Bob Strauss

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

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.

Nate Parker’s film isn’t always successful at balancing empathy with suspense or its prison reform message with character development. But there are engaging moments from start to finish, with a plot that, while not as surprising as writer-director Parker may have thought, wracks nerves multiple times.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Defined only by their scars, all three lead characters feel generic, as if Werthman built them out of archetypes that ran through his case studies.

While many of the film’s action sequences are in slow motion, it’s the story’s narrative (credited to Snyder, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad) that really crawls.

The concept might have worked well on paper. But on screen, at least how Chase Palmer has directed and co-scripted it, those clashing elements exert weak gravitational pull.

It’s just not very fun or engaging.

Sadly, fun is a rare element on Pandora, as “Borderlands” trudges through its treasure hunt scenario and endless ripoffs of better franchises from “Lethal Weapon” to “Star Wars.” It makes you want to go home and blow up your Playstation.

There’s a weepy turn in the sentimental third act, and why not? Nothing else was working.

The Watchers just doesn’t connect on anything deeper than a surface level. Given material that isn’t about looking at the same boring thing over and over, Shyamalan might have been able to really make something.

First-time director Lindsey Anderson Beer and her co-adapter Jeff Buhler have some nice ideas that never quite gel.

Credit to Hart, though, for trying to make every scene, comic or sentimental, as strong as he can. He reads each line that’s supposed to be funny as if it is, locates Sonny’s emotional truth no matter how ridiculous the scene is, and never lets his signature energy sag.

The film’s broad performances, undemanding humor and not-too-frightening horror are all designed to appeal to kids (and older fans of the “Haunted House” series). Adults are advised to enjoy the living Spirit Halloween aesthetic of it all, and remember that you love your children while enduring the rest of this hollow experience.