Kate Erbland

Bolstered by strong performances and a tight narrative, Son Of A Gun is an admirable debut film from Avery, and a worthy new entry into Australia’s burgeoning class of crime features.

It’s a slice of life, surely, but a meager one at that.

More shark action would be welcome in this film about sharks. As a basic disaster flick? Thrash works, and offers up less than 90 minutes of admirably silly and occasionally chilling action, even if it could stand to take a bigger bite out of the story.

For all its of-the-moment charms, Escape Room can’t shake its more basic genre trappings, eventually giving itself over to tired and predictable revelations and flimsy twists.

When Tomb Raider digs into its more creative action, it’s about as entertaining as popcorn entertainment gets these days. It’s when the film falls back on the old tropes that things grind to a halt.

Noelle is the sort of film destined to be discarded, a cheap holiday tchotchke with no staying power.

While Susanna Fogel’s feature film version of the story is appropriately excruciating (this is a high compliment; mostly, it will set your teeth on edge and raise the hairs on the back of your neck, just as it should), its muddled, messy, and brand-new final act feels at odds with Roupenian’s story and the very emotions it raised with its readers. The final word on “Cat Person” the film? Not nearly as biting and perfectly pitched as the story that inspired it: It’s good…enough. It could have been more.

Maybe the pictures should get small again; it might be the only way to save an MCU that seems dangerously close to getting too big to do anything but fail.

For a film built on the wild concept that bonafide action bad-ass Kate Beckinsale has to wear an electrode-laden vest meant to shock her into submission before she maims everyone around her, there’s only one response: How dare this film be so lethargic.

Wilde and Silberman seem to bank on the raw power of the film’s third-act reveal to make up for the conspicuously predictable plotting of “Don’t Worry Darling,” but that flimsy switcheroo only detracts from the film’s actual merits. Pugh’s outstanding performance and the extraordinary below-the-line craftsmanship are all impeccably rendered, but they can’t overcome the film’s rotten core concept.

The only thing scarier than Prey at Night is the possibility that we might have to wait another decade for more of its very special mask-faced chills.

Godzilla’s interest in saving humanity never made much sense, but it’s this CGI creation with no dialogue that gives the film the continuity and character it lacks elsewhere. When Godzilla lights up his nuke-powered tail and lets loose his interminable scream, for just a moment, the MonsterVerse has something to offer.

The film mistakes stiff, literally buttoned up acting — you’ve never seen so many starched and fully done up dress shirts in one film in your entire life — as somehow being clever, but there’s scarcely a moment of Morgan that is genuinely shocking (though the undercurrents with Amy are at least unnerving).

The series’ third outing, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, falls into precisely the same traps as its predecessor, offering up an unwieldy, mostly unsettling mash-up of adult themes and childish whimsy, made still more inscrutable by too many subplots, too many characters, and a tone that veers wildly off-course at every possible turn.

Inevitably, Tape will inspire conversations — its woefully conceived final sequence literally begs for them — but perhaps not the ones Kampmeier anticipated when crafting a film that, for all its missteps, is built on necessary storytelling.

Fine performances by Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth and Judy Davis help matters a bit, but the final product is so oddly cobbled together that the entire thing should be left hanging on the rack.

If there is one lesson that “Halloween Ends” — hell, that this entire trilogy, this entire franchise — easily imparts, with blood and guts and terror to spare, it’s that horror never really ends. It just takes a different shape. This story surely will, too, but for now, it’s concluded in fine fashion.

Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future.

Kabbalah Me is most satisfying as a personal artifact that traces Bram’s quest, bumps and all, and it stumbles when it attempts to lay on educational aspects.

I Saw the Light doesn't just fail to illuminate Williams' complicated life and his prodigious talent; it can't even capture the dark corners of a man with more than enough to peer into.

Little in Senior Year will surprise, and the film chugs through its predictable beats with good humor, but there’s not much else to recommend it. Wilson makes for a fun heroine who’s worth rooting for, bawdy, and down for whatever, but the film isn’t willing to let those tendencies run wild.

At least there’s Slate, who gamely approaches her character with sensitivity and care (the actress also produced the project) and keeps Frances grounded even as The Sunlit Night sputters around her.

R#J certainly looks new, but flashy graphics can’t detract from the problems that lurk inside its structure and its script

Bird Box Barcelona has strayed so far from what made the first film interesting, scary, and yes, timely! that it remains but a distant memory, as if someone pulled a blindfold over our collective cinematic memory, for no real reason whatsoever, with no answers to ever be found.

It’s every cheap, fast, loose, pointless joke in the book, and barely any of them can clear a solid laugh.

Ver Linden’s film may play out mostly in a straight-forward chronology, but that choice doesn’t do “Alice” (or Alice) any favors, expecting major revelations and revolutions to happen in the exact minimum of time.

This first entry could stand to be a bit more satisfying on its own, but the sugar rush that accompanies “Gunpowder Milkshake” is more than sweet enough to prove its place in a fast-growing sub-genre, with a cherry on top.

It’s charming — and it’s different, and it’s worth saving.

Aussie director Nash Edgerton loads up on some of his signatures, including lots of bad guys, tons of twists, and a dark sense of humor. Unfortunately, his sensibilities are dulled by a sprawling story that never quite snaps together.

In Her Hands is happy to tout Ghafari’s status, the easy headlines about her gender and her age, even tougher stories about the price she’s paid for her work. As to what Ghafari has really done, what she really means beyond those quick hits, there’s nothing.

There are bigger questions to ask here, but when it’s easier to roll out some simple images and wrapped-up answers, Breakthrough breaks down, happy to just explain away everything good as a divine act that no one could possibly control. Movies, however, require a bit more than just faith.

Even Bautista and a genuinely cute kid co-star can’t enliven this predictable and humorless entry into a micro-genre long due for a refresher.

McNamara attempts to keep the movie ticking right along, and for all its half-cocked plotlines, Ashby is able to maintain a consistently humorous and light tone.

Softer and safer than a close cousin like “Adventures in Babysitting,” The Sleepover zips between its adult storyline and the wacky hi-jinks of the kids, scarcely noticing it’s the younger set who are far more amusing to watch.

Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon’s animated The Addams Family introduces the Addams gang to a new generation by way of a retrofitted origin story that shakily attempts to hold fast to its original charms while cramming it inside decidedly modern trappings.

Bacon holds it steady, setting up residence in an uneasy, unwell character, unconcerned with making him likable or worth rooting for — the kind of person who gets left behind, and with good reason.

Blindingly overlit, incoherently edited, and rife with baffling plot contrivances, the disappointing “Book Club: The Next Chapter” still manages to maintain the heart of its original story, but that only seems to be thanks to the chemistry of its central foursome.

This franchise might not be entirely dead just yet, but its latest resurrection doesn’t make nearly enough good arguments to keep pumping life into it.

What follows is misdirection, flashbacks, visions, and wooden dialogue. At least the action is good, and Brown is game as ever.

Despite the focus on such a fertile period, it suffers from a meandering narrative and a jarring pace, particularly as it pushes on into his later years without bothering to age star Nicholas Hoult in the slightest.

The situation is dire, and while Centigrade eventually spins off into some well-worn tropes and predictable twists, the strength of its clever introduction keeps it pushing forward into a satisfying end.

Tonally, IF never finds a happy medium. Story-wise, it doesn’t bridge the gap between pure imagination and basic narrative flow. We don’t know what’s happening most of the time, and worst yet, we don’t know how to feel about it, no matter our age. That’s much more than a failure of just imagination.

Second Act never recovers from its big reveal, a cataclysmic (and nearly catastrophic) piece of narrative nuttiness that derails every scene, every performance, every subsequent revelation.

Destination Wedding makes the case that the two-hander isn’t dead, even if it struggles a bit when forced to come to a neat, movie-ready conclusion.

While Grant’s film nails certain elements necessary to the genre (like casting a pair of likable, capable stars who generate some real heat), the film is also prone to falling into just as many bad habits and limp tropes synonymous with big screen romance.

In a movie world crowded with everyone eager to make their own special superhero stand out, this one doesn’t pack much of a punch.

Sud’s film is a master class in bad decision-making, improbable choices, and overwrought acting.

The film is littered with jump scares, but most of them offer up shocking twists that land with genuine payoff: the score winds up, the framing gets tighter, the shots linger for longer, and when a different film might serve up a jump scare with a giddy “oh, it was nothing!” laugh, The Prodigy delivers something truly distressing.

Lively makes off with one of her best performances ever, and one that makes an unexpected case for giving the actress a real action franchise next time around. One of contemporary cinema’s most underrated chameleons, Lively throws herself into the role with real gusto.

Pairing up talented comedians like Hawn and Schumer with a wacky plotline to match should spell comedy gold, but Snatched is about as cheap and disposable as a tourist trap tchotchke.

A strange, bifurcated tale of love and espionage, with Judi Dench stuck in a thankless role that does nothing to capitalize on her talents. The film is worse for it.

Seance doesn’t just grow more mysterious, gory, and spiky as it goes on, it also grows more convoluted. Yes, many things can be true at once, but “Seance” might benefit from being pared to a more streamlined story.

A relentlessly unfunny, charmless send-up of better films with better ideas.

It’s fun, but it’s blockbuster overkill after an already-crowded summer season.

Predictability doesn’t have to be a sin when it comes to the often paint-by-the-numbers world of romantic comedy, but this awkward combination of expectation and disdain for it make for a film only fleetingly worthy of celebration.

The film, of course, sets up for a sequel or two, another franchise for the algorithm to chew up, more artificial entertainment to consume, another screen to watch. Next time, we humbly ask, can we get a little more human?

The film’s bent towards revisionist superhero history is certainly compelling, but stuck in the confines of the horror genre, it flames out far more than it flies.

It’s colorful and madcap and zany, and while that might not make it suitable for all audiences, it will delight the very one it is made for. That’s fine for now, but if this franchise wants to survive, the next entry will have to take on a much tougher mission: stay silly, but get a whole lot smarter.

Despite being rife with crime, sex and darkness, Manhattan Night feels increasingly like a cheap ripoff of the genre it so very much wants to fit into.

Unfortunately, the film frequently relies on telling over showing, and Rosie and Alex’s bond is rarely demonstrated through palpable on-screen chemistry.

Bloodshot is a throwback actioner that likely would have killed in the late ’90s, but now feels every inch the product of that era’s humor and innovation. In a rapidly changing world, however, that might not be a bad thing.

It’s obvious from the start what’s going to happen, and although San Andreas occasionally makes some interesting moves (the swift offing of a character who pops up simply to be annoying is one of them), it’s mostly a paint-by-numbers affair bolstered by jaw-dropping CGI and a desire to completely flatten as much cityscape as possible.

Lisbeth is never going to be cuddly or sunny, but that doesn’t mean she has to be robotic or impossible to read. That’s something that Foy and Alvarez clearly understand, and the result is a heroine not only worth cheering for, but one worth loving and even understanding.

Clover is at its best when it leans into its more silly side, playing up the ludicrousness of many of its twists alongside a cast that’s not interested in winking at them or going for the easiest of laughs.

Shatkin is trying hard here, but Whaley’s overwrought script keeps the young actor from utilizing his charm; Reggie is simply difficult to be around, even as Meester’s Eleanor is expected to act charmed by all his quirks and issues.

Part origin story of the Mystery, Inc. team (Scooby-Doo and the rest of them, for newbies), part Hanna-Barbera homage, the animated feature is a charming enough diversion that adds to the appeal of the original show.

What’s most deadly about Taylor’s latest isn’t a miscast Swank or her character’s demented arc, or even the uncomfortable Ealy and his character’s insane idiocy, it’s the sense that this sub-genre should still be able to have plenty of naughty fun doing very bad things. Just not this kind of bad.

Unquestionably the work of both a newbie director and a green screenwriter.

Hammy jokes fall flat and that bloated run time sags in the middle, weighing down would-be snappy humor. It should all pop, but Overboard settles for a low crackle.

No, it’s not what you’re expecting, and what it is isn’t very good, either.

The full force of Union’s performance pushes the film to occasional crowd-pleasing results — give this woman a real action role, and fast — and Shaun’s ability to fight back is the one reliable element of an uneven film.

Daphne shouldn’t be this captivating, but with Woodley’s vulnerability and full-scale charm backing her up, Endings, Beginnings is able to capitalize on a seemingly thin premise.

onally similar to Autumn de Wilde’s sprightly (and critically lauded) “Emma,” the first-time filmmaker’s cheeky and original debut seems to have been the victim of some messy marketing. The final product is, yes, fun and contemporary, but also suffused with the deep longing of its heroine, Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson, game as anyone to bridge seemingly disparate tones).

Night Teeth lacks much more than bite. It’s incoherent to boot.

The cheerless, choppy nature of A Bad Moms Christmas keeps each storyline feeling oddly singular, and it’s worse for it.

The explosions might not be as big on the streaming screen, but they’re as bonkers as ever.

Occasionally muddled, mostly convoluted, and yet still broadly entertaining, it’s a shame this glossy and big budget affair (you really can’t fake Egyptian pyramids like these), will only exist as a streaming pick on Apple TV+.

It’s an amenable enough ramble of a romantic comedy, and Witherspoon is as charming as ever in the genre in which she excels.

The formulaic approach to presenting each story — which ostensibly track different people Julia herself has studied, though she never interacts with them — is predictable, static, and wholly clinical.

There’s much to enjoy in the film’s first hour, which plays out a bit like an updated “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” It’s a chatty comedy populated by amiable leads and a constellation of wacky supporting stars, with an ill-fated would-be couple at its heart.

These stories are all tragic and sad and complex, and more than worthy of innumerable explorations. Many of them are even present in this film, even if nothing about them satisfies. Consider this one a crisis of its own: a well-meaning look at a world that never goes deeper than the surface.

It’s not just a film that feels crafted by Mad Libs, but possibly by a middling A.I. with a soft spot for both “Notting Hill” and cinematic artifice that mistakes contrivances for drama and evolution.

Comedy has to be more than just cheap, gross gags that illicit a response steeped in revulsion. It’s got to have a heart.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a window not worth opening. Pull the drapes closed, it’s curtains for this one.

Passengers refuses to really wrestle with the compelling questions at its core, instead opting to lean on Lawrence and Pratt’s collective charm to keep things ticking amiably along.

It might seem a bit showy and cheesy in its final moments, but that kind of over-the-top shock is missing from most of the rest of the film. It’s a thriller missing the thrills, and we’ll take them where we can get them.

Twist cinema at its most brainless, Rowan Jaffé’s blunt-force thriller Before I Go To Sleep appears to have forgotten that films about amnesia don’t render the audience incapable of recalling what’s happened from one scene to the next.

While Carrillo-Gailey’s book was flinty and fresh, A Nice Girl Like You is more predictable than wild, more staid than sexy, but at least Hale injects some refreshing fun into the outing.

Brief moments of brilliance, including a riveting performance by Riseborough and a number of gorgeous frames, only shine with momentary appeal before the whole thing slips back into vapidity and convention.

Caldwell’s Infamous, at turns nihilistic and uncomfortably believable, may be built on a thin premise — what if its star-crossed pair of criminal lovers was, as the kids say, doing it for the ‘gram? — but an appropriately nutso performance from its star and some sharp writing keep it from feeling as disposable as its worldview.

Yet another seemingly unassailable combination of story and filmmaker that fails to capitalize on any of its obvious promises.

Life might be messy and weird and scary, but it possesses more honesty than this cinematic misery.

For all its darkness, [it] never really scares up anything new.

Some of the goofier bits from Pitch Perfect 2 has been excised, and this latest entry focuses more firmly on the bonds between the ladies after its somewhat mean-tipped predecessor, though it never hits the girl-powered highs of the original. But mostly, it’s yet another unholy mashup of disparate tones that’s never as fun or frisky as the original material.

The in-between moments when Mine is simply a guy stuck in the desert, trying to use his own wits to save himself, is when the film is at its very best, but that’s precisely what makes Mine such a disappointment: those moments are the in-between ones, not the bulk of the film.

While there’s certainly room to explore Alcott’s biggest themes in the lives of modern women, here the results feel more hammy than revelatory.

While The 355 might not be the boundary-busting breakthrough it was sold as, it’s something better: a solid spy flick that adds something new to the genre without totally upending it. That’s refreshing in its own way.

This thing should be light on its feet, fleet and fast and fun. Instead, it drags down the court, taking plenty of shots, but never quite sinking any of them.

Flashier stuff isn’t up to task, from awkward character design (the adults are, let’s just say, crafted with less care than the kiddos) to shoehorned callbacks and an over-reliance on exposition to push story points that could stand a more artful approach. The mind-bending nature of this series doesn’t help matters. (

Like “Green Book,” The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a broad historical outing based on real people and real events, condensed down into an essence that can only be billed as “crowd-pleasing.” The trick this time: Farrelly seems far more aware of how he’s playing fast and loose with history to offer a zippy feature to a fractured world. Dare we say it: It works far better.

Although the film is supposedly about movement, Growing Up And Other Lies frequently stalls out, and whole patches of it grind on without momentum or purpose.

The film zips through its final act at breakneck speed, doling out answers and riling up new conflicts with little care for how they impact a standalone story, just setting up for a franchise that might never come to fruition.

While it offers some necessary growth for all of its characters, The Kissing Booth 2 can never resist looking and acting like dozens of other offerings of its genre ilk, unable to grow beyond basic complications and done-to-death dramas. And yet there are hints that its evolution has a few more tricks left to employ, its winking conclusion only one of them.

Gans isn’t especially concerned with the outcome this coupling, instead reveling in overwrought and often bloated storytelling, lush details and some of the year’s most unnerving CGI.

While the premise of Chick Fight may be featherweight, it’s the film’s phony feminist execution that turns it into a real loser.

The Other Woman eschews plenty of standard genre expectations to make an unexpectedly friendship-friendly film.

That “Michael” skirts around the controversies, legal troubles, and horrifying allegations that marked the entertainer’s later years — and, for so many, have forever marred his legacy — isn’t a shock, as the film was supported and financially backed by Jackson’s estate. What does rankle, however, is that that by glossing over such matters, the final film has been mostly stripped of any humanity, good and bad.

Twohy seems to have long ago lost the thread of what Bubble & Squeak was really trying to say and the inventive ways he might say it.

Choked by overwrought trappings and suffocated by an unforgiving narrative structure, Wim Wenders’ “Submergence” is only bolstered by a pair of sterling performances from stars Alicia Vikander and James McAvoy, both of whom somehow rise above the lackluster film they’re sunk into.

The whole thing is overstuffed with enough narrative threads that it should require a feature film-sized outing to answer them all, but Entouragemerrily skips over whole chunks of vital narrative in order to give it a glossy Hollywood ending, the kind that would seem forced, well, even in the movies.

Boom’s film (penned by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez, and Steven Bagatourian) initially reads as a timely rallying cry around Shakur’s legacy, before devolving into a paint-by-the-numbers biopic that unspools with as much energy as a Wikipedia entry.

It’s all, quite strangely, boring.

Whatever The Stand In wants to announce itself as, no amount of bald-faced lies and winking observations about Hollywood can change what it really is: a bad movie, made worse by all the wasted possibilities.

Romantically uninspiring and comedically unstable, And So It Goes is a poor excuse for a rom-com, even one that continually plays by the rules of the genre and has two major stars to keep it bouncing along.

Love makes people do crazy things, and as overwrought and silly as Tulip Fever is in both execution and aim, the film embodies that sentiment in an unexpectedly compelling manner. It’s unfortunate that it takes 107 minutes to get there, but a final twist offers the film’s sole play for emotional resonance.

It’s like cinema made by Mad Libs, but worse, because we do realize actual people made this, not just randomized choices in a studio head’s office somewhere.

There’s just something retrograde about the entire thing, a copy of a copy, a “new” story with some very light edits to the “old” one, that bogs down even the lightest touches of merriment.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is as relentlessly odd as its predecessor, but its even giddier interest in corporate synergy turns it into a far more cynical outing. It will sell so many plush toys.

While shoving big messages inside animated offerings isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, The Nut Job 2 is uncomfortable with its most ambitious concepts, bookending them with gross-out nonsense that doesn’t seem engineered to appeal to anyone.

In the face of icky writing, limp directing, awful pacing, horrific green screen, and terrible jokes, star Joey King spent three film adaptations of Beth Reeckles’ YA novels injecting heart and humor into her Elle Evans. Still, King’s charm isn’t enough to save the series, but it’s sure as hell the lone silver lining of a franchise that finally, blessedly, is coming to an end.

While the film is understandably concerned with its titular characters — Ed Helms as straight-edge Detroit cop James Coffee, young star Terrence Little Gardenhigh as his plucky pre-teen foil Kareem — its real standouts are supporting talents like Gilpin and Taraji P. Henson, who end up holding together a film that perhaps should have focused on them instead (cutesy title to come).

The film's narrative is both plodding and predictable, and after the third or fourth battle sequence that leans so heavily on loud, thudding noises and swirling leather topcoats that it's impossible to see who is actually hitting who (and, moreover, why), audiences may be in danger of remembering just which "reimagined" fairy tale they're watching on screen.

Dan Mazer’s film is the closest yet the series has come to a true remake, focusing on one plucky kid, two crazed robbers, and a Christmastime backdrop engineered to make anyone feel warm and fuzzy, but despite a classic blueprint, the end result is grinchy, grouchy, and just plain odd.

When The Hustle succeeds — in fits and starts, and with occasional big laughs — it’s wholly thanks to the dedication of Hathaway and Wilson, who throw themselves into thinly written roles (the film somehow required four screenwriters) that they spice up by bringing their A-game to material that’s beneath them.

A gritty romance that only translates some of the source material’s poetic bent to the big screen.

While there are flashes of originality in the film’s script — which quite artfully builds on Bowie’s worries with a distinctly personal edge — most of it is relatively straightforward, never as psychedelic or sophisticated as its opening shot, which finds Flynn stuck in spacesuit and unable to engage with the world around him.

Despite some major narrative missteps, the film’s bold twist on the mob drama still has a refreshing quality. Maybe The Kitchen would have fared better as a series, with more time for its potential material to simmer.

The film occupies a strange no-mans-land of the sprawling Spider-Verse, not charming like the "Spider-Man" films, not funny like the "Venom" films, and certainly not technically impressive like the animated "Into the Spider-Verse."

Nothing connects, nothing gels, and every thread is lost.

King’s Dark Tower universe is rich with cultural reference points and is always totally unpredictable, but in cutting it down to consolidate its highlights, The Dark Tower can’t even shoot the most necessary bullets straight.

The film leans heavily on well-trod “most dangerous game” territory, but the insistence on inscrutable characters and cheap twists never lets it feel actually dangerous. It just feels vacuous.

While McCarthy and Spencer do their damndest to make the family-friendly feature work — McCarthy in particular brings real texture to her charming slacker with a heart of gold, a role she’s played so many times before — Thunder Force isn’t clever enough to break new ground in the superhero milieu, nor is it silly enough to mine its material for the kind of jokes that would make it distinctive.

Despite its slim 79-minute runtime, Emoticon ;) is crammed with a startling number of subplots, which mostly struggle to address some of the large issues they present and subsequently abandon.

It’s a simple enough conceit, but one made consistently confusing by a distinct lack of energy, excitement, and cohesive editing. Never before has 83 minutes felt so very long.

Too chaste to be a “Fatal Attraction” ripoff and far too dull to approach the hammy charms of “Obsessed,” the greatest assets of Peter Sullivan’s Fatal Affair are stars Nia Long and Omar Epps. They keep this from looking and feeling like a limp Lifetime movie knockoff.

It’s an imperfect debut, but it holds thrilling promise for what comes next.

The plucky DIY spirit that pervades small-scale organizations might work when it comes to launching movements in real-time—and Free The Nipple ideals have already bled over into the non-cinematic world—but it makes for a slapdash and slippery movie experience that never comes together.

A gross-out comedy masquerading only in the flimsiest sense as a romance, The Wrong Missy still knows its way around genre convention, but Spindel and company seem compelled to use those expectations to tee up cruel gags that do little to advance the film’s plot or central romance.

Whipping up a proper tone for the big screen versions of E.L. James’ wildly popular novels was always going to be the films’ biggest problem, and while director James Foley might not quite nail it, wily injections of humor prove to be an unexpectedly helpful addition to the kinky franchise.

Tucked into the melodrama of Regretting You, there is a sweet story about a mother and daughter trying to figure things out, but the reliance on their outside romances often detracts from it. That’s a shame.

Spencer and Alush turn in the film’s best performances, and Spencer’s natural warmth and Alush’s deep charm keep The Shack hammering right along.

Its low-key religious underpinnings — truly, no one even hauls out a Bible during the entire film — likely won’t rankle the secular set, even as Christian kids will be happy to see their worldview reflected by way of a mild crowd-pleaser. It’s hammy, it’s predictable, it’s a little silly, but what YA musical isn’t?

The movie arrives at an eye-roll inducing final twist, and hints at an inevitable sequel. But this app isn't exactly begging for an upgrade.

Call it a case of the Mondays, but this kitty needs to go way back to the drawing board.

While the film attempts to thread a tricky needle between absolute drama and wacky comedy — dramedy! — Harris’ script is actually at its best when leaning more into the story’s tougher stuff.

Sound nonsensical? It is.

Though Stein’s film doesn’t exactly work up to a big surprise, it does unveil some new twists in its final act that hint at better craftsmanship than what was initially on offer.

And that, perhaps, is the easiest way to explain its overarching failure: In a film built on a bestselling eight-book series, filled with all manner of magical beings (including Colin Farrell), and rich in fairy tale history, the best scene is one in which its grating narrator farts on a passerby. You didn’t see that in the “Harry Potter” films, and for good reason.

The scariest thing about The Devil Made Me Do It is the possibility that it will set the stage for more of this, and less of what made the franchise so compelling in the first place.

The film is confusingly and sloppily put together, edited down to the point that the few genuine jokes of Let’s Be Cops are given precious little time to breathe, before zipping into the next sequence of increasingly irrational events.

There aren’t that many minutes to mess up, but the film manages to make it feel much longer. At just 86 minutes, Brahms: The Boy II should fly by, but the film lurches forward with its momentum punctuated by bad jump scares and odd flashback sequences.

By the time the entire town discovers that Clint is trapped in a weird hole and Lucy has fallen for Chatwin’s Rydell White, No Stranger Than Love picks up some serious steam, balancing its bizarre tone with actual charm. Sadly, however, it’s too late to pull the production out of its own gaping void: The inability to treat its characters with respect.

Although no one comes off looking especially good, an acceptable alternate title for the film could be "The Ugly Americans," because Mitch Glazer's script takes some of the worst stereotypes about ex-pats and blows them sky high.

Mark Cullen’s ruthlessly boring and decidedly dismal Once Upon a Time in Venice marks a new low in Willis’ still-trucking action career, one that even Cage would likely flinch at, even if it does feature an entire sequence dedicated to naked skateboarding.

Even at a slim 95 minutes, Endless grinds on endlessly.

A superhero film with no power and worse special effects that attempts to rewrite a story that's yet to be told effectively.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of day-old champagne: the taste is almost there, but the bubbles disappeared long ago.

Embarrassing and weird.

Plainly unfunny.

While a defter touch could have made the marriage between fizzy romance and domestic drama work, All Relative fails to engage because the emotional connection between all parties—Harry and Grace, Harry and Maren, Grace and Maren—is weak to nonexistent.

Although the film appears to be aiming for pitch-black humor, it’s all so mirthless that the result is genuinely ugly.

Life Itself thinks you’re stupid. Or, if not stupid, unable to understand how a movie should work. It’s a movie made for people who can’t be trusted to understand any storytelling unless it’s not just spoon-fed but ladled on, piled high, and explained via montage and voiceover.

Initially it seems as if Sidney Hall will just be another film about lone geniuses trapped in worlds where they’re misunderstood or undervalued, but the film then unspools into nearly two hours of baffling narrative choices, weak character development, and so many offensive cliches that it would be funny if it wasn’t so, well, offensive.

Branaman’s script piles on low-level drama, bad decisions, and enough misdirection to make the film’s baffling ending feel not just unearned, but entirely unbelievable.

No, most audiences who tune into 365 Days: This Day are likely not seeking out female empowerment tales or coherent plots, but the disdain with which the film treats both its viewers and its star can’t help but grate.

Apartment Troubles consistently finds opportunities to subvert expectations and tropes in an appealing fashion.

Planetary’s message is repetitive without being enlightening, and the film and its assorted participants insist on hitting the same beats without pause, until the concept loses all meaning.

It’s about nice kids embracing their nerdiest passions, but Magic Camp can’t conjure up enough zing to put on the kind of show they deserve, something weird, something different, something even a little bit magical.

Milch and co-writer Kendall McKinnon don’t actively buck humorous situations — the film is a comedy at its heart, deep, deep down — but there’s a dark underpinning to everything that happens in “Dude,” even when it’s overlaid with bawdy jokes and filthy situations.

The high school-set rom-com is a sexist and regressive look at relationships that highlights the worst impulses of the genre.

While Wake Up: Stories from the Frontlines of Suicide Prevention is a slim, if deeply well-meaning endeavor, it will likely spark some necessary conversations. That those conversations need to go far beyond simply watching a film is a problem not unique to this film (or in this moment), but Townsend manages to effectively disseminate important knowledge in an economical and sensitive way.

Each portion of the story — the formation of the 9to5 group, its ambitious jump into union organizing, and its current aims today — could easily engender its own feature, but it’s the early acts of the film that are most successful on their own.

If the intimate storytelling doesn’t hit viewers where it hurts, the film’s timely exploration of topics seemingly ripped from the headlines are destined to sting on their own.

While Mouret can’t resist the desire to tie it up into a neat little bundle, just like some of its less inventive genre peers, Love Affairs still manages to end in an unexpected way that feels just right — unwilling to settle on a tidy outcome, and open to the possibilities of what could happen next.

While platitudes about how this is really just about love — not money or industry or good old-fashioned greed — are far too simplistic, at least the movie attempts to make its issues feel personal enough to make people care. Sure, it’s cheesy idea, but that doesn’t mean that the bedrock truth isn’t real. The same logic applies to the film.

The film’s predictable plotting is delivered via a nearly lethal combination of obvious twists and a series of face-offs that would be compelling, if not for the exposition-heavy conversations that take place in between the physical brutality.

While its energy starts to flail by the end of its second act, Golden Arm is able to end strong, using the grammar of sports films and the amusement of arm wrestling to deliver a satisfying win worth cheering for.

Thorne’s novel might be best known for its hot-and-bothered sex scenes, but she also built a romance with real stakes and big emotion, and Hutchings and his stars translate that to the big screen with ease. Why can’t every rom-com make it look so easy?

Caught in between a love story and a ghost story, the film accidentally disproves the very epigraph that opens it — “Every love story is a ghost story” — because this is one that fails to haunt or to hurt.

If nothing else, Capturing the Killer Nurse should inspire its viewers, eager for both more information and more nuance, to seek out Lindholm’s film. Fortunately, even in the seemingly endless maw of Netflix content, that better version is just a single click away.

While the initial perimeters of The Re-Education of Molly Singer are simple and perfect for some laughs and character growth, little of that happens here.

Packed with major talking heads, zippy animation, and a bouncing (and bouncy) sense of time (and timeline), “It’s Dorothy!” succeeds mightily when it comes to its most elemental thesis.

D’Apolito covers a staggering amount of ground here, much of that possible because of Lewis’ special brand of candor.