Cue those weepy violins. Indeed, you get everything you'd expect from this mostly saccharine melodrama.

A superior and recent take on this material, Robert Greene’s experimental "Kate Plays Christine," is worth seeking out, both for its sympathy and deeper grasp of Chubbuck’s unknowable pain. Ironically, Christine’s director Antonio Campos (Afterschool) is capable of exactly that kind of riskiness, but the instinct abandons him here.

The film's final moments, in which we discover the source of the film’s intrusive, patronizing voiceover, are simply vile. The result is like stuffing yourself with Christmas pudding: sweet, glutinous, a bit too much.

A dull affair.

This can't be a faithful facsimile of the literary phenomenon currently turning soccer moms into Scandinoir crackheads. Nor can ethical journalist Mikael (Nyqvist), an uncoverer of conspiracies, actually be the dull, Windbreakered nonaction hero onscreen.

Dime-store philosophy, coupled with the running commentary from the Games’ heinously Spicoli-esque announcers (“Dude, that was the hardest slam we’ve ever seen!”), ruins an otherwise gripping, in-your-face experience.

Sontag’s true talent was for the printed word; behind the camera, her limitations come more harshly to light. Upon Promised Land’s release, she recounted her experiences in Vogue--an all-too-appropriate forum since her film is mostly chic posturing.

The movie you were hoping to avoid.

Apart from a hi-def night-vision gimmick, returning directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman don't take advantage of either upgrade.

It's entertainment designed to resemble a good time without aspiring to provide one.

It’s not that you can’t see what Von Trier is getting at, it’s just you wish he’d get there quicker and without all the desecrated bodies. For most of its hefty runtime, The House That Jack Built is just a slog.

When De Palma started taking himself too seriously—circa Casualties of War—is when he lost the thread. His genius was always in voluptuous nonsense. He needs to drop the politics and get back to baby carriages.

So it's the story of a down-and-out bigwig vindicating himself by revising his crowning cultural moment. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

While Monster Trucks may be bizarre, haphazard and deeply silly, hey, it’s a movie about monsters that live in trucks. It was never going to be Citizen Kane.

Cake chokes you on its self-seriousness, even as it trots out potentially interesting supporting players.

Hunt is a film stuck entirely in fifth, racing from one sudden shootout to another at the expense of the labyrinthine plot.

Only jackanapes and jackasses would deny that the experience of war can cause psychic damage, but does that mean we have to sit through such a schematic, dogmatic melodrama about the subject?

Humankind's fate is left in the hands of several unusually inept and colourless scientists, the ants get the works from the special effects department, and original ideas (so often a casualty in sci-fi cinema) take a back seat.

Camp is everywhere, humour thin; and the soundtrack is very contemporary for a movie which in the pre-publicity boasted of its jazz origins. The whole film is an example of the strange influence of pop promo mentality on cinema. All that noise, all that energy, so little governing thought.

While Jumping the Broom showcases rarely depicted class issues within the black community, the film still relies on wince-inducing stereotypes to delineate them.

Porterfield has proved he can do grit and atmosphere. Should the young director ever decide to channel this talent into storytelling with purpose and a point, he might be someone to watch out for.

If Stevenson's performance were equal to his mammoth physique, the movie might have a shot, but even his broad shoulders aren't up to carrying this much dead weight.

Everyone in this movie - adapted from a flummery stage comedy by Hugh and Margaret Williams - stands around like mannequins in Bond Street stores.

In using the urban poor and the queer community as punch lines, Casi Divas ultimately succumbs to its own criticism.

The film slowly loses the sobering toughness of its initial inquiry, and finally comes off as bloodline-biased hagiography.

Given how prominent the postcard sultriness of her backdrop is compared with the story's emotional ping-pong, all she ends up with is a kinder, chicer Adrian Lyne movie.

A proper profile of Hefner would start and end with sex, and not merely glance on casualties like Dorothy Stratten (and even the loveless Hef himself). The movie can't seem to get it up.

Fading out long before it’s able to cohere into anything memorable, Song One has its heart in the right place (on its sleeve)—it’s just in desperate need of a few strong hooks.