Derek Smith

The film trots out thinly conceived villains and a murky plot twists that leave crucial details needlessly shrouded in mystery.

6 Days boils down the intricate relationship between Iran and the West into a tense standoff of conflicting ideals where the values and perspectives of only one side really matter.

Forever My Girl makes one wonder if Bethany Ashton Wolf actually thinks this is what true love is like.

Like other gender-swapped films in recent years, The Hustle plays the identity politics game as an end in itself.

The Hunter’s Prayer packs its brisk 85 minutes with an impressive array of car chases, gun fights, hand-to-hand combat, and foot pursuits, all cut with a precision and an economy that heightens the impact of every hit.

The Desperate Hour’s broad, vague rendering of its characters is part and parcel of its troubling approach to its material.

The film never thinks to lean into the blatant silliness that its premise invites.

Distractingly indebted to No Country for Old Men, the film’s wild tonal swings mostly leave it feeling impossibly disjointed.

There's no follow-through or follow-up on how the main character's voyeurism informs his burgeoning sexual perversions.

As the film spirals outward from its central relationship to delve into other characters’ hidden pasts, the story becomes too unwieldy and fragmented for the audience to develop a comprehensive understanding of Callum Turner's Thomas or his personal evolution.

The decision to have Allison Williams and Dave Franco, both in their late 30s when the film was shot, play their characters as teens may be the most egregious example of Regretting You’s indifference to verisimilitude.

Its inconsistent, half-baked characterizations would be more forgivable were they at least in the service of some inspired comedy.

The film is too narrow-minded to explore the notion that a saint-like man may want to satisfy his normal carnal desires.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard improves on its 2017 predecessor only insofar as it runs 20 minutes shorter.

If there’s an ethos that Justin Dec’s film believes in, it’s only that “death sucks.”

The remake gets bogged down by a superfluous, hackneyed backstory and narrative threads that are conspicuous for their lack of emotional gravitas, causing the film to feel like a wheel-spinning exercise.

The film is subsumed by the unshakable sense that Jared Leto is intended to make Martin Zandvliet's take on the yakuza underworld more palatable for American audiences.

Danny Baron's film awkwardly melds Bollywood romcom tropes with a half-hearted critique of the GMO industry.

A welter of dissonant intentions, the film fails to seamlessly intertwine its elements of realism and fantasy.

The film aims only to shock, refusing to deliver anything in an intriguingly post-ironic way in the process.

Instead of elaborating its plot, Blacklight offers up repetitious, dialogue-driven scenes that deliver only the shallowest of exposition, advancing the story at a sluggish pace.

Dolittle’s inability to completely develop any of its characters reduces the film to all pomp and no circumstance.

By its conclusion, what we’re left with is a cinematic Frankenstein, whose disparate genre elements have been cobbled together without much consideration or fuss.

The film’s treatment of its subject is belligerently hamfisted, disingenuous, and incurious.

Despite its title, Life Itself doesn’t revel so much in the joys and travails of life as it does in the shameless emotional manipulation stemming from the ham-fisted tendencies of its own maker.

The seesaw of effect of oscillating between extolling Sidney’s genius and lingering on his anguish begins to feel like a child slowly burning an ant with a magnifying glass, occasionally taking breaks to truly savor the harm he or she is committing.

The Last Face's shameful exploitation of Africans doesn’t stop with the mere privileging of its two wealthy white doctors and their trivial personal struggles within the narrative.

William H. Macy's The Layover was clearly conceived and written by men who have no interest in approaching female friendships with any degree of complexity, curiosity, or respect.