Richard Roeper

At times Shock and Awe is reminiscent of journalistic procedurals from “President’s Men” to “Spotlight” to “The Post,” and it gets the nitty-gritty details of an early 2000s newsroom just right.

Godzilla x King Kong: The New Empire is the definition of an old-fashioned (with new technology) popcorn movie and there’s certainly no harm in that, but at the end of the day, it feels like the stakes have never been more medium.

The Giver doesn’t seem entirely consistent about its own rules and races far too quickly to a thoroughly unsatisfactory conclusion that raises three questions for each answer it provides.

De Niro infuses Costello with a kind of avuncular charm, while Genovese has the fiery temper and paranoid fury to match Jake La Motta in “Raging Bull.” It’s a privilege to witness one of the best actors of all time, still at the top of his game.

Please leave all logic and reality at the door as you settle in for a violent slice of Netflix original movie entertainment featuring an outstanding cast of first-rate actors clearly having a great time shooting up the joint.

The special effects are first-rate and the performances are way over the top yet entertaining, but The Witches is far too disturbing for young children and not edgy enough to captivate adults.

This is a film so sweet it might give you a contact sugar rush, but it features two inherently likable, great-looking romantic leads, a fine supporting performance by the always reliable Virginia Madsen, a timeless true-meaning-of-Christmas message — and a genuinely cinematic style, mostly because the movie was actually filmed on Andrews Air Force base in Guam and the surrounding beaches and jungles and islands.

So, yes: “Kate” is “John Wick” meets “Die Hard” meets “Collateral” meets “Kill Bill all the Volumes” and we’ve seen it all before and you’re not going to get much in the way of original plot, but what you WILL get is a grindhouse of a good time with some bleak and wickedly sharp humor, screen-popping visuals and some pretty great fight choreography.

Candy Cane Lane is harmless but teeters on the brink of being quite terrible.

As we pick up Billy/Shazam’s story about four years later, it quickly becomes apparent this is just going to be a by-the-numbers, second-tier adventure with only a few small chuckles and one or two genuinely touching moments. The rest is just noise.

Before it was even over, I was already forgetting about it.

One imagines his vast fan base will find this to be an immensely satisfying viewing experience.

With a movie like this, either you’ll tap out after 15 minutes or you’ll settle in for an evening of popcorn and beverage-of-your choice escapism.

On its own “merits,” it would still be a dud. A sluggish, uninspired, period-piece retread of so many earlier and much better Allen films, filled with overly familiar characters and situations and of course a soundtrack seemingly selected from Woody’s personal record collection.

Sitting through the smug and convoluted and ridiculous Now You See Me 2 is like being subjected to a dunk tank again and again — and then being handed a wet towel when it’s finally over.

Directed in solid fashion by someone listed only as “Ives,” with a zippy if at times preposterous script from Dipo Oseni and Doug Richardson that might not totally hold up under scrutiny, “Cash Out” has a certain undeniable style, as personified by the use of Frank Sinatra’s “You Go to My Head” over the opening credits.

This forgettable film is too rough for younger kids and too stupid for the grown-ups.

With an ending clearly setting up further adventures to come, The Super Mario Bros. is a solid kickoff to a new chapter in this enduring, multi-platform franchise

Talk about a mediocre mash-up. Much of We Are Your Friends plays like an Electronic Dance Music update of a very good John Travolta movie — “Saturday Night Fever” — with a liberal sprinkling of plot elements from a quite terrible Tom Cruise movie called “Cocktail.”

We’re not buying what the script is selling, not for a hot second.

As quickly as Thing can snap its fingers, we’ll soon forget our visit with this version of The Addams Family.

Unlocked has the DNA of many a 21st century late summer release: It’s a well-made but terribly uneven film that’s been sitting on a shelf for two years, despite the credentials of the veteran director and a star-studded cast.

I’m pleased to report that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire carries the same endearingly goofy, science-nerd spirit of the first film and delivers a delightful balance of slimy ghost stuff, sharp one-liners, terrific VFX and a steady stream of callbacks to various characters, human and otherwise, from the 1984 movie.

It’s The Maltese Falcon meets Inception somewhere in the Vanilla Sky on the way to Chinatown in the inventive and ambitious but wildly convoluted and ultimately disappointing sci-fi noir Reminiscence, which careens this way and that, and this way and that, before running off the rails.

This is one badass movie.

Director R.J. Cutler is fond of time-lapse establishing shots and rapid-fire montages, none of them particularly effective in conveying this bizarre dual world Mia now inhabits.

This is a well-photographed and rousing tale, with the “Stranger Things” star doing fine work as the fiercely determined heroine, and a deep and talented group of familiar faces in key supporting roles.

The long-awaited, highly anticipated, much-discussed film adaptation of the first segment of E L James’ inexplicably popular "Fifty Shades" trilogy is a tedious exercise in dramatic wheel-spinning that doesn’t have the courage to explore the darkest elements of the characters and doesn’t have the originality to stand on its own merits.

With Rebel in the Rye, we get a solid, well-acted and basically standard biopic about the man who created Holden Caulfield, largely in his own image.

All due respect to Lopez’ longevity and acknowledging that some of these films have their diehard fans, J. Lo has never scored with a classic romantic comedy, and though she once again gives it her all and dives into another ludicrous premise, there’s no salvaging this deliberately over-the-top, mixed-genre effort that plays like a slapstick take on “Die Hard” at a wedding.

It’s potentially fresh and unique material, but from the first scenes through the tone-deaf conclusion, Capone is a noxious film about a noxious man — a gruesome and grotesque viewing experience that tells us nothing new about Capone while rubbing our noses in one detestable scene after another. By the time we get to a typically overblown scene in which a diaper-wearing Capone wields a gold-plated Tommy Gun while on a shooting spree, we surrender.

Ultimately, though, the sequel has very little new to say about Arthur Fleck and his place in this world, and the musical interludes start to feel like gratuitous self-indulgence rather than insightful and illuminating passages that advance or enhance the material.

Hart delivers a sincere and relatively low-key performance as Dell, but he’s playing an all-too-familiar movie stereotype.

Director Seth Gordon (“Four Christmases,” “Horrible Bosses”) knows how to film fast-moving comedies with star appeal, and Diaz (who hasn’t lost an ounce of onscreen charisma) and Foxx are terrific together, but wouldn’t it have been lovely if they had tackled more creative and challenging material?

IF never quite soars, never fully grabs our hearts, never fully captivates our imagination.

This is a film that provides more questions than answers but leaves plenty of food for thought.

Alas, though Ishana Night Shyamalan demonstrates promise as a filmmaker and delivers some arresting visuals and a few good jump-scares, “The Watchers” feels like a cover band’s take on familiar scary movie themes, with little in the way of original ideas or surprises.

Every Secret Thing is a small, well-crafted film with a few chilling moments and some fine performances, but it’s a muddled, pedestrian crime thriller.

But so much of the humor and so many of the situations in Second Act feel like warmed-over Second Helpings of a dinner from long ago...A dinner that wasn’t all that memorable in the first place.

As a director, Logan knows how to put us through the horror genre paces, from jump scares and mysterious sounds in the woods, to the obligatory gruesome kills. Time and again, though, we’re reminded that real monster in “They/Them” is bigotry and intolerance.

Writer-director Victor Levin takes an interesting although ultimately tedious and distracting approach to nearly every scene.

I’m giving Life of the Party three stars — a solid B, if you will — on the strength of at least a half-dozen laugh-out-loud moments, some truly sharp dialogue, a tremendously likable cast, and the sheer force of its cheerful goofiness.

From the opening scene right until the wholly expected finale, Lonely Planet is pure romantic-drama escapism. It’s so thin that if the original material had been in book form, that book would have been a pamphlet.

It lands just this side of camp, with a perfectly cast Kevin Kline hamming it up as the aging bounder Flynn, and Susan Sarandon really hamming it up.

This is an entertaining B-movie bolstered by performances from a cast that often rises above the predictable material.

Even though Pain & Gain does indeed mine laughs from some very violent acts, there is nothing in this movie that glamorizes those three meatheads. Kudos to Bay and his screenwriters for making sure we’re laughing at them, not with them.

Costner’s performance is filled with memorable moments.

The Tomorrow War is an earnest effort to bring something new to the time-travel action genre, but this movie is a 2021 vehicle made of parts from the 2010s and the 1990s and 1980s.

Unwise casting choices in two key roles. Increasingly ludicrous plot developments — even for a slick, escapist thriller. Dubious science about the potency of a nuclear warhead. Intellectually lazy pop psychology, much of it heavy on the daddy issues, as character motivation.

Back in the day, Gigi & Nate would have been a prime-time network “Movie of the Week” or an “ABC Afterschool Special,” in that it has a pleasant but not particularly striking look; endearing performances from a familiar cast of esteemed veterans and earnest newcomers, and a storyline designed to provide a few initial chuckles, some light romance, a devastating family setback and finally, a happy ending.

Given that director and co-writer Florian Zeller’s “The Father” was a powerful and nuanced and creatively presented original work with Anthony Hopkins winning an Oscar for his moving portrayal of a man with advancing dementia, it’s truly shocking how Zeller’s “The Son” is such a tone-deaf, emotionally manipulative, leaden stumble into the abyss.

Watching this movie is like having a particularly unsatisfying Wordle session. You start off in promising fashion but in a few quick moves, nothing is in the right place.

It’s a putting-the-band-together origins movie, executed with great fun and energy.

Writer-director-star Angelina Jolie Pitt’s By the Sea is awfully pretty and mostly dreadful. It’s pretty dreadful.

For all the visceral depictions of hatred and violence and human destruction, it feels as if the director is chasing his own tail and forgetting about making it all mean something.

Even though of course we recognize the bravery and selfless heroism of the men on that train who risked their lives to save others, and even though there are a few pulse-quickening moments in The 15:17 to Paris, the movie is slow-paced and feels padded, even with that running time of just over an hour and a half.

Director Burr Steers...does a nifty job of rocketing from period-piece romance to gory bloodshed, with sprinkles of dark humor here and there.

Despite a game performance by Lively, The Rhythm Section is a junk pile of missteps, from the convoluted screenplay that hops from locale to locale in Advil-inducing fashion to the overly stylized directing to the self-consciously “cool” oldies pop music selections.

The tantalizing enticement of Goldie Hawn pairing with Amy Schumer for a mother-daughter, road-trip buddy comedy has some moments, but never fulfills its promise. As their onscreen adventures and antics grow zanier and broader, the laughs actually grow softer and more sporadic.

What a magnificent presence is J.K. Simmons. What an authentic, weathered, world-weary face he has. What a tremendous gift he has for conveying so much with such little dialogue in the stark and unsettling I’m Not Here.

Davis (who was an executive producer on the film) gives a strong performance, as if she were acting in one of those many prestige projects lighting up her resume. It’s a noble try, but this dreck is beyond saving.

We find it hard to get invested in the fates of any of these characters, despite the talented cast and the undeniably interesting look of the film.

Lansky loses steam every time the focus is on somewhere other than Lansky.

When it’s time to answer the question of Who ya gonna call, Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes across as a well-intentioned and sincere but unfortunate misdial.

As a stand-alone work of cinema fiction, A Million Little Pieces is an effective blunt instrument of a film — a rough-edged, unvarnished, painfully accurate portrayal of addiction and rehabilitation.

What DOESN’T get lost in translation is what made “El Secreto De Sus Ojos” so effective: the visceral, devastating empathy we feel when a horrible injustice is committed and it ruins multiple lives; the haunted looks in the eyes of a trio of characters who will never be able to shake off the events of long ago; the lush and lurid film noir touches; and the air of melancholy hanging heavy over a pursuit of justice because we know there’s no such thing as true justice, not in these circumstances.

Director Lucie Jourdan paints a vividly disturbing picture of Cline, using his own words and actions against him, but wisely and compassionately makes Our Father as much about the victims as the infuriatingly evil Cline.

Sleeping Dogs has pacing problems, and the direction is competent but not particularly stylish. What holds the film together, and what holds our attention to the very end, is the powerful performance by Russell Crowe as a man haunted by demons he can’t quite remember.

I’m not going to spoil the epilogue in the slick but trashy and quite dumb Jennifer Lopez action movie The Mother, but I will say it’s so insanely off the rails, so bat-bleep crazy that I almost want you to watch The Mother just so you’ll know what I’m talking about. Almost.

A disappointing and murky mess of a film that feels like an uncompleted project and leaves the viewer frustrated, despite the gritty visuals and a game lead performance by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank.

Rampage might not be the worst movie of the year so far, but it’s a contender for most pointless.

Strives hard to replicate the screwball comedy but ends up being a lot more screwball than comedy.

If you’ve seen “The Big Chill,” you’ve seen this movie, with older grown-ups. Even if you haven’t, you won’t be surprised by much.

Perhaps this story would be better told in a limited non-fiction series as well, as Queenpins relies too much on scatological humor, farcical sequences and a not entirely convincing message that these women were feminist, Robin Hood heroes.

This is also one dark and wickedly funny comedy.

Harsh times and heartbreak abound in the Russo brothers’ gritty addiction epic Cherry, but there’s poetry in the language of the script and in certain moments of wonder and hope, of dark comedy, of love and redemption.

There’s an admirable commitment to absurdity, yet it belies the thoughtful coming-of-age journey for the five teens up until they hit “morphin time.”

McFarlane goes as goofy as you’d expect, but there’s a fairly soft and traditional center lurking inside this hard-R candy.

It clearly aspires to be something more than another story about empty-headed teenagers in a remote cabin who get picked off one by one in gruesome fashion — but at the end of the day, that’s pretty much what we’re getting.

What could have been a great B-movie winds up being merely solid.

For a movie called The Marksman, we rarely Jim actually demonstrating his marksmanship, as we’re left with Neeson again doing extended, hand-to-hand combat with a much younger, cockier foe who has no idea what he’s up against.

If you liked the original, the best way to preserve that memory is to stay away from this sequel.

Anything is possible in the world of “The Union.” I mean, anything.

Still, in large part due to the stellar work from Depp and Whitaker, this is a valuable and somewhat illuminating look back at the senseless, stunning killings of two rap icons just six months apart.

There’s always been something a bit ridiculous about the whole Tarzan premise, and while the talented cast and a solid director make for a serviceable and intermittently entertaining adventure, there’s very little about this film that screams, YOU GOTTA SEE THIS.

As Karla turns into Super Mom, brushing off multiple car accidents and more than one attempt on her life, Kidnap provides some easy applause-getting moments but grows increasingly over-the-top.

An excruciatingly cheesy, hopelessly dated, profoundly unfunny and tone-deaf romantic comedy about an intelligent, hard-working, likable and lovely woman.

Whenever Pacific Rim Uprising gives itself the chance to do something fresh or unique or original, it passes up that opportunity to embrace the cliché.

Directed with action-movie aplomb by Tom Harper (“The Aeronauts,” “Peaky Blinders”) and featuring great-looking visuals from settings including London; Lisbon, Portugal; South Tyrol, Italy; Morocco, and Reykjavik, Iceland, “Heart of Stone” is clearly intended to jump-start an action franchise for Gadot, and it’s off to a promising start.

It’s bigger, louder and dumber than the original—filled with cartoon violence, only occasionally funny dialogue and a group of suspects/victims not nearly as intriguing as the bunch from the first film.

Clever trappings aside, Brightburn is filmed mostly as a horror movie, with the monster lurking just around the corner or pounding on the door as the dopey victims behave just like all the other dopey victims in forgettable slasher films.

On the stage, it could be a powerful and moving work. As a movie, it’s a sometimes effective but more often tedious history lesson.

Directed by David Yates, who has spent most of the last two decades helming “Harry Potter” movies and prequels and might not be the best fit for this material, Pain Hustlers aims to be a fast-paced, raucous, blunt and slick work a la “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Big Short,” but winds up caught between the worlds of breezy satire and hard-hitting expose.

Careening wildly from the black comedy tone of the aforementioned sequences to deadly serious World War I battle scenes, from somber spy thriller to broad comedy, The King’s Man has little of the wickedly outrageous and subversive style of the original film as it flies this way and that and never sticks the landing.

Now comes Foe, which is set primarily in the year 2065 and envisions a dystopian world in which the delicate and dangerous balance between humans and sentient AI creations is the basis for a pretentious and empty cautionary tales with some interesting ideas — but it’s mostly a pile of hokey claptrap.

Directed by Peter Farrelly from a story/screenplay credited to a total of eight writers (rarely a hopeful sign), “Ricky Stanicky” has the cheerfully offensive and goofy offbeat flavor of 1990s Farrelly Brothers comedies such as “Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary,” only with most of the laughs and much of the charm MIA.

Reprising his writing/directing chores from the original, Ken Scott gives us an uneven mishmash that alternates between easy gags, shameless sentimentality and some just plain bizarre choices.

This is a shoddy-looking, superficial and cliché-embracing effort that misses the mark at every turn.

For at least half a movie, it’s a wildly entertaining concept with some pretty good payoffs and there was a chance we’d have the best B-movie in recent memory, but then the story takes the easy way out and we’re left wondering why they didn’t ride the original idea all the way to the finish line.

As earnest and heartfelt as a movie can be, Walking With the Enemy is, unfortunately, a plodding and clunky drama that never misses an opportunity to embrace a cliché.

If we don’t care a whit about the characters and their respective dilemmas, a multiple-vortex tornado ripping through a used car lot is just a multiple-vortex tornado ripping through a used car lot.

We’re the Millers is just good enough to keep you entertained, but not good enough to keep your mind from wandering from time to time. This is an aggressively funny comedy that takes a lot of chances, and connects just often enough.

End of the Road was produced for maybe 10% of the budget allotted for the big, bloated, star-studded Netflix thrillers “The Gray Man” and “Red Notice” (both reportedly cost some $200 million to make), and it doesn’t come close to approaching the glamour value, breathtaking location shots and epic action sequences of those two films — but it’s better at executing its mission, which is to immerse us in 90 minutes of old-fashioned bloody vigilante satisfaction.

When it sings, “Dawn of Justice” is a wonder. When it drags, it still looks good and offers hints of a better scene just around the corner.

What a wasted opportunity.

This is an unapologetically violent video-game-turned-movie, filled with gore and also brimming with flat dialogue, whether it’s big-picture speechifying or mostly lame attempts at snappy, action-movie banter. One might reasonably surmise longtime fans of Mortal Kombat would have a better time playing the latest version of the game than watching this origins story.

This is one of those comedies that could have been a brilliant short film on “Funny or Die” or “Saturday Night Live,” but wears out its welcome as a feature-length film.

Frantically overcooked, bursting with headache-inducing, rapid-cut action sequences and only half as clever as it fancies itself, Bloodshot is an ambitious and intermittently entertaining minor-league superhero film.

It’s a competently made, traditional biopic about a man who disdained those terms.

Poker Face has a lean, cool look, and there are some effective dramatic moments, mostly due to the weight-of-the-old weariness in Crowe’s powerful performance. Unfortunately, Paul Tassone’s over-the-top theatrics as the main villain border on the cartoonish, as the psychological gamesmanship gives way to standard action movie stuff, and the cards and the chips have long been forgotten.

From start to finish, Hunter Killer is all wet.

Ewan McGregor is a versatile and durable actor who has spent a lot of time on film sets, and someday he might become an accomplished filmmaker, but his feature directorial debut is one of the most unfortunate literary adaptations in recent memory.

This is an uneven film with a couple of glaring inconsistencies, but director Slattery has a fine sense of framing and pacing, and the top-notch cast handles the clever dialogue with aplomb.

Given the revolutionary nature of Marley’s music and the often-chaotic state of his life, it’s reasonable that some might find this to be a disappointingly formulaic handling of the material, with only a few stylistic flourishes that take place mostly in the flashback sequences. Still, this is strong work, showcasing the indelible legacy of an artist who was gone far too soon.

That this is such a well-made production, with passionate and strong performances from the stellar cast, makes it all the more exasperating. What a missed opportunity

At times The Girl in the Spider’s Web almost feels like a superhero movie, with Lisbeth as Bat Girl.

Mistress of Evil is an entertaining thrill ride with a sly sense of humor and some admirable albeit obvious political and social commentary, with messages along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it matters who you love.”

This is a visually arresting film with two attractive and charismatic lead actors, but it’s doomed by the melodramatic twists and turns, and the ridiculous behavior by nearly every major character.

Director/co-writer/actor Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here is a precious and condescending exercise in self-indulgent pandering, featuring one of the whiniest lead characters in recent memory.

In a pair of elegantly chilling sequences (the editing in this film is superb), Maya and Ryan fight for their lives against the needle-drop background of first “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues and later “The Best of Times” by Styx. You’ll never think of those classic rock tunes in the same way again.

Thanks in large part to the beautiful work by Daisy Edgar-Jones and the consistently stunning visuals, Where the Crawdads Sing provides just enough marshland entertainment to carry the day.

The twist on top of the twist was so amateurish, so hacky, so insulting to the viewer, I’m already thinking about apologizing to you guys for just the one-star demerit.

This is a revenge Western we’ve seen dozens of times before, and the villains aren’t nearly as intimidating and pitch-black evil as they need to be. The end result is a passably entertaining shoot-’em-up with very few surprises.

From the moment Rachael and Stefan look into each other’s eyes while we roll OUR eyes, The Aftermath is a runaway train of cornball cliches.

We’re halfway through the movie when the villain’s identity becomes painfully obvious. Spoiler alert: We’re not wrong. The dialogue is often so painful, it’s almost entertaining on some level.

This is one of the most irritating movies of the year.

Despite the frequent verbal confrontation scenes in which characters lash out at one another, soap opera style, for lying or serving their selfish interests, Dark Phoenix doesn’t come close to carrying the emotional impact of so many Marvel Universe films where the characters come across as complicated, relatable and three-dimensional.

Sure, we get the obligatory slapstick dog-shtick in the form of overturned food carts and disastrous dinner scenes and wacky chases, and there are some uplifting moments — but the overall mood of Lasse Hallstrom’s pup-point-of-view film is … melancholy, sometimes even grim.

My thoughts turn to the Giant CGI Anacondas in “Snake Eyes” and what their lives are like in between meals — and if that sounds ridiculous and outlandish and weird, welcome to this bombastic, slick, convoluted and unnecessary second-tier action franchise reboot.

I don’t think you and I need to connect on InstaSkypeChatFaceSnapTweeterBook for you to understand I’m saying we’ve seen this movie before. It’s just usually not this smug or condescending or muddled or inconsistent.

Shyamalan being Shyamalan, Glass does have a distinctive look and some pretty cool moments, and a half-decent twist or two. Mostly, though, it’s an underwhelming, half-baked, slightly sour and even off-putting finale.

The film is a consistently funny gem with moments of inspired lunacy.

Thanks in large part to Costner’s robust, earnest, growling, deadpan voice work as a dog who can be brilliant one moment and fantastically clueless the next, “The Art of Racing In the Rain” still comes close to winning us over … Until the final scene, which was so shameless and manipulative, I wanted a refund on every lump in the throat and teary-eyed moment I had experienced to that point.

The occasionally clever dialogue and the peppy voice performances are the best things about Scoob!, but not nearly enough to overcome the loud and convoluted overall tone.

The individual parts never come close to fully meshing into a quality team effort.

Given the unapologetic, sharp-edged tone of Burr’s comedy, it’s surprising that as director, co-writer and star of this vehicle, he played it so safe.

The modern retelling retains little of the charm and whimsy of the source material, in favor of a cloying story, a most unwelcome new character and some pretty cheesy special effects.

Unfrosted is one of the worst films of the decade so far.

Nanjiani and Bautista are terrific together, but Stuber also benefits from a quartet of wonderful actresses who are all effective despite limited screen time.

[Harris and Franco] bring out the finest in each other as they punch and counter-punch vastly different memories of horrific incidents from the past. It’s great stuff. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the The Adderall Diaries is overwrought, convoluted and irritating.

As the plot twists grow increasingly ridiculous and some of the main characters have to act like complete idiots just to keep the story rambling along, “Fatale” commits the crime of somehow becoming tedious and dull even as the body count piles up.

Every frame of the film is bursting with sensory overload information, from the shaky, hand-held camera angles to the constant scrolling of viewer messages to the occasional use of split screens.

Jackman does a magnificent job of portraying a man who has been lying so long on so many fronts, even he isn’t sure of the truth any longer.

Finally, a sci-fi action mega-movie filled with CGI battles in which barely distinguishable foes hurl each other about while delivering unspeakably corny lines, as we hear hip-hop hits on the soundtrack.

Transcendence is a bold, beautiful, sometimes confounding flight of futuristic speculation firmly rooted in the potential of today’s technology.

South of Heaven devolves into a rote thriller, with henchmen upon henchmen upon henchmen falling by the wayside until the inevitable showdown — which plays out in underwhelming fashion.

The Internship is the movie version of a goofy dog that knows only a few tricks but keeps on looking at you and wagging his tail, daring you not to like him. Down, boy. You win.

Run, don’t walk, away from any temptation you might have to see the off-putting, unfunny, clunky and cartoonishly terrible would-be mob comedy “Mafia Mamma,” which is so lacking in subtlety, cohesion and humor, it makes “Murder Mystery 2” seem like a Rian Johnson thriller.

A depressingly uninspired superhero adventure sequel that leans heavily on plot points and battle sequences we’ve seen in at least a dozen other films in the genre — and almost always done better.

The Ice Road is what we used to call a B-movie, but there’s no shame in a B-movie that carries out its mission with such competence and star power.

Granted, the pleasures offered in “Captain America: Brave New World” are neither grand nor groundbreaking, but they’re consistent and earned.

What elevates “Dirty Angels” to the status of a solid slice of R-rated action entertainment is the stellar cast led by Eva Green and the surehanded direction from 81-year-old veteran Martin Campbell, director of the Bond films “GoldenEye” and “Casino Royale” (which co-starred Green as Vesper Lynd) and most recently, the Liam Neeson-starring “Memory.”

As an often cliché-riddled tale of redemption on the big screen, Burnt is the equivalent of a sleek, well-lit, trendy restaurant serving up a mildly creative dishes on an otherwise predictable menu.

Wild Mountain Thyme comes close to winning our hearts based on the performances and the lush County Mayo scenery and the sheer romanticism of it all, but writer-director Shanley keeps us at arm’s distance in the climactic sequences, when we should be swept up in the story of Rosemary and Anthony but we’re left exasperated at the forced eccentricity of it all.

The problem with Ferrell’s character is he goes from bland to desperate to off the rails — and very little about that transition is genuinely funny. The problem with Wahlberg’s character is he never seems all that dangerous or mysterious.

It’s pulp, but it has real actors doing real acting in a gritty story — which is a lot more than can be said for some of the much more high-profile buddy cop movies of the last couple of years.

The Great Wall is so fantastically misguided and so wonderfully bad, I could see some coming for the action and staying for the camp laughs.

It’s like a strange and misguided takeoff on “All That Jazz” as funneled through “Rock of Ages,” and while there’s no denying the heart and effort behind the presentation, that finale is representative of the movie itself in that it has an uncanny way of hitting the wrong notes.

This is a deliberately off-kilter, cheerfully violent, hit-and-miss effort with just enough moments of inspiration to warrant a recommendation — especially if you know what you’re getting into.

The running time is 104 minutes, but it felt longer than “The Brutalist.”

Maybe the dingo ate their screenplay.

Despite the fine performance by Witherspoon and a number of the supporting players, Devil’s Knot comes across as a cinematic, slightly dramatized Cliffs Notes edition of a story that’s been told often, and almost always more effectively, in other formats.

Does it come across as a bit precious at times? Yes. Is it particularly groundbreaking? No. Am I going to ask and answer one more question here and tell you if this is a light and breezy confection with delightful performances? You betcha.

It’s sloppy to the point of distraction — not that the forced hijinks and ridiculous storylines are actually worthy of our attention.

It’s almost as if Halloween Kills is an inconsistent, sloppy mess.

First-time feature director Dante Ariola (working from a script by Becky Johnson) has a good feel for these characters and keeps things moving along at a brisk pace.

In its finest moments, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is swift and clever and exhilarating. At its low points, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword plays like a cheesy B-movie, with ridiculous monsters and unintentionally laugh-inducing moments.

Neeson never phones in his performances, but he’s particularly invested this time around, playing a guy who can be a pure killing machine one moment, and as lost as a child the next. Pearce and Bellucci headline the terrific supporting cast, and the 78-year-old Campbell proves he can still direct the hell out of a slick and engrossing thriller.

The dialogue and exposition scenes in G.I. Joe are like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon from the 1980s, but the PG-13 violence is a little intense for the 7-year-old boys (and girls) who might love this stuff.

The popular singer-songwriter Camila Cabello makes her acting debut as the titular character, and she’s a revelation, as the camera loves her and she displays not only the expected vocal chops but a real knack for comedy, as this version of Cinderella is particularly charming when she’s floundering about and getting into embarrassing situations of her own making.

The harder everyone tries to wring laughs out of the next hail of bullets or the next ridiculous plot twist or the next comedic decapitation, the duller the edge of the humor.

Home Again has a certain charm and polish. It’s hard not to like people who are so … likable. But it’s also hard not to feel a constant sense of disconnect from these characters and their so-called “crises.”

Venom: The Last Dance is dopey and silly and filled with familiar stock characters and well-worn tropes, but it’s almost never ponderous.

Nobody’s ever going to match Bogart’s iconic work opposite Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks’ 1946 classic, but Neeson delivers a reliably powerful, world-weary, “I’m too old for this s---!” performance in Neil Jordan’s exquisitely photographed and sometimes convoluted but thoroughly enjoyable period piece.

Shatner and Smart have a comfortable chemistry, and it IS nice to see a movie romance between two people who remember the 1960s. It’s just too bad they’re in a vehicle that isn’t nearly as impressive as that vintage Porsche.

Time and again, Ride Along comes up with a clichéd setup — and then blows the payoff.

It’s an ambitious reach, and the talented cast of mostly familiar names is game for the challenge, but Crisis goes over the top with too many key plot developments. The end result is a serious case of Messaging Exhaustion.

The Amazon Prime original movie Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse has to be considered one of the more disappointing films of 2021 so far, given the long and rich history of entertaining adaptations of Clancy’s work and the vibrant star power of its leading man.

Moonfall is the kind of film that doesn’t take itself seriously and yet really doesn’t have a sense of humor about the ludicrous nature of its very existence.

Kick-Ass 2 is an uninspired retread. All too often it plays like a Comic-Con gone insane, with costumed do-gooders taking on costumed criminals in gratuitously vicious battles.

Cruz is a deadpan treasure, never cracking the hint of a smile even as he delivers some well-timed one-liners. Wish we could have had an entire movie about this guy. Instead, we were cursed with the annoying and shrieking but not even close to terrifying La Llorona.

A quirky and entertaining deadpan comedy/drama.

The Woman in the Window is filled with dramatic touches such as a dizzying overhead shot of a staircase, a skylight just begging for someone to come crashing through, pieces of evidence conveniently left lying about and visual references to far superior noir thrillers, including the aforementioned “Rear Window.” It’s also filled with cheap scares, false alarms, dumb cops, loud storms and tricky camera angles designed to make us feel as disoriented as Anna. The only thing those elements really succeed in doing is giving us a headache.

A relatively breezy and slick slice of entertainment, with a fast-pace style befitting the material and expertly calibrated performances from the ensemble cast.

Corny? Absolutely. Sincere and spiritual? Yes.

The putatively provocative and wannabe-controversial erotic thriller “Miller’s Girl” is a sordid little tale that isn’t nearly as clever and literary as it tries to be, nor is it as deliberately campy as 20th century entries in the genre such as “Wild Things” or even “Poison Ivy.”

This is a well-designed, initially intriguing, visually interesting sci-fi romance torpedoed by a premise — and a payoff — so creepy and misogynistic, it’s amazing nobody who read the script or green-lit the film (or chose to star in it) raised concerns about how it would play with an audience of, you know, people with working minds.

One of the unique things about the original “House Party” from 1990 is while there was an abundance of energetic and exhilarating dancing, the party itself was almost secondary to all the action that took place OUTSIDE the party...Not so much with the massive, bloated, epic, over-the-top bash in the “House Party” reboot, which marks the second time LeBron James has put his enormous clout behind a new take on a beloved 1990s film (after the “Space Jam” reboot) — and the second time the results were underwhelming.

This brutal, bloody, dark and at times gruesomely funny thriller isn’t some David Fincher-esque mood piece where all the clues come together at the end. It’s more like a modern-day, Georgia version of a spaghetti Western.

Gina Rodriguez: You deserve much better than this.

This is one of the worst movies of the year.

In the bland and outdated and curiously tame would-be sex rom-com “A Nice Girl Like You,” Hale once again tries her gosh-darndest to sell the material — but even though this toothless yawner is based on a real-life memoir, every single frame feels artificial and forced.

While the members of the Broken Lizard comedy group retain their likability, and there’s something kind of endearing about the disjointed, throw-everything-at-the-wall, “Caddyshack” type chaos behind the comedy, there are simply too many dead spots and cheap jokes and flat gags to carry a full-length feature.

This movie soars on the strength of the screenplay. Monahan gives Hedlund and in particular Isaac dozens upon dozens of rich, intricate lines, and they’re both up to the task and then some. Isaac is an actor who is not afraid to go big or go home, but in Mojave, his finest moments are relatively quiet and sublime. Every inch of his performance is pure excellence.

Sandra Bullock has starred in only seven films in the last decade, and along with Gravity in 2013, her two most intriguing roles by far have been courtesy of the streaming giant Netflix: first with the smash hit horror film Bird Box (2018) and now with The Unforgivable, which has prestige credentials, a brilliant, A-list cast and a few moments of near-greatness, but is ultimately a disappointing and frustrating viewing experience due mostly to script and editing problems.

The jokes in The Week Of are big and obvious and sometimes mildly tasteless.

The laughs come at a rapid-fire pace, but the comedy sometimes veers into hokey, over-the-top set pieces.

Fatman skids and slides and careens between genres and never finds solid footing in any one place, and ultimately winds up as an interesting failed experiment.

An Acceptable Loss is a B-movie with some A-level acting, particularly by Tika Sumpter.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Michelle Darnell was a hilarious onstage comedic creation. On film, she is a flimsy, one-dimensional, tiresome character, surrounded by equally unconvincing and unfunny players.

Tony Hale took neurotic brilliance to the next level on Arrested Development and then Veep, and he’s squarely in his comfort zone playing another cringe-inducing, socially awkward and hilariously tone-deaf character in the offbeat charmer Eat Wheaties!, one of the most endearing movies about light stalking you’ll ever see.

Every once in a while there’s an inspired montage, or a one-liner that made me laugh out loud. But how can you have the great Christoph Waltz playing a villain in a comedy, and you get almost nothing out of it?

Russell Crowe is an A-list star in a B-movie, but to his credit it never feels as if he’s slumming it.

It’s arguably the weakest, lamest and least memorable entry in the history of the franchise. It’s also crass and tone-deaf. And played mostly for laughs that are few and far between.

Suicide Squad does have its moments of beautiful comic-book visuals.... Those are just tantalizing hints of a better movie that never materialized.

Now comes the loony, murky and muddled sci-fi action semi-thriller 65, with A-list star Adam Driver and the talented writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (who collaborated with John Krasinski on “A Quiet Place”) taking a detour through B-Movie Lane in a film that isn’t compelling enough to make for silly popcorn entertainment but isn’t terrible enough to be labeled a disaster.

Directed with claustrophobic, docudrama-style intensity by Derrick Borte (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Forte) and featuring a career-best dramatic performance by Gaffigan, American Dreamer is a dark and intense and sometimes brutally violent slice of rotted life.

It is an ambitious, dreamlike, beautifully shot movie (with cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins) that aims for the fences again and again in the course of 149 minutes — but nearly every one of those mighty cuts is a swing and a miss.

Trippy and entertaining mind-bender.

Father Stu breaks no new ground in the biopic game, but it’s a solid and worthy tribute to the real-life Father Stu, who continued to do the Lord’s work until his death in 2014 at the age of 50.

Without Costner’s movie star equity, this thing could have fallen apart in the first 30 minutes. He keeps us involved, even as we’re thinking: Wait, WHAT just happened?

One of the many graceful touches in Welcome to Marwen is the total lack of pity or condescension in either world.

Shirley MacLaine is still a big-screen force. With a quick dismissive glance or a sharp-edged delivery of a one-liner, she creates a handful of genuine and genuinely funny moments.

With The Comedian arriving in theaters, it’s safe to say I now have only nine spaces left on my list of the 10 Worst Movies of 2017.

Despite its considerable flaws, Salinger is a valuable and engrossing biography of the author.

This is a classic example of a well-made, big-budget action movie that is less than the sum of its parts.

There ARE times when Aloha doesn’t work — and yet I’m recommending it for its sometimes loony sense of wonder, its trippy spirituality, its brilliant cast and because I seem to be a sap for even the Cameron Crowe movies almost nobody else likes.

Pitch Perfect 3 feels like an encore nobody asked for.

There’s no defending Jupiter Ascending. There’s no explaining Jupiter Ascending. There’s no way Jupiter Ascending isn’t making an appearance on my list of the Worst Films of 2015.

This is a well-made thriller traveling over awfully familiar turf.

The entire movie comes across as if the screenwriters had gathered the scripts for dozens of similar films in the genre, dropped them into some sort of software blender — and whipped up one big bland smoothie of a story.

More times than not, The Benefactor takes the less interesting fork in the road.

White Men Can’t Jump 2023 is the second remake for director Calmatic this year, following the disastrous “House Party” from last January, and while it’s not as clumsy or weirdly tone-deaf as that bomb, the screenplay by Kenya Barris (“black-ish”) and Doug Hall misses a couple of major opportunities, including the decision to have the most dramatic development of the entire movie take place offscreen.

It spirals downward into a ludicrous, dumbed-down horror story more concerned with grossing out the audience than in providing any compelling reason for this long-running franchise to keep chugging along, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

Space Cadet wraps itself in the trappings of a female empowerment story, but it actually celebrates using deception and taking shortcuts. Rex Simpson is no Elle Woods, and this story is more “Illegal, Need Bond” than “Legally Blonde.”

Not funny, not funny, not funny, not funny, not funny.

Zipper might be entertaining enough in a campy way for you to watch it on demand as long as you’ve got a really big bowl of popcorn and an even bigger glass of wine (or the non-alcoholic elixir of your choice) to get you through. Might. Be.

The blood-soaked potboiler First Kill is Generous Pour through and through, from Bruce Willis playing a cop for the umpteenth time in his career to the old switcheroo we can see coming a mile away to the pounding and overwrought score to some genuinely effective detours and subplots.

Intrusion is a derivative, manipulative, convoluted and dopey story that dishes up one scary movie cliché after another before careening out of control with a late plot development so insanely implausible, so far out of left field, it’s as if someone accidentally deleted 20 pages of the script during production and nobody noticed.

The Family Plan exists in a world that defies all logic and reality. Granted, this is an over-the-top comedy, and yes, there are a few dark laughs, but this is basically a live-action cartoon with a deadly premise.

The great and usually fantastically innovative Werner Herzog has turned Bell’s story into a conventional, cliché-riddled, overly talky and plodding biopic where very little happens for long stretches of time, and we have to endure deadly-dull voice-over narration while looking at admittedly gorgeous scenery and, well, camels.

The intentions and performances are irrefutably sincere and noble. The execution almost always feels a little bit forced and a little bit false.

I thought the basic situation in The Bodyguard was intriguing enough to sustain a film all by itself: on the one hand, a star who grows rich through the adulation that fans feel for her, and on the other hand, a working man who, for a salary, agrees to substitute his body as a target instead of hers. Makes you think.

This is a home run swing that results in a strikeout and a long trudge back to the dugout.

Nearly 50 years after William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” elevated the horror genre to Oscar-level greatness and produced chills and thrills that resonate with us to this day, the direct sequel The Exorcist: Believer is a tasteless, tacky, uninspired and just plain lousy knockoff that upchucks pea soup-colored porridge all over the legacy of the original, from the crummy-looking and tedious exorcism sequence to the murky cinematography, to the return of an iconic character who is given an absolutely awful and borderline offensive storyline.

This is a cheeky, madcap romp, with exaggerated views of 1960s American stereotypes about Brits and vice versa, featuring terrific performances by Perlman and Grint, a most unlikely and most likable buddy duo.

The Gunman veers dangerously close to camp in the final scenes. If you make it that far without walking out.

The intended charms of the down-home period piece/Southern comedy/romance/drama Big Stone Gap were utterly lost on me.

It’s only mid-April, but I’m making an early reservation for The Other Woman to appear on my list of the 10 Worst Films of 2014.

When you’re balancing ridiculous slapstick right out of a live-action cartoon with well-written, well-acted scenes that feel completely of this world, that’s a tough balancing act, and “Tammy” isn’t quite up to the task on a consistent basis.

"Dead Men” works well enough as a stand-alone, swashbuckling comedic spectacle, thanks to the terrific performances, some ingenious practical effects, impressive CGI and a steady diet of PG-13 dialogue peppered with not particularly sophisticated but (I have to admit) fairly funny sexual innuendo.

The adaptation is a curiously strange effort, as director Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) films the story like an indie drama, with straightforward, realistic, dialogue-driven scenes — and then every 10 minutes or so, a character breaks into song, and it seems much more contrived and jolting than something like La La Land.

The Intruder is next-level dopey. Every single character in this film, including the villain, is irritatingly, maddeningly dumb. Nearly every scene is practically an invitation for the audience to talk back to the screen and ask these people if they’ve lost their minds.

Woodshock is its own worst enemy. The more the filmmakers play around with what’s real and what’s a dream or an element of Theresa’s delusions, the less we’re invested in what’s actually happening with Theresa.

Planes moves along quickly at a running time of 92 minutes, occasionally taking flight with some pretty nifty flight sequences. The animation is first-rate, and the Corningware colors are soothing eye candy.

In the lurid and cheesy and sometimes unintentionally funny political thriller Runner, one of the most intriguing and eclectic casts of the year is wasted in a murky cesspool that comes across as a third-rate version of “House of Cards” with a little bit of “Scandal” thrown in for bad measure.

Despite its provocative title, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town isn’t particularly sexy. More troubling, it’s not very funny either.

As the plot grows increasingly convoluted and borderline laughable, Chastain is steady as she goes, playing a character who’s worthy of a film franchise in a movie nowhere near deserving a sequel. Odds are we’ll never see Ava again, and that’s a shame because, with a better script and more inspired direction, she could have been a contender.

Every frame of “Pinocchio” is filled with rich and lush detail — at times this almost looks like a 3-D film — and the performances, whether live action or voiced, are universally excellent.

I’m all for pushing the limits of taste in the name of edgy laughs and portrayals of teen life that don’t sugarcoat the realities of teen life, but while Incoming easily earns its R rating, it has a bit of foul odor about it and features far too many cheap gross-out gags and the inclusion of some genuinely creepy characters whose actions range from the morally questionable to flat-out criminal.

Though it crackles with energy and has some impressive albeit gratuitously bloody kill sequences, the Big Picture plot is a dud, up to and including the preposterous final scenes.

There’s gratuitous nudity, lots of partying, zippy camera moves, plenty of product placement and did we mention all those celebrity cameos? It all feels more like a rerun than a fully formed, stand-alone movie.

The best thing in the movie is Schwarzenegger, who delivers the Guardian’s lines with perfect timing and creates an empathetic character, because as we know, nearly all the best movie robots somehow become just a little bit human as time goes on.

For all its next-generation technology, and even with the great Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain”) directing, Gemini Man is a mind-numbingly unoriginal international spy thriller.

Tessa Thompson’s performance is the best thing in the movie, in part because she’s playing a character who genuinely respects the legacy of the Men (and Women) in Black and is thrilled to be part of the team.

All Eyez On Me is enthralling, exhilarating and at times maddening.

There’s no denying director/co-writer John Erick Dowdle’s skill set for creating almost unbearably tense and quite twisted suspense pieces in which you’ll find yourself laughing at the sheer unapologetic insanity of it all.

This adaptation of the young adult science fiction novel “The Knife of Never Letting Go” (the first in a trilogy) is sunk by the nearly unwatchable and unlistenable execution of the main premise.

A lazy, crummy-looking, poorly paced, why-bother follow-up that lacks the Christmas bells to go full-out politically incorrect.

The problem — and it’s an insurmountable, deadly, comedy-killing, consistent problem throughout — is a tired, uninspired, derivative screenplay that brings everyone to Vegas for a wedding and incorporates nearly every weekend-in-Vegas cliche explored in dozens of previous films.

A forgettable movie with a forgettable title about forgettable characters I’d just as soon as forget.

Even a warmed-over, behind-the-times Woody Allen script is going to contain some choice one-liners, and this is a superb cast that knows how to put the right spin on clever dialogue — even when they’re playing thinly drawn characters in a dated and unnecessary story.

And So It Goes is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. The pleasure comes from experiencing the fine performances and semi-frequent smile-inducing dialogue, bolstered in no small fashion by the wonderful comedic timing of Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton.

At times Reitman (adapting Chad Kultgen’s 2011 novel) can be a bit preachy and scolding about the pitfalls of surrendering one’s “RL” (real life) to one’s online existence, but just about any parent or any teenager seeing this film will empathize with any number of the interconnecting plot lines.

Ben-Hur struggles to find an identity and never really gets there. The well-intentioned efforts to achieve moving, faith-based awakenings are undercut by the casually violent, PG-13 action sequences.

Midnight Sun is cheesy and implausible and manipulative, but it did chip away at my cynicism through the sheer force of its corny and sincere heart.

This is two hours and 27 minutes of pure dinosaur droppings, and the viewer is as helpless as a boat passing under a bridge on the Chicago River as the Dave Matthews Band unloads a torrent of foul waste from above.

Hillbilly Elegy is a beautifully constructed, unforgiving, heart-tugging family epic about three generations of the Vance family.

Even when John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are slumming it, they’re good fun. Not enough to save the movie, but enough to keep you interested when you click across this thing sometime in your future.

The flat and uninspired Addams Family 2 is the wrong kind of “twofer,” in that it’s often too dark and grotesque and bizarre for children, but also profoundly unfunny when it tries to appeal to the grown-ups.

The numerous sex scenes are so uninteresting and devoid of creativity or plot advancement, even the actors participating in said encounters seem bored.

A serviceable if sometimes overwrought biography, with solid performances and the courage to spotlight not only the heroics but the appalling misdeeds committed by the iconic Ms. Mandela.

Sean Hayes is a droll delight as Susan, who uses cynicism and snappy put-downs as a defense mechanism but has a real heart.

When you make films from junk TV, more often than not you’re going to wind up with a junk movie.

A sequel that’s never subtle, rarely surprising — and as rich, syrupy, sweet and satisfying as a tray of homemade baklava.

An artfully shot and occasionally provocative but ultimately underwhelming and self-indulgent film.

Writer-director Krauss embraces the spiritual elements of this story without turning it into a heavy-handed religious lecture.

It is the story of the faith in which I was raised, and it is a story told here with great reverence and extremely faithful renditions of scenes from the New Testament. But, alas, it’s not a good movie.

The spiritual angle in Serenity is just one of the many elements making this one of the most ambitious, one of the most challenging — and one of the most entertaining thrillers in recent years.

It’s never a good thing when a film about a dying man sometimes has us wondering if some of the people in his life will be better off without him.

This is a murky-looking, CGI-heavy dud.

This is slick trash. A bloated, unfunny, sometimes downright bizarre train wreck featuring some of the loudest, longest and least entertaining actual train wrecks in recent memory.

Occasionally Winterbottom delivers a haunting, effective moment, giving a hint of a different, more compelling film. But then it’s back to the self-righteous, self-indulgent, muddled metaphors.

Unfortunately, “He Went That Way” never finds a steady tone, veers off into some bizarre subplots and features two surprisingly underwhelming performances from the talented lead duo.

Every once in a while Are You Here strikes comedic gold.

Had I been attending Fist Fight as a non-critic, any number of scenes might well have catapulted me out of my seat and out the door.

The screenplay is so clunky, not a single cast member manages to sound believable. Familiar, likable actors from Kate Bosworth to Gina Carano to Morris Chestnut are buried under an avalanche of awful. You’ve been warned.

This is a nifty little gem in the heist genre, with the familiar message about the perils of greed and always wanting more and more and even more.

Problem is, there’s no movie inside this movie. It’s a breezy and intermittently entertaining and super slick work, but it’s filled with so many overly familiar notes and well-worn cliches, and there are so many winking nods to the viewer, it feels as if we’re about two rewrites away from this thing being a flat-out spoof on the level of Airplane! or Hot Shots! or Scary Movie.

This is one of the most shocking and one of the best movies of the year.

A mildly entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking but ultimately ludicrous deep space thriller.

I’m not sure there’s much more of an appetite for these inward-looking, COVID-set films anymore, but if you’re up for it, writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi’s “Life Upside Down” is a slight but wryly effective, upper-class social satire with winning performances from a cast including Bob Odenkirk, Radha Mitchell and Danny Huston.

As much as I’ve enjoyed Adam DeVine’s work, he’s played variations on this same guy for nearly two decades now (he’s 39) and the man-child act is getting tiresome.

This movie is pure cotton candy — sweet and brightly colored and a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it’s not intended to be something you can sink your teeth into, and five minutes after consuming it, it’s like it never happened.

The mystery is muddled, the romance is tepid and scenes that should be electric with tension are almost dull.

The best acting in The Canyons is done by the porn star. That might be all you need to know about this film, which is the kind of vapid, self-consciously artsy, waste-of-time movie that might never have seen the light of day (or the dark of theater) and would have gone straight to VOD were it not for the triple-threat name-recognition trio of the actress Lindsay Lohan, the director Paul Schrader and the writer Bret Easton Ellis.

Throughout the game, during the action sequences and especially during the timeouts and strategy sessions, the “celebrity” fans are a huge distraction — and making things even more bizarre, their numbers include Pennywise the Clown from “It” and the murderous, rapist gang known as the Droogs from “A Clockwork Orange.” Who in the name of Bugs Bunny thought this was a good idea?