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.