Blake Goble

Nominal laughs plus three reliable actresses equals the very mediocre Otherhood.

This Ben-Hur is closer to an ‘80s actioner about two men who once loved each other parting ways, only to reunite and settle their differences through vicious means.

Murder Mystery is a dud, stained with slack humor and a total unwillingness to play within its own chosen genre.

As a narrative, Point Blank’s like a screenplay slammed to the ground, shot repeatedly, and re-assembled with scotch tape and vending machine stickers (likely White Snake band logo iron-ons). It’s flashy. As far as action flicks go, Point Blank’s cool with its low IQ because it’s having fun throwing ‘bows to loud music. It knows what it is.

It’s damnable with faint praise. It’s too cheap to be thrilling, and too earnest to be all that offensive. Mired in clichés. Mostly flat. A weak Spy. Only Kevin James diehards need apply.

Like Prince’s music, perhaps this film is best taken in for its sensation and not its literal output. That, and the dialogue is just ridiculous. But Prince looks cool, owns his story’s loose ideology of churlish change, and stages some marvelously ornate shots.

Sure, it may be a little rote, and even thrifty, but it offers more than enough yuks to earn its way into your Netflix queue.

At its most basic, this is a conventional talkie, rooted in Warner Bros crime history, happy to play with cliché. At its most audacious, The Kitchen is a welcome flip on the generally male-dominated script. And at its most pleasing, this is a popcorn flick, with big moments, great pops, and three stars giving it their all, having one out in the street, making big moves for the people.

Better than My Super-Ex Girlfriend, sloppier than Hancock, it’s nothing dynamic but fun all the same. And frankly, not every superhero flick or comedy needs to be the Super-person of its domain. Likability is sometimes an underrated super-power, and Thunder Force is bursting with it.

Parents will nap, some kids will be amused, and the nerdiest viewers will have good reason to point out flaws in the movie’s not-so-intelligent designs.

There’s a laziness to The Road Chip, what with its mostly stale or needy jokes and cutesy plotting.

Jones slaves to make something of the material, and to his credit, or rather his profoundly large cast and crew’s credit, the craft is certainly visible in Warcraft. It feels rude not to compliment the hard work of the makeup, costume, production design, and visual effects teams.

It’s not that funny, and feels like a ripoff of Animal House. Either way, The Wild Life is like the contractually obligated Crowe script that time forgot, his undisciplined id, playing with cheap thrills before he got a chance to express himself like a human storyteller in 1989.

This film is all easy beats, predictive familiarities, and absolutely zero heart, soul, or silliness anywhere to be found.

The dispiriting thing is that Tom & Jerry is far from the worst family film in the world. It’s just a familiar, by-the-books, vertically integrated product to ensure continued IP visibility for the film and television arm of a corporate portfolio. Here’s the latest and laziest IP for you to become disenchanted by, should you feel so inclined.

Neil Marshall’s Hellboy is a monster mash, loud and proud. Just bring a mop.

It’s clichéd, distant, afraid to truly immerse itself in anything but long looks, but at least it looks good. And that’s that.

This is another bad Perry film, but a curiously verbose one with jokes piled atop more jokes.

Marlon Wayans is clearly getting off on the gags, but the lazy, hard humor, and elastic joke-making eventually has a numbing effect.

Adam Mason’s Songbird is about boring people getting mad that they’re stuck inside, and the government is oppressing them, and they’ll soon fly free or whatever.

At 100 minutes, with just enough digital chutzpah to keep everyone reasonably amused and never quite annoyed, Dolittle is tolerably fine.

Rio, I Love You is worth a passing look for its pot of talent.

The end result is a finished product which smacks of Universal optioning a hot Scandi novel, losing enthusiasm for it during development and production, and leaving audiences with the remaining carrots and coal.

If for one second you forget the diverging script, the weak direction, and Efron’s limitations, there’s something to be amused by with De Niro’s flagrantly foul-mouthed, horned-up grandfather figure.

Like the Hollywood it tries to lampoon, in its way, The Fanatic comes across as shallow. It is, as they say in the biz, a flop.