Sara Stewart

It was supposed to be a lark. And then, almost immediately, it went off the rails. I’m not referring to the mother-daughter vacation gone wrong in Snatched, but rather the experience of watching it.

There isn’t a moment of I’m Not Here that didn’t have me fervently wishing I wasn’t here.

It’s big, bloated, and, if you give in to the familiar charms of its jacked leading man, not unenjoyable. (Alternately, you could easily just let it induce a little nap.)

As About Alex moves toward its conclusion, it devolves into some plot resolutions that were a lot less predictable back in the ’80s.

Like the reanimated corpse of a teen queen, this would-be cult movie looks the part, but has little going on inside.

There are two things that make the flawed Mapplethorpe worth a watch: Matt Smith’s dedicated performance, and a reverent inclusion of so much of the artist’s work.

Ultimately Unicorn Store shows little appeal beyond, perhaps, a young-adult audience with a very high tolerance for glitter.

Tarzan does little to adapt to modern times. Perhaps most punishingly of all for Skarsgard’s “True Blood” fans, it fails to ever put our hero in a skimpy loincloth.

Too bad the film around Brody is fairly by-the-numbers, with a mean-spirited kicker that doesn’t imbue much originality to its imperiled-female plotline.

Most of Mortal Engines is a wearying blast of CGI and genre-cribbing (most egregiously, director Christian Rivers hired composer Junkie XL to seemingly lift, wholesale, his soundtrack from “Mad Max: Fury Road”).

Using autism as a plot device walks a fine line between empathetic and exploitative, and The Night Clerk is wobbly in that respect.

Director Ben Hickernell soft-pedals the material into a blandly feel-good dramedy. As Abigail's spirited young trainees, Alexandra Metz and Meredith Apfelbaum give Backwards their all, but can't row their way clear of its clichés.

Temple and Angarano, entertaining enough, never quite sell the idea that this goodhearted couple would be so easily transformed by greed.

Predicated almost entirely on the repeated juxtaposition of innocent girlishness and mindless violence, Violet & Daisy could still have been campy fun — instead, it wilts for lack of wit.

It feels like the brainchild of middle-aged guys (James Ponsoldt directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Eggers) who still think of Facebook as cutting edge.

The film tries to be clever by going meta: Once again, it’s rooted in Mr. Glass’ conviction that superheroes are real, and it repeatedly name-checks comic-book tropes that are reflected, languidly, in the movie’s own plot. But in the end, all it really reveals is a onetime visionary’s glass now half — no, let’s go with mostly — empty.

Action flick machismo suffers an identity crisis in Stuber.

The film strains credulity as it hurtles toward its conclusion.

A well worn trope that’s tough to elevate beyond eye-roll level.

Bad Samaritan plays like an unambitious episode of “Black Mirror,” low on techno-savvy but enhanced by the always-compelling David Tennant and Robert Sheehan, an Irish actor best known for his role on the British series “Misfits.”

In reality, it’s a tiresome parade of gory and sexist cliches that are, frankly, insulting to a cast that includes Laurence Fishburne, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Leslie Bibb and Clifton Collins Jr.

To be fair, Ferrell is almost always at least mildly funny, even when doing something as lame as skateboarding into a power line, but Wahlberg’s cowboy shtick just seems half-hearted.

Twi-hards, Beliebers and Whovians have nothing on the cult of Jane Austen, whose beribboned ranks are ripe for satire. Unfortunately, this scattershot comedy only occasionally hits the mark.

Concert sequences are engaging, though I was disappointed not to see any animated flourishes.

Fans of the cartoon should stick around for Lewis’ after-credits sequence, which introduces a dastardly rival band. It’s the movie’s best scene, setting up a sequel we’ll never see.

Second films in trilogies are often the toughest to pull off. Maybe Green’s final chapter, Halloween Ends, will redeem what he’s done here, which ultimately feels like very little progress at all.

A surprisingly tone-deaf combination of two wildly different stories that simply don’t work in concert.

Director Tom Harper (“War Book”) defaults too often to gotcha scares, which is disappointing.