Jen Chaney

Too much is skimmed over rather than dug into deeply.

My Old Lady isn’t the tart slice of dessert that its initial scenes suggest it might be. In fact, it only becomes truly compelling in its second half, as Horovitz drives toward darker material and farther away from the light.

A Five Star Life steers away from pat answers and stereotypically Hollywood conclusions, a narrative direction that’s all the more refreshing with a woman in the lead role. But in its second half, Tognazzi’s movie derails as it starts trying to hammer home its points with too much force.

It’s an air-kiss of a movie, one that places a non-contact peck on either side of its subject’s mouth, then breezes off before a serious conversation can begin.

As a stand-alone documentary, it begs for more conflict and a broader canvas from which to explore the contemporary theater scene.

Perhaps Sneakerheadz needs a sequel, one that more directly interrogates the shoe manufacturers themselves about the hazards of pumping up so much hype about their product.

The most compelling moments come from watching Braun and Jones advancing toward and retreating from each other. It doesn’t sound quite right to say they have good chemistry; it’s more accurate to say that both actors understand how to make the lack of chemistry between their characters real and tangible.

Unfortunately, this procedural/character study unfolds in a manner that feels more generic than genuinely deep.

This film ultimately doesn’t reach its full potential in part because it can’t settle firmly enough on a vibe or viewpoint. It ping-pongs between buoyant caper, farce, and female empowerment drama without ever lingering long enough in a single zone to make an impact.

Momoa does capture some scenes of genuine warmth and beauty that suggest he has the potential to develop a filmmaker’s eye for visual poetry.

After paying good money to take your family to see this film, you may be dealing with some anger-management issues of your own.

What transpires in this adequately acted, uninventive film fails to add any fresh twists to the cash-vs.-conscience formula.

A film in search of a tighter edit and a stronger point of view. It meanders from scene to scene, calling to mind the images of leaking faucets and dribbling IV fluid that appear here in close-up.

The result is a piece that’s more personal, but also not as rigorous and objective.

Even likable actors can’t obscure the fact that, holy gods on Mount Olympus, this thing is a slog, a movie that dutifully hits its plot points involving prophecies and fleeces without evoking a whiff of spirit or imagination.

Paquet-Brenner has assembled a talented cast.... Yet he elicits mostly unmemorable performances from just about everyone involved.

Need for Speed is a piece of auto-collision pornography that weighs down its car-flip-and-massive-fireball money shots with a preposterous plot involving vehicular manslaughter vengeance.

Angels Sing is a heartfelt but less-than-polished piece of work that isn’t for everyone, particularly those who can’t suspend the disbelief required to accept preposterous plot developments, or the sight of Lyle Lovett wearing a variety of snowman sweatshirts. But graded on a Christmas-movie curve, it actually isn’t bad.

Big Stone Gap suffers from some hokey moments, including an ending that’s both implausible and too heavy on the sap.

Even McAvoy’s reincarnation-obsessed Frankenstein can’t breathe vitality into this shallow adaptation, which careens from moments of horror to serious drama to attempts at comedy that don’t quite land.

This film can’t decide whether it’s a Noah Baumbach-ian character study or an episode of NBC’s Revolution.

The scenery in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, largely shot in Corfu and Athens, is gorgeous but everything else about the film’s construction is an absolute mess.

What’s truly regrettable about The Wedding Ringer is that, at certain moments, it almost succeeds as a heartfelt comedy about male friendship in which its two stars, Josh Gad and Kevin Hart, get to demonstrate that they can act.

Harold and the Purple Crayon makes the classic Hollywood mistake of taking a story that was lovely because of its concision and simplicity and turns it into a movie that is overly long and complicated for no good reason.

As directed by Perry, The Single Moms Club goes for a mix of escapism and reality-based drama and winds up with a movie that can only be enjoyed via the running, snarky commentary that will inevitably scroll through most audience members’ heads as they watch.

Love the Coopers is one of the most jumbled, tonally misguided holiday movies in recent memory. It is an insult to tidings of comfort as well as joy, and a complete waste of the time and talents of its ensemble cast.

The Bag Man is always teetering on the edge of amateurish absurdity, before being tugged back from the edge by its actors.

The prevailing tone throughout Innocence is as somber as the onset-of-twilight blues and grays that dominate the movie’s color palette. All that seriousness ultimately doesn’t blend well with a narrative that marinates in the preposterous.