Roger Moore

With The Prosecutor we come for Donnie Yen and for the fights, and if we’re studying Mandarin, to bone up on Chinese legal arcana. Because God knows there’s a lot of dialogue to this thing. But at some point, all that starts to feel superfluous and in the end, boring.

The film, co-scripted and directed by Crane and Grylls, with Crane playing Hamlet, and narrated and somewhat driven by Oosterveen, who portrays Polonius, is a mad idea but a great gimmick, one that occasionally transcends that gimmick.

The acting is wildly uneven here, with some players either amatuerish or uncomfortable enough acting in English as to stand apart from the rest.

It’s an indie film that reminds us there’s talent out there that mainstream distributors haven’t embraced — in front of and behind the camera. And fittingly enough for the subject generation, “Meltdown” feels self-satisfied but incomplete, with a finale that plays like a pulled-punch.

Throwing somebody with one “particular skill” that doesn’t include violence, criminal or espionage subterfuge or the like? As an exercise in screenwriting problem-solving that’s almost always a fun film to watch.

As amusing as Wallace’s sputtered reactions to their predicaments always are, as cute as the work song the singing gnomes compose might be — “We break out little backs, and never stop to have a brew ’cause we’ve got battery packs!” — it’s the parade of sight gags that sell these clay-animated comic jewels.

Story matters, and this one didn’t need to be told.

Eggers indulges himself in all the tricks of the scary cinema’s trade — simple historic ffects given a digital boost in recreating an 1830s Europe of gloom, greys and shades of brown and red. The most chilling image is of the shadow of count’s clawed hand, stretching across a sleeping city, reaching for Ellen.

The finale Reijn slaps on Babygirl seems a cop-out afterthought.

The Fire Inside is a feel-good picture that feeds off our disappointment that not everybody who succeeds against the odds wholly “succeeds” against those odds, and makes us wonder if this will ever change.

In focusing on the tunes and the lyrics, Mangold makes us reconsider the head-snapping surprise of that Nobel Prize in Literature.

Just the Two of Us seems pre-ordained and predigested, with every emotion tugged at and every “trigger” and behavioral “tell” underlined so as to remove any doubt about what’s going on, who is the victim and who is to blame.

For such a short thriller, “Ferry” never manages to feel brisk or breathless or even satisfying. Lammers should be irked that they wasted such an interesting character on a movie full of “kindergarten s–t.”

Perry’s sympathetic treatment of this history — stay through the credits — is laudable, and no one can ever say he can’t turn out slick to the point of immaculate melodramas. These ladies are so smartly made-up and prepped for their closeups that it calls to attention how tidy and sterile this cinematic war is. It barely looks lived-in, much less fought.

The acting isn’t awful and the production values are passable. McDonough makes a much better villain than anybody shoved into that sort of role here. This is an origin story that lacks anything in the way of a “hook” to whet the viewer ‘s appetite for a series. Even the “Christianity” angle is soft-peddled.

Director and co-writer Jérémie Guez shows more flashes of competence than inspiration here. His film is slow and clunky, beginning with promise, ending with the last of a string of third act let-downs.

The Red Virgin is a smart and timely tragedy, coming out as cultures around the world are either embracing equality or trying to roll back the clock on women’s rights.

Kraven the Hunter’s the empty hole where a real movie’s beating heart should have been.

"The War of the Rohirrim” is narrated to death because it has to be, otherwise it would be impossible to follow. And it’s dull and simplistic as narrative, more of a “comic book” take on Tolkien than an actual adaptation of anything Tolkien would have allowed to be published.

This thriller begins at a crawl and finishes with a sprint. The foreshadowing is obvious even if the next twist rarely is.

What one is left with is a gorgeous, quiet and tragic appreciation of Callas.

The narrative may dawdle, the anachronistic music contributes to a disorienting disconnect and there may be too much of a suggestion that “love” is one-sided thing, first to last. Guadagnino’s ” romances”seem to lean that way. But Craig’s performance more than compensates for those shortcomings.

A dark comedy without much in the way of laughs, Filthy Animals serves up a string of characters, each repellent in this way or several others, no one to root for, no “message” to take to heart and with an ending so unsatisfying as to leave one slack-jawed and muttering one question.

There’s sacrifice, but little compassion and little sense of the allure of the origin story that launched a global religion. This account from an “elevated historical” space has action, but the drama in the story is mostly dull pre-ordained “prophecy,” as if that’s enough.

It’s all perfectably passable filler, a nice “escape” with the kids at the movies, with a few stunning animated effects to recommend it.

It fails on pretty much every level.

The robberies and shootouts are staged to brilliant effect. And even the over-the-top acting moments can be forgiven by the “period piece” nature of the history being told.

Huston’s made his film with such care that the lack of other surprises hinders but never hobbles it.