Mark Kennedy

Neither the divers nor kids, government officials nor families and volunteers really come into focus, staying as murky as the miles of submerged cave.

The Tender Bar is a gentle, oddly crafted but loving look at men, fueled by a soundtrack of classics like Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” and Steely Dan’s “Do It Again.” It’s a valentine to guys who step up.

Most of Mann’s toolkit is here — slick and moody camerawork, a poetic surrounding and heightened use of music, even the car porn of “Miami Vice.” But Ferrari — despite Mann’s leaning on Italian opera — fails to ignite.

The script by Jake Crane and Jonathan A. H. Stewart is a slow-burning affair that will have audiences tugging at the leash.

By sanding off all the dark human quirks from their deeply human heroine, the filmmakers have left us a film that’s just filling the space.

“Bad Boys” only works when the bickering cops are center stage.

Next Goal Wins isn’t a tale of “woe” or “woah!” but “meh.”

Visually and storytelling-wise it’s not a cut above much of what kids can watch on TV these days. This is a franchise that looks like it’s slowly going the way of the dinos, while we drool.

The script by Tracey Scott Wilson (Fosse/Verdon) is a collection of scenes that don’t add up to much, never really building and interrupted — by necessity, of course — with overly long music sequences. This film needed someone to sharpen and clarify.

McCarthy’s visual style is too fragmented, happy to capture his scrambling camera and sound operators in the frame and changing up his shots from guerilla-style jerky iPhone images to tasteful, polished portraits.

While the franchise soldiers on unironically, the films may fail to keep up with the real world, where fears have metastasized.

Peter Hastings, director, screenwriter and animal voice of Dog Man, has had a hand in Pilkey’s much better adaption of “Captain Underpants,” but this time smashes together characters and plot lines from several of the books in a way that is hard to follow even for fans.

The Hunt is not great satire or even a great film. It’s an unstylish and heavy-handed horror-thriller that turns into a revenge gore-fest as it mocks everyone with a big clumsy paw.

Simon McQuoid does a decent job on his feature directorial debut, giving us a constantly staggered hits of dopamine in the form of controlled violence.

Ackie’s performance is something to be cheered, reaching for the the kind of authenticity that Andra Day channeled when she also tackled a doomed musical icon in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” But so much clumsiness, scenes featuring unnaturally heightened drama with little insight and the compromised authenticity of the performances drag I Wanna Dance With Somebody down — ultimately, it’s not right but it’s just OK.

On Swift Horses belongs in the same category as other hushed ’50s-set same-sex romances, like Todd Haynes’ “Carol” or Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” But this adaptation hasn’t made the leap to the screen very well. Sometimes swift horses stumble.

If the “Insidious” franchise is your jam, by all means go and see the original Fab Four of the Lambert family battle hollow-eyed demons for perhaps the last time. But for everyone else, why not let the past stay in the past?

Disney should have left the original alone.

Orion and the Dark is about fear and overcoming it but this movie directed by Sean Charmatz has too much junk clogging up the vision.

They Will Kill You may remind you of the marriage between madcap, social satire and bloody mayhem from “Ready or Not” but it’s a warning of how hard that combo is to get correctly.

The Bad Guys 2 has clearly lost its moorings.

Part of the problem of “Chapter 1” is that in addition to overstuffing it with too many characters, the editing is pretty bad. Viewers will struggle with some violent cuts in which Costner has jumped the action forward months within the same chapter without any clues.

Spinal Tap II is filled with ghosts. It’s like watching a cover band playing the hits but then realizing it’s actually the original band onstage after all.

It’s not as funny as it thinks it is and tiresome in its overly familiar redemption arc.

But It Ends With Us doesn’t end quickly enough — more than two hours drag — with tangents and poor editing, like sudden scene cuts that leave viewers looking for clues to where they are.

The problem with Men isn’t with the acting. It’s with a script that could be described as attempting at something like arty horror and can’t stick the landing. Often it is tedious, slow to build and pretentious.

Overly long, bombastic and poorly focused.

Overall, it’s just not so good, so good.