Barbara VanDenburgh

Tel Aviv on Fire, like the soap opera that shares its name, doesn't attempt to grapple with the complexities of the conflict. "Is there nothing between bombs and surrender?" it asks, pleading for moderation. Moderation gets you a pleasant-enough comedy. But not much more.

It’s ironic that a film about bucking formula is itself so formulaic. There’s nothing wrong with such inoffensive pleasantness, but if Late Night wants to advocate setting fire to the system in pursuit of more meaningful art, it should have led the charge.

Green Book is not unthoughtful in its crowd-pleasing. It’s just that such crowd-pleasing feels inappropriately quaint for 2018.

In spite of the compelling raw material in the lives of its ostensible subjects, it strikes out as an act of storytelling.

Beirut is inoffensive in its familiarity, a handsome enough thriller to pass the time. What it’s lacking are stakes.

A delicately balanced, mature drama, What They Had portrays a family devastated by Alzheimer’s with accuracy, empathy and respect, capturing both the heartache and unexpected tenderness of caring for a loved one coming slowly undone and the familial bonds that are tested and forged in the process.

If there’s any social commentary being made here, it doesn’t come through in performances so wooden you can’t tell if the actors are that bad or the characters that vapid.

There is nothing brave about Bravetown, a film so paint-by-the-numbers bland that its efforts to piggyback the sacrifice of American servicemen and women for emotional depth is downright craven.

Turns out You’re Next isn’t a slave to horror-movie conventions after all — rather, it’s having tongue-in-cheek fun with conventions while playing up to them, complete with a killer retro ’80s-horror synth score and a gruesome finale that recalls the excess of Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive.”

Instead, the story is largely told from Dahmer’s perspective, and we know too much about where he ends up to feel anything like sympathy for him. It’s still a morbidly fascinating peek behind the blood-stained curtains.

The real power of Beatriz at Dinner is that it isn’t about politics but the human heart. Beatriz and Strutt are not arguing legislation; they’re arguing two visions of the American dream, two visions of the human soul.

The film is less effective, and less focused, when it switches into activism mode. Not that its heart isn't in the right place — we all know about the appalling state of institutionalized elder care. Which is the problem with those segments: We all know this already, and the filmmaking feels like perfunctory, necessary padding.

The end result is as dour and unilluminating as British weather.

It’s a stumble down the catwalk not even Blue Steel can save.

It’s a variation on a theme that Solondz has been working through his whole filmography, and when he’s successful, he convinces you to believe the worst in people and laugh at it. But when he’s not, the film can feel like punishment.

To put it in terms Charlie would dig, “Bumblebee” is like an 80s mixtape that’s all hits, no deep cuts. Nothing here surprises save the perspective. But that’s enough to save it.

The report is important. Its findings and the attempts to undermine them and the investigators, shouldn’t be forgotten. That The Report tries to keep these lessons in a fickle public’s consciousness is a good thing. If only anything committed to screen here were memorable.

Storks is charmless with rote obligation. This is a kid’s film for hire, with none of the creativity, emotion and design that elevate the genre to art, or even simply a fun time at the movies.

Good for its uncommonly level-headed characters, less so for viewers watching a movie in which not much happens.

While it necessarily lacks the joy of discovery the first movie brought, “The Lego Movie 2” is still a breathless romp, landing enough jokes a minute to discourage over-analysis. It’s a good time at the movies, which is all a Lego movie really owes us for the price of admission.

It’s an admirable film, though not a particularly memorable one.

It adds up to a marginally more interesting experience than the first “Frozen,” but this sequel would have benefited from venturing a touch further into the unknown.

For all its thematic and behind-the-scenes innovations, cinematically Captain Marvel feels like a step backward for the MCU. Fresh off the heels of the all-or-nothing bombast of “Avengers: Infinity War,” the righteous representation of “Black Panther” and the giddy lunacy of “Thor: Ragnarok,” Captain Marvel is a retreat into a bland formula.

A great soundtrack can go a long way in smoothing over a decent movie’s rough patches, and Northern Soul’s is fantastic.

The Patience Stone largely functions as a one-woman play, with Farahani’s character soliloquizing over her husband’s body.

The script feels structurally inept, building up scenes and characters then cutting them off, never to be revisited. The end result is a film that feels full of staircases that lead nowhere.

The danger in making a movie like Coming Through the Rye is in the constant referencing and hero worship of bigger, better, towering works of art — you can only exist in their shadows and pale all the more for the comparison.

Crown Heights is soul-shaking only in the abstract. In execution, it’s deathly dull.