Rodrigo Perez

Never once does it carry any of the unclassifiable “It factor” charm that sometimes elevates a mediocre movie. Nope, “Red Notice” is just deeply unexceptional and pedestrian: a lot of lights shining on three worldwide-class superstars, with perfect white teeth with explosions and gloss all around them, and never once creating anything that resembles a captivating spark.

Pain & Gain fails at being an entertaining and ridiculously fun Michael Bay movie and curdles into something much more tone deaf and obnoxious.

As the clock ticks, the film asks, who can this qualified woman trust, but mostly, we’re just looking at our watch, waiting for the dull torment to end.

It’s incredibly soulless, disposable, and as generic as they come.

The McConaissance finds no purchase here. Mining for something adventurous and coming up empty handed, ultimately the dramatically-challenged Gold digs for something fiery and collects zero treasure along the way.

Charlie Countryman opens up with an interesting first section, but only backslides deeper and deeper in its overwrought and incoherent second and third acts.

Campy and cartoonish, Burton’s Big Eyes is not the return to form many were hoping for. It is another phony and hollow piece of sugary kitschploitation masquerading under the guise of an “important true story” that places a nearly grotesque premium on style over any traces over substance.

In the depths of the abyss below, The Gorge mostly turns into a high-concept action film that’s so dull, predictable and ugly to look at it’s extremely easy to tune out and have your mind go on autopilot while the otherwise charismatic Teller and Taylor-Jones are wasted.

Fountain Of Youth may feel superficially dynamic, and cinematically, it sure tries its best to trick you into thinking it’s a vigorous thing, but it’s just a cup filled with empty calories, sustaining nothing and ironically, only just wasting precious minutes off your life.

There’s some interesting ideas floating around about identity, manhood, and what it means to connect with someone in an over-connected world, but A Case Of You (named for a Joni Mitchell song that’s not actually in the film) never actively explores them. Instead, it delves into generic rom-com and ropey cliché to little comic effect.

A would-be but not-actually-inspiring movie about a landmark LGBT rights case that loses sight of the flesh and blood people at its heart, gets bogged down in tedious municipal politics and fails to find a way to compellingly dramatize an important story.

It’s maybe not excruciatingly bad, but certainly even less nourishing and satisfying than even the most fleeting and calorically empty of sugar highs.

The film is not unlike a classic rock supergroup reuniting to play all the greatest hits, with the payday at the end as the only true motivation, rather than returning with something new to say about their work.

Look, America certainly needs relief, support, escape, and laughter, yes, but good god, ‘Barb & Star’ is not it.

The film plays nary a note of reprieve and the dank aesthetic does nothing to help the mood. “Low Down” is unequivocally a downer.

Labelling Live By Night a disaster is a little uncharitable; the baggy drama is perhaps more painfully mediocre than full-blown folly, but it’s close.

It’s all largely an ugly, vulgar, vacuous time that’s disposable and never as amusing as it clearly thinks it is.

A major gaffe, God Help The Girl finds a great artist taking on a huge challenge and stumbling painfully on its ambition almost every step of the way.

The heroine of the film may not be in distress, but oh boy, is this movie in desperate need of saving.

Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus is, without question, bold, distinct, and idiosyncratic filmmaking with its own voice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good or in any kind of reasoned key.

Forgettable and only mildly entertaining, 300: Rise of An Empire seals its own fate at the initial story level by being so deeply invested in its own mythmaking and playing super safe.

Largely inert and undramatic, what you're left with is a tedious sentiment: “by the grace of god” this horrible crisis ended without violence, explosives, or spark. Congratulations?

Heart Of Stone purports to have characters made of sturdy, gritty, golden, unbreakable stuff, but that’s a tagline, not a movie or story; it’s really just flimsy work easily tossed off and broken as it tumbles into the ever-filling bin of barely-one-use Netflix movies.

A Good Day To Die Hard isn’t dead on arrival because that would suggest it has a pulse.

A superficial tale about the casualty at the center of the story, Extremely Wicked, rings hollow and false and is really just as interested in the sensational and salacious as any other reductive thriller.

The wandering, strictly bush league movie, unfortunately, cannot reprise the unbridled strut of Quintana’s ‘Lebowski’ braggadocio, suggesting perhaps we should leave the resurrection of beloved characters to the professionals.

At this point, the Monsterverse needs the much simpler, dumb-fun, pleasurable joy of “Kong: Skull Island” because ‘New Empire,’ just ain’t cutting it beyond loud and senseless brawls that aren’t even a delight to watch.

Acerbic and purposefully vile, LaBute’s story is clearly self-aware of its various cruel manipulations of character and audience, but the formula itself -- taken from his early modus operandi -- is simply becoming more and more rote.