Michael Ordoña

Perhaps, despite its lack of structure, the film will inspire a new generation to investigate this funny lady who could sing the lights out.

The slapstick generally works and the movie milks Bautista’s sheer size and roughness, compared with tiny Coleman’s crafty fearlessness. Much of the story is telegraphed, but it’s not about shocks or surprises. It’s a charming diversion stocked with people who are fun to watch.

Unfortunately, the movie’s thriller elements amount to pale reflections of many other works.

The film fails to coalesce largely because viewers are left to wonder what joins the couple in the first place.

While it’s sometimes dizzying in its visuals or its joy, it’s often not cute. It can be fun, even exhilarating. It can also carry the emotional impact of loss.

The film drifts from grown-up to kid problems with mostly anecdotal evidence but very little science to back it up. It tries to cover too much ground in 71 minutes without going deeply into any of the areas it lightly explores.

Tammy’s Always Dying is a richly observed comedy-drama. Johnson’s direction is intelligent and restrained.

The film’s bright colors and blaring happy music may not be enough for viewers to overcome the rather unfunny themes of neglect (“Back up the abuse caboose”) routinely excused in more engaging fare.

The handcrafted feel of the film is mainly a virtue, setting it apart from the vast majority of animated fare.

It almost works as food porn when we spend some time in Chico’s kitchen, but we never linger long enough for the experience to marinate.

The filmmakers cast several comic performers — Adam Pally as the dad, Tichina Arnold as the grandmother, Ken Marino as the bad guy — but there aren’t really opportunities for them to shine. Arnold seems to have the most fun with it. The Main Event, sadly, never gets off the mat.

What results is an emotional appeal that highlights a grave problem but doesn’t give the viewer the scientific, factual foundation to be completely convinced. The film also doesn’t offer solutions.

One suspects Inside the Rain is a labor of love. One wishes its makers would have let us in enough to love it as well.

Dosed works best as a purely anecdotal, personal chronicle of a friend’s struggle with addiction therapies. It is not recommended as a substitute for scientific conclusions.

The story is struck from a familiar template: inactive protagonist, dead parent, worries about popularity, a regional competition looming. But the film distinguishes itself from there, largely due to the direction of “Fast Color’s” Julia Hart.

Perhaps the slickly made documentary overstates the cultural impact of a little-seen and widely disliked film. However, it earns points for scraping at the surface of something rarely discussed in film fandom — homosexuality in horror.

The film is well-intentioned and rooted in harrowing real-life stories. Unfortunately, it’s made in the style of British television, with cinematic clichés that telegraph outcomes. The heavy-handed use of music, in particular, is intrusive.

The gags are often better in theory than practice.

Apparently, at least 400 women fought as men during the Civil War, but the perplexing Union is not the exploration they deserve.

Interesting and timely, The Red Sea Diving Resort highlights the plight of refugees and casts those helping them in a heroic light, but it doesn’t quite deliver dramatically.

Sometimes the cheekiness works and sometimes the empowerment theme feels forced.

The film, based on Romain Puértolas’ novel, has clever touches and is consistently engaging, if meandering.

The film gets laughs from a script emphasizing Steve’s awkwardness and the soundtrack’s use of ’80s power ballads. Of course, nothing in it is as endearing as the birds themselves. The mere sight of their fat bodies waddling across the ice gets the warmest response of all.

Highwaymen captures, through the eyes of common people, the perceived rebel spirit that made the couple folk heroes during the Great Depression. It establishes through wardrobe and production design how rough that era was. It’s not just a setting; it’s a grim and desperate worldview.

It’s light on the science and heavy on the action.

The dialogue is often stiff, the action and plotting unlikely, making the romance hard to swallow. The appealing Uddin and Raymonde do generate enough chemistry in their fleeting time together to keep the proposition afloat.

The action is violent and improbable but not staged with particular pizazz.

The enjoyment one wants from GIs fighting these creatures is stunted by the film’s lack of energy and imagination.