Bob Strauss

Sokolov has cited notable filmmakers like Sergio Leone, Park Chan-wook and Quentin Tarantino as influences, and their inspiration can be seen in the film’s tense standoffs, corridor fights and flashing swordplay, respectively. For all that and some original flourishes, though, this mainly feels like a Radio Silence rehash.

Dialogue, quirky incidents and a general acceptance that this is the unfortunate way life is make this more than just a genre exercise, though hardly a breathtaking grabber of “Get Out” proportions.

Knowing what Powell is capable of, it’s not unreasonable to go into this expecting a bigger payoff.

The Rip is another one — efficient for what it is, but if it’s remembered at all it will be for Damon and Affleck’s matching beards and effortless way of appearing at home together onscreen.

Whatever their differences, love is this family’s language, and that’s undeniable throughout “Road Between Us.”

Rust isn’t so much a poor story or even badly told; there’s just too much of it, strung out along a discursive narrative trail that turns out to be unnecessarily repetitious.

The documentary could have used a little more excitement, but “Coastal” leaves us with a lingering notion that we’ve seen something special.

The King of Kings gives the Jesus story an animated treatment with some whimsical Dickensian touches. It’s nothing to write scripture about, but it should provide amusing and possibly enlightening Easter entertainment for younger children.

One to One: John & Yoko combines the best aspects of Boomer nostalgia with generational overindulgence.

This Statham exercise, like most, is mainly about body count. While that seems to be what his faithful fans want, it just gets kind of tedious for the rest of us.

Sometimes hilarious and pleasingly intense, “Day the Earth Blew Up” can also be kind of meh. But even when not as clever as its legacy demands, there’s enough of the old aesthetic and eclecticism to make us hope that this ain’t all, folks.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.

Pitt’s all-in performance and an impressive supporting cast supply enough roughhouse wit and Brooklyn grit to hold up scenes that might have otherwise gone down for the count.

If you’re a millennial, odds are you’ll find “Y2K” amusing. But older and younger age groups will want to stick to their vinyl LPs and Tik Tok videos.

Standard issue and sluggish as it sometimes is, “Elevation” maintains engagement.

There are stretches when this true story can be a clunky inspirational piece about a young man who overcomes class and racial barriers to excel at science, business and helping his community. At regular intervals, though, it shifts to darker crime drama with dire themes of injustice and manipulation. The two moods don’t always transition smoothly, but each complements the other as they unfold.

Well-acted as far as superficial characterizations allow (Costner and Jon Baird share screenplay credit) and impressively mounted for a wide-open-spaces pageant that, quizzically, was not shot in widescreen, “Horizon” is most successful at filling its frames with ambition.

What “The Grab” doesn’t do quite well is sell its argument or weave its many disparate, admirably reported discoveries into a graspable whole.

Does its conclusion make up for the gluten overload that was most of “Rebel Moon”? Well, the series’ not-at-all-original theme is redemption, so that depends on whether you’re in a forgiving mood or sufficiently wowed.

The action ramps up so much toward the end that there’s really no time to care whether it makes visual or logistical sense. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches. It’s sustained, exciting and increasingly gory fun that’s a pleasure to get to after some of the film’s earlier, dour stretches.

A very fine actor when he’s not directing bad “Insidious” sequels, Wilson is the only performer here who extracts conflict, growth and genuine wit out of David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick’s surface-skimming script.

There’s nothing here to match the ingenious audacity of, say, the hospital-shootout-with-infant sequence in 1982’s “Hard Boiled,” but once Silent Night finally unwraps its gratuitous gifts, the faithful Woo fans should find them worth the wait.

Though Butcher’s Crossing has its share of conflicts and drama, it can move as slowly as the glaciers that cut its imposing scenery.

Saw X is “Saw 1.5” chronologically, taking place between the first and second films in this granddaddy of torture porn franchises. Quality-wise, though, it is closer to a 10 than a zero, which cannot be said about most of the other nine movies in this distressingly popular series.

Good looks and brutal action can’t hide the fact that the film traffics in Italian stereotypes with the same impunity as simplistic notions of good and evil.

Though Meg 2 is by far the biggest production he’s ever helmed, director Ben Wheatley doesn’t appear to be in over his head with this; special effects and stunts are proficiently delivered, no matter how ludicrous

This new iteration may be interesting from a cultural perspective, if not particularly worthwhile on its own — unless you’re a Jack Harlow fan.

There is a great deal of movie-backlot sleight of hand that looks fine while you’re watching, but when you think about it comes off as mostly façade. In that way, at least, Rodriguez successfully links form to content.

This sometimes clever, outrageously gory and slickly violent horror comedy is more “John Wick” than Tod Browning, and that’s just the tip of its tonal confusion.

Not cheesy enough to be fun/bad (the recent loss of Raquel Welch reminds us of what a hoot such junk films like her 1966 “One Million Years B.C.” could be) nor awesome enough to compete with the “Jurassic” movies of the world, this production is an in-betweener whose biggest asset is a tight, 93-minute running time.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance may not be as dirty a delight as the male stripper series’ first two movies. It has other pleasures, though, especially for fans of screwball comedy, musicals and — yikes — serious dance.

By the time “Missing” reaches its truly terrible ending (which makes you wonder if the movie was all just a stealth Apple promotion), the feeling is one of programmed exhaustion rather than catharsis.

The Drop can feel like being stuck with someone who has their good qualities, in serious ways, but that you can’t stand.

While pacing and believability issues in The Pale Blue Eye cannot be overlooked, this finely made period mystery’s virtues should still be savored.

An atmospheric and, to a degree, challenging mashup of psychological, social and folk horror, Nanny casts a spell it doesn’t put us entirely under.

Enola Holmes films are too concerned with chases, romance and flattering their target audience to even consider challenging anyone’s puzzle-solving abilities.

The real magic of “School” resides in its stars. Caruso loses Sophie’s moral direction in deliciously fun yet behaviorally alarming ways. Wylie finds Aggie’s righteousness without damaging the character’s cunning intellect; a scene involving “wish fish” has no business being as moving as Wylie makes it. Together, the young actors take this project beyond good and evil, into the realm of something real.

The film is worth watching thanks to a flawless central performance by “Glee” alum Dianna Agron, solid elder annoyance shtick from Candice Bergen and Dustin Hoffman, and Bialik’s “Big Bang Theory” co-star Simon Helberg locating his pain and relishing every minute of it.

The thing that may be most chilling about “Master” is how its three protagonists want and need to support one another but ultimately cannot due to internal as well as external forces.

That its premise is a fundamentally corny one we’ve seen a million times before is a separate matter, but filmmaker Kuosmanen (“The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki”) and his two lead actors camouflage that well in naturalistic behavior and psychological depth.

Overacting and silly lines sometimes distract, and the latter sound sillier in Branagh’s forced French accent (“Ah love, it is not safe”). Still, Branagh’s direction and screenwriter Michael Green, who also scripted “Orient,” add diversity and convincing emotions to the mystery mechanics.

Even with a script that doesn’t provide much behavioral variety and goes in many wrong directions, Bullock commands the screen with little more than closed lips and wary stares.

Director David Hackl’s biggest credit is Saw V, and he remains adept at gross torture and keeping a mystery moving. Definitely a B production, Dangerous has aspirations. View that as more of a comfort than a threat.

As a director, Schweighöfer deftly plays around with a few genre conventions, handles action scenes capably if not distinctively, and stages a decent enough Point Break tribute.

The movie is almost all conversations, most of which are intriguing and sensitively structured, with little action. It’s enough, but not worth changing the world for.

Kate looks like most other productions from 87North, the company behind such cinematic cage fights as Atomic Blonde and the John Wick films. Honestly, this could have been called “Nuclear Brunette.” But with heart.

Free Guy is an ode to independence, creativity and the nicer aspects of anarchy.

At the very least, it marks the arrival of a filmmaker with great potential. It also presents a metaphysical vision that’s quite peculiar and not very persuasive if you can’t get on its generous wavelength.

While it’s not always as sharp as it could be, the energy in Jolt never falters, and there are definitely amusing bits.

First Date is a very ambitious independent film with a charming, casual attitude.

It’s Ice Road Truckers with a plot and concentrated, well-staged jeopardy. The film’s vibe is different from the History Channel series, but fans of that show will likely welcome the return of familiar thrills and predicaments.

It presents a mostly sympathetic portrait of Mildred Gillars, the American actress who made propaganda radio broadcasts for the Nazis during World War II. Not an impossible task, but a tough one that the best efforts of producer-star Meadow Williams and director Michael Polish couldn’t make persuasive.

Oslo ultimately acknowledges that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is anything but resolved, and shows why even this first, limited step toward settling it was so immensely difficult. Whether we’re in the mood to find it entertaining right now remains in dispute.

Undergirding it all is a light but ever present tension between living up to the philosophy the men were taught as teenagers and making their way through the realities and compromises of American adulthood. Tran’s not preachy about that, but the filmmaker’s killer move is showing how his heroes’ souls can be as fragile as their aging bones, yet resilient when the situation demands.

About Endlessness is like a bunch of Debbie Downer skits directed by Ingmar Begman, just not as entertaining.

Those who just want to watch a cool, competent and only semi-dumb action movie, though, can thank god for small favors like that.