Christy Lemire

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.

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

Like A Boss is a movie written and directed by men which bears very little resemblance to how women actually relate to each other.

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.

This a super-Sorkiny Aaron Sorkin script — full of the kind of well-timed zingers and clever turns of phrase that never occur to us in real life.

I’m also hoping that the game is more emotionally engaging — or at least, you know, fun — than the movie I just saw. Because that thing was a dour mess.

This slick and cheesy Netflix movie only occasionally rises to the potential of its wild premise, thanks mostly to a crazy-eyed, licking-his-chops performance from Jason O’Mara. He knows exactly what kind of material he’s working with here. For the most part, though, “Hypnotic” is dopey, but never quite dopey enough.

There is nothing new, exciting or particularly challenging about what The Secret: Dare to Dream is selling.

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

Even by the low standards of this type of live-action, family friendly comedy, Show Dogs is especially lame. It’s actually kind of amazing that it’s getting a theatrical release at all.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

In theory, these actors should be able to just show up, be themselves, tap into their formidable improvisational abilities and let the laughs flow freely. In reality, though, movies require scripts. They require actual characters and dialogue and narratives that evolve in ways that are logical, or at least engaging.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Even by the standards of raunchy, comic spoofs, director and co-writer Deon Taylor’s film feels especially scattered.

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

Within these oversaturated times for comic book movies, Madame Web is blissfully breezy in its pacing, which helps make it a more enjoyable watch than some of the super-serious, end-of-the-world fare we often see.

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.

Playing With Fire tries to be tasteless and crass but also treacly and cheery. It wants to you go: “Ewwww …,” but also: “Awwww ...” You’re more likely to groan, then look at your watch again.

Schiffli’s snarky and snide self-aware tone quickly grows wearisome, and his action sequences have a cheapness about them that’s distancing; they’re almost laughable but never so-bad-they’re-good.