Here’s a mathematical formula for you: Take one overlong, nonsensical script; multiply it by terrible editing and design; then divide the whole thing by wooden performances. Voilà: You’ll have Jeff Lipsky’s unwatchable indie.

As an info dump, Table is admirably efficient, addressing everything from obesity to the limits of charity. As a film, it’s less compelling, with only one subject — Philadelphia single mom Barbie Izquierdo — getting enough screen time to put a human face on the crisis.

Fans of the gritty, era-defining precinct drama will bristle at how the program's realism has been replaced by a generic Tinseltown U.K. slickness. But regardless of whether you’re a longtime devotee or not, you’ll be left saying, “This is The Sweeney? I’ve been rooked.”

You couldn’t accuse the cast members of being good actors, yet this young performer knows exactly how to express Jackie’s confusion, vulnerability, instability and longing without any sense of judgment; the film would simply not work without her, no matter how sensitively Sallitt handles such provocative, ick-producing bait.

Drooling fanboys and "Buffy"-loving academics are sure to go wild — not that there’s anything wrong with that…right? Stoker is a gorgeous wank job; just prepare to hate yourself for loving it.

The film’s subject is almost too horrible to contemplate, but it finds a way to space out the blows without softening them.

Miller’s ace in the hole is the hulking, regal Harper, whose round face vacillates between childlike mirth and lung-stomping sadness. His casual charisma not only commands our attention and affection, it sidelines every social or thematic concern to this singular, tentatively aspiring life.

The first and only piece of advice needed on one’s way to the fishing pond is this: Bring your patience. Not surprisingly, the same could be said to a viewer of this slow-building but riveting experimental collage.

The real mystery of Dark Skies isn’t who’s pulling the paranormal pranks — it’s lanky visitors from above, not vengeful spirits from beyond — but why Dimension is treating this reasonably effective potboiler like something that should be hidden away at Area 51.

Manly, sharp-edged submarine B movies don’t come along often anymore — so consider this Cold War off-white-knuckler a welcome blast of recycled air.

Snitch is a movie that cries out for the wiry B stars of yore: Robert Forster, a younger Tommy Lee Jones. And it would have occurred to a craftier screenwriter to make his hero’s walk on the criminal wild side a touch more tempting.

Though often funny, there’s a reverse narcissism in the way Karpovsky wallows in his “character’s” off-putting flaws.

A too-pat ending also spoils Rubberneck (shorter: Mommy made me do it!), though it doesn’t ruin the steely pleasures of the filmmaking.

Once the murderer starts relying on the lad’s kindness, all the preceding kid stuff starts to take on a purposefully sour tang.

Waiting for Inescapable to finally reach its unearned, sentimental conclusion is a tiresome experience, but seeing Tomei submit to its badness is several measures worse.

The late Douglas Adams summed up Earth as “mostly harmless,” a description that also applies to this eminently tolerable animated time-filler.

Any residual charm evaporates when the third-act dramatics start piling up and a must-be-seen-to-be-believed final twist redefines the word shameless, even by Sparksville standards.

We’re a long way from this shoot-’em-up franchise’s John McTiernan–helmed heyday. Willis gives one of his laziest ever performances, leadenly tossing off each quip (“I’m on vacation!” is the most abused) and acting like he’s passing a kidney stone during the bathetic father-son bonding scenes.

Through it all, Henney is an appealing screen presence, but he’s trapped in a movie that puts regurgitated sitcom shtick and regional economic boosterism ahead of character and humor.

Though the director includes a few brief humdingers — a fight that involves a Rube Goldberg–ish tangle of wires; some munitions-fueled mayhem in a farmhouse — it’s not enough to keep viewers from wishing they were thumbing through a John le Carré novel instead.

The director has made disappointing films before — a more generous word might be transitional — but never one so slight.

The whole film seems dead set against offering up any kind of salaciousness. Like the overly arty "Zoo" and other indie experiments, it misses the point in a disturbing way.

As with many young-adult book-to-film series, Beautiful Creatures plays like an illustrated compendium of scenes from the novel, as opposed to a finely tuned narrative all its own.

The essential thrust here is both knowing and undeniable: No is pitched at the pivot point when the image makers were brazen enough to push ideology to the side. Considering how high the stakes were, it’s amazing they almost didn’t get the gig.

The precedent for a movie like this is Ang Lee’s bruised "The Ice Storm," but whereas that film sprung from a novel that burns with indictment, Julia Dyer’s effort — scripted by her late sister, Gretchen — is a more open-ended affair and slightly unsatisfying for it.

The story is ultimately nothing more than a decrepit vehicle for the moldiest of scary-movie clichés: screechy specters, inane character behavior and jump scares that a toddler could anticipate minutes ahead of time.

Christopher Felver, while an inspired photographer, is not the director for the job; he dutifully ticks off Ferlinghetti’s major achievements — such as the founding of North Beach’s literary mecca, City Lights — yet never imbues his life with anything more than lefty zeal.

The whole notion of taking a page out of the Bressonian handbook (nonprofessional performers, a complete lack of emotionalism) lends a spiritual aspect to this antihero’s plight, with neither social neglect nor a battered corpus keeping his soul from transcending the self. Reaping the benefits of such a minimalist methodology, however, requires a high tolerance for Porfirio’s pitiless formalism.