Chris Nashawaty

A clever filmmaking experiment? Without a doubt. A satisfying one? Not so much.

After about 10 minutes, The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter feels borderline promising. After 80, it feels like a blown opportunity.

It’s both a bit confusing and a bit confused. Fortunately, it’s also loaded with some of the crunchiest action scenes since the John Wick movies thanks to Indonesian martial-arts maestro Iko Uwais.

Gyllenhaal’s Southpaw performance is great, but for reasons unrelated to his physique. He’s thrilling to watch and the only unpredictable thing in a two-hours-plus movie where you can count on one hand the number of moments that aren’t hand-me-downs from better boxing films like "Rocky," "Raging Bull," and "Fat City."

The setup has mysterious promise, but the film cheaps out on a satisfying payoff.

Falls victim to too many trite boxing-movie clichés and is in way too much of a rush to cover too much narrative ground. It sometimes feels like you’re watching it with a finger on the fast-forward button.

As 86-minute kids’ movies go, The Secret Life of Pets 2 is shockingly padded. It’s the same old dogs with no new tricks.

Of course, there’s a sort of comfort in familiarity, especially around the traditions of the holidays. But Daddy’s Home 2 never manages to really catch you off guard and crack you up the way the best comedies should.

Just when you think you know where Burnt is headed, there’s an underhanded twist about halfway in. And it’s almost enough to set the movie right.

No one can argue that Mary Magdalene isn’t a well-intentioned film. It’s just that while Mara convinces you that Mary deserves a more contemporary reappraisal, she also lays bare the fact that she deserves a better movie in which to accomplish it.

Noah is a movie about big ideas (environmentalism, heavenly obedience versus earthly love) and even bigger directorial ambitions (how to tell a personal story on the grandest of grand scales). But, in the end, it's also a disappointment. Maybe not one of Biblical proportions, but a disappointment nonetheless.

The sequel still manages to walk the tightrope between clever and crass. For a while, at least.

It’s never pushed far enough. Instead, Dark Places just becomes an overstuffed, low-simmer potboiler with too many improbable detours and overly convenient twists.

As a film, Under the Skin is hauntingly freaky and ultimately frustrating. But as a movie star's gamble to be seen as more than just a moneymaking member of the Marvel universe, it's a home run.

While it’s nice to see Cusack and costar Samuel L. Jackson downplay rather than go big, Cell has a been-there-done-that quality that winds up feeling a bit disappointing.

Its intentions are noble. Its gaze is harshly realistic. But it’s also overly melodramatic. Bettany has the makings of better director than screenwriter.

The supporting cast includes Nick Nolte, Christine Lahti, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Hailee Steinfeld, making the movie’s greatest accomplishment the fact that it was able to squander so many interesting actors.

Unless you’re Billy Bob Thornton, old furniture just isn’t all that scary.

It’s a diabetically sappy big-screen self-help seminar that should have been titled The Book of Schmaltz.

There’s a seed of an interesting, Twilight Zone premise here — what would you do if you were the last two people on earth? But Bokeh doesn’t seem to know what to do with it besides have its photogenic Adam-and-Eve leads take long nature walks, play board games, and upgrade their living conditions.

Since the film’s last-minute rewrites, casting switcheroos, and musical chairs behind the camera are irrelevant to the actual quality of the movie, I’ll avoid rehashing them here, save to say that the disarray shows on screen.

A hypercaffeinated first-person action flick that teeters somewhere between gonzo insanity and a nausea-inducing endurance test.

A so-so meditation on historical amnesia. It’s also so weighted down with mysticism and metaphor it forgets to quicken your pulse or whiten your knuckles.

Honestly, I’ve seen more narratively ambitious Mad Libs.

Welcome to the Jungle isn’t a bad movie. It’s a diverting, mildly amusing, competent bit of big-budget studio product. And maybe those are the stakes we’re now playing for these days.

The only saving grace is Chris Pratt as Vaughn's deadpan best friend.

It feels like Smigel and Sandler just shot the first draft of their script without fine-tuning or polishing any of the jokes.

The title isn’t the only thing about the film that has an exclamation point; every scene comes with one – and also seems to be in blaring, buzzing neon. The movie doesn’t know when to stop.