Stellar thesps gamely strive to elevate the one-note material, but gravity ultimately defeats them in this relentless downer.

For every engrossing rank-and-file story, there are endless self-congratulatory explanations and podium highlights.

Despite the presence of Glen Matlock, Steve Dior and a handful of other punk rockers, plus a slew of oblique eyewitness who lurked around before and after the fact, the documentary soon bogs down in tiresome minutiae.

Garden of Eden sends sleek, half-nude bodies glumly cavorting through lush Riviera landscapes in a paradigm of unintentional camp.

Strictly for fans of free-form, DIY hit-or-miss humor (and those who prefer a miss to a hit), pic complacently parades its alienated amateurism in the mistaken belief that half a gag is better than none.

Woefully amateurish psychological thriller.

In this shoestring outing, Susan Streitfeld ("Female Perversions") opts for an unsettling mix of low-tech cinematic tricks and temporal reshufflings to simulate the process of enlightenment to sometimes laudable, usually ludicrous effect.

Lacks the delicate tonal control and subtle smarts required for such an intended half-surreal exercise.

Grotesquely straining to ridicule and validate its hero simultaneously, A Novel Romance will disappoint even Guttenberg diehards.

Dustin Guy Defa's Bad Fever takes mumblecore to its reductio ad absurdum, featuring a hero whose utterances border on the unintelligible.

Satirist and "Daily Show" ex-contributor Mo Rocca's faux-disingenuous tone and nonstop jocularity dominate the documentary to quickly grating effect, significantly diminishing its impact.

Unfortunately, with its unconvincing action, preachy script and flat performances, the picture winds up less moving than most typical journeyman documentaries on the subject.

This transparent piece of propaganda blatantly overplays its hand.

Rain strives for a "Magnolia"-type tapestry of quiet desperation. But after 90 unremitting minutes of badly acted, atrociously written histrionic misery, pic leaves one praying for frogs.

In the absence of actors with the tremendous presence of Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, picture loses its raison d'etre. Yet, directed by video helmer Dave Meyers with a certain fastidious distance from its plentiful gore, picture is also insufficiently over-the-top or corny to incite gleeful audience feedback.

Amateurish, half-hearted romantic comedy-cum-heist film twists itself into unconvincing knots to pull off a guilt-free bank robbery.

Culturally falling somewhere between "Sideways" and "Dumb and Dumber," this low-rent road movie similarly rides on principles of audience identification, largely minus competent helming, thesping or scripting.

One long tease -- not in a voyeuristic sense, since its heroine, as nakedly incarnated by pouty Polish sexpot Natalia Avelon, hides none of her obvious talents under a bushel.

A terminally lame puberty comedy.

Moore and Hill's script plunges Spacek in a mawkish stew of banality and improbability composed of bits and pieces of earlier roles.

Pappas' scattershot musings on the social, political and metaphysical implications of extended healthy seniority come off as positively crystalline compared with the random natterings of the director's friends and neighbors, who are invited to chime in.

A muddled script, spatially confounding direction and four thesps seemingly acting in four different movies are only a few of the problems with the misbegotten political thriller As Good as Dead.

Tedious enough to serve as a cautionary example of the pitfalls of DIY filmmaking.

Reveling in its provocative absurdity, Impolex is a madly uncommercial head-scratcher that will strike a dream-logic chord in some viewers and leave others in a "My kid could do better than that" mood.

Drearily pretentious, ultra-stagy exercise in middle-age self-loathing.

The connective tissue between its separate segments is so tenuous and unconvincing that "Cries" almost suggests a failed anthology.

Incompetent on every level, from its haphazard staging to its amateurish sound mix.

A flabby, unfunny action-comedy produced, directed and written by former WWE exec VP Mike Pavone, The Reunion boasts one of the most poorly assembled scripts to emerge from the wrestling franchise.