Derek Smith

Akiyuki Shinbo and Nobuyuki Takeuchi's time-travel device mostly just exists to complicate what is, at heart, a trite and sexist love story.

Martin Campbell’s film never shakes off its familiarity, and as such seems destined to, well, be lost to public memory.

The film is lazily content to simply put its female characters through the potty-mouthed, gross-out comedy ringer.

The third film in the series reliably delivers on the promise of both flamboyant showmanship and a steadfast refusal to adhere to more than just the rules of physics.

The film suggests a gene splice of a slasher flick and supernatural horror. But as enticing as that combination may sound, André Øvredal’s rendering of it is as bland and listless as the blues and grays that dominate the film’s color palette.

Ultimately, the film tries so hard to do so much that it doesn’t end up doing any of it particularly well.

Even overlooking its fictionalized account of an inexplicable political resurgence, the film falters in its needlessly convoluted plotting.

The Greatest Showman‘s spectacle is overshadowed by its archaic and misguided notions of American exceptionalism.

What’s self-worth in the 21st century without a dollar amount attached to it, and what value does UglyDolls have if kids aren’t walking out of the theater nagging their parents for toys of their favorite characters?

This shaggy, disjointed film is less interested in the complexities of Marley’s personal or professional life than it is in presenting him as a hero and an inspiration.

Birds of Paradise lacks the nuance and finesse needed for its story to really take flight.

The Bookshop is steadfast in avoiding drama at all costs.

As Champions tediously veers between the increasingly rote narrative beats of an inspirational sports story and a love story of opposites attract, it further stresses its own archaic qualities with a consciously anachronistic soundtrack that includes Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” EMF’s “Unbelievable,” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya.”

In the instances where it’s not going hard, Dicks is a surprisingly flaccid affair.

The circuitous narrative of Nash Edgerton's Gringo is such that it never allows for a character or storyline to develop in a particularly efficient way, as every few minutes an abrupt twist or turn sets things off in a new and unexpected direction.

Like Lisa and Kate’s pendular swings between hope and despair, Johannes Roberts’s film can’t help alternating between the genuinely terrifying and the just plain dumb.

The pressures of Christmas prove too great to fight off and the need for feel-good holiday cheer inevitably veers the film toward half-hearted, sentimental drama that seems purely obligatory to its seasonal milieu.

A sweet ode to childhood innocence turning sour upon its introduction to the public is an intriguing notion, but Simon Curtis incomprehensibly crams the events of Christopher’s early childhood stardom, his difficulty coping with the ubiquity of his namesake’s legacy, and his ultimate defiance of his father into less than one-third of the film.

There are only so many monster-centric jokes to be made before they become toothless, and only so many ways to preach tolerance before it sounds more like blunt moralizing.

The film quickly reveals that the only angle it’s interested in is the one that most sympathizes with Gary Hart.

The film spins a soapy yet dramatically inert and often tone-deaf yarn about societal rejection and female empowerment in the wetlands of North Carolina.

As it strives for a grander metaphor of life in America, The Forever Purge resorts to sweeping generalizations that make the prior films in the series feel like pinnacles of subtlety.

The film preaches of the love of creative freedom, yet finds no original form of expression of its own.

Peter Segal’s film is pulled in so many different directions that it comes to feel slack.

Ultimately, in trying to make Katherine both a historical girlboss and a near-martyr to a vaguely articulated cause, Firebrand’s meandering, under-baked screenplay manages to neither have its cake nor eat it too.

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

Ben doesn't deserve our sympathy, in part for how noxiously the film has imagined the female characters who surround him.

The longer things drag out, All I See Is You becomes every bit as amorphous as its protagonist's vision.