Andy Webster

The possibilities are intriguing, but the characters are underdrawn, and the pacing lags.

Bad Kids of Crestview Academy traffics in exploitation movie flourishes.

If you’re a boy between, say, 8 and 12 and wired to the hilt on Coca-Cola, the shrill, exhausting “Gold” might be for you. But only if.

“He can move the mountains.” “I was blind but now I see.” Those lines are but drops in the torrent of clichés saturating Michael John Warren’s narcotizing documentary Hillsong — Let Hope Rise.

Disappointing plot twists ensue in a climactic brawl starved for snappier choreography and editing.

Penélope Cruz is an Oscar-winning actress we don’t see often enough in prominent leading roles. So how disappointing to find her having to carry Julio Medem’s florid Ma Ma, a melodrama only glancing at profundity.

The Offering, a muddled horror film, falls over itself incorporating as many genre elements as possible. The result is the cinematic equivalent of combining every paint color on a canvas: a murky mess.

It has little story to tell and few ideas to offer. Just a great deal of product to sell.

It’s depressing to see Ms. Moretz — so spirited in “Clouds of Sils Maria” and the “Kick-Ass” movies — reduced to constant mooning at Mr. Roe.

The biggest offender is the director, Imtiaz Ali, who, also again collaborating with Mr. Kapoor, actually celebrates two love affairs: Ved and Tara’s, and (given Ved’s universal adulation) Mr. Ali’s with his own self-aggrandizing vision of his calling.

A smorgasbord of empty calories, the Vin Diesel vehicle The Last Witch Hunter, for all its overstuffed visuals, leaves you hungry. But not for more.

The actors, including Erin Boyes as another captive, try to infuse their characters with depth, and the cinematographer, Scott Winig, lends the proceedings a professional gloss, especially in nighttime scenes. But their efforts cannot lift the story beyond its thin, lurid premise.

Despite Mr. Ransone’s goofy charm, Sinister 2 can’t claim the same finesse, substituting pedestrian plotting and a more graphic gore for the original’s restraint.

Overabundant diffuse lighting and wide-angle perspectives only compound this horror movie’s deficiencies in plot and dialogue.

You won’t find much offensive in Kevin James’s slick, innocuous vehicle Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. You won’t find much prompting an emotional reaction in general, so familiar are the jokes and situations. If Mr. James’s character thinks of safety first, so does this movie, to its extreme detriment.

A spare trifle carried largely by its leading actress.

The sophomoric humor may be absent, but in its place is only a soufflé of whimsy, seasoned with soot, that fails to rise.

[A] disposable comedy.

The humor, when it isn’t overcooked, can be downright insulting or worse.

The film, financed by a Kickstarter campaign, looks polished enough. But its investors’ money might have been better spent elsewhere.

Already the franchise displays a sputtering exhaustion.

Feels like a religious tract more than a movie.

The familiar special effects are not the most disappointing element here. It’s the squandering of the talented Ms. Heche, who is given top billing but almost nothing to do.

This is pap, plain and simple: scattered raunch-lite devoid of emotional resonance. At best, it sells itself on the spectacle of a TV show’s cast reunion — and even then it disappoints.

The horror anthology has a long tradition, going at least as far back as the British classic “Dead of Night,” in 1945. The best offer surprise endings or a sense of humor. You won’t receive much of either here. Just vertigo and maybe a wicked case of induced attention deficit disorder.

The Rambler...feels like a slender plot with additional scenes pasted on.

An entwined triptych of sorts unified by invective, slurs and characters demanding that others shut up, Run It is a very patchy affair.

Marlon Wayans’s satire “A Haunted House” got to “Paranormal” first, and for a much smaller budget delivered bigger laughs.

Limp pacing and countless shots of Washington’s skyline plague the narrative. Ms. Smollett-Bell exudes an earthy appeal, but it’s the charismatic Mr. Jones who steals the picture. Given all the stifling preachiness, that’s to be expected.