Eric Kohn

Call it a Shakespearean catharsis or just call it a lark -- either way, the movie represents Whedon's least essential work, regardless of the material's inherent comedic inspiration.

W.E. is less outright bad than underwhelming; if the director were unknown, it would hardly deserve notice. Like her first film, the 2008 "Filth and Wisdom," it suffers from countless storytelling flaws.

If nothing else, the movie makes a strong case for Cox’s astounding resilience, an ability to take even the most routine gig and deepen its potential. It helps that The Etruscan Smile sputters along more than it belly-flops, and stabilizes by the poignant finale.

Though ultimately unsuccessful, it valiant reaches for a funky, wild critique of hedonistic sluggards wandering through society with no clear direction. But more than anything else, it delivers Keanu in his element.

The Tomorrow Man suggests "Take Shelter" by way of "It’s Complicated," an unseemly combination that never quite gels. But the actors work overtime to mine substance from the material, and Jones gives them plenty of room to rescue this curious movie from complete oblivion.

Mute is ludicrous, but within the confines of its referential logic, also pretty cool.

With emerging rebel leader Rey (Daisy Ridley) providing a sturdy emotional foundation, and billions of Disney dollars fueling an obviously stunning array of special effects, Rise of Skywalker doesn’t squander every opportunity to dial up the thrilling nature of the epic at hand, but all that razzle-dazzle can’t obscure a hollow core.

By no means a great piece of filmmaking, Blood Father nevertheless recaptures some of the rough attitude of Gibson's "Mad Max" days, as he shoots, growls and head-butts through a routine tale of angry drug lords.

The movie is constantly at war with attempts to provide an honest portrayal, almost as if its subject were reaching beyond the grave to steer any negativity back in the direction of a hagiography.

No amount of strong performances and good vibes can hide the sense that we’re just watching a paint-by-numbers routine. Nair puts so much effort into galvanizing the movie’s central figures that the slightest hints of conflict register as little more than an inconvenience.

None of the pretty imagery or impassioned lovemaking can break free of a mopey old formula that sits on every scene with the same schematic quality that makes its weary setting so familiar from the start.

Melissa McCarthy is hilarious in every scene of The Boss, but the movie rarely keeps up with her.

Doctor Sleep shows considerable effort to ingratiate itself to discerning cinephiles, from the moody Newton Brothers score to cinematographer Michael Fimognari’s dark blue nighttime palette; as a whole, the movie conjures an eerie and wondrous atmosphere that blends abject terror with a somber, mournful quality unique to Flanagan’s oeuvre. But his pandering to dueling source material results in a jagged puzzle beneath both of their standards.

While its bleak assessment of American intelligence operatives imbues the story with some modicum of topicality, the specifics never keep pace. The movie becomes a bland action-drama lacking the sophistication to deal with its weightier themes. As a promising endeavor hacked to pieces, the movie's fate mirrors its anti-hero's own failed ambition.

Having laid out the scenario, Brandt drags it through the motions of a tired procedural.

The Lodge seems more content to hover in the disquieting mood than make anything substantial out of it. ... As it continues along an aimless trajectory, The Lodge proves that even horrible events can be a deadly bore.

Even as it celebrates the spirit of committed journalism that rises above the powerful forces designed to contain it, Kill the Messenger displays the same anesthetized quality that Webb's dedication to his job was meant to counteract. Renner is a different story.

In the process of merging formulas, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things recycles the same material it seems inclined to rejuvenate, one step at a time. There may be endless ways to make “Groundhog Day” feel fresh, but this one’s little more than another harmless retread.

A loud, visually assaultive assemblage of genre tropes as technically accomplished as it is difficult to watch, "The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears" has plenty to impress while simultaneously offering so little.

By virtue of its style and high stakes scenario, End of Watch is impressively tense, but then so are most episodes of "COPS," which don't suffer from the forced melodrama found here.

In between the meandering exchanges lies an unquestionably thoughtful interrogation of a broken system.

Child’s Play at once repudiates Mancini’s franchise by attempting to make it bigger and bolder while falling back on ingredients we’ve seen before, and seen better. While it sets out to skewer the algorithms that could destroy the world, the remake hews to a mechanical formula — and winds up a product of the same tendencies it’s trying to indict.

A supremely dense coming-of-age drama steeped in weighty blather at the expense of emotional validity.

The mystical allure of this long-awaited "lesbian werewolf movie" turns out to have more value than the real thing.

While the new Ghostbusters successfully empowers female movie stars, that’s not the movie’s selling point. However, it’s the only justification for its existence.

Ellen Barkin puts on a bold, candid performance in Cam Archer's Shit Year, but the enigmatic movie is composed of too many fragments to sustain her efforts.

Broken Tower feels stationary, repeating the same motifs and attitudes ad infinitum until the credits finally roll.

My Salinger Year often trips on the self-serious nature of its premise, and struggles with an antiquated quality out of sync with its timeline, as if trapped between the character’s genuine experiences and her idealized vision of a literary world that doesn’t really exist.

By its later scenes, Chef only finds respite from its bland qualities through the scrumptious-looking dishes constantly on display. As self-indulgent vanity projects go, this one's pretty innocuous, if only because it's always easy on the eyes.

Magic in the Moonlight belongs to the pool of lesser Allen comedies, yet Firth and Emma Stone — as the alleged necromancer Sophie Baker, the object of Stanley's scrutiny and eventually his affections — bring all the zany energy they can muster.

Like its tattered setting, The Rover is scattered with intriguing ideas never successfully fleshed out.

Expert craftsmanship can't rescue Triple 9 from the constant feeling of a pulpy remix.

The director excels at generating a nervous energy around his character’s mounting desperation, and the movie’s intermittently engaging for that reason alone.

While Redford frames the drama with a tense atmosphere, it doesn't shake the sense that we're watching a tame made-for-TV affair.

As much as the suspense remains in play, its main threat has a certain robotic quality, and the humorless tone doesn’t help.

Eastwood remains a deeply purposeful filmmaker, and The 15:17 to Paris clearly has a plan — it builds to a riveting showdown, with a unique kind of payoff enhanced by the authenticity of its design. It’s a fascinating gamble even when it doesn’t hold together.

There’s plenty of intrigue to the dissonance of a hard-rock lifestyle and Malick’s gentle touch, but much of the movie’s potential is overshadowed by the impulses of a director unwilling to get there.

This is still a pretty familiar journey that's easier to pity than hate -- much like Caplan's character.

Hiding behind a shaggy beard and a stoner grin, Paul Rudd plays an amusingly oblivious shlub in Our Idiot Brother, but the movie can't keep up with his comic inspiration.

The Happy Prince largely amounts to a bland rumination on Wilde’s lesser-known decline.

Rosewater is lacking in sophistication, but its attitude is infectious.

A Hologram For the King never congeals into a single, involving story.

It’s an efficient, effects-driven ride with snippets of real ideas, but never quite willing to take them out of this world.

Kong: Skull Island may include some clever period details and idiosyncratic asides, but it’s largely a blockbuster B-movie less interested in depth than scale.

Family is funny in bits and pieces, but so obvious in terms of its eventual direction that it might have been better served by less plot and more clowning around.

It's a period piece composed of familiar pieces, none of which have much to say beyond surface elements that have been explored countless times before. Using a typical coming-of-age mold, Chase turns cultural ephemera into formula.

Marred by excessive sentiment, it has a buoyancy and a hook that makes it stand out -- but they're elements that would help it kill on Broadway (as it already has on the Australian stage) a lot better than it does onscreen.

In theory, Election Year offers a form of catharsis from contemporary anxieties by turning them into entertainment. Instead, this latest entry in a ridiculous franchise has become a victim of its own sick joke.

This tame exercise never quite jives and sometimes just bombs with one-note melodrama, but always maintains Thornton's conviction about the material.

It takes some ambitious swings and works on its own terms in fits and starts, all while not really working at all. Like the T.S. Eliot poems that inspired it, Cats is an elaborate lark.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that the 2019 version of Hellboy is busy to an exhausting degree, overloaded with apocalyptic fears, and seemingly endless in its pileup of twists. But it’s hard to read much into a movie less invested in shrewd observations than in stuffing as much lore as possible into 120 minutes.

At a time when calls for diverse media dominate the industry, Hidden Figures hedges its bets with a family-friendly commercial solution: warm and fuzzy storytelling that’s both progressive and safe.

It's one thing to make a minor, accomplished work after focusing on grander statements, but Julieta mainly disappoints because it feels like the kind of straightforward, unadventurous drama that the filmmaker generally excels at reinventing through his own peculiar vision. This time, he plays it too safe.

Whereas "The Avengers" felt like a reimagining of the paradigm for superhero movies, Age of Ultron has air of a rerun. Though impressively made and visually remarkable, it suffers from the hollowness that plagues so many blockbusters carrying the sense that we've been through this before.

With Shaye’s performance as its anchor, the movie is often a perceptive character study, at least until it’s hijacked by the same bland trickery that so often fogs up horror movies with more to offer.

Small touches point to a slightly better movie hiding beneath most of the routine, particularly the respectable finale that stops just short of the clichéd resolution expected of it. On the whole, however, The Way, Way Back dances to a tune we've heard too many times before.

It’s a dazzling showcase of fantasy-based filmmaking in the 21st century that also manages a feeble attempt at injecting feminist politics into an antiquated narrative. Yet its eventual climax strains from the obviousness of these efforts.

Despite some clumsy moments, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 handily revives the first movie's appeal.

It never crystallizes into a singular experience, and instead collapses in a rush of well-intentioned innovations.

As ghost stories go, this one's done just well enough to provide reminders of how it has been done better.

Ultimately, Robbins’ domineering character is so well-calculated that it appears Berlinger couldn’t peer beyond the curtain even if he tried. That fascinating dilemma makes the movie worth watching even though it presents an incomplete picture.

Wan seems to critique the third act failings of The Conjuring during the alarmingly superior first half.

The ideas don’t cut that deep, but like its psychic protagonist, this movie knows exactly what its audience wants.

An overlong blend of kid-friendly “Game of Thrones” warfare and standard-issue metaphors of intolerance, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil finds plenty of ways to build on the original premise, but few that resonate any better than the last flamboyant ride.

Rather than developing Roman’s conundrum, Roman J. Israel, Esq. settles for a prosaic character study laid out in painfully obvious terms, with a tacked-on twist in the third act just so that the story can find some way to end.

Smothered by its lighthearted approach, The Monuments Men attempts to make a grand statement about the valiance of dying for the sake of art, but fails to create it.

Predominantly a failure of tone, Horns has plenty of admirable traits and yet dooms itself from the outset. It's an admirable conceit stuffed into far less subtle material.

While certainly the most dazzling Superman movie to hit the big screen, the 143-minute Man of Steel is also the longest, and it only justifies that heft because it leaves room to keep the effects coming.

Love plays out like the fragmented outline for a more engaging movie. But the one found here lacks substance both on the level of story and graphic reveals.

While not without its touching moments, "Mister and Pete" is inevitably defeated by its own good intentions.

The problem with Outside Satan is that the filmmaker has remained faithful to expectations without enlivening them. It's a curious exercise unworthy of his expertise, but then he may realize as much.

The reality is that Passion Play has a few good ideas that simply don't hold together. More of a miscalculation than an outright dud, it takes the form of a wildly surreal western fantasy, something that Chilean madman Alejandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo") could have executed with more rigorous invention.

Neither goofy enough for camp status nor lackluster enough for extreme derision, Son of No One is just mediocre enough to be an easy target.

The overall arc of this “Justice League” coheres throughout, providing occasional dashes of intrigue and inspired visual conceits, and sometimes it’s even fun. Re-centering the drama around ostracized actor Ray Fisher as Cyborg, and drawing out some of the ostentatious fight sequences to their breaking point, Zack Snyder’s Justice League displays genuine effort to make this impossible gamble click.

Neither wacky enough to work as pure punchline, nor smart enough to bend its looniness into something more substantial, Storks views the world with the same confused outlook of its wide-eyed infants.

Wirkola, who’s best known for his two “Dead Snow” zombie movies, struggles to tackle a more serious-minded tone this time around.

Writer-director David Ayer’s brash, assaultive Brad Pitt drama manages some evocative imagery and achieves visceral impact by enacting a hellacious atmosphere that never lets up — but Ayer takes the mission too literally, and winds up literally lost in the fog of war.

Though salvaged in parts by Lindon’s impassioned performance and a few perceptive asides that hint at a better version of the events, At War is mostly a redundant portrait of working-class struggles that does more to belittle the efforts of its subjects than position them in galvanizing terms.

It’s an unabashed freewheeling mess of CGI explosions, fast-talking strategies and shiny metal monstrosities clashing in epic battles. And it’s actually kind of fun, in an infuriating sort of way, to watch the most ridiculous Hollywood movie of the year do its thing.

The innumerable change-ups in The Perfect Host only pretend to take the plot in new directions. In reality, each new twist is perfectly derivative, which leads to a host of problems.

Yes, Waititi’s sugary fantasy unearths an endearing quality in the most unlikely places. But in the process, it buries the awful truth.

Whereas "The Apostle" was a passionate effort for Duvall that he spent years pulling together, Wild Horses feels more like a vanity project that eschews polished storytelling for half-baked conceits.

Maïwenn's evidently tight control over her performances once again shows its strength within the context of individual scenes, where the characters' attitudes often convincingly shift from blithe to furious in a matter of minutes. But the overall arc of their developing relationship fails to convince.

It turns a major tragedy into a minor disaster movie.

The movie is like one thin satiric lark inexplicably slowed down to the point of lethargy.

Bad Hair has plenty to say — about the plight of black women in particular and blackness in popular culture in general — but his movie can’t settle on laughing off the conflict or regarding it with dread. Instead, it settles on lingering in the knotted chaos, hoping that the message still burns.

At their worst, Affleck’s roles are stern and lifeless without soul, pretty sculptures with nothing inside. It was only a matter of time before he made a movie that embodied that lesser side of his career.

There are flashes of subtle resentment to Williams’ performance that register as some of her best work in ages, so it’s unfortunate that the movie’s calculated assemblage of sentimental beats dominate the show.

Braff hasn't made another generational statement, but rather a regurgitation of tropes that got old a long time ago.

Bogged down by flashbacks and flash forwards, The Bastards pointlessly mixes up its ingredients, creating a distancing effect from the tangible sadness at its core. The result is the rare case of a movie that confirms its maker's skill while wasting it on useless ambition.

[Dolan's] crafted the semblance of a substantial movie that never quite gets where it was supposed to go.

Even as it makes the facile Palin-for-president case, fence-sitters will find themselves non-plussed and existing Palin haters won't budge.

Even Allen himself, appearing in front of the camera for his first role since 2005's "Scoop," looks a little lost in the mess.

At times Midnight's Children balances off its earnestness with a sweeping view of history and tangible human drama, but the allegorical qualities of Rushdie's novel fail to translate as anything but a shrill, on-the-nose instance of thematic overreaching.

Life spends its first act building up some big ideas, but eventually unravels into another monster movie in space.

Gyllenhaal's alarmingly effective presence is enough to act circles around the soapy narrative of a fallen athlete's comeback so tightly that it crumbles in the very first act.

In Yann Demange’s bland retelling, the kid’s downward spiral has been reduced to a series of crude, unremarkable encounters and the very thing this true story shouldn’t be: poverty porn. Nevertheless, Demange manages to stitch together a number of involving scenes that track Ricky’s harsh upbringing and the events that precipitated his downfall.