Christy Lemire

McDonagh’s film is well-crafted throughout but ultimately has nothing fresh or insightful to say about the ugliness of white privilege.

These moments remind us of the mindless summertime excitement the “Jurassic” movies have long provided, albeit with diminishing returns. But that giant footprint just isn’t as imposing as it used to be.

The style remains firmly in place – this time, it’s a lurid look at Los Angeles in the mid-1980s – but there’s nothing underneath it.

While Where the Crawdads Sing is rich in atmosphere, it’s sorely lacking in actual substance or suspense.

Lift is as generic and forgettable as its title, the kind of glossy, empty action picture that Netflix just keeps pumping out, whether we need it or not.

Eventually, though, the whole effort feels chaotic, crammed as it is with uninspired pop culture references and way, way too many fart jokes, even for a movie aimed at kids.

Headey is coolly fierce and shares some powerful moments with both Wilson and Winstone as the reporter who threatens to expose this juicy sex scandal. But these scattered pieces don’t create a complete and convincing picture.

The jumbled narrative structure allows for a couple of a-ha revelations, but it mostly creates a distance for the viewer. And yet despite these flaws, the artistry on display in Violation is undeniable.

It is the kind of movie you watch on an airplane — perhaps on the way to someplace luxurious and relaxing like the South of France, the film’s setting — while falling in and out of naps.

What begins in lively and vibrant fashion as the title would suggest gets bogged down in a literal and figurative swamp in Vivo.

The sequel (which is also a prequel) features a bigger cast, a longer running time, extra subplots and additional romantic entanglements. But it’s emptier than its predecessor and has even lower stakes. It’s less entertaining, and for all its frantic energy, it manages to go absolutely nowhere.

While “Superior” has a rich style and a couple of intriguing ideas, it ultimately doesn’t add up to much, leaving you with the feeling that you’re watching an inferior homage.

While it’s drenched in style and features performances from an eclectic cast of actors who are deeply committed to the bit, and its expressions of erotic desire can be quite steamy, director and co-writer Amanda Kramer’s film feels limited and grows tiresome rather quickly.

Both in front of and behind the camera, Whitney Cummings tries to breathe new life into the hackneyed, men-are-like-this, women-are-like-this style of romantic comedy with The Female Brain. The results are frustratingly hit-and-miss.

It may seem ironic that a movie about electrifying the United States should ultimately be so tedious and forgettable, but such is the state of the delayed and troubled drama The Current War: Director’s Cut.

The performances are really strong, though. That’s what’s so frustrating; you just know there’s a better movie in here waiting to burst free.

Reitman gets the superficial details of the era right: the pay phones, the big sweaters, the constant indoor smoking. But he’s missing both key insight and satirical bite in his depiction of this pivotal point in American history. Privacy is about to become a thing of the past. In The Front Runner, it dies with a whimper.

Given that she’s one of the greatest actresses of her time, Mirren naturally finds ways to reveal glimmers of humanity in her portrayal of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. But the artifice of her physical transformation too often smothers her, resulting in a stoicism that makes her an elusive figure.

A weirdly hideous hodgepodge of images and ideas, as convoluted as its confusing title would suggest.

A strong cast giving their all — including Jon Hamm, Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, Catherine Keener and Amber Tamblyn — can’t do much with such heavy-handed, self-serious material.

Last Days is a scattered, superficial depiction of a sad tale that requires deeper analysis.

Just like the titular vehicle, the movie sputters along toward its intended (and entirely predictable) destination. Even having tremendous actors like Sutherland and Mirren in the front seat can’t enliven this vacation.

Despite a few musical bright spots, you’ll leave humming the costumes.

It’s a hollow replica of its source material.

It’s a harmless animated adventure that will provide a bland diversion to young viewers.

It brings me absolutely no joy to report that The Marvels is terrible, and the worst film yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It goes soft and nice and wants us to care about these characters who barely resemble human beings. After all, it’s Christmas. But everyone involved here should have asked Santa for a stronger script.

The Boy Next Door has its share of so-bad-they’re-good moments – and details, and chunks of dialogue – but not nearly enough. Mostly, they’re just bad. And it had such potential too, starting with the casting.

Director and co-writer Jessica M. Thompson establishes an unsettling mood that suggests we’re about to enter a dark and twisted world. But then eventually, her film is just dark – as in, it’s hard to see what’s happening, with herky-jerky visual effects that are especially off-putting. And when the twist comes as to what’s actually going on, it’s like: Really? That’s it?

Pistorius does solid work throughout in expressing various states of panic, but she’s mainly reacting to Crowe’s improbable omnipresence.

It’s meant to be a tale of uplift for faith-based audiences, but instead wears viewers down with a heavy-handed narrative, an overbearing score and voiceover that spells out everything in cringe-inducing, folksy tones.

Despite the dazzling, sun-soaked scenery, the long nights of partying and the sight of these attractive actors stripping themselves bare—physically and emotionally—for their roles, the harsh truth of Monday, and its accompanying hangover, comes all too soon for us.

Davis’ dialogue remains clunky and he never misses an opportunity to punctuate every feel-good moment with overwhelming, swelling music. He draws stiff performances from most of his actors, whose interactions are often painfully awkward. And as was the case with the original film, the structure is predictably episodic.

Rio, I Love You feels like little more than an extended tourism promotion video.

Director and co-writer Sarah Adina Smith offers some inspired moments and laughs here and there, but too often, running bits simply don’t pay off.

As it stands now, Aloha feels like several films at once, crammed together and sped up, with results that are emotionally hollow and narratively confusing.

Dark Meridian ends up being is a generically violent gang drama full of bad guys standing around grungy warehouses, explaining themselves before shooting each other in the head.

American Ultra tries to combine a sweet, slacker romance with a slick, super-violent action flick. If that sounds jarring to you, that’s probably because it is.

Despite the slick variety of shadings and textures Mandler employs to bring the story to life, the ending feels anticlimactic, like the tidy wrap-up at the conclusion of a TV procedural.

It’s just dull and hollow — a massive waste of time and money. The characters are flimsy, the dialogue is stilted and the amount of destruction is ridiculous.

Typically reliable actors like David Strathairn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan can only do so much when they’re given so little to work with on the page.

Last Knights is so thoroughly mediocre, so dully empty, that it’s difficult to summon the enthusiasm to trash it.

It never quite works on its own. What’s crucial at the core is creating a character who feels like a real human being; Susan is more of a collection of quirks and bad choices. There just isn’t much to her. And the novelty alone of seeing Hayes play a woman is not enough to recommend this, although he does offer sporadic glimmers of vulnerability and humanity.

If you liked “Frozen” but wish it had been angrier, The Huntsman: Winter’s War is for you.

Despite its many perils, both natural and human, The Ice Road is surprisingly dull.

Love, Guaranteed is the kind of movie you leave on the TV because you’re lying on the couch with a cold, and the remote control has fallen off the blanket onto the rug, and you don’t feel like going to the trouble to reach down, grab it and change the channel.

It’s like a surreal, extreme version of “Bad Moms.”

Sthers has amassed such a strong cast of veteran actors that they manage to create some resonant moments now and again.

To her credit, Callies has an accessible presence and tries to provide more pathos and humanity than were supplied on the page, even as her character makes increasingly idiotic decisions in the name of parental love.

There’s no real tension in this murder mystery (or much mystery, for that matter), the kills aren’t clever, and eventually this part of the story ends up feeling entirely unnecessary.

The pieces are all there, but they never really snap into place.

This sluggish tale of remorse and forgiveness mostly remains bland and distant, like the many generic aerial shots of Rome that it offers.

Justice may have a striking screen presence, but she can only do much with material that’s less than heavenly.

While Antebellum is dazzling to the eyes, it also leaves an icky taste in your mouth in its leering, exploitative depiction of violent, slavery movie tropes.

Alas, David O. Russell has concocted all manner of adventures and detours, wacky hijinks, and elaborate asides to occupy his actors, none of which is nearly as clever or charming as he seems to think.

The best thing about “Invader” is that it’s short. But for much of its 69-minute runtime, it is thoroughly unpleasant, which makes it feel much longer.

Actually, Muppets From Space doesn't offer much for adults, either. The normally smart, endearing characters can't save this movie, which begins with a flimsy premise. [12 July 1999]

The Whale is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, and Meredith Hagner travel to Mexico in Vacation Friends, but they never really go anywhere.

There are plenty of perfunctory jump scares as well as some especially cheesy visual effects. But there is exactly one inspired sight gag and one funny line of dialogue, so you have those to look forward to, should you land on The Curse of Bridge Hollow while absent-mindedly scrolling for timely holiday fare.

Again, merely watching Brody engaging in such painstaking work is interesting; the generic bloodbath that ensues, less so.

You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro in your life until you see the reboot of “Hellboy.”

A strange little movie that attempts the tricky feat of combining comedy, drama, sci-fi and romance, but it doesn’t get those individual elements right so it never coheres as a whole.

It lacks both the delicate artistry and warm wit of its predecessors. The subtle sense of spirituality is long gone; in its place are frantic action sequences. Whereas the previous movies operated on various levels to resonate with adults and entertain kids, this one is geared mainly toward younger audiences in ways that are frequently silly and insubstantial.

It’s just a flat and suspense-free tale of pretty people in peril.

Back and forth The Oak Room goes, without ever building the tension it ostensibly seeks. Instead, it meanders from tale to tale, and the writing isn’t sharp or specific enough to sustain this kind of complex framework.

It’s more rote than revelatory, and the possibility of a sequel in the final shot plays more like a threat than a promise.

The supposedly original script from writer Zach Dean offers very little that’s innovative or inspired.

Confuses repetitive raunchiness with daring humor. It hammers us over the head with the same handful of jokes in the hopes of beating us into submission. And it strains the screen appeal of a group of actors who normally are enormously likable.

Larger than its predecessor, last year’s “The Maze Runner,” in every way: in its cast, scope, set pieces and (unfortunately) length. But “more” also means more convoluted.

Imagine eating a giant bag of Skittles, then throwing it all up in a fit of sugar-induced nausea and you’ll have some idea of what it feels like to sit through My Little Pony: The Movie.

Because even though I’d just seen the exact same movie my son had, I wasn’t sure I completely understood it, either.

Various characters populate Person to Person, but they rarely register as actual people. And while some of their storylines intersect throughout the course of a day in New York, they rarely connect in ways that have actual meaning.

For better and for worse, Bliss truly makes you feel as if you, too, are suffering from a narcotic-induced, hallucinatory freak-out—one that leaves you physically exhausted, mentally spent and ultimately wondering what the hell just happened to you.

In fact, very little here is special, despite the individual charms of Evans and co-star Alice Eve.

It took 20 years for an Artemis Fowl movie to come out, and now that it’s here, the film itself feels like it’s in a hurry to be over already.

Mostly, Fifty Shades of Black is exactly what you expect it will be. It hits all the notes of its source material, only it amps them up, and it seems to get the inherent absurdity of this premise even more than Sam Taylor-Johnson’s movie did.

You’d think a movie in which Adam Driver fights a bunch of dinosaurs couldn’t possibly be boring, but that’s exactly what 65 is.

The result is a muddled mixture, offering some moments of exuberance and humor without ever being singular or exceptional.

While the 2009 book played this genre mash-up for dry, sly laughs, writer-director Burr Steers’ film amps up the thrills and gore. And that’s a problem—not necessarily as a narrative choice, but from a technical perspective.

All of these potentially effective elements—as well as a stellar cast that includes Charlize Theron, Kerry Washington, and Michelle Yeoh—get swallowed up by the overwhelming reliance on CGI-infused action sequences. They’re both empty and endless, and too often leave you wondering what’s going on and why we should bother.

The bar is just so low, people. It’s just hovering there above the ground.

Anyone who’s dealt with a teenager can relate to the baffling surliness that emerges out of nowhere — but like needless sequels, this, too, shall pass.

The whole thing ultimately collapses in a heap of unintentionally hilarious melodrama.

There is simultaneously too much and not enough going on in writer/director/co-star Josh Lawson’s feature debut. He crams in too many people and plot lines but offers too little in the way of character development and credible emotion.

A frantic jumble of retro kitsch and random pop-culture references.

A numbing and soulless spectacle of 3-D, computer-generated imagery run amok, Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings presents an enduring tale by pummeling us over the head with it.

Slapstick mishaps and—ultimately—feel-good triumph of sorts ensue, with plenty of perky training montages in between.

Nothing is compelling about these characters, and Bennett and Riley have little chemistry with each other playing them, even though they’re supposed to be estranged exes experiencing an unexpected spark.

The film is clearly sweet and well-intentioned, but Mexican director and co-writer Analeine Cal y Mayor has trouble transcending the confines of her meager budget, which leaves “Book of Love” looking and sounding distractingly chintzy.

Pretty much everyone in this movie is annoying all the time, and Spindel yanks us around in tone from one moment to the next: wacky, then romantic, back to wacky, then dramatic, before ending on a disastrously wacky note. Every new situation, whether it’s shopping at Toys “R” Us, a school field trip or a pre-natal therapy workshop, provides the set-up for wild humor that doesn’t land.

It’s about both fellatio jokes and falling in love all over again, but it’s so rushed and the characters are so underdeveloped that the film feels frustratingly slight.

The result feels strained and slapped together, crammed as it is with silly mistaken identities and misunderstandings, adolescent jealousies and slapstick jokes. It’s a sitcom in a sari.

When it leans hard into the inherent absurdity of its wacky, mismatched buddy antics, “Venom: The Last Dance” can be a total blast. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Terrible and insane, and will surely end up being one of the worst films of 2019. But it’s also such a wildly ambitious roller coaster ride that it must be experienced, preferably with friends, to laugh together at its cheesy dialogue, over-the-top performances and multiple, major plot twists.

Behold the craven exercise in hollow nostalgia that is Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

Jackals put me in a foul mood. Maybe that’s the intention of this lean, mean slab of B-horror trash: to set you on edge and keep you there long after it’s over.

The dream — or the drug-induced hallucination, or whatever this is — can only last for so long.