Roger Moore

Director, co-writer and self-distributor Jason “J.” Horton (“Craving,” assorted other C-movies) set out to make an “Evil Dead” without Sam Raimi’s flair for humor and “gotchas,” without his gift for story and ear for zingers and without Bruce Campbell as everybody’s favorite horror anti-hero.

No characters in this are developed enough to invest in them or pin them down as suspects. At about the time Blood Red Raincoat Killer whips out a circular saw, which is as inventive as the murders get, the movie invites us to check out.

Krasinski and González manage some light mid-brawl banter that hints at “chemistry” that the script doesn’t really provide. Portman soldiers through it, with Gleason at his least inspired and Ritchie helming his uncoolest clunker since his divorce from Madonna.

It’s only a movie, of course, not one of the better ones in this sometimes entertaining but occasionally muddled franchise. Taken to heart as a movie of its moment, and not just experienced as “a ride,” it’s too bad they had to go out with a bummer.

The fights are furious and bloody. Don’t get too attached to anybody. Or any body part.

Apte is the riveting center of it all, making sense out of nonsense, and when she can’t, just bluffing and bullying her unfiltered way towards enlightenment, or something just short of it.

Grisi has made a simple parable for life on Earth and the consequences the most remote people face from climate change, and a film that’s worth rooting for as Utama is Bolivia’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature competition at the Oscars.

The Surfer bites off more than it can existentially chew, but it works well enough. And Cage, McMahon, Cassim and Justin Rosniak, as the stereotypical cop-who-sides-with-the-bullying-locals are terrific — by turns hatefully or ruefully so.

Endless, dizzying 360 degree pans, hand-held on-his-way-to-the-stage snippets and jolting, beads-of-sweat/strings-of-spit closeups and a cranked up score can’t hide the vacuity of it all.

The Nonnas are the stars and the hook that makes this one work.

If your thriller’s quick enough and cryptic enough, viewers won’t notice it’s not remotely as clever as you thought it was. But when you title your ghost story The Ruse, you’ve already given away that.

Whatever interest — and laughs (those HATS) — that holds isn’t enough to distract us from guessing plot twists a dozen scenes in advance or from giggling at how Feig and screenwriters Jessica Sharzer and Laeta Kalogridis stumble through a “How do we END this mess?” debate, one which Feig clumsily slaps on the screen without bothering to edit.

It’s more a (somewhat) satisfying “finale” than a logical one.

As the cliche goes, this film is both sad and life-affirming in its depiction of end-of-life concerns.

Whatever its sluggish pace and stumbling grasp of time, Queen of the Ring still manages to be a fine vehicle for making a case for women’s equality in a period piece that more than gives this sport and that period in time its due.

It’s all something of a jumble, with even its “kumbaya" messaging muddled in a murk of competing story agendas.

The scripted schemes don’t unravel easily, until the “talking villain” finale reveals all. That makes Exterritorial more “solid than surprising, and even that “solid” footing grows more slippery with each implausible escape or too-convenient plot twist.

This immaculately lit and shot (by Maximilian Pittner) and gorgeously designed (by François-Renaud Labarthe, who did “Clouds of Sils Maria”) and costumed (Miyako Bellizzi) potboiler does justice to Sagan’s “ultimate beach novel” source, even if it never escapes that label.

The characters aren’t sketched in. They’re underscripted outlines for “characters,” which might cut it for a video game, but not for a movie. The multiple deaths and rebirths fatally lower the plot’s stakes, and nobody in the cast makes us feel the terror or the grisly ends that keep happening to them.

It’s not particularly ambitious and there’s barely a hint of “breaks from formula” in it. But in The Accountant 2, it’s not the individual numbers that matter. It’s how it all adds up.

As cute and predictable as this all is, the cast hurls itself at this slight farce and makes it play.

I think the remake hits the comic highlights harder. But if you’ve seen “Fix the World,” there’s no reason to bother with “Dad Quest.” If you haven’t seen the original film, “Quest” is at least a decently acted, occasionally amusing and somewhat quick “summary” of the superior film it’s based on.

No characters really pop and there’s little room for pathos, humor or anything else.

The film itself is more recognizably human and considered, while lacking any comic edge or sense that the romantic stakes are high.

Coogler introduces themes, agendas and histories in collision with this film. But once “Sinners” transitions from Black history at a crossroads into straight-up horror, nothing much is made of the Big Ideas in this ungainly mashup of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Crossroads” and “From Dust Til Dawn.”

There’s ambition and a dollop of intellectual heft to the indie dramedy Daddy. Even if it misplaces characters, shortchanges its goals and fails to deliver much in the way of a satisfying conclusion, you can appreciate the attempt and the effort involved.

The cast is game, which always counts for something. It wasn’t a hard movie to watch, as blandly predictable as it is

Fahy does a decent job conveying vulnerability, even if the desperation that should figure in here seems a tad tame until the third act. Sklenar is mostly just a hunky pawn, here.

Mendoza’s pitch, to “get it right” and have “real combat vets” have their story told, might be noble in its intention and the tribute (stay through the credits) to their service the film represents. But he and Garland emphasize authenticity over empathy, accuracy over dramatic connection.

The Amateur may be a mixed-bag of coincidences, not-quite-plausible technological traps and narrow escapes, and a tad old fashioned feeling in this post-justice/post-accountability world. But Malek keeps us invested and interested in this quest.

Writer-director Conners makes the most of her good fortune in casting. She has Smith be the grandmotherly gravitas at the center of this quiet storm, wise with her years and so old she’s aged into the truth teller so many need to hear, with only a couple daring to listen.

The narrative never strays from the formula/quest that Ha is on. But writer-director Oh isn’t shy about boring us half-to-death as we wait for that inevitable connecting of the dots, resolution of the search and the inevitable brandishing of the “Revolver.”

The music drops are good enough to pass muster, and the peformances mostly transcend the tried and trite story and the frankly pedestrian direction.

Promised Hearts never for an instant lets us lose hope that true love will find a way, which is a universal message every romance hews to. But the film requires too much patience and relies on too many hoary plot devices to have a prayer of coming off, at least in much of the rest of the world.

Harmless nonsense this may be, but if you’re under the impression it does a wildly popular, award-winning “creativity” game justice, you’d have to be right on the demographic money in terms of who the picture is pitched to — 12 years-old.

I like the women’s world this picture creates, with Sue Jean Kim cast as a Columbia U. colleague and Ann Dowd as the sympathetic support-system neighbor. But The Friend is an uneven, not wholly satisfying experience in most ways.

It works, in that arch-action-vehicle-built on-cliches sort of way.

Love the cast, and scattered moments of this play as cutting or funny. The problem is, almost every one of those bits is in the trailer, which plays as a lot more amusing than this drag.

The Life List is as bland as its title, a movie unworthy of comparison to most any “Bucket List” movie you can think of. Well, exxcept for that dramatic climax, the one that comes before the fender-bender of an anti-climax.

Waiting for Dalí gets by on charm, settings and set-ups. It’s a pity more of those set-ups don’t deliver the “twee” the picture promises.

It’s not on a par with Scorsese or Coppola’s best statements on this history, but it’s not bad. And twice the De Niro at the same price makes it a bargain.

It’s just another sign that this generation of bottom-line-obsessed execs at the House of Mouse has lost the thread. Nobody there seems to “Whistle While You Work,” and the evidence is turning up on screen.

Labeling Jonathan Majors‘s turn in Magazine Dreams “deeply disturbing” is the epitome of understatement.

Writer-director Blichfeldt’s debut feature is more cringe-worthy than laugh-out-loud funny. She picked obvious targets. But there’s a lot to be said for having the audicity to “go there” and go gory when you’re sending up the ugly open secret that “Beauty is pain,” that it’s a trap and that it’s well past time to stop taking fairy tales with princes and “Sleeping Beauties” at “children’s story” face value.

Sure, Locked is a remake. It doesn’t hold a lot of surprises if you’ve seen the original. Yes, it has “Hollywood” touches. But Hopkins and Skarsgård and Yarovesky deliver, even if they leave out my favorite joke from the original film.

Being Maria is a film that tries and mostly succeeds in immersing us in the experience of the French actress Maria Schneider, cast and almost certainly abused and exploited in a movie that would both make her name, and ruin it, to say nothing of the psychological damage it probably left her with.

Wrestling, the wrestling underworld and the sorts of folks obsessed with it was a promising setting. The premise feels familiar enough to have worked, in some form. Not this one, though. Kids, I want my 93 minutes back.

There’s no subtext to any of this, no commentary on culture, society or politics, government, anti-vax cranks or human failings. And thanks to Viktor Csák and Krisztián Illés, who scripted this, there’s not much of a “text” either.

Aimed at kids who’ll giggle at the adorably retro robots and snicker at the profanity, “Electric State” creates cringes you didn’t know you’d cringe about.

The blunt truth is that there’s very little that’s original or even interesting in this empty rehash of many a recent YA franchise with occasional pauses for song.

Koepp and Soderbergh make this as much about mistrust and fidelity in a marriage as it is about spies-gone-wrong. They keep their film intimate and interrogatory, giving it an old fashioned theatrical feel.

Thrillers live on tension and rising suspense. This one discards suspense too early. And action comedies are, by design, fast and furious. This one, while serving up some serioulsy gory action and splatter film laughs, can’t get out of its own way.

Bridges and Davison preside over this elegy with intimate, subtle and affecting performances that lift the entire undertaking to the edge of poetry.

Only Errol Morris could make a murderer in prison come off more credible than pretty much anybody else in a true crime documentary.

The Assessment is smart and sinister sci-fi of “The Handmaids Tale” school, a striking, minimalist parable about humanity’s failings in facing an inhumane future.

Like “Cocaine Bear,” Borderline was built with “midnight movie” appeal in mind. And even if it never quite adds up to more than that, it doesn’t disapoint.

The characters are thinly sketched in, even if the leads manage something approaching two dimensional.

The “battle of wits” is pretty one-sided. We end up investing in a slow-moving, low-heat thriller that never really comes to a boil.

If the movies are going to talk about labor, human rights, cruel “leaders” and love in the world Gen Z is growing up in, the raw deal facing Mickeys 1-17 is a good place to do it.

A tale that touches and tickles and exposes us to the trials of other lives in a very different part of the world, it’ll make you glad you showed up to read the subtitles.

The shootouts are first-rate, in that “bad guys mostly miss, good guys never do” way.

Riff Raff lives down to its title, a trashy movie with a gilded cast — a cast a tad tarnished thanks to the addition of this to their resumes.

The sex and romance elements are more abrupt, perfunctory and charmless in this take. But they go for the same upbeat, heartwarming feel in the finale, which plays about the same.

Parkinson knowing this story backwards and forwards means he’s become an expert on how to tease out the suspense and tug at the heartstrings.

The film’s second half more than atones for its drifting, muted early scenes cataloguing many a romance novel/movie cliche.

Perhaps only an Iraq War combat vet would dare to tackle Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with the sort of sarcasm and gallows humor of My Dead Friend Zoe.

It’s pretty enough and just engaging enough to suggest it might just become a series pilot.

The entire deadpan affair is more reasonably amusing than hilarious, but the pauses in the action, with the screen going to black and “users” of this Amazon streaming movie commenting their complants– “That’s it?” “That’s not a movie” and “On this budget, this is what you get” — are laugh out loud funny.

Three great performers committing to their parts will always be a pleasure, and the fact that each was beloved by generations makes this dramedy an easy sell for most film buffs.

The animation is lovely, if perhaps a tad Pixar 2.0 in texture, color palette, complexity and “realism.”

Everyone is Going to Die is a generic home invasion thriller that clumsily struggles with the #MeToo “message” grafted onto it.

Hard Truths is reminder that filmmaker/artists/observers of his stripe are once-in-a-generation, one-per-culture talents.

A tale told under a cloud with unreliable witnesses, it’s a slow and soft spoken drama that too breaks the chilling spell Tøndel is trying to cast.

The world Sakamoto brings back to life . . . is as vivid as any saga of samurai, shoguns, ronin and clans.

Broome (of TV’s “The Buccaneers”) carries himself like a convincing insolent rich lout. And the car chases and brawls pass muster, even if the plot turns too-predictable-to-tolerate early on.

Director Scott Derrickson ensures the action beats are solid enough, that the production design is CGI-assisted gloomy and that the stars looked good in whatever light, fight choreography or romantic interlude they were placed.

There isn’t a laugh or light moment in this unwieldy beast of a movie. As a political allegory, it doesn’t play. As Marvel action pic, it’s sorely lacking. At least they spared no expense in the cherry blossoms dept.

A lot of the charm is still here, much of it coming from the innocent, well-mannered bear abroad, perfectly voiced by Ben Whishaw.

Make no mistake, “Soundtrack” is a real work of art, an historic film painted with extant footage, a fresh interview or two, sound from many sources and thoughts, facts and opinions from a wide range of people with a stake in not just events back then, but the urgent need to have those facts preserved and honestly served up to those of us trapped in the present.

For a movie about a tragedy and the struggle to cover it with professionalism and compassion, September 5 is more historically intriguing than compelling and in the end, an emotionally hollow experience.

The Monkey has no pace, no rising sense of urgency or suspense, no real path it’s following and little or nothing that amounts to a message.

Writer-director Wang isn’t splitting the atom or reinventing the wheel here, and the film’s variations from the tropes for this genre aren’t unique or all that revelatory. But “Didi” makes a most relatable tour guide in helping us remember what running straight into a wall as you hit your teens was like.

Succubus, a supernatural thriller re-titled “The Demoness” for video distribution, is a show reel of nudity and horror sex, of looped, disembodied voices reading lines from a “doesn’t really understand English” translation of a screenplay that was already bad at plot, suspense, action, character and dialogue.

Torres is so subtle at portraying a mother unable to show panic or righteous rage that when Eunice finally does let her guard down it’s almost shocking. It’s a great performance.

It’s too bloody, too depressing and infuriating, and Andrews makes it his business to not give the viewer much relief or satisfaction with any of it. But it’s also quite good, even if it denies us much that would give the viewer some sense of relief or justice.

If Led Zeppelin’s place in the culture outlives them, later films will plumb the depths of their “real” experience of fame, success, sex, drugs and rock’n roll. This is the coffee picture table book version.

The final verdict on Kinda Pregnant is kind of tired and kind of played, with a star who needs to find some new shtick if she’s to have another cultural moment all her own.

The goofy tone is maintained, start to finish. But that finale is the biggest dud among the various clunky set-ups that don’t produce anything funny or scary or romantic.

This one lands punches but rarely laughs, reaches for pathos where there is none and relies heavily on the sentiment that earned Quan an Oscar.

Bogota: City of the Lost is an underworld “how criminals crime” procedural with an exotic setting and fish-out-of-water characters but no pace or narrative drive worthy of its novelty.

The performances are semi-serious, at best, and longtime producer turned director/co-writer Steve Barnett’s first feature directing job staggers right up to the DMZ between awful and “OK, at least that’s over with.”

The picture, which is earning dismissive reviews in some quarters, wouldn’t work without the oddball, mismatched chemistry between Witherspoon and Ferrell, who are a walking sight gag when they’re in the same shot.

Such movies thrive on the hope they present and the big moments when that hope is either proven or sadly dashed by the finale. And this “Lucca’s World” delivers.

The images can be lovely, but the cryptic clues in the story fail to surprise when they arrive or move when they’re “explained.”

Signing on an impressive cast, writer-director Drew Hancock takes a big, roundhouse swing at “coupling” in a distracted, instant gratification craving, uncompromising and not-entirely-adult era, and at sending up a rom-com convention or two. But the best he manages is a slow roller to shortstop with this icy, rarely amusing and gory dark comedy.

An adoring portrait of a Star at 80.

Every Little Thing is a documentary as delicate and magical as its subjects.

Stewart and Yeun (“Minari,” “Nope”) do their best to animate their flesh-and-blood scenes with confusion, curiosity and attraction. But they don’t have enough screen time to make this learn-how-to-love experiment come off.