Johnny Oleksinski

The fights, taken on their own, are occasionally OK, but not enough to lift this joke-and-fun-free slog.

I think what Tarantino is going for is brazenly manipulating historical events to suit his style, and turning a well-worn genre on its head. But in so doing he’s made an everything bagel of a movie: Part satire, part bear hug, part fictional bromance.

A loony con-job that comes up short on being convincing.

Johnson still does whodunits better than Kenneth Branagh’s horrid Agatha Christie adaptations he keeps torturing audiences with. Yet despite the giggles and the beefier budget — explosions, an exotic locale, massive sets — “Glass Onion” comes off slight.

Gyllenhaal and Mulligan are in fine form here, but too much of the screenplay, written by Dano and Zoe Kazan, doesn’t ring true.

With The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, directors Ethan and Joel Coen venture to the frontier once more, after “True Grit” and “No Country for Old Men.” But this time, there’s only a little grit in this very slow country.

Presence is a brisk 85 minutes, which is nice if you have dinner plans, but it also exposes limited storytelling ambitions. It’s a mid-season episode of TV. We don’t get to know much about the characters, and don’t care either way about their fate.

Nothing Cooper does is organic or authentic, and his show-off performance is always stilted. He arduously thinks through every single choice — it’s time to scream into a pillow; cue the laugh; ready, set, cry. Nobody goes to a movie to watch actors ponder their next beat. We want to feel, and his overwrought turn does not allow us to.

Danes and Parsons are a weird pairing, who carry their TV personas with them like tote bags. Their “Homeland” and “Big Bang Theory” shticks don’t quite click. Even so, when Danes’ mother comes to realize that her sweet kid is more than just a talking point, she’ll have you wiping away tears.

Whatever sophisticated point Decker and screenwriter Sarah Gubbins aim for here is undone by its pretentious academic characters, whose arrogant droning would make you switch seats if you were next to them at a coffee shop.

Anderson’s film is told via a prologue and three episodes that bring to life the quirky publication’s stories. They just barely engage the audience as we watch the director’s entire mobile phone contact list show up for about 15 seconds each.

Dynamite actually — sometimes cheesily — is a lot like 1990s and aughts disaster flicks, except there is not much suspense as to whether or not the nuclear bomb will land, even though Bigelow casually tries to create some.

Laughter and enjoyment is stifled by the constant question of whether we’re allowed to laugh or enjoy anything at all.

While the off-kilter film is a fine showcase for the personalities of two of our best emerging comedic stars, Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”) and Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”), the humor falls short of being very funny.

Directed by Maria Schrader, the film that’s part of one of the most reliably galvanizing genres — newspaper reporters doggedly chasing down a tough story — is a disappointing, sleepy metronome with made-for-TV diminutiveness.

The core problem facing the rather annoying new movie “The Fall Guy” — starring Ryan Gosling as a professional daredevil — is that we can’t believe. Never for a second does the viewer buy that goofy Gosling is an in-demand stunt person who sets aside his ego for the betterment of a project.

Clooney draws you in, but upon arrival there’s an emptiness.

It’s far from terrible and a pleasure to look at. But, perhaps inevitably, after such a raging success, Bong’s latest movie is a disappointment.

The sleepy horror movie is an onslaught of spooky images that, while well-done, are watered down by sheer abundance. We stop being scared after the first 15 minutes because there is nothing new to see.

The Batman is the first caped crusader adventure in a while to come off as completely purposeless. Christopher Nolan’s movies reframed the comics as realistic, psychologically complex tales of an urban blight, and Affleck’s Bruce was built to fit into a wider DC universe. The Batman is here just to ensure that Marvel has box office competition.

Day’s performance is a beacon surrounded by mediocrity and mismanagement.

Roy Cohn was way more entertaining than the new documentary about Roy Cohn.

The promising satire then shifts to a typical thriller with bloody shoot-outs, druggings, tazings and a car dramatically plummeting off a cliff. That business wears thin fast. I Care a Lot is almost two separate films, and I much prefer the first one.

The first flick had a lot going for it: clever cinematography, a refreshing irreverence and Paul Rudd’s boyish charm. But “Wasp” is scant, man.

Trying to understand the story can make you feel like you’re sitting on a stool in a dunce cap.

You can see director Jon Watts and the filmmakers struggling to replicate the magic of their first film. But its charm came not from an overabundance of jokes, but from turning Spidey into a school hallway hero whose biggest challenge was girls. Jetting off to Venice, Prague and London and busting up landmarks brings it more in line with the rest of the overly dense Marvel Cinematic Universe.

At Crimes, you gag a lot more than you giggle.

The upper-crust British characters in The Little Stranger, the new horror film from “Room” director Lenny Abrahamson, are so rigid they make the Crawleys of “Downton Abbey” look like the Osbournes. The effect is occasionally spooky, but more often snoozy.