Christy Lemire

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

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.

Think of the worst movie you’ve ever seen – a movie that didn’t make you laugh, didn’t make you cry, didn’t move you or change you in any way besides giving you the desperate urge to flee the theater. Think of a movie that was a massive waste of your time and money. Hold that title in your mind. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is worse than that.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

At first, the story is fascinating. Soon, it becomes dizzying. Quickly, it turns sickening. And eventually, it’s heartbreaking.

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.

In directing her first feature, Contreras takes a straightforward approach to documenting the 2022 contest. She follows a handful of conductors from various points on the globe as they get ready for their big moment on the Paris stage. But within this traditional structure, she’s chosen her subjects well. They have a variety of experiences, personalities, and home lives that inform their art.

Weekend in Taipei is a B-movie straight out of the 1990s: a trashy, splashy, knowingly over-the-top action picture in the tradition of Luc Besson, which is fitting, given that Besson himself co-wrote the script with director George Huang.

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

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.