Christy Lemire

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.

Vincent N Roxxy is a nasty little piece of B-movie trash that lacks both the verve to grab you as a guilty pleasure and the artistry to be taken seriously as a dramatic thriller.

Granted, it’s meant to be a fantasy film, but not a single moment rings true in A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting — not the teen angst, not the little-kid nightmares, and definitely not the sense of fun and camaraderie meant to fuel these Halloween adventures.

It isn’t creepy, but it isn’t terribly plausible, either. It’s just another movie in which a 30ish white dude finds purpose and learns how to live life again through the love and support of a younger woman who’s more of a concept than a real person.

It lacks the verbal punch of a pulpy film noir. Its pacing is too slack to serve as a gripping romantic thriller. It even rings hollow as a cautionary tale, because everyone is scheming and duplicitous and so no one has been truly wronged.

It's all a dull, repetitive slog of talking heads saying the same thing over and over in slightly different ways, and it never picks up steam.

It’s more of the same, without any discernible improvement in quality, despite the massive technological leaps over the past two decades.

A mixture of misplaced gallows humor, wildly over-the-top caricatures and a gimmicky use of animation combine to make My Dead Boyfriend one of the year’s more uncomfortable movie-going experiences.

Back in Action isn’t as obnoxiously soulless as “Red Notice,” but it’s firmly within that subgenre of glossy, globetrotting action pictures you can stream while you fold your laundry. It all feels so cynical.

A movie that’s as empty and unlikable as the characters themselves.

Time may feel like a flat circle, but the calendar says it’s January, so that means we get shoddy, dumping-ground dreck like the generically titled Redemption Day.