Geoff Berkshire

Watching an estimable quintet of character actors do their thing is the chief pleasure of Cut Bank.

A terminally quirky indie dramedy, Bottled Up risks trivializing prescription drug abuse in service of a trite middle-age romance.

Daddy’s Home isn’t so much a lump of coal as an empty box.

Against all odds, “Nashville” series regular Peeples keeps the film watchable, delivering a capable star turn with enough flashes of soul to belie the script’s artifice and credible pop vocals to boot.

The performers are mostly out to sea without a paddle trying to make sense of hateful characters, but Trimbur at least shows some comic spark and strikes a few sympathetic notes.

The type of sporadically silly and patently predictable horror pic that would look like filler on Syfy’s weekend lineup, The Other Side of the Door brings virtually nothing new to the supernatural genre.

As violent as its predecessor yet noticeably duller and less outrageous, Machete Kills is dragged to the finish line entirely by its director’s madcap energy and an absurd cast of major stars in strange cameos.

There isn’t a pharmaceutical cocktail powerful enough to improve the dreadful comedy of Better Living Through Chemistry.

Less reliant on slow-burn suspense and larded with fake-out jump scares, this is the first sequel in the series that fails to advance the overall mythology in any meaningful way.

By the time the film reaches a third act low on logic and heavy on exploding heads, it's clear that "Hover" never had the right parts to take flight.

The lukewarm family dynamics sit awkwardly alongside equally underwhelming action sequences.

Even with a bona fide icon at its center, The Comedian doesn’t dig deep enough to add anything substantial to the subgenre.

Character actor Michael Cudlitz’s first leading role is the sole selling point of Dark Tourist, a well-acted but rote and ultimately repellent character study of a psychologically disturbed loner.

Visual spectacle still takes precedence over coherent plotting, and the human characters retain all the gravitas of generic placeholders who accidentally made it into the shooting script.

Tawdry but cripplingly self-serious, the second feature from Mora Stephens (a full decade after her little-seen, also politically themed debut “Conventioneers”) benefits from Patrick Wilson’s committed star turn.

There’s no question writer-director Neil LaBute’s effort doesn’t catch fire.

Empty cynicism isn’t a substitute for well-reasoned critique, and Roth winds up looking more clueless than the so-called “social justice warriors” he’s trying to satirize.

The timidly plotted proceedings never veer from romantic-comedy formula. There’s a whole lot of talk and very little action here, and not just because the squeaky-clean pic wears its PG rating like a badge of honor.

The film’s haphazard structure and freewheeling arguments only serve to reinforce tired pothead cliches — it’s paranoid, prone to starry-eyed dorm-room philosophizing, and it doesn’t know when to quit.

Every bit as sitcom-ish and saccharine as its predecessor, but considerably less distinctive.

The part may be tailor-made for Simmons’ no-nonsense persona, and his performance reliably rock solid, but the bland execution of director Gavin Wiesen and the uninspired scripting of Seth Owen have no comic zing.

Even a prickly pro like Sutherland can’t do anything to elevate a hokey self-help lecture disguised as family entertainment.

The goofiness is redeemed somewhat by a wickedly violent climax — the exclamation point at the end of a rather simple sentence.

Despite an impressive global scope and admirable ethnic diversity among the interview subjects, the central thesis that women are leading the charge on green issues receives nothing but anecdotal support.

Cheerfully exhorting imagination, creativity and bravery in children while demonstrating none of those virtues itself, The Hero of Color City proves to be a dispiritingly colorless feature-length babysitter.

So good at making the most outlandish elements of his first two films seem completely credible, Jones can’t find a way to get this cartoony spectacle to soar. His heartfelt approach to the material only underlines the silliness.

The sudsy quality of the production ensures all the performers look terrific, but aren’t given particularly impressive material to work with.

Despite a game lead performance from smallscreen star Katie Cassidy (“Arrow”) as a young woman with multiple personality disorder and an incorrigible punk attitude, this latest low-budget outing from helmer John Suits simply doesn’t have the imagination or resources necessary to pull off its clumsy stabs at visual pizzazz.