Peter Debruge

Granted, Landesman feels an obligation to history, but there’s something ponderously obvious about the way so many of these scenes are played.

Stanton has been given the resources to create an expansive, expensive world, but lacks the instincts to direct live-action, a limitation that shows most in the performances. Bare of chest and fair of feature, Kitsch doesn't exhibit enough charisma to carry a project of this scale.

Reacher is a brawny action figure whose exploits would have been a good fit for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone back in the day, but feel less fun when delegated to a leading man like Tom Cruise. The star is too charismatic to play someone so cold-blooded, and his fans likely won't appreciate the stretch.

Though billed as a documentary, this 59-minute doodle barely rises above homemovie status.

Both intellectually and emotionally, there’s something promising afoot, and yet, Whannell doesn’t go far enough.

While never as gripping as a good piece of fiction, Goold’s treatment actually manages to improve on the book, even if that meant fabricating a few things along the way.

[A] slick, smarter-than-usual conspiracy yarn.

Perhaps the cleverest thing about Barker-Froyland’s delicately contrived debut is how uncontrived she manages to make it seem.

While the entire ensemble comes across fully committed to roles that are well beneath them, it’s not at all clear what the point was in presenting the Moke and Jady characters as twins.

The movie offers an updated version of the same basic ride Spielberg offered 32 years earlier, and yet, it hardly feels essential to the series’ overall mythology, nor does it signal where the franchise could be headed.

The Hunt turns out to be a good deal smarter — and no more extreme — than most studio horror films, while its political angle at least encourages debate, suggesting that there’s more to this hot potato than mere provocation.

While his American competition practices the right to remain silent, McDonagh writes his clever, coal-black heart out, delivering another firecracker script.

Judging by the ponderous tone and pace, Fuqua thinks he’s making high art (likely aspiring to something existential like Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï”), but this is a grisly exploitation movie at best.

The dynamic between mother and son is fascinating, with Blethyn creating a character who is more antagonist than villain.

A partly authentic, partly scripted behind-the-scenes featurette that never quite conveys the star’s “high/curious” interest in all things taboo.

Over the years, Pacino's Method has become his madness, and now, whether he's playing Shylock or Satan, he doesn't become the part so much as the part becomes him.

Granted, Freundlich has the benefit of Bier’s screenplay contributions to guide him, but in his particular execution, the story feels grounded for a very different strategy from Bier’s: Rather than going out of his way to include recognizable human moments, he strips away anything excessive, allowing subtext to surface in the quiet spaces between dialogue.

While not especially artful, Fatima honors those who stand by their convictions. That its role models are children makes the message all the more remarkable.

It’s a shame that the plot gets so carried away with the supernatural power struggle, since the mile-a-minute movie is far more engaging when focused on Ruby — who makes an appealing addition to the DreamWorks Animation family — and the sitcom-ready aspect of kraken-human relations.

The performances come with certain limitations (the line readings sound memorized, never spontaneous), but as a whole, the movie makes memorable, three-dimensional characters of its players, and that’s a start.

What should have been a galvanizing David-versus-Goliath story pales in comparison with Amazon series “Goliath,” which is comparably colorful but far more coherent as it hits so many of the same beats.

Alas, the older actors don’t have all that much to do (editor Chris Dickens keeping cutting back to McKee reading), but the younger trio are strong, albeit restrained, in their roles. Corrin, so great as a wife betrayed in “The Crown” (they played Princess Diana), could do this role in their sleep, while Styles has the tricky task of making Tom’s betrayal feel tragic for all involved.

If Larry Clark had ever found his way onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, he probably would have come away with a film like “War Pony,” which observes its young Native American characters hustling, skating and stealing drugs from otherwise distracted adults.

The movie doesn’t show a complex enough representation of either adult life or the New York literary world to offer much depth to grownups (it’s far more engaged with Joanna’s romantic life and dream sequences set at the Waldorf Astoria), which means that My Salinger Year must have been intended to inspire young women for whom 1995 seems like the ancient past.

“The Greatest Hits” feels like the remainder-bin version of better love stories.

Though the story was written almost two decades ago, it’s a microcosm for the kind of wall-building mentality that has taken hold of the mainstream today, and the Malloy brothers achieve a kind of tragic poetry that sticks with those who make it a point to seek this one out.

With any luck, Relive will get a reboot down the road, in which someone takes better advantage of the basic idea.

It’s downright tricky to maintain the tone Waltz is going for here, but the story is consistently outrageous enough to keep us guessing, and Redgrave goes a long way to offset the lunacy of it all. ... But instead of getting more interesting as it goes on, Waltz’s performance grows tiresome.

Gyllenhaal grounds Davis’ wildly unraveling psyche, finding both the humor and heart in a man who admits to having spent the past 10 to 12 years incapable of feeling.

True to their brand, Illumination has engineered another easy-to-swallow confection designed to maximize audience delight, whether on first or fortieth viewing, although this time, there’s almost zero nutritional value.

Don’t Look Up plays like the leftie answer to “Armageddon” — which is to say, it ditches the Bruckheimer approach of assembling a bunch of blue-collar heroes to rocket out to space and nuke the approaching comet, opting instead to spotlight the apathy, incompetence and financial self-interest of all involved.

Directors Teng Cheng and Li Wei have dedicated serious attention to creating a stunning dramatic atmosphere for a story that, truth be told, is still plenty confusing to non-Chinese audiences.

The Sentinel isn't nearly as slick as it must have looked on the page. Those zingers are perfect fodder for a movie preview, but they just don't lead anywhere interesting on-screen.

What makes The Gray Man exciting — and let’s not beat around the bush: This is the most exciting original action property Netflix has delivered since “Bright” — are the shades the ensemble bring to their characters and the little ways in which the Russos come through where those other films fell short.

The movie’s nothing special, but it’s worth checking out just for the cast.

American audiences have seen Ju-On. And The Grudge just goes to show why remaking it is such a frivolous idea: What's the use in wasting so much energy if the filmmakers aren't going to fix what was wrong with the movie in the first place?

All told, in giving parents nothing to object to, director Alexs Stadermann (who got his start making straight-to-video sequels for Disney) has also given them little to get excited about, apart from the idea of sharing Maya with another generation of preschoolers.

Bullet Train feels like it comes from the same brain as “Snatch,” wearing its pop style on its sleeve — a “Kill Bill”-like mix of martial arts, manga and gabby hitman movie influences, minus the vision or wit that implies.

The result has all the red flags of a flop, but takes a strong enough anti-establishment stand — and does so with wit and originality — to earn a cult following. There’s too much ambition here to write the movie off, even if Amsterdam, like the history it depicts, winds up taking years to be rediscovered and understood.

The film — while not an especially compelling or well-told biopic unto itself — shines much-needed attention on the plight of the Roma people at the hands of German (and French) officials.

This is a dour and deeply unpleasant film that wears its gritty realism as a badge of honor, while failing to recognize the motivations that explain such behavior in reality, which makes him neither an attentive journalist nor a particularly good storyteller (at least not yet).

Consistently funny if all-around a bit too familiar.

Very little of Spirit Untamed lives up to what the studio is selling.

Amusing as the Cooties script manages to be, one gets the distinct impression that its authors didn’t bother to visit a school at any point in the research or writing process, missing out on any number of jokes they could have made at public education’s expense.

The film even pokes fun at itself in the process, fully aware that Spenser Confidential isn’t meant to be taken as seriously as Wahlberg’s last few movies — and just as well, since irreverence plays well on Netflix.

Kids deserve an adventure movie like this, one that might inspire them to become junior inventors and ignite their interest in the world's many wonders.

Apart from the uncommon notion that these mysterious visitors may actually mean us well, the film seems a little too comfortable with clichés, right down to the men in black who show up mid-movie to ruin everybody’s fun.

For an inaugural effort, Open Season ain't bad, but the studio shows far more promise with its gee-whiz visuals than it does in the story department.

The events being considered deserve better than a sloggy melodrama in which the tragedy of a people is forced to take a back seat to a not especially compelling love triangle.

Yes, Despicable Me 3 is unwieldy, but it mostly works, as co-directors Pierre Coffin (who also voices the Minions) and Kyle Balda never lose sight of the film’s emotional center, packing the rest with as much humor as they can manage.

The movie does serve up a rather satisfying ending, suggesting the studio’s latest politically correct reinterpretation of “true love.” The rest looks cheap and lacks much of a personality.

Managed (more than directed) by motion-capture star-turned-aspiring blockbuster helmer Andy Serkis, Venom: Let There Be Carnage has all the indications of a slap-dash cash grab. The set-pieces look sloppy, the visual effects are all over the place, and the laughs come largely at the movie’s expense.

Directed with an odd mix of human compassion and giddy abandon by Stephen Gaghan (“Syriana”), Gold is a lively portrayal of what’s often misidentified as the American Dream, but might be more accurately described as the American Fantasy — where men dream of wealth and success without having to put in the work.

The movie doesn’t have the budget or imagination to permit subplots.

Tonally, the movie walks a tricky line between easy-target satire and female-empowering corporate case study, falling into the overcrowded junk-culture nostalgia-porn category so recently represented by “Tetris,” “Air,” “BlackBerry” and “Flamin’ Hot.”

From a filmmaking perspective, it’s no easy feat taking what looks like so much chaos and organizing it into a character-driven comedy, but that’s just what Affleck and co-writer (and “City on a Hill” series creator) Chuck MacLean have accomplished, giving Liman the blueprint to alternate between unpredictable set-pieces and more relaxed examples of male bonding.

A charming midlife crisis of a movie that bottles the "La Femme Nikita" director's typically high-concept inclinations in a modest indie package.

Fendrik seems more interested in the rich jungle surroundings than in the generic human struggle in the foreground, alternating between clunky setpieces (such as the sitting-duck rowboat shootout) and long stretches where the characters say nothing.

There’s precious little in The Protégé that audiences haven’t seen before in some form or another, but that’s hardly a liability, since the script recombines those familiar elements in such entertaining ways, counting on Q, Jackson and Keaton to make these stock characters come alive.

While it was exciting to see what “Tron” might look like in the 21st century, the brand gets in the way of Ares’ internal evolution. However fascinating it might be to watch him “level up,” what audiences expect — and what Rønning delivers — are cycle races and dynamic gladiator battles.

While the new studio’s debut can’t touch “Toy Story,” it’s an auspicious start for a talented group of storytellers.

Doesn't always work -- like its title, the movie straddles two separate worlds, landing squarely in the dreaded realm of "dramedy" -- but it's a noble effort.

Here, in cinema’s most unpleasant genre (the dysfunctional family gathering), Dolan has found a way to exasperate and exhaust his audience, but he has also achieved a completely unexpected catharsis at the end of an agonizing hour and a half.

The script is nearly all dialogue, including several eloquent spoken passages toward the end, but it’s a lousy story, ineptly constructed and rendered far too difficult to follow.

The trouble with Paris Can Wait — apart from the sheer agony of being trapped with two insufferable characters as they sample gorgeously photographed food and wine that we can’t taste — is the way the movie seems so willing to let its leading lady be defined by her husband’s job.

In attempting to reclaim this woman’s reputation, Maïwenn’s film feels unexpectedly tame — it risks turning a would-be scandal into a royal bore.

When confronted with real problems--and there's enough melodrama here to top a movie-of-the-week marathon on Lifetime--these otherwise empowered characters seem helpless to defend themselves.

The characters feel thin, the secret society seems implausible and its goals too vague to capture the imagination. “Manodrome” taps into a deep unease at play in the wider world, but it presents only the shell of an idea, focusing on a not-terribly-interesting character with only the haziest of goals.

The intermittently clever movie is full of art-world in-jokes, but seems oblivious to its many plot holes, which are more conspicuous than the slashes in one of Lucio Fontana’s “Spatial Concept” canvases.

Emperor’s bloodless presentation fails on a fundamental dramatic level, playing like the fancy version of a junior-high educational filmstrip, down to the false suspense of Alex Heffes’ corny ticking-clock score.

Kids will love it. It feels fresh and original and mildly subversive, but it's all a cover for the filmmakers not having the patience or confidence to put together a real story with a beginning, middle and end.

This is the new normal for horror movies: The screenplays have to seem hipper than the premise they represent, which puts “Child’s Play” in the weird position of pointing out and poking fun at all the ways it fails to make sense.

The director could use a bit more practice working with kids, who give stiff and slightly unnatural performances here (Ciarra seems the most comfortable on camera), to say nothing of the so-so visual effects, which favor cute over convincing where the CG chimera is concerned.

It’s a squirmy, uncomfortable movie no teenager wants to watch with their mom, but maybe everyone should — required viewing for freshman year.

It's the details that make Dummy such a winner. By way of comparison, consider last summer's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," in which each actor put a heartfelt spin on his or her one-joke character (the father who believes that Windex cures everything). Well, here's an entire movie built on nuggets like that.

Despite wall-to-wall narration by Haddish (at her most raunchy), the movie does a clumsy job of telling a not-very-complicated story. Then again, this lean team effort is Sanders’ directorial debut, and he gets the laughs.

There’s humor in every detail, much of it skewing to the sordid, if not downright scatological, end of the spectrum, from exploding buttocks to anthropomorphic hairballs.

The comedy feels forced as Fey works overtime to insert unnecessary zingers at the tail of every scene. If the cast weren’t so endearing, her actions could easily sour an audience on the whole experience, and Admission digs itself a hole only an ensemble this appealing can escape.

So many movies are either mindless or completely disinterested with engaging the intellect of their audiences that Freud’s Last Session offers a welcome bit of brain stimulation — but does far less for the soul.

What sets I Feel Pretty apart is the inspired premise that Renee’s transformation takes place entirely in her head, while those around her are left befuddled by her sudden change of attitude — a concept that begs the question of why our society encourages women to second-guess their self-image in the first place.

Strong on texture but taxingly light on narrative.

There’s a virtuosity to Gavras’ filmmaking, which yields some surprising laughs and thrills along the way.

Script shortcomings aside, Winslet and Elba make a reasonably good couple.

With material like this, Samuel Fuller or David Lean might have fashioned an epic war movie for the ages, chock-full of hard-boiled characters and against-all-odds heroics. But in John Dahl's hands, The Great Raid never really lives up to its name, delivering everything you might expect from such a movie, but not an ounce more.

The Argument is amusing for a while, and some of the ensemble — Maggie Q and Coleman in particular — manage to access something both human and humorous in what might have seemed harsh in another actor’s hands. But silly as the filmmakers intend for this to be, there’s something unpleasant about the whole ordeal.

King Cobra is all smut and no soul, a tacky, superficially titillating reunion between Franco and “I Am Michael” director Justin Kelly.

If you were hoping to find another "Nemo," you're likely to be let down by this insincere and borderline unpleasant alternative.

One of those slow-baked Southern character studies about taking an old flat tire of a man and finding some way to love him anyway.

Hopelessly shallow Down Low is still light-years ahead of mainstream movies (including last year’s “Bros”) as debuting feature director Rightor Doyle delivers what an entire contingent of queer audiences have been asking for all their lives: namely, a comedy that’s as raunchy and inappropriate as the jokes they make among themselves.

While the visual effects are surprisingly weak for a film of this scale, the script (from “Ghostbusters” writer Katie Dippold) proves far better than anyone might expect, establishing an emotional foundation for what might otherwise be a gimmick-driven haunted house movie.

Smile feels like one man's answer to movies increasingly overloaded with sex and violence.

From its opening scene, the film feels desaturated and airless, as if the intrusion of energy or color might upset the characters’ delicate task of healing.

There are simply too many loose ends to distract us, and too much empty air in which audiences can’t help but poke holes.

As far as titles go, Cote d'Azur doesn't quite cut it for this topsy-turvy French comedy, in which an innocent seaside vacation gets really messy once a family full of busybodies starts poking around in one another's business.

While “The Secrets of Dumbledore” doesn’t exactly embrace simplicity, the screenplay — no longer credited to Rowling alone, but co-written by stalwart “Harry Potter” adapter Steve Kloves — feels far more focused. Happily, the execution proves that much easier to follow.

You know things are getting bad when an instantly forgettable, nearly impossible-to-follow, Chinese-language action movie manages to score a U.S. release simply because of Chan’s involvement.

The acting feels genuine across the board, with Lithgow (who wrestles an impossible-to-geolocate accent) emerging as the most fearless in an all-around daring ensemble.

Unfortunately, the behaviors on display have virtually nothing to do with real life, serving as empty escapism for the dog lover in all of us.

The movie deprives us of either a tragic villain or a sympathetic lead, hoping that its grab bag of squirm-inducing details — dental drills, stillborn livestock, flesh-eating eels — will suffice, when in fact, they reveal how a shorter, tighter treatment ought to have done the trick.

Because Korine’s never been one to subscribe to traditional narrative tropes, there’s an insidious sort of suspense running beneath the otherwise-thin plot, like some kind of high-voltage electric current.

Zwick barely manages to tickle our adrenaline, waiting till the climactic showdown amid a New Orleans Halloween parade to deliver a sequence that could legitimately register as memorable.

Very little of Monster Hunter makes sense, but it’s visually interesting at least and not un-fun to stream at home with a friend, asking questions and cracking jokes along the way.

This is Gere’s movie, and Sarandon and Lopez graciously let him dance away with it.

A delightfully ridiculous screwball action comedy.

Janeane Garofalo is all wrong as the giraffe, whom the animators contort into all manner of weird positions so she can share the frame with pint-size love interest Benny the squirrel (Jim Belushi).

Here, Wnendt suppresses his naturally provocative streak to deliver an aggressively cute existential comedy instead.

It’s this improv-ready ensemble’s wit and Galifianakis’ own gift for physical humor that account for most of the laugh-out-loud moments, heightened by silly flourishes so eccentric...they could only be found in a Jared Hess movie.

Evaluated on the concept’s own terms, the script clearly could have used another do-over or two before Israelite and his cast took the plunge.

Like head-in-the-clouds Orson, Back’s debut feature imagines more for itself than others can see, though only the latter has earned a shot at another job.

An hour and a half would’ve been a perfectly fine run-time, whereas at two hours and change, “Sonic 2” wears out its welcome well before it turns into yet another phone-it-in franchise entry.

One of the great pleasures of the original Love Bug comes in watching all the live-action stunts, and CG just isn't the same.

While uneven in places, The Great Gilly Hopkins works because it boasts an actress tough enough for the title role.

If there was any doubt as to De Niro’s greatness, it’s laid to rest in these face-to-face confrontations. No star could’ve held his own quite so effectively against De Niro.

As first features go, A Teacher demonstrates a willingness to provoke, but doesn’t seem to understand the minimum expectations most audiences place on films in terms of both incident and characterization.

The studio wimped out, and the result is a lesser production on every level: talent, script, content, and purpose.

Martone’s repetitive, tediously non-linear film attempts something more impressionistic and expansive, with emotionally muted and sometimes strangely exploitative results.

Films like this have a way of finding their own devoted fan base, and Gypsy 83 deserves to be discovered not only by Goth and gay crowds, but by anyone who runs screaming from all things average.

Giovanni may be the main character of A Brighter Tomorrow — a conceit shamelessly lifted from Fellini’s “8 1/2” — but Moretti pokes fun at himself, privileging other characters’ points of view as well.

Belongs to the same class of cotton-candy romances as "Chances Are" and "Somewhere in Time," although it steers its light-hearted subject into darker territory with the life support subplot.

This is superficial entertainment to say the least. But if you're looking for laughs, then Just Friends is just fine.

There's a lot to be said for a movie that isn't after instant fame, but only wants to make audiences feel good.

There’s an old-school, B-movie snap to much of the proceedings, which Nash Edgerton modernizes without imposing too flashy a style upon the material. It’s pulp, plain and simple, delivering on the chance to watch depraved characters navigate unseemly situations.

Ballad of a Small Player looks great, but lacks the fundamental human insight to make it a winner.

Kevin Spacey is a darn good actor, and he's a pretty good singer to boot. But those traits alone do not excuse the painful experience to be had sitting through Beyond the Sea.

Instead of watching a professional actor pretending to be intellectually disabled, we're watching a jackass pretending to be a dimwit pretending to be intellectually disabled.

The result is an aggressively unfunny look at human-robot relations in a garish, cartoonishly rendered future.

For about three-quarters of the running time, Rebecca does a respectable job of navigating between respect for the source and establishing its own distinct identity. And then, at precisely the moment where it stands to make a few enlightened improvements . . . this Rolls-Royce of an adaptation veers off the road.

I'd gladly take the legend over this dreary pseudo-historical mumbo jumbo.

Secret Window's premise is certainly new, even if King appears to be plagiarizing themes from himself.

What matters most is whether we believe Brown in the role, and the “Stranger Things” star has no trouble embodying the kind of quick-thinking independent mind it takes to survive such an adventure.

A filmmaker like John Sayles ("Sunshine State") who shares Hiaasen's issue-conscious outlook might have framed the lesson a bit more eloquently. But Shriner blows it.

Looking back to “Frozen River,” Hunt’s long-awaited second feature shares the weaknesses of her debut — namely, a single-minded focus on a somewhat trashy predicament, with little to no room for subplots or other enriching details — while lacking in the earlier film’s strengths.

Something’s clearly missing, and the most obvious answer is magic, both on-screen and in the project’s conception.

This overly devout adaptation of Joe Hill’s sacrilegious text benefits from the helmer’s twisted sensibility, but suffers from a case of overall silliness.

[A] well-meaning, well-acted but otherwise clumsily executed parable about second chances.

This game-changing instant classic will doubtless inspire imitators, onscreen and in backyards everywhere, en route to redefining what a new generation expects of its mice-will-play movies.

Sober, this kind of material is an acquired taste at best and downright unbearable in stretches. And yet, the movie has the makings of an instant cult classic, sure to grow funnier among its devoted fans with each successive viewing.

Plays like a modern-day inversion of "Inherit the Wind," highlighting an astonishing shift in the American legal system over the last 80 years.

Berg’s narrative debut lacks much in the way of either poetry or realism, leaving only the clunky dynamics of a fairly predictable missing-persons case — for which screenwriter Nicole Holofcener carries at least part of the blame.

It’s so committed to affirmational messages about queer identity not being a choice, a condition or a legitimate motive to get axed by a deranged serial killer that the movie all but forgets to be scary — although enlisting Kevin Bacon as too-genial-to-be-trusted camp overseer Owen Whistler nearly makes it work.

The script represents a too-tame middle ground, which gives the unfortunate impression that perhaps the filmmakers want us to empathize with this icky romance.

While Lautner is to be admired for his physical commitment to the role, the below-the-line team lighting, shooting and choreographing his moves deserves equal credit. The film wouldn’t have worked without such a versatile team, which otherwise operates without a trace.

Suitable for teens — lies somewhere between indignant expose and unusually tasteful exploitation picture, with shower scenes and sweaty young delinquents aplenty.

I watching The Son play out, this family’s tragedy becomes our own, and Zeller’s warning becomes impossible to ignore.

There's enough estrogen gone awry in this bitchy teen comedy to make "Mean Girls" look like a Disney after-school special.

Like an early Woody Allen film or a classic Marx brothers feature, more of Hoodwinked's gags flop than hit, but they come at such a steady rate, you hardly notice.

Let's be honest: Whether it's Jessica Alba or Paul Walker you're dying to see stripped down to her/his sexiest swimwear, there's only one reason anyone is interested in diving Into the Blue.

The film all too eagerly allows itself to be taken in by Payne’s charms, trying to capture her human side via interviews with her two grown children, while all but ignoring the all-too-obvious cautionary aspect in favor of escapist entertainment.

Unlike this summer's compulsively watchable "Hustle & Flow," Get Rich or Die Tryin' captures none of the thrill of finding your voice, recording a demo or landing a concert.

Valiant enlists a squad of loveable birdbrains to turn the classic fighter-pilot formula into an upbeat adventure film loaded with laughs.

It’s tawdry “Sleeping With the Enemy”-style fun while it lasts, boasting a better cast and splashier production values than the next closest Lifetime movie, while being so ridiculous at times that audiences can’t help but talk back to the screen.

This film barely scrapes the surface when it comes to conveying everything someone in Vivienne’s shoes might be feeling.

As icky a comedy as you’re likely to see this year, Flower comes from an angry place — one that is clearly more concerned about sounding provocative and clever than having anything meaningful to say.

With even less plot than in previous installments to get in the way of its inventive 3D dance scenes, this fifth pic delivers on spectacle... but lacks in chemistry.

As a thriller, The Statement is relatively disappointing, but as a moral study, the movie proves far more promising.

This isn’t an easy role, but Lively aces it.

Although Davis’ performance is so good here, it’s tough to know where the real world ends and the vendetta fantasy begins.

The good news for “Ghostbusters” fans is that “Afterlife” does nothing to tarnish what has come before.

Apart from his programming, there’s little that sets Leo apart from your average action hero. And that, of course, is the problem with nearly all of these Netflix movies in the end: They approximate, but seldom surpass, what they’re meant to replace.

The hyper-stylized violence, for instance, isn't nearly as senseless as the narrative bits in between. And the ''twist'' employs the same sleight-of-hand as "The Usual Suspects."

Peyton delivers a unified-looking whole, in which the visual effects integrate well with stage and location work.

In post-"Wedding Crashers" Hollywood, the entire exercise feels dated (just as the comedy's PG-13 rating -- this in spite of a recurring rape joke -- makes it feel neutered).

To rob Mapplethorpe of his controversy is to strip the movie of its dramatic conflict. By doing so, the script (co-written with Mikko Alanne) reduces to a rather banal biopic, reenacting how a scrappy outsider achieved unconventional success.

If "Casino Royale" and "The Bourne Ultimatum" represent the new breed of 21st century action, then Rush Hour 3 is Stone Age stuff. The movie aims for irreverent, but delivers irrelevant instead. Let's hope the Rush Hour series stalls here.

There’s a serious mismatch between the personality of Samantha McIntyre’s script (which seems to be written as a kooky, do-it-yourself comedy, à la “Being John Malkovich” or “Napoleon Dynamite”) and Larson’s directing style, which feels entirely incompatible with whimsy.

It is all aggressively stylized, abusively fast-paced and ear-bleedingly loud, relying so heavily on CGI that nothing — not one thing — seems to correspond to the real world.

The trouble with The Union is that neither the film nor its characters have much in the way of personality, to the point it’s not even clear how they feel about one another.

The truth is out there, but when pot and kettle go to battle, Hollywood best be careful using the term City of Lies to describe anything other than itself.

As a brand, Burroughs’ hero has always been schlocky, and no amount of psychological depth or physical perfection can render him otherwise if the filmmakers can’t swing a convincing interaction between Tarzan and his animal allies. That dynamic — along with his full-throated yodel — has always been Tarzan’s trademark, but in this relatively lifeless incarnation, it simply doesn’t register.

More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.

The implication is that Berry’s character, Karla Dyson, isn’t like other parents, and yet, what makes Kidnap so compelling is that she behaves exactly the way you think you might under the same circumstances.

In spite of its tweaks to gender roles, the duo’s sexcapades and Snow’s spirited performance, Hooking Up doesn’t offer much by way of surprise, which doesn’t mean that as the odd, amiable couple head toward their personal reckonings, you won’t find yourself rooting for them. Separately and together.

It’s all engineered to pay off in familiar ways, though the movie isn’t quite as predictable as you might think.

Pain Hustlers takes an off-putting mock-documentary approach to this tragedy, focusing on a handful of sleazebag salespeople who bent the rules to incentivize doctors to prescribe Lonafin (the film’s fictional Subsys substitute) first for treating cancer pain, and later for conditions as mild as migraines.

Amounts to little more than a downbeat soap opera as half a dozen squatters -- hustler, junkie, stripper, queer, fallen Madonna and skank, with a mentally challenged roomie thrown in for good measure -- try to hold their lives together in a grungy New York loft just days before Christmas. Think "Rent" without the music.

Six months into 2022, it’s the funniest film Hollywood has produced thus far. Audiences know what to expect, and Illumination delivers, offering another feel-good dose of bad behavior.

Cena makes it impossible to imagine another person in the part. He’s game to go big, which fits Rod’s frustrated-actor persona, while also having the capacity to play vulnerable and sincere.

The circumstances may be contrived, but the characters feel refreshingly genuine.

The idea is to have a good time, and Waititi knows how to give audiences that.

If you choose to focus on the family connections, then it’s clear that Helgeland has something to say.

For a horror movie to work, it has to be ABOUT something.

In the end, the project doesn’t really work. The Coen brothers have a touch for the absurd, and a gift for dialogue, that’s lacking here, and without those two qualities, Jesus wears out his welcome relatively early in the journey.

True to the game, the violence is both ghoulishly creative and gratuitously extreme.

Though no one would accuse The Bronze of not being funny, it somehow manages not to be funny often enough.

What is most beguiling about The Libertine is that it allows Wilmot to self-destruct without ever giving us cause to care or relate.

Aftermath is one of those mopey coping-with-grief movies in which the characters grapple with intense emotions, while audiences feel nothing.

Movies in which the same person serves as writer, director, and star should carry a special warning for audiences, even if that individual happens to be an actor as endearing as Luke Wilson.

A smarter script would’ve found ways to work a historical critique (or some “Shrek”-like satire, at least) into its relatively brainless string of set pieces.

In a move reminiscent of Gus Van Sant's "Psycho," some shots are lifted directly from the original and much of the screenplay is identical.

While Antebellum is no zombie movie, it treats systemic racism as a kind of contagion that refuses to die, eating the brains of successive generations. There’s only one way to stop it, and that’s by blowing the minds of all those infected — which is precisely the impact Antebellum achieves.

From Doremus’ side of things, it can’t be easy to depict something as subtle as “intermittent feeling” or “increased sensitivity,” though the helmer does a fine job of laying the groundwork for the attraction blooming between Silas and Nia — boosted by the resonant collection of electronic tones and chimes that constitute Equals’ futuristic score.

This is precisely the type of moviegoing experience engineered for those who still get a laugh when the Baha Men hit "Who Let the Dogs Out?" accompanies a doggie mayhem montage.

If America goes to war sometime in the next year, pundits will have a field day with this movie. But barring that, it’s just another ugly, unpleasant slog through a disposable fantasy universe. The true Disney villains in this case are off screen, sabotaging the studio’s canon from within.

Look past the gimmick, and all that remains is an overly arty study of a lopsided marriage in which super-attentive husband James (Jason Clarke) actually seems to prefer when his wife Gina (Blake Lively) can’t see — and another opportunity for Lively to prove that she’s more than just a pretty face.

A debut effort that occasionally bogs down in its own symbolism.

Entertaining, though conventionally told war story.

Each segment introduces new characters and a radically different scenario, which suggests that Hancock's structure may actually be an insecure attempt to deliver a horror movie.

Despite the inherent perversity of the concept, Mosley succeeds in maintaining a certain sweetness throughout. Even more impressively, she makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity.

Although the screenplay contains all the beats needed to generate tension, Assayas’ gift for conveying information between the lines is almost entirely lost on Polanski, who doesn’t give his actresses the opportunity to flesh out the subtext of their most awkward interactions.

Violet & Daisy feels radically disconnected from recognizable human behavior.

Enjoyment requires denying the increasingly problematic truth about Bond: As heroes go, 007 represents a bygone notion of the privileged white man taking what’s his and leaving destruction in his wake.

Re-shot, re-cut and somehow rescued from total obscurity, Boone’s movie isn’t half bad. Alas, it’s not half good either. It’s basically just decent enough to motivate those sick of shutdown to risk getting sick for real.

Even Yang, whose commitment is admirable, struggles to convey what’s inside John’s head — which, of course, is the whole point of this project.

The movie never quite reckons with just how twisted a concept it’s peddling, and that’s easily the scariest thing about it.

Sooner or later, Laika was bound to branch out, which makes this funnier, more colorful film the link previously missing between the company’s Goth-styled past and whatever comes next.

Threadbare sequel.

Granted, there aren’t a lot of surprises in The Art of Racing in the Rain. If anything, knowing — or at least anticipating — how the film’s myriad tragedies will unfold seems to heighten the effect.

The movie could have really used some of that anarchic, industry-skewering “Tropic Thunder” energy. The only risk taken here was asking Sony — plus any surviving members of the original cast — to poke fun at themselves, which only goes so far when the film has no fangs.

This attractive but calculated attempt to connect 'Scooby-Doo' to other Hanna-Barbera characters abandons the show's fun teen-detective format.

Turn them loose, and this cast has nearly endless potential to be outrageous, and yet, the script...keeps interrupting the festivities with unnecessary details about whether the company will even be around tomorrow.

It’s both funny and familiar to see these two incredibly different personalities thrust together for what’s meant to be a short ride. [SXSW work-in-progress review]

Considering that Insurgent is meant to represent the series’ great civil war, it all comes across feeling like a tempest in a teapot: a glorified rehash of what came before, garnished with the promise of what lies in store.

Bad Education doesn’t shy away from the humor of the situation, but it doesn’t go for the cheap laughs either.

Awful Nice carves out all the touchy-feely stuff that makes Judd Apatow movies run two reels too long in favor of a jump-cut style that eliminates the fat and keeps the jokes coming.

A fun fish-out-of-water farce with “Godfather” DNA and a clever female-empowerment kick, Mafia Mamma makes inspired use of Collette, who’s never better than when playing women we oughtn’t to have underestimated.

The movie amounts to a few weak gags stretched out to feature length.

Though the sequel features far more footage of the giant beasts, including a spectacular nighttime scene in which one of the bioluminescent creatures ejects phosphorescent spores into the desert sky, the story remains stubbornly focused on relatively uninteresting human concerns.

The film’s unexpected ending is both effective and unconscionable, factually accurate and virtually impossible to accept, in part because Günther has manipulated us to make his point. He wants to deliver a statement about the American dream, but we’re not obliged to accept his conclusion. Maybe it’s just the movie that’s rigged.

With a certain kind of horror, a laugh’s as good as a scream, and Books of Blood delivers plenty of the former.

It’s all thoroughly unpleasant, but then, that’s what audiences for this kind of movie want from the experience, so consider it a success of sorts.

Wild Mountain Thyme is the kind of film you want to love, just as you want these two characters to fall in love, and it’s simultaneously exasperating and original that they don’t go about their courtship in the usual fashion.

An egregiously miscalculated rent-a-companion comedy from Irish writer-director John Butler (“Handsome Devil”).

Holland blossoms in the space where all-American domestic fantasy ends and nightmares begin, but never quite delivers on its premise, if only because the resolution feels so familiar.

Close is the best and worst thing about the film, delivering a performance that upstages even Christopher Walken (!), taking her over-the-top Cruella de Vil turn to its saccharine-sweet opposite.

Riddled with ammunition for what Alfred Hitchcock called the "Plausibles"--those poor-sport moviegoers who insist on pointing out a movie's inconsistencies instead of simply enjoying the ride

It’s only Guez’s second film, although he’s written others (including the similarly genre-subverting zombie movie “The Night Eats the World”), and there’s enough promise here — especially on the performance front — to look forward to future projects.

The movie may be a self-help exercise of sorts — for those who seldom recognize themselves on screen, and who don’t measure up to the expectations set by rom-coms and princess movies — but it’s disguised as a shaggy character study.

Cracknell approaches the project with confidence and a clear (if clearly derivative) vision. Her compositions are striking and swooningly romantic at times, though she has a curious idea of Anne Elliot.

Borderline reprehensible, High Tension is a living nightmare, but then, why else would you see it?

The movie is an exasperating puzzle with most of the pieces missing.

As kid-friendly Christmas movies go, this one actually goes out of its way to remind what the holiday represents, which should please parents looking for something a little more sophisticated (but just barely) than the VeggieTales cartoons.

Loud, sophomoric and stunningly crude.

Firth and Blunt make a strange couple, and Ariola a musicvideo helmer making his feature debut, should have devoted more time to making the chemistry work than to sustaining the melancholy mood.

Ultimately, “King Arthur” is just a loud, obnoxious parade of flashy set pieces, as one visually busy, belligerent action scene after another marches by, each making less sense than the last, but all intended to overwhelm.

It’s certainly not great literature, but if you can get past the imbecilic script, there’s no question that Bay has seized the opportunity to make 6 Underground as visually stunning as such a project can withstand.

Fitting neatly between “The Heat” and 2016’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, Jackpot! finds the dapper director squarely in his comfort zone, falling back on some of the tricks that worked so well in “Bridesmaids,” minus the underlying relatability of that film’s brilliant screenplay.

In the end, “Memory” isn’t terribly convincing, but it’s at least trying for something more serious than most.

The surprisingly serious-minded (but still plenty pulpy) project deprives Johnson of his greatest superpower — his sense of humor — while giving the now-straight-faced star a chance to play a character with some interesting contradictions.

Apart from casting (which is just OK here, as Wilson resorts a bit too much to shtick, while Arquette reaches for sincerity), regionally- and period-specific details are the ingredient that make otherwise-interchangeable stories like this appealing.

Part serial-killer thriller, part old-school anti-Soviet propaganda, Child 44 plays like a curious relic of an earlier Cold War mindset, when Western audiences took comfort that they were living on the right side of the Iron Curtain, and relied on movies to remind them as much.

Sure, Moonfall is all kinds of stupid, but it’s a heckuva lot funnier than Adam McKay’s all-star satire. I had a blast, and would gladly saddle up for a second viewing.

For Aja, who has demonstrated an appetite for truly twisted material in the past, it all adds up to a disappointingly tame outing.

A North Korean terrorist may be responsible for taking the president hostage, but it’s Bulgarian-made CGI that does the most damage in Antoine Fuqua’s intense, ugly, White-House-under-siege actioner Olympus Has Fallen.

The “raunchy” set-pieces feel like road bumps en route to a too obvious and disappointingly tidy conclusion. Do yourself a favor and spend five minutes — and as many dollars — researching something else to watch instead.

While more coherent than much of Anderson’s recent work, the film proves less successful at combining destruction and damsel-in-distress storytelling within the same frame, serving up blurry images of Milo trying to rescue Cassia while the city crumbles around them.

Rojas is played by Penélope Cruz, who's endearing enough, but still comes across coarse and irritating every time she attempts a role in English.

Like it sounds, Monster Trucks is a lame kids’ movie reverse-engineered from a worse pun.

Miss Bala no longer serves as a critique of a system that might allow innocent people to get caught in the crossfire of the drug war, but as the kick-ass origin story for a new kind of action hero.

Though he clearly admires the woman, O’Haver doesn’t want to let her off easy, which makes for a more nuanced portrayal than the stock canonization another director might have chosen (it would have been just as easy to paint her as a devil).

While some gags are funny the first time around, practically everything in The Week Of overstays its welcome.

Illegal Tender is the sort of crime movie in which nothing, not one detail, has been observed from real life; it's composed entirely of fantasies and falsehoods lifted from bad movies and hip-hop videos.

As it is, the film feels simultaneously far too heavy and not at all substantial, a long, slow buildup to something wondrous that never comes.

The cops play things as dirty as the crooks in Gangster Squad, an impressively pulpy underworld-plunger that embellishes on a 1949 showdown between a dedicated team of LAPD officers and Mob-connected Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) for control of the city.

It’s nowhere near the embarrassment of Brian De Palma’s “Domino,” or any number of recent studio tentpoles. Nor is it fresh enough to pretend that audiences had missed out on something special if it had been buried altogether — except perhaps for Luss, who’s bound to get another shot.

Director D.J. Caruso offers a practical solution to the issue of adolescent bullying, as its two young protags respond to a case of vicious hazing not with despair or retaliation, but through teamwork and character-building.

Swedish director Mikael Håfström's Derailed makes "Fatal Attraction" look positively subtle, while mustering none of the nuance or moral complexity (not to mention the sexual chemistry) of "Unfaithful."

On paper, this could have been the antidote to an increasingly codified strain of comic-book movies, but in the end, it’s just another high-attitude version of the same.

Fans will cheer at Schumacher's faithful inflation of Webber's vision, which interprets all that pomp and bombast as if the show were some sort of overblown Vegas attraction.

It’s a dark and all-around unpleasant journey to take.

An ambitious disaster, Alexander is the rare historical portrait that leaves you feeling as though you know less about its subject than you did upon entering the theater.

It's a tomb-raiding adventure movie several notches below Indiana Jones status.

This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.

While the humor mostly misfires, there’s a certain pleasure to be had simply from spotting the celebrity cameos in Sandy Wexler.

While the Wachowskis have always put their greatest emphasis on aesthetics, they allow the visual impulse to get the best of them here, investing so much attention in creating unique fashions, technology, architecture and design that they’ve blinded themselves to the huge logical gaps in their own story.

The explanation for all this mayhem eludes me, and even a lame last-minute twist isn't enough to cover the fact that Jigsaw ain't as clever as the movie thinks he is.

Amounts to Chicken Soup for the Soul-style torture -- unless you like that kind of thing.

Politics aside, however, the movie delivers on the inspiration of its premise, featuring just the sort of laughs one hopes for.

Slumberland is stronger at conjuring elaborate dream worlds than it is at crafting a satisfying emotional foundation, which is generally true of Lawrence’s past projects as well.

An epic showcase for mediocre CGI and slapdash screenwriting.

As heroines go, it’s refreshing to get one as complex as this: When psychologically scarred female characters do turn up in thrillers, they’re usually little more than shivering victims who set a group of male cops in motion, but here, Libby does her own detective work, while Hendricks lends star power to the flashback scenes.

As Scandi directors go, Niels Arden Oplev couldn’t be hotter. After putting his stamp on “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the Dane has what appears to be his pick of projects. So why follow it up with such revenge-fantasy dreck as Dead Man Down, a derivative collection of brazen plot holes and latenight-cable cliches into which he drags “Dragon” star Noomi Rapace?

Frankly, if forced to bet between John McClane and Anakin Skywalker, I’d take the “Die Hard” tough guy every time, but that’s just the underdog factor Miller is going for, staging a reasonably entertaining series of off-road chases and backwoods shootouts en route to that final confrontation.

So much care has gone into each of the departments, from Guy Hendrix Dyas’ exquisite production design to Jenny Beavan’s micro-detailed costumes to composer James Newton Howard’s loving update of the Tchaikovsky score, and while any one of these elements might be tasteful in and of itself, it’s all too much to take in at once — the kind of overkill for which Liberace was known.

Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back.

Director Robert Zemeckis clumsily replicates the fixed-camera conceit in what plays as an elaborate visual-effects experiment.

Without watering down the action, Nelson soft-pedals the most disturbing ideas in such a way that young audiences won’t be overwhelmed with gloom, instead inviting them to identify with the film’s empowered female heroine as she struggles to overcome her crippling lack of self-confidence and embrace what makes her special.

It all makes for clumsy-fun escapism, not bad as end-of-summer chillers go.

As audiences, we trust filmmakers to do a reasonably accurate job of representing stories based in truth, and we get angry when they take the kind of liberties Avnet and company allow themselves here. As if it weren’t bad enough that Three Christs were boring, it’s impossible to believe, and for that, there is no cure.

This inventive family movie sets up the most delightful premise, then squanders it on the kind of yawn-inducing CG adventure you might expect from one of those long, plot-heavy cut scenes that slow down video games.

A striking discovery, Dayo Okeniyi will be unfamiliar to most in the lead role. He played a small part as District 11 tribute Thresh in “The Hunger Games,” and appears opposite Jennifer Lopez in “Shades of Blue,” but Emperor is effectively his breakout, which makes him feel as much a revelation to audiences as Green’s story will be.

Dever is the best thing about this adaptation, which feels slightly less creepy in the lied-about-knowing-your-brother-to-worm-my-way-into-your-heart department, if only because Dever’s so good at balancing Zoe’s strength and vulnerability that the situation doesn’t read as a nearly 30-year-old creep manipulating a minor.

Though Macy is an odd fit to direct (coming at the talky script like it was a madcap piece of theater), the wonky tone is all screenwriter Will Aldis’ invention.

It’s a pleasure to see such a fine actress navigate the nuances of her role.

Tipping embraces the self-indulgent label of “elevated horror,” crafting a tense, trippy, ultra-stylized movie that’s so surreal at times, it might feel like you’re watching an extension of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle.”

Not all movies need to serve up profound insights into the human condition, but the ones that don’t should at least be entertaining, and Twohy’s particular strain of absurdism is not just contrived, but deeply unfunny.

Sexy, stylish, and legitimately suspenseful.

Fancy-sounding dialogue and handsome widescreen lensing goes only so far to disguise the shallowness of the underlying material.

Gemini Man is a case in which an awful lot of effort has gone into making an awfully lazy action movie.

The connection between Tessa Thompson and Hemsworth is what saves the day, not anything their characters do onscreen.

In the age of reality television, Paparazzi feels desperately out-of-touch, the jaded grousings of an industry burnout.

When it comes to confrontations, the movie wimps out, putting more effort into New World-building than in the largely generic characters who populate it.

While the scares are in short supply, there’s a surfeit of macabre, tongue-in-cheek creativity to be found here.

The remake seems to have been written and directed by people whose only experience with children is the long-distant memory of having been kids themselves so many years ago.

Though virtually every twist on this emotional roller coaster feels preordained by its architect, the director leaves certain mysteries for the audience to interpret, making for a more open-ended and mature work all around.

The trouble isn’t just that Midnight Sun cherry-picks the most poetic elements of a real-world disease to serve its transparently manipulative ends, but that it offers audiences such an unrealistic portrait of romance in the process.

Of the three “Jurassic World” movies, “Dominion” is the least silly and most entertaining. But that’s not saying much. This “stop to ask if they should” cycle’s human characters were never especially interesting, and why should we trust Trevorrow to suddenly make them so?