Courtney Howard

This new adaptation’s noteworthy commentary on poignant, timely issues is often eclipsed by predictability, superficial character development and inconsistent pacing.

Despite some pacing issues and predictable plotlines, the film keeps us wholeheartedly engaged with well-drawn, well-performed characters, grounded shenanigans and sweet, sentimental commentary on heartache.

While there are certain shots that provoke an emotional pull, whether that be fear, sadness or wonderment, there’s a synthetic quality to them. It leaves us yearning for a full immersion into this world of make-believe. Environments lack depth and dimension, coming across flat and uninteresting.

Takes expected genre trappings and infuses them with unexpected delights, creating an enlightened, enchanting and entertaining feature.

Despite its smattering of shortcomings, A Castle For Christmas is gently disarming, heartening, holiday-themed escapism that’s as satisfying as a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night.

It establishes its own identity, occasionally improving upon its cinematic predecessor enough to make it a worthwhile watch.

Spinning a winning, delicate love story would be almost impossible if not for the performances of the leads. Ali and Harris have impeccable chemistry, making us feel the profundity and stakes of their romantic relationship.

With its prevailing sentiments on dating in the digital age feeling more than a decade old, and themes centered on honesty and shallowness ringing hollow, this feature is fairly forgettable.

Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife hits the reboot button once more, this time carrying a familial cinematic legacy. Yet with all the nostalgia packed into the picture, its own refurbished identity is slightly compromised, functioning as a mimeograph of what came before it.

The filmmakers raise some interesting points, but it becomes an exercise in frustration to interpret the calculated connection between disordered eating, the metaphysical, and religious, medieval martyrdom. With nary any tangible scares, or much to truly unnerve or unsettle except from an empathetic humanistic standpoint, this feature-length directorial debut is assured, but far too ambiguous for its own good.

For all the innovative, intelligent decisions made, there are an overwhelming number of frustrating creative choices. The movie’s pacing is inconsistent, especially when it comes to character development, which can feel at once underdeveloped and overstuffed.

While it’s possible to make the formulaic and familiar resound fantastically, that concept has evaded these filmmakers here. Neither bland regurgitation nor innovative retelling, the remake falls somewhere in between, suffering greatly by not establishing a more distinctive identity.

Any crass consumerism is eclipsed by disarming, demonstrable themes and meaningful sentiments woven throughout the film’s textured fabric.

Though the high-concept relationship movie frequently trips over its own well-meaning sentiments, the sweet, earnest performances and sharp technical craftsmanship deliver a blissful feeling when the material comes up short.

Containing razor-sharp witticisms about feminine intuition, gendered sexual politics and relationships (both platonic and romantic), it excels beyond its self-deprecating title.

Overall, Roth crafts a resonant picture, purposefully threading in themes centered on identity and degradation with a sensitive, deft touch. Where it falters in properly contextualizing its pervading sentiments, it often finds resilient strength in the smart parallels between animal and human.

Director Leandro Neri’s lighthearted romantic comedy delivers hijinks and a few sweet sentiments about having the courage to embrace destiny. Nevertheless, its broad comedy and thoughtful themes aren’t completely cogent, due to a lack of properly motivated character developments and questionable scenarios.

Effervescent performances from an ebullient ensemble make Finding You a palatable and compelling female coming-of-age tale.

This superior sequel serves as both a meta-commentary on his humbling past antics and a pivotal point for the eponymous protagonist. It’s an astute, entertaining, light-hearted mix of slapstick and self-reflexive humor commingling with enlightened, sharp sentiments about individualism and commercialism (the latter of which Potter herself wrestled with, and eventually pioneered).

The soulful, comforting sentiments at the core of Basilone’s feature are really what ring true.

The cinematic catharsis the Barrs and company have carefully crafted stands as a fully realized portrait of grief that’s universal in its texture. By focusing on living with the specter of grief and the discovery of its blessings, the filmmakers highlight the human struggle, breaking through to the gutting truth of the matter.

The feature’s genteel, sweet spirit and radiant lead performances rescue it from forgettable mediocrity and genre familiarity.

While imperfect and at times predictable, the adventure these filmmakers and performers take us on feels like a warm tropical breeze.

While more than an hour and a half seems like a long time to make the simplistic statement that the internet is bad, Balmès has greater profundity in mind when disseminating astute observations about how modern necessities and communicative devices impact cultures and ecosystems.

The warmth and touching tenderness of All My Life melts even the coldest of hearts in its quest to deliver happy and sad tears.

Even though the kid is the hero we should clearly be rooting for, the filmmaker conjures equal amounts of empathy and compassion for the monster. That serves to add complexity to the characterizations, but balancing both sides muddles the poignancy of the climax.

With lackluster character development, a few ill-conceived situations in the second half and dialogue that sounds like it’s been run through Google Translate, there’s only a modest amount of entertainment value found therein.

Littered with confounding clichés and hokey devices, director/co-writer Andy Tennant’s feature is the exact inverse of what a passionate romance should aspire to be, let alone one preaching the power of positivity.

It delivers a few refreshing details by giving the heroine more agency in her quest to find happiness — yet not quite enough to justify its interminable run time.

The path to the inevitable but deeply moving conclusion is lively and thoroughly entertaining. Friedlander gets us there by throwing in unexpected yet true-to-life twists and turns that will likely be all too familiar to new parents, who typically don’t have the help of a second couple to share the responsibility.

While it falls short of its promised earth-shattering, mind-altering revelations, it does cast an interesting hook from a creative perspective, thoughtfully packaging its message in visually coherent, engaging ways.

This stirring documentary gives a comprehensive look at suicide through the lens of four at-risk segments of the population.

Neither emotional enough to pay proper tribute to the true story it captures, nor hokey enough to qualify as “so bad, it’s good,” this is a flaccid, failed attempt at heart-tugging poignancy.

Even though the feature reflects WWE’s core values built on family, teamwork and inspirational aspirations, and contains healthy messages about proving one’s mettle using wit and wisdom, The Main Event sags far too frequently.

Like any good, inspirational athletic adventure, the film forges a strong connection with the human side of the story.

This documentary is not an infomercial for the Smith Ridge Veterinarian Center, but rather a wildly compassionate call to arms for a profession in need of advancement.

While it suffers from a rocky beginning with burdensome amounts of kook and quirk, the unfolding spell it subtly casts holds profundity and wisdom.

All The Bright Places would be nowhere without Haley’s vision and deft ability to deliver all of the feels. He finds places to let his bright intellect shine, perfectly crafting heartrending melodrama through tonal pacing that’s never cloying nor disgustingly saccharine.

Lacking spine-tingling dread, taut tension, and the deservingly provocative ending needed to make its modern sentiments land, this re-imagining is less than a classic.

What should have been an awe-filled adventure quickly curdles into an awful one, thanks to a pedestrian formula and the filmmakers’ fixation on fart jokes.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this story is that the filmmakers work from the assumption that the audience instantly cares about these characters. We don’t, especially when we’ve been given no good reason to. As the film’s tagline prophetically declares, “We all have blind spots.” It’s okay to keep this one in yours.

With heartening, encouraging messages that speak to the target audience and beyond, Good Girls Get High doesn’t stray too far from the formula, but manipulates it in such a way that feels fresh.

Its candy-floss-lite sentiments and strong lead performances carry the picture beyond the genre’s limitations. That said, it lacks a sense of uniqueness to set it apart from other female-centric book-to-screen adaptations.

While the narrative occasionally falters, the visceral way in which the writer-director captures his subjects’ triumphs and travails provides an unflinching portrait of modern teens on the fringes of society.

While the filmmakers have crafted compelling characters and conundrums, they unfortunately fail to give them better connective tissue and a satisfying third act.

Steamier and sleeker than a Hallmark Channel movie, but with just as many idealized scenarios, it’s “so bad, it’s good” escapism at its finest.

This magical-realist fairy tale, about a young woman feeling so isolated and insignificant after a tragic loss that she’s literally invisible to everyone except one other struggling soul, is certainly imaginative and intelligent in its ideas. However, the savvy smarts within don’t quite sustain the running time and, much like its protagonist, the film becomes transparent in its motives and sentimentality.

These filmmakers are eager to explore the delicate facets of a forceful, fully-formed woman, and they do so with imagery that’s both stunning and subtle.

Perhaps the best sequences are multi-purpose. They’re both funny and genuine, add a bubbly buoyancy through deft wit and charm, and tweak genre conventions.

It’s unusual for a typical Illumination broad comedy to include a heartrending message that makes parents feel less alone in their very real, visceral struggles. It’s just cloaked in a shenanigans-soaked romp about what pets do when humans aren’t looking.

Stacie Passon, director of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, sharply channels the author’s atmosphere of dread, paranoia, and isolation, making the past feel prescient.

This melodrama, released to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month, lacks the necessary polish to elevate not just its message, but also the actors’ performances.

Overall, Poms isn’t a film that demands the audience’s attention — and that’s a shame given the breadth of skilled, seasoned talent involved. The blueprint for a genuinely inspired, warm-hearted dramedy is indeed there, it’s just that the filmmakers can’t figure out how to properly utilize what they have.

This fun, feminist-friendly feature, about a woman devastated by the disintegration of her long-term romance and the two best friends who rally around her for one final night of frivolity, taps into that collective yearning for more. It gifts us with the next big “Girls Night In” event, for which Netflix has cornered the market.

With irreverence, charm, sparkling cinematography, and a catchy pop soundtrack, this marks the series’ youngest-skewing, most comedic Earth Day documentary yet. That’s not a bad thing, however.

Despite a heartfelt sentiment that one person has the power to uproot societal structure and inspire change, and the filmmakers’ desire to raise awareness about an abhorrent practice, packaging it in a family-friendly narrative proves to be wildly problematic.

“Bambi” perhaps did it best, but Chance is on the opposite end of the spectrum in both overall tone and filmmaking skill. Though the message here is one everyone should hear, clichéd characters and a dark, derivative dirge of a story end up feeling more manipulative than motivational.

Though the narrative tends to be a touch too simplistic for most grown-ups, and lacks enough riotous dog action for the little ones, there’s enough bite to make things worthwhile for those who just want to enjoy a sweet, wholesome dog movie.

While it lacks gripping, nail-biting tension, the unnerving horror that underscores the family drama brings it to life.

Since the filmmakers’ hearts are clearly in the right place, it’s a shame its parts couldn’t knit together a bit more seamlessly. The narrative’s lifeblood is the sweet friendship that develops between Calvin and Skye — and the actors’ magnetic chemistry keeps that alive.

By pumping up the darkly comedic undertones, augmenting the frigid chill of the original, Moland’s terrific, riveting noir-tinged picture distinguishes itself from other rote, reductive remakes.

Gratuitous sex, gruesome torture, copious amounts of gore, and garish imagery populate the picture. Those qualities might be reason enough for some to watch, although a great many others would do well to scroll right past it on their Netflix feeds.

For every shameless trick the filmmakers employ to pluck our heartstrings, resonant chords are struck elsewhere, teaching audiences about family, the power of unconditional love, and the ripple effects of compassion.

With its saccharine score, saturated cinematography, and trite platitudes, the film is formulaic and forgettable except for Russell’s performance as the lovable legend.

Though its heart is in the right place when it comes to many of the boldly-portrayed sentiments, the indie melodrama plays like a hokey, weak after-school special rather than a powerful and alarming wake-up call.