Johnny Oleksinski

Writer-director Todd Robinson is the victim of his own noble intentions, turning each and every moment into an ice bucket of sentiment.

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.

Pugh, a sensational actress, keeps our interest as she grows increasingly suspicious and sees disturbing visions in mirrors and on windows. She brings class and gravitas to a movie that would otherwise be kinda trashy.

Driven is a lot like a DeLorean: Looks great, but moves slow — if it even moves at all.

Despite being a She-Hulk who’s seemingly impervious to physical pain, Jolie turns in her best performance in a while — arguably in over a decade. She’s relaxed, determined and maternal here, and connects well with Little, who is a big talent.

Robert Zemeckis’ film “Here” is an object lesson in how to take a touching idea and make an extremely annoying movie out of it.

Waffling Disney can’t decide if it wants this thing to be a quirky and fun but unsettling movie like “Beetlejuice,” with some real guts and creativity, or another schlocky ad for a Disney World FastPass. At times Simien’s film is surprisingly dark and emotionally honest, while at others it’s kitschier than “The Country Bear Jamboree.”

A frustratingly bland young-adult feminist comedy without good jokes, Moxie is a cross between a hokey ’90s family sitcom and a vastly superior teen film, such as Lady Bird.

Both boys are good, and Kyle MacLachlan gives a tender turn as Franky’s gay dad. But the sheer amount of issues shoved in here is overpowering.

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.

Colman and Cumberbatch’s appealing energy is always a pleasure — and clearly the draw here — but I didn’t enjoy spending my night with the sourpusses it’s wasted on.

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.

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

For the most part, the film is second-rate horror, but watchable enough.

What Bombshell has going for it is a jaunty pace. The film by Jay Roach — the “Austin Powers” director who’s had rotten luck with dramas — clips along and is always watchable. But it misguidedly mimics other annoying, ripped-from-the-headlines movies, such as “The Big Short” and “Vice,” that rely on Elvis-impersonator acting, smug narration and quick cuts. Sometimes, you just want to see a tough topic taken seriously.

The first “Sonic” worked unexpectedly well because it thrust the wisecracking alien into a small town filled with humans — a hog out of water — and gave Carrey the opportunity to once again do the physical comedy he’s best known for. Now the novelty has worn off, the charms of the original have evaporated and there’s nowhere for the series to go.

There’s nothing wrong with some silver screen sorrow, but not when it amounts to indecisive mush.

The Rock is funny and charismatic in “Hobbs & Shaw,” and his bro chemistry with co-star Jason Statham is a joy. The pair slinging vicious insults at each other is almost vaudevillian — it would make a decent live tour. And then there’s the rest of the movie.

Here, Ginsburg is just an idea, a symbol — a meme.

Too bad “Ballerina” drops the ball. Despite being led by an actress who once took on the role of Marilyn Monroe, it’s a much less attractive movie — downright ugly sometimes.

The Tomorrow War, in trying to become the new Independence Day (this release date is not arbitrary), throws Alien, The Terminator and A Quiet Place in a blender. And, like that gross kale smoothie you made once, the result is gray goop.

That idea was fun once, maybe even twice, but by the fifth outing the formula has given way to preachiness and predictability.

Scott Thomas sounds like she’s about to pull out a shiv and knife her new boss right then and there. The actress is so good, you wish she could reprise the role in a better film that actually deserves her.

Director Greg Berlanti’s romantic comedy, which imagines that Richard Nixon’s administration really did film a fake, backup moon landing in 1969, is a mystifying misfire all along the way from initial concept to end credits.

The whole movie is indistinguishable rubble.

The Protégé should’ve been a home run for director Martin Campbell, who did brilliantly with Casino Royale, Daniel Craig’s first James Bond film. He brought seriousness to the old franchise without sacrificing its charm or decadence. Instead, we get old clichés.

There is also something a bit off about CGI that makes these behemoths appear less sturdy and imposing. Oddly enough, the most gravitas comes from Hall’s all-business scientist.

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.

Updates are fine for some stories. Not this one, though. Moving the action to a contemporary urban setting is akin to fitting a fairy with cement boots.

Firth, who can still be a heartthrob when he wants, douses the smoldering embers of old romance and turns Archibald completely tense and awkward. It’s a wise choice that makes his eventual transformation more poignant.

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.

Carell’s niche right now isn’t awkward anchormen, but parents going through hell. He makes a believable dad to the equally moving Chalamet, who writhes, screams and cries, but never showboats. The perfect pair is better than this movie.

Wright is relaxed and almost meditative as she takes in the beauty of the horizon, and her simple directing captures the majesty of nature.

Most of their scenes come off as low-stakes dueling stand-up routines, rather than a plot that builds.

Rambo: Last Blood features what’s easily the most violent movie scene of the year. It’s awesome.

The film’s worst offense is that it works way too hard for it to be a light watch.

After some early thrills, director Baltasar Kormákur’s movie ceases to excite because the creature has no more surprises left. He just jumps through the window — again.

Writer-director Matthew Vaughn, who’s helmed all three, needs to either call it quits or hand over the reins to someone with some self-control. The formidable talent of Ralph Fiennes can lift his movie some, but the man’s not Hercules.

This wannabe works oh so hard to be a contemporary detective noir, with its shadows, damsel in distress and brooding narration. But it never finds the suspense or sensuality of that genre.

Uncharted, you say? That’s a funny title for an action-adventure movie that doesn’t stray one inch from the well-trodden path of what came before it.

You never believe Buck is the genuine article, so moments of danger and even cute mannerisms don’t land. Even the best-trained contestant at Westminster has some unpredictability.

Those confessionals can and should deliver an emotional wallop; however, Sara Colangelo’s direction isn’t skillful or nuanced enough to give the scenes power. The speeches from actors, such as Laura Benanti, about the worst day in all of these people’s lives feel too rehearsed and polished for us to believe them.

Sorry to Raid on your parade, “Ant-Man” fans, but the third chapter is a pile of dirt.

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.

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.

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.

There aren’t really game-changing shocks here so much as detours. Shyamalan takes what your non-serial-killer father might call the scenic route. The destination? Meh.

If Wonder Park were a carnival attraction, it would be the merry-go-round. The animated movie has animals, relentless positivity and the most predictable journey ever. You must be no more than 4 feet tall to ride this one.

Not a bad idea — and one that already worked out pretty well for John Hughes’ “Weird Science” in 1985. But here it’s a single-joke skit that’s too self-aware to be distinctively funny, freaky or thrilling.

Truly every line of this gussied-up pile of trash is worthy of a yelled-out crowd response. It’s one schlocky horror picture show.

The talented quartet saves the movie, but making it great would take a rewrite.

Crowe — knowingly, I think — clowns around from start to finish. Even if the horror doesn’t have you screaming, his Italian accent will.

The Artist’s Wife can, at times, come off as a collage of other, better movies.

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.

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

Making mixed martial arts — described in the film as “the bloodiest and the goriest sport you’ve ever seen” — tame and lackluster is a challenge. But director Benny Safdie is up to the task.

With a formulaic plot and adequate supporting players, Smith phoning it in presents a major roadblock for a series as reliant on two leads’ chemistry as this one.

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.

Lazily bopping around to exotic locales in France, Turkey and Qatar, it’s a generic collage of mega-yachts, luxe hotels, fancy parties, disguised identities and tame fights that add up to a big nothing.

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

The director of all this airiness comes as a surprise — Thea Sharrock, the British theater artist known for her Broadway production of the play “Equus,” in which a naked Daniel Radcliffe stabbed the eyes out of a stable full of horses. “Ivan” is about as far from that as you can get.

Basilone’s movie becomes an intriguing puzzle that frequently bugs you, but you’re nonetheless determined to make it to the end.

With stakes so high, the movie should pack a punch. But while it keeps its eye on the stars, its feet never leave the ground.

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 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.

Director Philip Martin’s film is not poorly made per se, but its efforts to make the behind-the-scenes scramble to get the Duke of York on TV exciting are for naught.

Everything uniquely special and hilarious about the 1984 fish-out-of-water hit is gone, replaced by commodity streaming mush that looks like every other ho-hum action-comedy right now.

Directors Aaron and Adam Nee’s movie sits frustratingly for two hours on the tarmac of comedy as we the angry passengers await takeoff.

I only wish the Little laughs were bigger.

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

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.

The utopia-via-laboratory aspects of “Vol. 3” resemble “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” — only it’s the Wrath of Gunn. This chilling paperweight clocks in at 2 hours and 30 minutes, making it the fourth longest Marvel film so far. And it’s wildly self-indulgent.

The supporting voices are sublime. Alongside Hudson are Audra McDonald, Tituss Burgess and Broadway’s Hailey Kilgore and Saycon Sengbloh. But the music, absent a believable 1960s sense of place or real concert atmosphere, doesn’t rouse so much as please, not unlike the familiar movie it’s a part of. Respect settles for being respectable.

This belabored movie, which is much more serious than its predecessor and takes nearly an hour to take off, feels like it lasts a Day-O.

It’s too bad Scott could not deliver a brilliant character study of one of the world’s great military leaders — and instead settled for letting a self-indulgent Phoenix fly over the cuckoo’s nest.

It’s a lot of fun . . . until it becomes a mystery thriller so convoluted and tonally wacky, Angela Lansbury would have quit in a huff.

The timeless classic, a groundbreaking achievement for animation, has been turned into another pointless and awkward live-action automaton that vanishes from your mind the second it’s over.

“Grandpa” is, at least, not as moronic as much of De Niro’s recent résumé. But that’s a low, low bar.

Indeed, Clancy has written 20 books featuring John Clark. But, even with a star as charismatic and physically formidable as Jordan, audiences won’t be hungry for a single sequel.

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

But a happy reunion can’t re-create the original’s spark, innocence and masterful comedy.

Crystal, for what it’s worth, stays genuine through the increasingly viscous plot. He still has that warmth beneath his zingers that you don’t find in the frigid comedians of today. Nonetheless, we resent his movie’s aggressive efforts to force us into crying with strained, untruthful moments by the bucketful.

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

Cage is amusing though, and exemplifies the old stage wisdom “if you’re having fun, they’re having fun.” However, that’s the biggest problem for Renfield: Whenever Cage leaves the frame, which is often, we immediately stop having fun — as if Dracula commanded us to.

A movie needs more than a smart idea and an impressively visualized concept of the future to run smoothly. Two-thirds of the way through, “The Pod Generation’s” battery is already at 1%.

There’s so much anguish, we eventually become numb to it over the nearly three-hour film. We come to know her only as a victim, not a fleshed-out person. Is that take enlightening? Meh. Entertaining? Not really. Long? Extremely.

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

If you find hedge funds hard to wrap your head around, the movie Human Capital won’t do much to ease the confusion.

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.

When the massacre starts, the movie gets better. But the methods of murder are, like everything else, awfully self-serious and limited to mostly just plain old guns and knives.

If you like Charli xcx’s songs and find her to be a unique and uncompromising presence in the often airbrushed world of pop, you’ll appreciate moments of “The Moment.” But that’s it. This is not a fully formed movie. At best, it’s a moderately intriguing pitch.

The lovable Ross, who does her own singing, doesn’t have her mom Diana’s diva energy, and Johnson speaks with only a rote understanding of music. The film’s one twist is as predictable as tomorrow’s itinerary.

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.

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

Like in "Crystal Skull,” director James Mangold’s movie aims to merge Indy’s earthy supernatural framework with science fiction, to mixed results. The love-it-or-loathe-it ending is a real doozy.

Subtlety is kicked to the curb in favor of volcanic drama, and nary a moment goes by without some screaming or an inspiring message.

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

Knock at the Cabin, the “Sixth Sense” director’s latest anvil, is less “Old” and more Old Testament. No fun here! Yeah, there’s much more competent filmmaking and acting on display, however it’s all wasted on a strained and ponderous story with stratospheric delusions of grandeur.