Christy Lemire

A big-budget, holiday-timed blockbuster about…racism, which may not exactly be the joyful, escapist entertainment families are looking for this time of year.

Diane Kruger is as inscrutable to us as she is to her fellow Mossad agents and the asset she seduces in The Operative, a solidly crafted if forgettable espionage thriller.

Finally, a woman — Sophie Barthes — has directed and co-written a film version of Madame Bovary, but strangely, that doesn’t result in any more richness or enlightenment.

It’s an inspired idea, even though a lot of the industry inside jokes may go over most moviegoers’ heads. The playfulness of this self-referential structure gives the movie a zany energy off the top that it ultimately can’t sustain.

As Don’t Worry Darling reaches its climactic and unintentionally hilarious conclusion, Wilde loses her grasp on the material. The pacing is a little erratic throughout, but she rushes to uncover the ultimate mystery with a massive exposition dump that’s both dizzying and perplexing.

It’s all inspiring stuff, to be sure—and often so dramatic that it’s hard to imagine it really could have happened, even though it did.

If only the dialogue and visuals matched the daring of its ideology.

For much of its overlong running time, “Waiting for Bojangles” depicts mental illness as an adorable personality quirk, a source of good-time party vibes, even a glamorous quality. Then, once this frothy French romance evolves into a more serious drama, it turns turgid, causing a jarring tonal shift.

Horns would seem like another gamble, and another opportunity to stretch. It’s a supernatural thriller, territory he’s familiar with, but taken to a raunchy, grotesque extreme.

It’s time for your annual Liam Neesoning: that cinematic tradition in which the seasoned star plays a grizzled character with a particular set of skills, which come in handy to dispatch bad guys and rescue good ones. But this year’s entry in the subgenre, The Marksman, is particularly mediocre.

These “Fantastic Beasts” movies are just not good. They’re extremely OK, but never truly inspiring or transporting.

Even by the standards of this franchise—and this genre in general—Step Up All In is pretty laughable.

Director Tim Sutton, working from a script by Greg Johnson, offers some striking visuals and a couple of compelling performances. But for the most part, this high-concept Western is too much of an empty drag to ever grab you.

That’s one dismayingly archaic trend throughout The Young Messiah: the fiendish characters are also wildly effeminate.

Stretched out to 90 minutes in Sponge on the Run, the pacing lags, the goofiness sags, and you discover over time that there’s not much holding these antics together.

The sad subtext of Made in Italy is more intriguing and poignant than what we see on screen.

Moving from in front of the lens to behind it, the former ‘80s sitcom star clearly has something personal and piercing to say. Her film will surely resonate with so many others who hear their own nagging voices in their heads.

The film version of the best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars feels emotionally inert, despite its many moments that are meant to put a lump in our throats.

It ultimately results in a cold, unsatisfying experience.

Takes on the topic of gender dysphoria with a talented cast but not much to say.

A Bad Moms Christmas has the shoddy look and frantic feel of a slapped-together, cash-grab sequel, because that’s exactly what it is.

By indulging in the exact same instincts it insists are problematic artistically, Peter Rabbit 2 wants to have its carrot and eat it, too. But maybe that won’t bother you. Maybe you’ll be grateful for a return to the theater and the opportunity to do so with your kids. In that regard, the sequel hops along in sufficiently bouncy fashion.

All the pieces would seem to be in place—on paper at least—for a rich and gripping grown-up drama. So why does the result feel so elusive and unsatisfying?

With Girls of the Sun, she handles the action sequences with a deft hand and a feel for tension, but her character development is woefully lacking to the point of empty cliché.

Rich in atmosphere but short on substance, director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’ film has the look and tone of a serious, original work of art, but it ends up feeling empty as it recycles images and ideas from many influential predecessors.

Sam Elliott is Sam Elliott as Sam Elliott in The Hero, a sentimental and sporadically effective celebration of the veteran character actor.

It’s amusingly slick and mean for a while, but ultimately the film’s one-note nihilism grows numbing, and its stylish visuals and well-chosen soundtrack can only do so much to keep it lively.

Like Slimer shoving snacks in his ravenous maw, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” tries to cram way too many characters, storylines and iconic images into its two-hour runtime.

But because the talent amassed here is so impressive, I wish the film had been more focused.

It’s sufficiently giddy at first but eventually grows repetitive and wearying, especially as more and more stuff gets blown up real good.

A presence that initially was disturbing grows repetitive and almost predictable over the course of an entire film.

Perfectly serviceable and utterly forgettable, Honest Thief nonetheless offers a few pleasing details to keep it from being a total slog.

Director and co-writer Susanna Fogel has trouble achieving a tonal balance between the comedy and the action, which only grows increasingly glaring over the course of the film’s overlong running time.

Blake Lively gives it her all in The Rhythm Section, but the movie only meets her halfway.

Schwarzenegger has turned into your elderly uncle, dancing like a goofball at your wedding after a couple glasses of champagne. He knows he’s being silly, and he knows that you know, and that alone is supposed to be good for a laugh. But it’s not. It’s just sad. He has essentially become McBain.

The ending — with its revelation of what these girls were really after all along — is so frustrating, you’re likely to wonder: Is that all there is?

A terrific cast can only do so much with superficial, maudlin material in the coming-of-age dramedy Wildflower.

Writer/director Camille Griffin’s feature filmmaking debut is an ambitious but muddled mix of Christmas comedy and apocalyptic drama.

An impressive team comes together in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the heist thriller Triple Frontier, but the results are frustratingly uneven.

It’s structurally awkward, jumping around in time needlessly and sometimes confusingly, rendering Nureyev’s story weirdly inert until the final 20-30 minutes.

Being a mom is hard, a universal truism that "Nightbitch" explores in ways that are occasionally inspired but mostly blunt and banal.

The Glass Castle is at odds with itself. Maybe that contradiction is by design. Maybe it’s inevitable, given the emotionally complicated terrain it treads. But the result is a film that never quite clicks tonally and doesn’t do justice to its harrowing central story.

The mythology here is both dense and frequently silly, with the movie grinding to a halt around the one-hour mark for an extensive information dump. By the end, you may still be unclear as to what’s going on, but you also may not care.

The multiple twists, double-crosses and leaps in logic are more likely to prompt giggles than gasps, despite the impressive production values and the earnest efforts of an A-list cast.

Hamilton deserves better. So do the other strong women who make up the film’s trio of warriors, fighting to protect each other and all of humanity from technological destruction. Again.

Tim Burton’s Dumbo feels like one of the big-eared baby elephant’s early flights: It’s adorable and earnest but it causes a lot of commotion, and it only sporadically, haltingly soars.

The Deliverance would have worked just fine if it had functioned solely as a domestic drama infused with the thorny, real-world issues of addiction, poverty and racism.

Life After Beth gets into the well-tread zombie-comedy territory in a clever and inspired way. Then it doesn’t get out of it nearly so skillfully.

So of course, Hardy applies that same intensity to the comic-book anti-hero origin story, Venom. And his fully committed performance is pretty much the only reason to see it.

It’s disappointing and actually kind of cynical in its unwillingness to try anything even vaguely innovative with these beloved characters.

Director/co-writer Chris Dowling infuses his sports drama with a grungy sense of place, making Run the Race feel a bit like a Christian version of “Friday Night Lights.”

It’s an inspiring tale based on true events with a worthwhile message about finding your voice and asserting your identity. If only it were good.

Every Day has an intriguing concept that’s hampered by problematic execution. And it raises several questions it never answers in satisfying fashion, leading to a conclusion that will elicit not just head-scratching but unintentional hilarity.

The wacky New York types with their lack of an internal censor and their wild ideas for what they’d do to the apartment provide a consistent source of laughs.

Zombieland: Double Tap is more of the same, but also much less. The cast is larger, the carnage is gnarlier and the comedy is even more meta than before. But while individual moments and action sequences might be amusing, the endeavor as a whole feels like a tepid retread.

The pacing is so jarring that the emotional payoff doesn’t develop as intended. And the overall irony, of course, is that this is a movie about the need for magic that could have used a little more of the stuff itself. But if it makes you think of your mom and dad fondly, even for a moment, well at least that’s something.

While we do indeed see the normalcy of her home life with her parents and younger brothers and the regular, teenage-girl instincts that exist alongside her courage, we never get a glimpse into her deeper feelings.

The glittering cast of Death on the Nile is all dressed up but, alas, they have nowhere to go.

Within the muchness of it all, there are both occasionally thrilling moments and too little in terms of substance.

Individual scenes can be tense but the arc as a whole lacks momentum. I Smile Back should have been devastating. Silverman is willing to take you there. What it ends up being is frustrating.

Bailey has achieved the purpose she set out at the film’s start. She’s made a film that’s optimistic, ultimately. But it would have benefitted from being a lot more real.

Ultimately, these shocking and violent sequences become repetitive and gratuitous, making Red Sparrow feel more like a cheap exercise in exploitation than a visceral tale of survival.

Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan do their best to elevate Military Wives from a simple tune to a symphony, but the notes just aren’t there on the page.

For a movie that’s about a character on the run, No Man’s Land meanders and takes its time in a way that feels in conflict with the narrative.

Director Kim Farrant’s debut feature is beautifully shot and offers some powerful, well-acted moments from a strong cast, but it’s just relentlessly dreary.

The guerrilla-style approach is ambitious. The access is incredible. The film itself, however, is less so.

As the film trudges toward its conclusion, it’s one frustrating scene after another like that. And by the end, you’ll realize the clever opening title sequence was probably the best part of all.

Weirdly sluggish and dull.

The Report is also surprisingly free of tension, given the subject matter; if you’re going to experience any anxiety, it’ll probably come from a sense of worry over whether all of this is going to be on the final exam.

It’s almost too pretty in a self-consciously artful way, and that overriding aesthetic suffocates the underlying truth of the lead actors’ performances.

The stakes are higher because this is the end—It really is this time!—but the first hour or so of returning director Francis Lawrence’s film is legitimately nap-inducing.

Cuckoo gets more confusing the more it explains itself. The further writer-director Tilman Singer goes in articulating the strange goings-on that drive this stylish, unsettling thriller, the less compelling it becomes.

Everyone’s so handsome and there are SO many cozy sweaters and clunky boots to enjoy on those rainy days. But these characters are barely more than a collection of quirks, and the thing that’s keeping them from being together forever has got to be the most ridiculous of all contrivances.

Your Place or Mine begins in 2003, and it feels like the kind of superficially agreeable and instantly forgettable romantic comedy that came out around that time.

Aïnouz rarely builds tension through these machinations; surprisingly, given what’s at stake, “Firebrand” is often a bit of a slog.

Gadot remains a winning and winsome figure in “Wonder Woman 1984,” and she retains her authentic connection with the audience, but the machinery around her has grown larger and unwieldy. Maybe that was inevitable, the urge in crafting a sequel to make everything wilder and brasher, more sprawling and complicated. In the process, though, the quality that made the original film such a delight has been squashed almost entirely.

Maggie Q and Michael Keaton have such snappy, sexy chemistry with each other in The Protégé, it’ll make you wish their connection were in the service of a better movie.

Nothing nearly so wacky or grotesque goes down in this romantic thriller, but you’ll wish it would.

Senior Year takes two high-concept premises—the going-back-to-high-school movie and the waking-up-from-a-coma movie—and slams them together in an intermittently amusing but mostly obvious comedy.

A drama that’s tastefully restrained to a fault in a particularly British manner.

It’s a mismatched-buddy comedy. It’s a fish-out-of-water comedy. It’s a raucous girl-power comedy.

It's pretty standard man vs. nature stuff. It’s also a pretty simple parable about the perils of greed. All of this would be fine if “Gold” had more to it, but aside from its undeniable style, there’s very little there there.

With Radioactive, Satrapi eschews traditional biopic notions in favor of a more daring approach. But the execution is frustratingly inconsistent, with a time-hopping structure that’s more jarring than thrilling.

Everything gets upended in the film’s final third, when its languid pacing gives way to sped-up plotting.

With its amusing training montages, colorful supporting characters, and uplifting message of perseverance, The Phantom of the Open does exactly what you expect it will in the most familiar, comforting manner imaginable. It earns the politest of golf claps.

Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti’s film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 proves the old adage that you can go to the well — or in this case, the dog bowl — one time too many. And that’s saying something, given that this is only the second film in the series.

There’s a surreal, dreamlike quality throughout, with bursts of violence and bad behavior. But while Grabinski certainly deserves credit for his ambition, the juggling act he’s attempting gets away from him, and Happily ultimately ends up being more frustrating than dazzling.

If you long for the gritty charms of mid-‘90s indie cinema in general and “Trainspotting” specifically, T2 Trainspotting gives you exactly that. And by “exactly,” we really do mean “exactly.”

Everything about “The History of Sound” is restrained to a fault—until it’s about the music. And then it bursts with passion and pure emotion.

All of it is done capably but without much panache; worst of all, the boxing sequences feel rudimentary, lacking both artistry and savagery.

Vaguely more tolerable than you might expect – enjoyable, even, in sporadic bursts.

Their many challenges wrap up too neatly, but there are enough genuine moments of truth in Blast Beat to make you wish there were even more.

Rough Night starts out buoyantly, and it and features some wonderfully weird moments scattered throughout. But those scenes never truly gel with the movie’s eventual life-or-death stakes.

The best thing I can say about it is that it’s not another retread of its predecessor.

Dazzlingly impressive from a technical perspective but frustratingly dull from a narrative one, Medusa Deluxe is an ambitious but uneven experience.

Unsung Hero could have used more of such emotional honesty. But it ultimately must deliver a broad uplift that’s palatable for the whole family, so it tends to skim the surface.

While the performances are stronger and the narrative is more coherent than you’d see in a “Madea” movie, for example, Perry’s latest still features many of the auteur’s trademarks: dizzying tonal swings, awkward blocking, drab lighting, jarring edits and a mixture of the salacious and the puritanical.

For every delicate element there are many others that are heavy-handed or cringe-inducing, including some painfully on-the-nose musical selections. (Salt-N-Pepa’s perky “Push It” plays while Collins’ character, Rosie, is giving birth. Get it? Because she’s pushing!)

Danish documentarian Janus Metz — making his first feature, and working from a script by Ronnie Sandahl — feels the need to hold our hands and oversimplify these two titans of tennis.

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.

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.

Judy Greer assembled a monumental cast for her directing debut, A Happening of Monumental Proportions. Then she stranded her fellow actors with material that doesn’t even begin to tap into their talents.

No one needs a paycheck this badly. This goes far beyond the one-for-me, one-for-them theory of role choices.

The Pickup is as generic and forgettable as its title suggests: a bland action-comedy that will surely end up being one of the year’s worst movies, if only for the egregious way it squanders its talented cast.

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

Secret Headquarters is as bland and forgettable as its title would suggest. It’s so generic, it almost sounds like the name of a better movie translated awkwardly from another language into its simplest terms in English.

Particularly at a time when women’s rights are in jeopardy here in the United States and around the world, “Dirty Angels” represents a blown opportunity to say something meaningful amid the mayhem.

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.

Christian readers and audiences are the base here, but it’s hard to imagine that this incarnation of the story will persuade anyone else to find the Lord unless they’re sitting in the theater praying for the dialogue or special effects to improve.

The 355 amasses some of the most talented and electrifying actresses in the world, then squanders them in a generic and forgettable action picture.

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

Luck truly is best suited for small children with low standards. Older kids will be bored. Adults will find it especially dreary, even though there’s actually a relevant message in here about the merits of failure and the perils of lawnmower parenting, buried somewhere beneath all the sparkles and desperation.

Penn’s own humanitarian work is well-documented, including raising millions of dollars for Haitian relief efforts. Clearly, his intentions here are genuine. But his execution is laughably pretentious.

Jettisons everything that’s honest and worthwhile about the books in favor of hackneyed misadventures and gross-out scatological humor.

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

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.

The makers of The Possession of Hannah Grace clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty — and mostly scare-free — horror film ends up being.

Over and over again, this is the level of humor in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 — this is the shrill note it hits.

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.

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.

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.

A blandly gritty piece of late-August mayhem that’s as forgettable as its generic title.

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.

A movie based on a toy should be a whole lot more fun than this.

Alas, everything is wrong with Superintelligence, beginning with the misbegotten premise of Steve Mallory’s script.

Shrill, frantic, and hideous to look at, “Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue” isn’t just one of the worst animated movies of the year—it’s one of the worst movies of the year, period.

Like Father Like Son is at once unintentionally hilarious and borderline reprehensible, and it’s the closest approximation to the disaster of “The Room” since Tommy Wiseau’s cult favorite first graced arthouse theaters over 20 years ago.

The pacing is sluggish, the script is crammed with both incomprehensible technical gobbledygook and lazy, sexist jokes, and the visual effects are laughably cheesy. My kid could make a more dazzling space movie on his iPad.