Simon Abrams

While “Creation of the Gods I” is not yet a personal, let alone essential, series, you can see glimpses of the epic that director Wuershan has arguably been working his way up to since “The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman,” his wildly uneven, but occasionally disarming 2010 breakthrough.

Night of the Hunted might have been a productively grim exercise if it didn’t feel like Alice’s dilemma wasn’t just a pretext for more ostensibly shocking talking points.

If you’re watching “Leo,” it should be to see Vijay show off in between animal attacks, car flips, and celebrity cameos. And even if you don’t expect much from “Leo,” it still might give you exactly what you need.

You still might get what you want from Tiger 3 during the action and musical scenes, which have their moments.

There’s no question that Neel’s the key to Salaar’s success, so it’s hard to get too upset for his reminding us with every italicized, bolded, and underlined flourish.

Khufiya isn’t a deconstruction of the spy thriller, but it does blatantly re-orient viewers to what’s often missing or downplayed in stories about spies, many of whom are presented as solitary little wheels who work for big organizations that could stop needing them at a moment’s notice.

Deliver Us stands out because its creators have struck the ideal balance of lull-inducing silences to daft genre trope punctuation. It doesn’t make much sense, or flow smoothly from one scene to the next. But boy, Deliver Us sure does what it does.

It’s not hard to see the appeal of “The Roundup: Punishment” given the technical polish and formulaic conventions that keep this series chugging along. But Lee still deserves better dialogue—“I made someone a promise. To punish you.”—and better jokes, too.

Escape finds an interesting subject in that ambiguous line, but never examines it closely enough to convey what it’s like to be invisible while in service to your own country.

Some exciting moments are scattered throughout “Consumed,” but they’re never as compelling as the movie’s initial promise.

Customs Frontline is not quite as thrilling or as relentless as Yau’s other recent successes—particularly “Moscow Mission” and “Raid on the Lethal Zone”—but it still delivers more twists and surprises than you might expect from this tip of sudsy, formulaic cop drama.

The filmmakers do what they can to compensate for their unlikely hero’s prevailing lack of charm and agency, but not even the combined forces of Lloyd Dobler and the Fab Four can bring a spike of joy to this DOA period drama.

I can only recommend “Don’t Turn Out the Lights” so much, mostly because the characterizations and the dialogue are so cliched and unlovable that it’s often hard to enjoy all the twists and turns that Fickman (“Race to Witch Mountain”) tiptoes past throughout this diverting Choose Your Own Adventure genre exercise.

It’s hard to imagine who might enjoy this deliberately slow and often punishingly slack historical drama.

When it comes to broad comedies and unabashed melodramas, I’m usually not satisfied unless the moviemakers commit to exhausting whatever genre movie clichés or tropes that they’re futzing about with. The Greatest of All Time comes close enough to that ideal and on a fairly consistent basis.

Heavier Trip mostly ambles from one formulaic twist to the next, never really straying far from conventional situations or familiar characterizations.

For the most part, the new “Bad Genius” doesn’t enhance more than it adds to its source material. It’s still a better-than-average redo, if only because it doesn’t break what never really needed fixing.

Vettaiyan may sometimes feel like the worst kind of throwback, but it still manages to coast on its star and his collaborators’ unshakable faith in crowd-pleasing movie logic. The filmmakers don’t miss a formulaic story beat nor do they skimp on what they think their audience will want from Rajinikanth.

It's a stylish and modern action movie that also features some of the year's most satisfying fight choreography and action filmmaking.

While the action scenes may be the best reason to watch "Striking Rescue," they're not the only ones. There's almost enough off-kilter energy to keep pace with Jaa's on-screen intensity.

Some genre-affirming twists and tropes throughout hint at a sharper genre parody that happens to be about a sympathetic young heroine. This isn’t that kind of movie. Sometimes, it just looks like something better.

Here, finally, is the movie that you likely wanted to see in the first place, replete with fantastic beasts, computer-generated spells, and other supernatural attractions. If you embrace this superior sequel for what it is, you’ll find a lot to like in “Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force.”

The battle scenes are grand, the martial arts fights are fleet and impressive, and the romantic drama is taken seriously enough. It’s a bit of a headache, but “Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants” still has its cornball charms.

Last Bullet puts a decisive capper on the previous movies’ action-intensive gearhead-cop saga, though it’s hard to say how much closure one might need from these characters. They’re charming enough thanks to a committed ensemble cast, but nothing about the movie’s by-the-numbers narcotics cops vs. dirty cops story demands further extension.

As it is, “The Gardener” suggests that Van Damme still doesn’t know how to both give his audience what they want and show off his range.

It’s hard enough to watch performers struggle to pump up thin material, even though the main cast’s members all seem capable of the physical business required of their roles. It’s harder to watch as the makers of this scrappy, low-budget production give away too much whenever they rely on effects-driven action or drama.

Unlike its predecessor, “Troll 2” doesn’t have enough canned dramatic or comedic incidents to make it seem particularly eventful.

The Banished, about a grieving woman’s search for her missing brother, sometimes feels like a compendium of modern horror movie clichés. That doesn’t always matter, since the movie is thick enough with dread to work despite its distracting familiarity.

Kaufman keeps things moving at a brisk pace and delivers the sort of cheesy dialogue and story beats that you should expect from this dorky, but serviceable genre exercise. He’s a better action filmmaker than he is a straight-up dramatist, as you can unfortunately tell in scenes where the protagonists struggle to emote through visually and emotionally flat dialogue scenes.

Here, the filmmakers know exactly what kind of movie their audience wants and have a better-than-average plan to deliver it. You say you want more bromantic chemistry, over-the-top action, and flamboyant, logic-defying plot twists? “War 2” delivers all of that.

Jimmy & Stiggs is a slick wallow into a cranked-up, self-destructive headspace that frequently over-compensates for what it lacks in plot and character development with sheer vigor and volume alone.

Prisoner of War may sometimes deliver what you hope for, but it’s an otherwise sloppy outing for Adkins, who by now should expect more from himself and his audience.

Unfortunately, “Back to the Past” doesn’t really stand on its own, and its creators don’t know how to offer viewers anything new.

The worst thing about “Scare Out” isn’t that it’s boring and ultimately trite, but that there’s so little of Zhang’s usual sensuousness in it.

Blades of the Guardians is a boisterous, but unhurried action-adventure that never feels sloppy despite its digressive bent. Even the perfunctory confrontations seem consequential thanks to Yuen’s knack for character-driven action.

For a while, the found-footage horror thriller “Bodycam” appears to have something to say and, therefore, a better-than-average sense of how to handle its subgenre’s tropes and tics. Then, in the last 10-15 minutes, the illusion is spoiled.

Joyless and dim, the grubby supernatural thriller “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge” often seems more like a filmed rehearsal for a movie than a fully completed feature.

This is a sports melodrama played like a Billy Joel concert, with enough well-honed showmanship and passion to make even its cheesiest qualities seem like an unpretentious celebration of Patton’s everyman.