Roger Moore

The over-the-top violence is funny in the early scenes. But it turns more and more abrupt, more over-the-top and more sadistic the longer the story unfolds.

Truth be told, the world didn’t need a third “Baby Assassins” movie. All writer-director Yuko Sakamoto did was make a longer, more bloated, more character-cluttered version of the first two films.

The cold-bloodedness of it all suggests a harder-nosed thriller of the “Hell or High Water” school was what Tost had in mind. But he tries to soften that up with sentiment, and the plot and tone never coalesce around that compromise.

War of the Worlds is bad, almost laugh-out-loud bad, and that “almost” is the killer here.

Last Goodbye’s value as an “Around the World with Netflix” taste of another culture is limited.

The film may be commenting on the cushy way the rich and famous coped with Covid. But it’s insufferable at depicting insufferability.

The Pickup never amounts to much more than a take-it-or-leave-it action comedy.

With a striking setting, menacing music scoring gloomy shots of bulls running through swampland in the fog and an up-close look at this unusual variation of bullfighting (it’s barely explained), “Animale” puts us in the mood for a fright even if it’s slow to deliver one.

The script isn’t much and the direction — save for a spirited high school bake sale food fight — is lackluster.

Cregger, like Jordan Peele and Robert Eggers, knows that smart horror is the best horror. And that any horror movie that starts arguments and conversations the moment the credits roll is a winner.

Familiar Touch is a simple, documdrama-real film of frank honesty and sensitivity about dementia and adjusting to life in Memory Care.

Mikael Marcimain’s direction of the action beats is never more than passably exciting. And an honest take on “An Honest Life” might be that everything between those robberies, riots and burglaries just reminds you that there aren’t enough robberies, riots and burglaries to keep one awake through all that tedious voice-over narration.

Kelman’s direction of his script highlights its more arch or even ludicrous/risible elements. The pacing is too sedate to give the narrative urgency and race past the clunkier moments. And the performances aren’t any more subtle than the sometimes absurd action beats.

It’s a reminder of when civility, fair play and principles mattered, of when decent people of influence like Sullivan didn’t think twice about standing up to myopic bigots like Georgia Gov. Herman Talmadge.

It’s not wholly coherent. But anyone in the mood for a quirky, absurdist farce with full frontal nudity, gunplay and a lost hero trying to fulfill his pregnant girlfriend’s deal-breaker request should check out Kill the Jockey (simply “El Jockey” in Argentina). Because surreal and screwy film fare like this is rare, with or without subtitles.

Mixed bag or not, films like “Keroauc’s Road” feed on the novel and the novelist’s mythology. And when they’re on their game, they get at what Kerouac’s sensory-overload novel tapped into that is quintessentially American — mercurial restlessness, eagerness to live a life less ordinary and that core realization that staying in one place — even a New York, New Orleans or Los Angeles — is no way to get to where you want to go.

There are maybe 20 minutes worth of jokes, sight-gags, slapstick bits and innuendo in those 85 minutes.

If The Bad Guys 2 isn’t as hilarious as “Bad Guys 1,” it’s still got lots of giggles provided by a steller, comical voice cast providing a big part of the soundtrack to some genuine Tex Avery style eyeball-popping, gonzo, in-your-face animation.

Brie and Franco know how to find their way from grim to funny. The laughs come in their deadpan underreactions and freaked-out over-reactions at their plight.

The execution of writer-director Seth Worley’s doesn’t turn up pathos or laughs. And the kids? Well…

She Rides Shotgun is a compelling, gripping B-movie ride, a picture that reaches for highfalutin “Trojan Horse” allegories when what it does best is a lot more obvious.

Nostalgia only gets you so far, and whatever “feels” folks cling to from the original “upset the uptight golf world” original, it’s not enough to float this bloated corpse of a comedy.

Watching unhappy, uncertain children grow in confidence as they learn, bond and then run loving, yipping, straining sled dogs is incredibly touching.

A rom-com that almost goes for it and almost comes off before losing its nerve.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, what we see on the screen is gloriously over-designed joylessness.

It gives Buckley fans lots of the music and some of the details and color of the life that Buckley lived.

Casting real musicians to actually play the work in question may have been a gimmick, but it lends the picture an authenticity rare for a screen comedy.

It’s kind of a mess, but an ambitious one hitting on themes Aster’s fans will recognize as his favorites. And as Aster scores points on conspiracy-obsessed America, cultish America, gun-fetishizing America, virtue signalling America and the limits of “back the blue,” he’s pretty much earned the right to be heard out, if not the benefit of the doubt.