Beatrice Loayza

The performers hold their ground even if the script simply goes through the motions — the car-as-prison may at first come off like a new jam, and yet you’ve definitely seen it all before.

There’s no room for introspection or difficult questions here. Antebellum therefore reads like the corporate spawn of “Black horror,” pieced together from Twitter anti-racist soundbites and crafted for maximum clout.

In The End of Sex, parenthood appears to turn adults into babbling adolescents who blush and freeze up in the face of sexual opportunity. This dynamic is supposed to be cringe-funny, but over the course of an hour and a half, this staid farce proves otherwise.

Rudd does his lovable simpleton shtick and manic Black carries on, as per usual, like a scruffy Don Quixote, but the film around them doesn’t quite keep pace with their go-for-broke absurdity.

If only these intriguing elements were attached to a more exciting film: We may live among our ghosts, but it’s only fun if they’re actually scaring us.

True, its hero is a philandering middle-aged novelist; he has an affair with a divine younger woman; and there’s even an imaginary trial where said novelist stands before a jury of women accusing him of misogyny. But, if you can tolerate these passé indulgences, there’s also something slyly compelling about this ethereal, pillow-talk-heavy drama.

While the final twist adds some depth to its madcap revenge plot, it’s Jovovich who keeps the film’s moodiness from unintentionally playing for laughs.

The film runs through plot points in appropriately spectacular, if mechanical, fashion. A shoddy script and an overwhelming reliance on clichés, however, make this would-be blockbuster feel incredibly cheap.

Though Jacquot throws into question our presumptions about figures like Casanova, as well as vilified women like La Charpillon, he leaves it at that, leaving us wondering what exactly it was all for.

For too long, we’re like players stuck in a dark stadium tunnel, retreading the same concepts and fending off opaque threats, when all we wanted was some action.

Uninterested in world building or creating any sense of stakes, Red Notice is merely an expensive brandishing of star power — only the stars haven’t got it in them.

“Return” cranks the chaos factor up several gears. Maybe that’s a logical shift for a franchise about a creepy New England town that jostles its visitors around multiple planes of reality. Though, here, it’s not as fun as that sounds.

As the film builds up to its climax, we realize Young’s understanding of mental illness lacks any real depth or complexity, betraying the artist’s limited worldview. The Blazing World is female trauma in the form of an amusement park funhouse.

With its jacked-up production budget, “Freddy’s 2,” at the very least, delivers more intricate set pieces that allow for a spatter of solid kill scenes — the rest is as tame and creaky as its signature animatronic teddies.

It’s a shame that it’s all so wincingly contrived. The film tries so hard to be slick, but its efforts are both unoriginal and painfully amateurish.

An undeniable melancholy — a sense of loss — pervades the film. Yet it is never resigned. The ghosts of history live among us. To ignore their presence, “Małni” seems to say, is to forget who we really are.

The director Samad Zarmadili cobbles together this underdog story like a slapdash sitcom episode.

The film’s palpably-rendered environment, with stiflingly dense foliage and vivid natural soundscapes, heightens the dizzying nature of the war without resorting to titillation or idealized images that might glorify pain and suffering.

The onslaught of information certainly impresses by illuminating a rich and not-often-discussed slice of feminist history, but the execution is distractingly flashy and gratingly unfocused.

Though moderately compelling to bear witness to one individual’s objections in real time, The Viewing Booth touches on gloomy truths about spectatorship in the digital era that might have felt novel a decade ago.

The film is, at the very least, never boring. It’s also, despite a potentially compelling conceit, pretty ridiculous.

Brimming with postmodern flourishes, Fauna calls attention to the slippery nature of performance and identity, lodging a complex, yet highly engrossing critique of narco culture’s influence on Mexican storytelling — and it does so without a drop of that pesky didacticism.

However generic (just this year, “Raya and the Last Dragon” depicted a similar treasure hunt geared toward bringing together diverse groups), the film’s messaging about unity and the need for a new generation to band together against misinformation and rabble rousing isn’t the worst thing.

Adapted by Lafitte from a 2013 play by Sébastien Thiery, Dear Mother is the kind of screwball comedy whose absurd premise and speedy pacing very nearly allow you to overlook the fact that it’s not exceedingly bright or witty.

This Is Not a War Story, which Lugacy also directed, is a naturalistic, chat-heavy narrative that captures the difficulties wrought by the unimaginable trauma individuals face as they attempt to forge connections and find peace after war.

The main issue is the film’s trite commentary on America’s political and racial divides (see also: last year’s “The Hunt”), which is neither funny, frightening, nor provocative. Just numbing.

Though attentive to calls for police accountability, and the media’s role in reducing complex issues into simple narratives, Long’s schematic script ramps up theatrics at the expense of more challenging insights.

So many things can and do go wrong, but this production diary’s most intriguing element is the way it considers the value of art at a time when the country seems to be on fire.

Perez is a flimsy leading man, and the film around him — a modest production that doesn’t exactly hide its budgetary shortcomings — is at best a borderline campy B-movie with bursts of bloody action. At worst, it’s a completely self-serious slog.

Though Winograd questions the film’s gender biases in the conclusion, he does so unconvincingly. At a quick 95 minutes, at least the whole thing zips by, however brainlessly.

"Maika” stands out for its moments of weird eccentricity. Bad guys get slapped by gobs of kimchi and Hung and Maika float around in a bubble, zooming past airplanes. Sure, it’s all very loud and cartoonish, but at least we’re not stuck in the suburbs.

Edwards’s generic approach — heavy on talking heads and explanatory title cards — often yields fuzzy results, with a haphazard rush of information overwhelming the rare moments the documentary settles into a more defined and compelling point of view.

We tend to look at the sex lives of sex workers as endlessly fascinating, but in Bliss the line of work is instead part of a larger take on the hurdles of modern romance.

The result doesn’t make the best use of the medium’s powers, but the chatty ride does make for good food for thought.

Directed by Stig Björkman and narrated by Laura Dern, this documentary is so fixated on enshrining Oates within the canon of American literary giants that it skirts around the peculiarity and provocation of her ideas.

Mbakam hits a remarkable balance. The sociopolitical truths that make up Pierrette’s losing streak are evident, without the miserable patronizing so common in films about struggle in Africa.

It’s a film for those who don’t know the outcome, playing upon the viewers’ thirst for answers as it chips away at a clearer portrait of the man.

Becoming King exhibits the kind of self-importance that ultimately diminishes the subject, be it Dr. King or Oyelowo.

None of these potentially intriguing avenues play out with much thought, diminishing the emotional effect of a tragedy that winds up seeming like an exercise in style.

In this case, thematic focus is bit of a buzz kill, pulling an otherwise unique portrait onto generic grounds.

If anything, the onslaught of weirdness is hypnotizing. As a visibly small-scale and local undertaking, the film feels genuinely connected to a vision of working-class Texas and its various characters.

With a cringey inspirational tone, the movie weaves in Ledbetter’s advocacy work and court case with moments from her personal life.

Here, heroism is presented less as a feat of preternatural bravery than a series of choices made by someone who simply refused to give up his humanity.

Il Dono manages to strike a balance between damnation and idolatry of its medieval setting. We’re sucked in, enraptured, even as we feel its lives fading away.

Less, here, would have really frightened more.

The film’s intriguing symbolism diminishes over time, but remaining is an elegant portrait of solidarity; a vision of workers enmeshed in the land that sustains them.