The November Man turns out to be the classic August movie: a triumph of competence over imagination and schlock over taste. Its highest value lies in reminding filmgoers that fall can’t come too soon.

It takes a very special director to make scenes of sky-diving, free climbing, big-wave surfing and BASE jumping something to yawn at. Yet Ericson Core must be that kind of miracle worker, because Point Break, his update of the 1991 cult classic, is basically a cavalcade of extreme sports, but with less drama than a highlight reel.

The camera style is grotesquely overwrought, a relentless exercise in technique for technique's sake. It's all here, folks: fancy wipes, expressionistic angles, quick-cut close-ups, stylized backlighting, camera moving in endless illogic. It's as if a 15-minute history of film technique had been compiled by a psychotic. [19 Mar 1986, p.B9]

Fox's performance is a shadow of his "Future" self, and the rest of the cast -- everyone from teeny-boppers to wise guys to baffled adults -- are equally benumbed. You really can't blame them, what with a screenplay by Joseph Loeb III and Matthew Weisman that relies on "losing control of his bodily functions" for its biggest laugh. [24 Aug 1985, p.C6]

At every turn, the movie is less moving than the real-life events that inspired it.

Despite its deficiencies, Annabelle is not without a modicum of verve. It has its unnerving moments, but they’re outweighed by the sheer stupidity and predictability of the story.

The first “Transporter” delivered an unexpected kick, courtesy of Statham, who made for a brooding, magnetic — and reliably kinetic — action hero. Skrein is an inferior stand-in, scowling like his predecessor, but lacking Statham’s cool, coiled power.

The threat that this mess of a movie might be followed by a sequel is enough to make anyone cry uncle.

Sexist, racist, overlong, dull, visually ugly and, worst of all, unfunny, “Kasbah” squanders its cast.

The movie — which looks and sounds like a more brutal Bond knockoff — is at least consistently stylish, though its tone is less assured.

A glorified infomercial in defense of the holiday that contains about 15 minutes of actual content padded out with almost an hour of filler.

Like its brain-damaged protagonist, Criminal just shouts and shoots its way into, not out of, an oblivion of illogic, plot holes and emotionally unengaging scenery-chewing.

Yes, it’s all in good fun. And there’s a certain verve to the way Lynch handles the violence, even if he’s less of a stylist than Tarantino. But the film’s brutality... is so excessive, even if tongue-in-cheek, that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Good camerawork only goes so far. Love drags on and on, alternating between arguments and intimacy, breakups and makeups. The movie never passes the authenticity test; if this is what sex feels like, we’ll all soon be extinct.

It isn’t unusual for a good premise to have a faulty execution. The Benefactor suffers from a conclusion that feels inauthentic to the real perils of addiction, as well as to its own story. The only remarkable thing about it is Gere, who really should stick to filmmakers worthy of his talent.

It’s a shame that the beginning of a movement that has come so far, so fast has been reduced to a trite, calculatingly manipulative reenactment.

You and your kids could probably craft a richer, more exciting polar bear adventure using nothing but Klondike bar wrappers and the power of the imagination.

Of course, action movies don’t have to be believable or poignant. They just have to get your adrenaline pumping. But the movie lacks inspiration in that department, too, owing to action sequences you’ve seen before, familiar music and dialogue so predictable you could make a game out of guessing the next line.

Despite flashes of brilliance, Why Him? is perfunctory and boorish, the sort of film that already has begun to fade from memory before you’re too annoyed by it.

Even by the forgiving standard of stuff-we-sit-through-for-our-kids, Ratchet & Clank falls short.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is a prime example of the principle of diminishing reruns.

Neither Grint nor the hoax subplot are compelling enough to hold our attention. Perlman, on the other hand, is a commanding, if peripheral, presence, diverting the focus of the film from silly historical speculation to the tale of a damaged psyche.

All the air has gone out of Rocky, something Stallone, who also wrote and directed, seems to realize -- he won't leave his movie alone. It's riddled with hapless gimmickry: zooms, slow motion, double images, freeze frames, embarrassing MTV-style montages, a noisy, aggressive sound track, and flashback after flashback to the movies that have gone before, in order to remind you why you're there, as if to insist, "See, this used be a good idea." [28 Nov 1985, p. E1]

If anything, Baywatch is a litmus test for how low Johnson can sink while still winning us over.

Despite an army of appealing actors in its large ensemble cast, the rom-com Mother’s Day is startlingly unappealing. Clumsily edited and culturally tone deaf, it’s more obsessed with the titular holiday than even most mothers would find reasonable.

Watching “Transfomers” is like sitting in a car that’s revving its engine while stuck in the mud. It sounds like it’s getting somewhere, even though all it ever does is spin its wheels.

The jokes in Ktown Cowboys land with a thud.

Somehow channeling the tone of both a Lifetime movie and an after-school special, Mothers and Daughters shambles into theaters oozing schlock and melodrama, just in time for Mother’s Day. This is no way to honor a beloved family member.