Soren Andersen

Its theme of white man as savior of black Africans is, to say the least, highly anachronistic in these days and times.

Phoenix goes off the rails in the second half when Kinberg piles fight scene atop CG-enhanced fight scene, backed by Hans Zimmer’s oppressive pounding score, until the picture devolves into a chaotic mess.

Director Scott Cooper really lays it on thick. He brings no modulation to the horror elements in his frightfest. Everything is gloom, gloom, gloom. And doom.

By the time the big reveal comes along, it’s almost beside the point. The audience, so numbed by the gore, is likely to barely care who indeed did it.

This is a production from producer Michael Bay, master of the cinema of CG run amok. And all we helpless mortals can do is cower and duck as those 3D fists fly.

This “Naked Gun” tries hard, but the magic simply isn’t there.

[Hillcoat’s] an expert in creating and sustaining gut-twisting tension. Good qualities all, but used here in the service of a story that is truly unappetizing.

Overlong set-piece action scenes pitched in the key of chaos, full of running and screaming and a whole lot of falling down, ultimately turn “Pikachu” into a wearying slog.

There’s nothing special about any of this, but as a generic thrill machine, Plane certainly delivers the goods.

Good fun, and all that, but its flawed central performance ultimately makes “Solo” a distinct disappointment.

Action scenes are so chaotically edited it’s often difficult to figure out who’s bashing and crashing into whom.

For his live-action debut, Knight slips into Bay boomboom mode.

It’s colorful. It’s predictable. And also quickly forgettable. Genuine wonderment is in short supply in Wonder Park.

A confused mishmash of plot elements featuring overwrought extraneous characters. Kids likely will love it. Their parents will just have to grin and bear it.

Hughes’ handling of the material is unfailingly serious but the picture’s tendency to stray into the ridiculous robs it of the majesty the director so clearly hoped to achieve.

Very, very late in ECCO’s two-plus hour running time, answers come. It’s a long wait for clarity. From the viewer, much patience is required.

In the central role, Miles Teller is impressively bulked up, but there’s a flatness in his performance. It’s a dogged, rather than an inspired, portrayal. The best work is done by Aaron Eckhart, who plays Vinnie’s trainer, Kevin Rooney.

Zombies. Nazis. Clichés. Insane violence. Overlord delivers a whole lot of much too much.

All of it feels warmed over, reprocessed … and, yes, confused.

Criminal has a strong supporting cast, but the big names aren’t doing much beyond the bare minimum to qualify for a payday.

[Neeson's] impressive physicality, (a tower among men), his rumbly basso-profundo voice and his impressive demeanor give him a natural gravity that allows him to rise above the most absurd material. And he does exactly that in The Commuter.

It’s Honeyglue, a romantic drama, which fittingly, given that title, is sticky with sentimentality.

Many decisions...make “Batman v Superman” a joyless slog.

Elba, always a powerful presence in whatever role he takes on, does the best he can in Beast, but the threadbare nature of the plotting and dialogue ultimately defeats him.

A more disagreeable collection of cynical, backstabbing, self-aggrandizing, shallow, vicious and vile specimens of humanity gathered together in a single motion picture would be difficult to conceive of.

Once it gets going, Black Adam feels like a continuous closed loop of destruction where the moments of mayhem blend darn near seamlessly one into the other. And those special effects look incredibly cheesy.

When words fail in The Last Knight, the crunching and crashing and KLANKing of the special-effects scenes take up the slack. Punishingly overwrought in every aspect, Last Knight is a KLANK! KLANK! KLUNKER.

It’s a mishmash in which characters are thrown from dimension to dimension and from dream to dream. The main character, played by Bannister, is forever baffled as to what his actual reality is. His bafflement is shared by the viewer.