Simon Abrams

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

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.

Sony’s latest Spidey yarn is a charmless stinker that’s only well-polished enough to make you resent the stench.

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.

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

A tepid situation comedy in indie drama drag, "The Black Sea" lacks a sense of urgency beyond a few moments of canned tension between Khalid and Georgi (Stoyo Mirkov), a haughty Bulgarian fisherman.

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

There's so much detail and such a clear sense of dramatic proportion that it almost doesn't matter that the movie doesn't resolve itself traditionally or with a full stop. You can still get a clear sense of how time moves for the workers in Zhili in "Youth (Homecoming)" without necessarily knowing what comes next.

This one stands out not only because it’s the fittingly agonizing climax to Wang’s trilogy but also for its sheer wealth of heartbreaking and totally convincing details.

Woo and Tjahjanto not only share a half-cynical, half-romantic view of violence but also likely some of the same influences. What sets them apart as filmmakers isn’t where or how much they’ve swiped but how well they synthesize their apparent pulp fiction love into something new and cinematic.

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.

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.

The funniest thing about “Daaaaalí!” is how often Dupieux succeeds at tricking you into thinking that he’s about to zig when he’s clearly ready to zag. It’s not a sophisticated bit, but Dupieux’s commitment to illogical anti-humor remains pretty disarming.

Siva rarely challenges his charming ensemble cast to step outside of their comfort zones, but he and his collaborators still deliver a lot of what you might want from an action-musical about a pack of murderous, but righteous pirates.

In his impressive debut feature, writer/director Jason Yu strikes a fine balance between character-driven and high-concept horror.

With “The 4:30 Movie,” a lightly likable coming-of-age story and romantic-comedy, writer/director Kevin Smith (“Clerks III,” “Jay and Silent Reboot”) offers low-stakes nostalgia and very little else.

What “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” lacks in subtlety, it more than compensates for in its range of feeling and the surprising depth of its feel-good reassurances.

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.

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.

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.

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

Unbound by physics or any sense of psychological realism, “Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In” is also probably the best comic book adaptation you’ll see this year, featuring a murderer’s row of Hong Kong stars like Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok and Sammo Hung, and featuring the sort of intricate maximalist production design that puts most other blockbusters to shame.

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.

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.

Kill tics off most of the essential boxes for a good popcorn flick, making it easy to resist but harder to pass up.

Goofy, over-earnest, and just good enough where it counts, Kalki 2898 AD outdistances its competition simply by digging deeper than expected into its patchy lore’s rich melodramatic turf.

This movie’s not frustrating because it’s blunt or vicious, but because its creators are only so interested in a world condemning Agnes to a dire fate. Her actions may ultimately be shocking, but her story is anything but.

Both an overstimulated multimedia lecture and an anxiety-stoking conspiracy thriller, “The Grab” urges viewers to follow the money, look at the big picture, and so on.