Robert Daniels

There is a good movie lurking within writer/director Cinqué Lee’s survivalist coming-of-age thriller “Last Ride.” It’s just suspended between two half-told stories.

Stolevski aims for a life-affirming treatise on the poetics of human existence but strains to be more than a pretty copy of his well-known influences.

By playing with formalism, using faux documentary, and cranking out hedonistic scenes of excessive drug taking and partying, Yates aims to blend “Erin Brockovich” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” But the director’s filmic language never offers quite enough sex, quite enough excess, quite enough of capitalism’s depravity. Pain Hustlers just doesn’t know how to commit.

Martin and Lindsay’s Tina all too often struggles to show Turner as a three-dimensional person — her wants, her beliefs, her passions — in lieu of her being a product of the abuse she withstood from Ike. As a tribute, it’s a disappointing slog for an always-vibrant legend.

As a film, The Humans provides serrated frights and big challenges for its actors, but ultimately, it is too cold and never believable enough to immerse one in its purported dread.

Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.

Unfortunately, Iannucci and Blackwell are so intent on making every quip funny, they lose the story.

Nope is an idea more than a story. It’s a collection of individually captivating scenes, as opposed to an intriguing whole. It’s a handsome picture, but Peele is far too impressed with its handsomeness to work on populating it with fully felt characters.

Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie is a purposely self-absorbed meta-narrative about a navel-gazing director at odds with his muse—an enticing premise on paper—that too often obscures its heart in lieu of tedious diatribes.

If The Covenant were only an interrogation of the hollowness of American exceptionalism, as its first hour suggests, it’d be among the most honest portrayals of the country’s role in the region. But Ritchie eventually awakens from his stupor, pushing this combat-action flick to gonzo territory.

Alex Wheatle combines the relevant themes that guide the prior “Small Axe” installments: music as an escape from one’s environment, police brutality, and a character adrift from his community — yet the writing struggles to connect the major plot points for big picture interpretations of Alex’s cultural self-education.

Barker takes his initially enthralling documentary and dilutes the story with this new feature, creating melodramatic lightness without an affectingly heavy touch due to the tepid tone and wheezing tempo. In short, it snoozes.

Singer’s Reptile, distributed by Netflix, wants to be a David Fincher procedural with Steven Soderbergh’s paranoia, but it’s a fangless homage without suspense, logic, or shame.

The French Dispatch is probably the worst film of the director’s career. But even his worst effort is worth biting the bullet for.

Even for Garland’s adept visual storytelling, supported by daring cuts by Jake Roberts and offbeat needledrops, the core of Civil War feels hollow.

A good movie exists in On the Count of Three. But a film with such challenging subject matter needed a more experienced director capable of shading the dark comedy and the heartfelt spirit with an assured visual hand.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is the kind of bold swing with difficult material that does manage to earn your respect.

The Inspection isn’t a bad movie. Rather it’s a disappointing slog because the arduous journey it sets up should have offered greater returns.

The film is missing out on a cohesive vision, to the point where the audience will spend the entire film waiting for the flashbacks and summaries to end, and for DaCosta’s movie to finally begin. But by the end, she’s only offered a visually stunning homage to the original film. For a director of her talent, that isn’t enough.

If Pearce weren’t so heavy-handed, if were just self-aware enough to know how to connect character with metaphor, then Encounter, a flawed sci-fi flick with a simple premise, could be a great adventure fit for the stars.

While “The Gates” itself isn’t a total smash, it’s a more than sturdy final effort from a beloved actor.

It becomes empty, artificial scenes of actors playing dress-up.

Sidney functions as a loving memorial to the pioneering Black movie star who passed earlier this year, but it never suffices as more than a tepid first draft of his life. And it is never as groundbreaking as Poitier’s best work.

The sunny, diverse musical delivers sugary messages of self-affirmation with the shine of a lollipop and the stickiness of a half-eaten sucker. It’s a bold attempt, putting a neo-realist spotlight on a bevvy of first-time and nascent actors, but presented under an obnoxious treacle banner.

This is a story written and directed by a 23-year-old. That reality defines Cha Cha Real Smooth’s truest virtue (blissful naïveté) and its grandest flaw — a blithering unawareness of reality. It’s a film defined by its myopic, narrow bandwidth.

Kali and Molina’s I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) frustratingly struggles to find its way, but when it does, this story of houselessness, grief, and motherhood blossoms like a sunflower in a rich field of pathos. And offers a very brief balm to these heady times.

Concrete Cowboy breathes new life into the western genre and sheds a brighter light on a faction of Black culture that was largely unknown by white audiences until today.

Blink Twice is haunted by lost opportunities. As a woman and survivor, Frida feels ignored. But Kravitz leaves the erasure that Black women feel untapped.

The star-studded cast does good, dependable work. There are visual flairs that linger in the mind: For all its faults, this movie has a striking look to it. And Corbin’s best intentions are genuine. The ending comes with a startling bang. But what remains when the dust settles? By the end of the over-tightened 892, unfortunately, a memorialization to Brown-Easley’s plight, we know little about the actual man.

“Spaz” works best when, within the film’s fascinating unpacking of cinematic history, Leberecht also interrogates the unfair practice of crediting and illuminates the work of Williams. He’s a man whose behind-the-scenes talent made every scene unforgettable, and it deserves a bolder documentary than this one.

The tale is one of greed and grift. But BS High, a documentary about the saga, is too taken by the audacity of Roy Johnson, the founder of Bishop Sycamore, to critique his actions.

Though copious bloodshed and plenty of backstabbing does ensue, this laborious film is best when the quirkier tone shakes viewer expectations.

For every moment The Lost Bus impresses with it scale and craft, there are other instances where it feels like we’re watching these screaming kids be dragged through a Disney amusement park ride.

Like the limited legislative change that has occurred due to the underappreciated efforts of these valiant activists, I wish Snyder’s Us Kids resulted in more.

Williams’ playful, genre-bending music that mixes post-soul cool with skater sensibilities is probably more than a live-action narrative could contain. In the hands of director Morgan Neville, however, the story of Williams’ life lacks specificity and substance.

The high-concept sci-fi horror film “Ash,” a hazy story about an amnesiac deep-space explorer who awakens to discover her entire crew was killed, is light on answers but heavy on style.

It ultimately crashes into a heap due to a host of rambling non-connective ideas and tonally grating dialogue.

It’s all pastiche; all surfaces with nothing below. And it leaves one cold.

While this installment isn’t nearly as woeful as Beverly Hills Cop III, it doesn’t have the charm or energy of the first two films either. It’s a limp, desperate action comedy with few memorable moments.

Port Authority isn’t a transgender-led love story. But another short-sighted film using Black folks as a lesson for ignorant white outsiders.

Halverson is too far on the deep end to provide us with digestible storytelling, and Cowperthwaite, who spends the movie jumping in nonlinear fashion from one year to the next, is in no rush to make the larger picture easier to see.

Even for fans of this animated universe, New Gods: Yang Jian can’t turn its viewers into believers.

The Choral is a narratively jumbled film whose unrestrained sweetness and adept ensemble tie up some of the film’s looser ends.

While this slick film wants to use their stories to put faces to the fentanyl epidemic, Swab’s genre instincts get the better of him.

Being the Ricardos isn’t a total disaster, but it’s not a grand triumph either.

Hartnett and Chandran’s laid back chemistry steady the film’s turbulent tonal shifts, adding a punch that the shakily choreographed action lacks.

Even if this rom-com never completely coalesces, Showalter’s The Lovebirds does ultimately deliver a worthwhile conclusion

While The Forgiven isn’t concerned with making David a better person — rather to get him to fully grasp his guilt — McDonagh’s methods can’t distinguish the film from the long list of stories about white folks learning lessons at the expense of brown people. There may have been higher ideals in mind, but “The Forgiven” fails to gracefully reach them.

While there’s plenty of large entertaining set pieces, Sheridan’s intriguing premise withers under its overabundant components.

Cruella is a dull overwrought origin story without an audience.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come delivers short-term thrills in an emotionally hollow gore fest.

Unfortunately, much like the light at the end of the tunnel, the thinness of this situational comedy, which continues to hit the same jokes with diminishing returns, becomes glaringly obvious.

The ticking clock makes The Midnight Sky a post-apocalyptic survivalist space film whose narrative is so overloaded that the emotional weight offers zero gravity.

At every turn director James Mangold desperately wants to recapture the glory of old-school Hollywood filmmaking, but turns, painstakingly to the worn-out tools of present-day tentpole moviemaking.

The subplots dangle, the suspense unravels, and the primary relationship never takes off. What you’re left with isn’t an arresting piece of filmmaking, but an idea that is stretched beyond the ability to naturally hold one’s attention without relying on loud filmmaking and even louder themes.

Because what Havoc lacks in characters and story, it delivers in two audacious waves of indiscriminate killing that are so bruising and relentless they make the “John Wick” movies look like “Sesame Street.”

Though Willmott has the best intentions with The 24th, and the story of this infantry is ripe for the Black Lives Matter era, the narrative drama is a missed opportunity to honor these fallen heroes.

Inspired but overwrought, “Scarlet,” an anime adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, begins with stunning style before falling off a major cliff.

The father-son drama in Embattled might win some rounds, but the abundance of clichés leads to a loss overall.

If Radioactive spent more significant time with Curie’s eccentricities . . . we might have arrived at a real character study. Instead, the biopic’s strained narrative bonds dissolve, awash in a series of disconnected events.

The well-placed message and the imaginative animation will win over the film’s intended audience: young children. But the moves Where is Anne Frank uses to deliver that message may do as much harm as they bring help.

A convoluted conclusion, begot by an unconvincing change of heart, obliterates any chance of “Hunt” offering the clarity it needs to be entertaining. Instead, Lee’s directorial effort wanders toward something unmemorable.

A brisk film that could do with twenty more minutes, Green’s “Good Joe Bell” has its heart in the right place, but the limited gaze the writers and director offer withholds this redemptive tale from being the uplifting critique of homophobia and bullying that it needs to be.

While Powell’s film is highly bloody and invested with psychological realism, it lacks a pulse and curiosity that doesn’t befit the excitement promised in the title.

Even for a man who could be called the greatest actor of his generation, the obtuse script and abstract visual language are too much to overcome in what is ultimately a dull, meandering film.

While the nimble Jang holds together the robust action sequences — bloody freakouts often captured in slow motion — no one else grounds any of the scenes with any emotion. Consequently, The Killer fails to land a real knockout blow.

In direct conversation with cinema’s many spaghetti westerns, Van Peebles’s shaggy script relies on winking nods and plentiful shootouts in lieu of production value. Outlaw Posse may not be innovative, but its regard for family affairs is worth treasuring.

A kind of mash-up of “Interstellar” and “Stranger Things,” the extraterrestrial coming-of-age sci-fi flick “Watch the Skies” is a passably enjoyable story about loss.

Avis loses the novel’s sincerity by watering down Sewell’s animal welfare plea. In this update, the humans are not as villainous. Beauty is not as prominent. And the novel’s mustang spirit diminishes into a ho-hum horse movie.

The entire ensemble rolls with the fast punches. And Crosby and Knapp show real comedic potential. But First Date takes too many big bites without the ability to digest any of its gummy sweets. Crosby and Knapp’s First Date, an at-times hilarious California pleasure trip, dissolves under the weight of its self-evident ambition.

Peninsula combines components from I Am Legend, Mad Max, and the Fast & Furious series for a nonsensical joy ride that, while entertaining, lacks the sharpness of its predecessor.

What follows is a movie that wants to be a teen movie and an allegory for the immigrant experience but never wholly coheres.

This is a nostalgia play composed of admittedly funny and gnarly moments that do not string together into a satisfying whole.

As much as Costner tries to play an even hand, attempting to give the Indigenous and settler perspective equal attention, it doesn’t wholly work.

While The Call of the Wild is silly, and never completely pulls the wool over the eyes with respect to the CGI, there’s enough meat on the bone to gnaw on before burying it in the backyard.

A game Ridley, along with a brief cameo by a soulful Gil Birmingham, provides the necessary stakes for Burger’s film not to idle in narrative mud.

There’s nothing inherently bad in the Pastors’ film. It’s competently made with the general sheen you expect from a bigger budget. You are, however, left scratching your head about what another sequel could bring that this one clearly couldn’t. No one in this cast is as dynamic as Bullock, nor is anything as tightly conceived as in the prior film. If seeing is believing, Bird Box Barcelona doesn’t have much to show.

Linden offers a fascinating premise, but her visual language doesn’t catch the eye, and the potential excitement to be mined from translating Blaxploitation motifs for modern-day audiences is missing. “Alice” could’ve been so much more, but instead, it comes off like a lost opportunity.

For a movie so intuitively captivating, so visually extravagant, it very nearly papers over all its emotional weaknesses.

The Tomorrow War tries its hand at throwback ‘90s action glory, back when cinematic adventures could be everything for everybody. Instead, this post-apocalyptic combat flick lacks the intensity to reach the 1.21 gigawatts worth of power needed to emblazon our screens in escapist flair.

This Italian post-apocalyptic film from director Alessandro Celli angles for child soldier depravity without any of the heart.

There’s a great film waiting to be made about the opioid crisis. But much like “Hillbilly Elegy,” “Cherry” can’t conjure up the cause and the toll of the devastation without relying on pastiche. Even the ending, meant to be a moment of healing, reduces Cherry’s concluding journey to a mere saccharine montage.

As I watched this turgid muddle, a messy ball of nonsensical threads and worse performances, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Roger Ebert’s old maxim: No good film is too long, and no bad film is too short.

There are shootouts, a car chase, some heroics and some hard life lessons—but this film isn’t breaking new ground on either the action or socio-political front.

The creators’ quest for deeper meaning feels strained and overreaching, and it overwhelms the adventurous spirit of the film’s first half. If anything, this is at least a great jumping-off point for Evans, who never wavers, even when everything around her does.

One Gets Out Alive is a desperate attempt to explore the immigration crisis through a horror lens, à la Remi Weekes’ stunning film His House. But Menghini’s film is an underwritten hodgepodge of hollow scares.

Sy and Lafitte still carry the day. They give the story a kinetic energy and a loose rhythm, which makes the narrative’s meandering more palatable, even as it fails to break out of the familiar action-flick mold.

Despite a deep ensemble led by a transformative Bullock, Unforgivable moves at a turgid pace, lacking the urgency and pathos required in a redemption narrative with any hopes that the audience will pull for its damaged protagonist.

Laboriously paced, the indulgent jolts and bloodless scares, neither deeply rooted nor artfully raised, float as lifelessly as a lily pad on a bog.

If the action in Kraven the Hunter was as well conceived as its villains, it’d be a riot. Unfortunately, the brawls are physically detached from the environment. The choreography lacks punch and design; the compositions are spatially unaware.

In its quest for entertainment value, this documentary loses sight of the actual grief and hurt a devastated son would feel.

The kinetic, captivating tone disintegrates once the narrative remembers that it needs to tell us about these people.

Those affected by America’s terrible immigration system need a film explaining their difficult plight. Knowton’s “Split at the Root” just isn’t it.

Stockholm Bloodbath is a half-promise. There's plenty of blood to be had, but not much of it boils.

Judging by this documentary’s easygoing approach, Altrogge wants to use his film as a full-spread story on Clemente. The decision pushes Clemente the man into being a mere memory.

Truth & Treason is a staid drama whose observations about Helmuth could easily be summed up in a quick encyclopedic blurb.