Keith Watson

Over-stuffed and under-conceived, Fist Fight is a clumsy mélange of clashing comedic perspectives.

The unvaried register of the filmmaking leads the narrative to feel aimless and dramatically inert.

SuperFly is a slicked-up, tricked-out revamp that dispenses with any pretense of verisimilitude in favor of rap-video extravagance and mob-movie bloodshed.

Fernando Trueba fails to probe the political implications of The Queen of Spain's period milieu, which is particularly confounding given the filmmaker’s evident anti-fascist sympathies.

Tommy Wirkola’s film squanders an evocative premise in favor of rote gun-fu carnage.

The ham-handed allegorical construction, generically titled characters, and self-serious tone in its final third drains the story of the specificity that might have resulted in a more incisive critique of the perils of perfectionism.

Daniela Thomas seems stymied by her own images, unable to extract the turmoil and violence suggested by her story for fear of upsetting the austere surface harmony of her visuals.

Power Rangers is so concerned with launching a mature teen-targeted franchise that it often forgets to have some fun.

Its scenes wildly escalate to a fever pitch at the drop of a hat, before then ending, more often than not, with abrupt violence.

The film rarely presents a clear analysis of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's victories, reducing her work to empty slogans.

Given the sheer amount of comic material here, some of the jokes are bound to fall flat, but the hit-to-miss ratio is depressingly low.

The animation feels like the result of the cold calculus of an algorithm rather than a human director with a personal vision.

Everything here wraps up as tidily as it does in your average Hallmark Channel movie.

A constant sense of motion can’t obscure how stale, secondhand, and spiritless this entire endeavor feels.

The film is ostensibly about the war for the soul of a house, but it couldn’t feel less lived in.

Tim Burton manages to put his stamp on this clunky behemoth of a film, but in the end, the Mouse always wins.

The Female Brain never seems quite sure whether it wants to probe the depths of its title subject or just make us laugh. And given the shallowness of its quasi-scientific blather and the tepidness of its comedy, it ultimately does neither.

Maika Monroe’s engaging performance serves only to highlight how feeble and unconvincing the rest of the film is.

Just as David Gordon Green seems to have finally unshackled his legacyquel trilogy from the dead weight of the past, the film loses the courage of its convictions.

Christopher Plummer brings a twinkly eyed insouciance to his character, but there's only so many times Jack can make a joke about, say, his adult diapers before it becomes thin and hollow.

Lacking any vibrancy, wit, or formal rigor, First Kill is not only as bland and leaden as its über-generic title suggests, it's downright sloppy to boot.

Unlike One Cut of the Dead, Michel Hazanavicius’s similar ode to low-budget resourcefulness often rings false.

The film is peppered with interesting true-life details, but these are overwhelmed by frantic comedic sequences.

The film in effect positions young jihadis less as fervid, bloodthirsty psychopaths and more as dumb kids at summer camp.

Hustle doesn’t really seem to know who its characters are, much less how they fit into the complicated web of sports, media, and finance that defines the NBA.

The film is so toothless that its protagonist is ultimately about as forbidding as a warm hug.

Jonas Åkerlund’s breezy approach to this material not only cheapens the music, but also has the effect of downplaying the severity of the scene’s truly unsavory politics.

Director Joe Berlinger essentially allows his subject to hijack the film for his own end.