakingly crafted to avoid splashiness that any momentum is killed. A little splashiness would have been most welcome.

If you've seen the previous "Transformers" you know what you're getting into, only this time, the director feels uninspired, more like he's punching a clock at the blockbuster factory, with even his flair for inventive setpieces mostly muted.

The entire film seems cloaked with a general vibe of “good enough.” Embarrassingly cheap CGI effects, poor ADR, and slipshod, jarring editing are the technical failures that compound with the creative ones to indicate a movie that’s not just miscalculated, but seemingly committed to putting together, at its best, a deliverable product and nothing more.

For all of the delightfully deranged places Primal could’ve gone, it stays drearily buttoned up.

The bland, boring Paranoia does little to distinguish itself and isn’t good (or even enjoyably bad enough) to be passable even as Saturday afternoon cable fodder.

If you’re not too undone by agitation with Carter’s umpteenth quip about the female body, you may even work up a smile over some of these sweeter moments involving the uniformed trio.

There’s no heart in this movie, no urgency.

With a weak script and underwhelming performances, there’s nothing about the film to latch onto or celebrate, but there’s just enough craftsmanship on display to walk away not feeling like it’s a complete failure.

The film feels flimsy, poorly conceived at best (no tasteless pun intended). It fails to hold up to even superficial scrutiny very well.

Warcraft may provide grand, thunderous spectacle as it transforms human actors into hulking Orcs, but when trying to perform the alchemy of transmuting genre archetypes into characters with soul, the magic fizzles out.

The problem is not that Cats makes no sense . . . nor that the performances are mediocre (most of them are quite good). The murder weapon is the galling CGI intended to cover the actors in head-to-toe feline fur. Instead, the animation detracts from the film’s capable performers and inventive surroundings, drawing the eye reluctantly in like the sight of a person vomiting in the middle of an amusement park. It makes for a slow death, so overwhelmingly grotesque that it ceases to be interesting at all.

The fashion mogul feels as if she’s learning bit by bit how to tell a story cinematically, how to complete transitions and flash back and forward, how to set a mood and tempo. It’s basically the rough cut of a student film which, to its credit, is also often more interesting than most student films outright.

Though the actors suggest a better result, Stein’s thriller is really just a Lifetime movie dressed up in a tux, and the problems start piling up faster than you–or any therapist–can count.

Featuring none of its predecessor’s sumptuous pitch-black visuals and sense of creeping dread, Ciaran Foy’s follow-up is a misbegotten venture at every turn, in large part because it follows the horror sophomore rulebook so closely.

It’s unsettling how every minute of this 94-minute flick delivers a new level of boredom. You have to feel for the actors.

The thrills here, whether you want to believe what Hypnotic is hawking, are far too mild to be satisfying for even a mindless viewing.

Uninspired films utilizing cinematic devices that felt old decades ago are a regrettable part of the cinematic viewing experience, and The Forger squarely falls into this category.

Amidst this goofiness, Skrein proves a serviceable Statham replacement, capable of executing elaborate martial arts-inspired fight moves, glowering behind the wheel of his car, and generally acting like a cold, detached thug-for-hire who, deep down, has a heart of gold.

Unfinished Business is the type of movie that is so awful that as it rolls along (its 91-minute runtime feels agonizing) you get more and more restless.

Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is a marginally better movie than “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” But that’s kind of like saying that getting stabbed in the gut is marginally better than getting stabbed in the neck.

This is a laughably bad movie, but an amazing drinking game waiting to happen.

The Dying Of The Light is forgettable, anonymous and at times almost amateur, and the product of a director searching for a new method of storytelling.

Charlie Countryman opens up with an interesting first section, but only backslides deeper and deeper in its overwrought and incoherent second and third acts.

Gripping, intriguing, and well-paced, Mary overcomes most of the issues with its overwritten script to emerge as a serviceable entry in the genre’s canon. Sure, the film lists from time to time, but it always manages to right itself when it matters.

When the script isn't working, Evans turns towards the soundtrack and leans on indie rock when he can (and when the low-budget picture can afford it) to attempt to do some of the emotional lifting.

Ostensibly aimed at an adult audience that craves equal parts romance and raunch, Fifty Shades Freed appears to have been written by a teenager – and not just because of its groan- and giggle-inducing dialogue, lack of emotional investment and thinly drawn characters. There’s no knowledge of any element of how the world functions, particularly in its approach to relationships.

“Rebel Moon” is nearly unwatchable and one of the most stunning misfires of this scale in quite some time.

Bringing someone back from the dead is one of the horror genre's oldest and most effective tropes, but with The Lazarus Effect, it just seems tired.

It can't be overstated what kind of a marvel these Turtles are onscreen, however. As crude and unpleasant their design might be, they feel like living, breathing things, not special effects.

Falls flat on its face thanks to a severe lack of self-awareness and an air of dramatic self-importance.

Countdown is completely inessential and adds absolutely nothing of value to the cautionary tale genre of technology horror.

The film’s best stability through all of these shifts is Willis who, while he could do a role like this in his sleep (and has), commands the screen and reminds us why he became an above-the-marquee star in the first place.

In the end, Hellboy is a juvenile delinquent you want to slap and a colossal mess that damages the brand, the character and probably breaks the heart of its more well-intentioned cinematic forbearers.

It’s nice to see McCarthy and O’Dowd in roles that showcase their emotional range; one just wishes it were in a project worthy of their talents.

It's easy to take most films' war-torn elsewheres for granted, and taken on its own merits, Red Dawn is a victory of small battles and heavy artillery, sentimental but rarely too hackneyed, energetic without becoming too silly.