Robert Daniels

[Borgli's] mealy-mouthed timidity in addressing genuinely controversial and provocative subjects, especially those that require a radical kind of empathy, not only renders his supposedly edgy provocations dull. It also makes one wonder if he’s at all interested in women as people.

These characters possessed far more soul in the prior film: they walked through every scene with centuries of baggage and loss; they spoke of times gone by with wonder and awe; they cared for one another. None of that is present here.

Rather than make the more interesting movie, Chaves and Johnson-McGoldrick kick the can down the road toward the next money-making sequel. Which would be totally welcomed if the The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It weren’t so artistically inert, and oh so boring.

This film, unfortunately, fails to live up to the quality of its influences. Filomarino’s Beckett lacks urgency, wit, and a lead actor capable of pulling together its underwritten themes.

Such blunt messaging reduces the onscreen carnage, which relentlessly occurs via this mute machine’s searing lasers, barrage of bombs and kaiju breath, to little more than the human toll required for this particular military man to feel again. Worse yet, the film concludes with hawkish intensity, fashioning itself into a tasteless recruitment video.

The preceding two-plus hours of this 145-minute slog — Tommy’s threadbare hodgepodge of bad impressions, gratuitous filmmaking, and even worse depictions of mental health — isn’t even a shadow of the real natural woman.

Grainy establishing shots of the skirmish offer little visual information other than its location on an expressway. Without viewers knowing where, and at whom, the soldiers are firing, the onscreen action is rendered indecipherable. Mackie’s quirky performance — Leo ends every order to Harp with an uncomfortable smile — is likewise baffling.

Schweighöfer’s prequel fails to offer the same level of excitement or gore as Snyder’s film. The heists are all snoozing affairs, and ultimately, the film succumbs to the script’s franchise ambitions.

Apart from a few quippy anecdotes, the only thing holding Elton John: Never Too Late together is the songs.

Naked Singularity isn’t a typical courtroom drama. It’s a heist flick, a sci-fi romp, and a message film all rolled into one. And it’s a pretty terrible example of all three genres.

Play Dirty is a misanthropic work. Which isn’t inherently a deal breaker, but a stiff Wahlberg lacks the moxie to make the brutal barrage of death amusing or worthwhile.

Despite the tantalising set up, Immaculate is a dull, predictable affair, composed of far too many inconsequential jump scares in lieu of sturdy storytelling.

In a cinematic landscape where the anxiety of surveillance has been sufficiently explored — with movies like “The Conversation,” “Enemy of the State” and “Kimi” — this simplistically dreary offering doesn’t crack a new code.

Hart possesses neither the charisma of Cruise nor the charm of Redford necessary to shoulder these action movie mechanics, a failure that demonstrates what happens when character actors are told they’re movie stars.

If Spiral hoped to reinvent the franchise, the dull installment merely amounts to bad fan fiction.

This lackluster script struggles to build a captivating story to match the allure of its expansive desert setting.

An empty muddle of social commentary with little intensity.

The soft-spoken Epps is frustratingly miscast. The editing by Geofrey Hildrew and Scott Pellet limps lifelessly along, and the direction lacks the necessary pulse for a story line with more twists than a low-budget soap opera.

The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but I Wanna Dance with Somebody lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

Despite Quan’s best efforts, there isn’t one square foot of this tepid film worth buying.

Antoine Fuqua might’ve had some cameras and microphones on hand to produce moving images and sound for this estate-approved King of Pop biopic. But make no mistake about it: “Michael” isn’t a movie. It’s a filmed playlist in search of a story.

The sole redeeming quality in this 85-minute swill resides in the makeup and practical effects, which rely on viscous blood and gnarly props that make the kills hard to stomach.

It lacks form, edge, politics, coherency, and the grand vision necessary for vast world building. It’s a film that begins on volatile ground only to tumble down a tonally rocky hill before settling on a conclusion so emotionally dissonant that its clang rings louder than the minor laughs the film engenders during its bloated run time.

The film struggles from scene to scene, incoherently tying elongated and repetitive montages of Guy and Sullivan performing together to hagiographic perspectives explaining how giving Guy is or the brightness of Sullivan’s future.

This movie is anything but brave. It is the most feckless, spineless blockbuster of the last decade.

A flattened biopic devoid of a perspective or originality. It follows a long list of musical origin stories that feel designed to sell new pressings of former hits more than tell an engaging story.

While what Cline did and the fight his victims took to find justice is a truth worth knowing and learning, Jourdan’s crass documentary isn’t the best vehicle for such weighty material.

For the most part, “Long Shadows” is short on reasons to have our attention.