Matt Fowler

The Marksman is perfectly watchable old man reckoning cinema, held together by good performances by Liam Neeson and young Jacob Perez, but it's ultimately not much more than an assembly line of non-surprises.

A House of Dynamite has the acting and directing goods, but its weak resolve arrives late in the game.

Metal Lords is earnest with metal but sloppy with character and story. It delivers a rousing finale but the journey there is uninspired and half-formed.

A muddled mix of '90s teen flicks, curated for a new generation (with a Hitchcock premise swirled in), Do Revenge is a lukewarm high school vengeance tale that never settles on a tone and is barren when it comes to laughs.

Krysten Ritter, along with Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett, provide enough pizazz to keep Nightbooks afloat, creating an engaging supernatural hostage scenario.

Greyhound has occasional bursts of violent excitement but it's overall lack of engaging characters, the unappetizing CG, and the lackluster story make for a very color-by-numbers outing from a headlining star capable of a whole lot more.

Copshop is meaningfully and enjoyably derivative as a patchwork homage to '70s shoot-em-up cinema (even Spaghetti Westerns), but it never quite reaches its potential.

Zeros and Ones uses the spy genre as a thin mask for a fever dream that evokes nightmarish uncertainty.

The story's lifted a bit by some of the solid comedic actors, and the WWE Superstars who make a run-in, but when the story isn't sloppy, it's paint-by-numbers.

George Clooney's The Midnight Sky is a gorgeous, glossy doomsday odyssey that feels like too big a winter coat on a small, fragile frame.

Cry Macho has spare moments of charm and tranquility, but mostly it's a dry and unfinished story that fails to hit even the most basic of Story 101 beats.

Wrath of Man has plenty of anger and action, and it's at its intriguing best when the entire story gets sorted out and all the players are on the board, but it stumbles at being a time-release mystery.

Don't Make Me Go features excellent performances from John Cho and Mia Isaac, but it stumbles big at the finish line.

Black Crab has all the ingredients to grab you and take you on a thrill ride -- and at times it achieves this -- but it suffers partial collapse by the end because of its need to land a little loftier than necessary.

War Machine has just enough juice to prevent it from being a Snore Machine.

Hubie Halloween is aggressively stupid, sure, but it's also occasionally endearing (with a guilty chuckle or two).

Bruised is a good outing for Halle Berry as a director, though a better reminder of her as a star. Aside from that, however, the story progression is light on impact.

Paw Patrol: The Movie is a precious and peppy offering for the pre-preteen set that utilizes gentle character drama and buzzy action to stand out as a big-screen adventure. It won't be any parent's first choice, from an animation standpoint, but the standards of storytelling hold firm, making for an overall calm and comforting watch.

Glenn Close and Amy Adams shine in Ron Howard's new, rather unfocused film about abuse, poverty, and addiction.

The Cellar has a cool and creepy set up but then fizzles once the answers start arriving.

The Last Mercenary has bounding energy and a fun take on star Jean-Claude Van Damme's past exploits as an action star, but the humor is way more miss than hit and the actual nuts-and-bolts spy plot is a trudge.

Gunpowder Milkshake does its formidable cast dirty with a bland script, recycled story, and an empty comic book style that does little but shine up a stale outing.

Wrong Turn delivers a handful of timely twists and coats the franchise with a new, and vastly more interesting, sheen. It stumbles at times to balance all the themes it's trying to handle with regards to societal ills, individual value, and self-determinism but the end result is still a warped ride that could set up more thrills to come.

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank curiously exists as a Mel Brooks movie remake, though that's also its most redeeming feature.

Outside the Wire is too long, too impenetrable, and not fun enough to warrant its lofty man vs. machine gimmick. It's fun to watch Anthony Mackie assume the role of a smart, cordial killbot, but the film's occasionally exciting bits of action aren't enough to breathe life into this muddled mess of a story.

Willy's Wonderland is a no-frills splatterfest that, while straining to fill its runtime, finds mid-level chills and thrills thanks to Nic Cage bashing the hell out of weaponized pizza parlor characters. It's a shoestring slasher that gets the job done while also not fully rounding a few of the corners it teases.

Cherry is big on style and features a bouncy, pricey soundtrack but its examination of the grim reality behind the veteran/addiction cycle feels rather routine. Holland breaks down many barriers here, performance-wise, and delivers the goods as a fantastic surrogate for societal ills, but the movie is plodding and, overall, an underwhelming patchwork of previous projects.

The love story between Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry works, or at least meagerly satisfies, on only surface levels, as does most of the movie.