Stephanie Merry

Norwegian director Roar Uthaug has had past success with nail-biting suspense, as in his well-received 2015 disaster movie “The Wave.” He can’t quite replicate that same tension here, however. Watching a tiny-but-tough woman survive one danger after another tests not only our credulity, but our patience.

The romantic drama is painfully contrived and insistently predictable.

Watching “Transfomers” is like sitting in a car that’s revving its engine while stuck in the mud. It sounds like it’s getting somewhere, even though all it ever does is spin its wheels.

The big thrills and few laughs are no match for the cumbersome, convoluted story, not to mention the nonexistent chemistry between Cruise and Wallis.

If anything, Baywatch is a litmus test for how low Johnson can sink while still winning us over.

Morality is hardly the main concern of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Instead, it’s content with hackneyed romance and soaring strings.

The story takes a couple of sharp turns, ultimately revealing that it isn’t a romantic comedy after all, but a shambling drama with a few mildly amusing pratfalls.

The Bye Bye Man had a relatively modest budget, and it shows in the special effects, which tend to be more funny than scary.

The Duelist will leave viewers scratching their heads over any number of questions, but the most gnawing one might be: Why did everyone get so dressed up for a bloodbath?

Of course, action movies don’t have to be believable or poignant. They just have to get your adrenaline pumping. But the movie lacks inspiration in that department, too, owing to action sequences you’ve seen before, familiar music and dialogue so predictable you could make a game out of guessing the next line.

A few minutes of excitement can’t compensate for an hour and a half of unimaginative storytelling and dull characters.

The drama stars Edgar Ramírez as Roberto and Robert De Niro as his legendary coach. The two are exceptionally well cast, but they can’t save an unfocused jumble of a movie that doubles as a cautionary tale about the importance of film editing.

Lazy, scattershot and excruciatingly unfunny, the movie is a hazard to the very young, who might come away with the erroneous impression that movies don’t get any better than this.

It’s all so plodding and grim, echoed by the blandly percussive score by Ramin Djawadi.

Wondrous visuals only go so far, in a film that turns out to be lethally dull.

Somehow channeling the tone of both a Lifetime movie and an after-school special, Mothers and Daughters shambles into theaters oozing schlock and melodrama, just in time for Mother’s Day. This is no way to honor a beloved family member.

Dough never leaves any doubt about where it’s going or what it’s trying to say, serving up a recipe that we’ve not only had many times before, but we’ve had enough of.

On paper, this is an extraordinary story. But the careless production values blunt its impact. The score is obtrusive and generic; the sound editing makes a shootout sound reminiscent of an old Western; continuity errors abound.

With so many warmed-over jokes, you’d think that the delivery would at least be on point. But everything, including the timing, feels off.

The Bronze is just another movie about overcoming arrested development. It’s not as funny as it tries to be, but, for a few, fleeting minutes, it leaves an impression.

The Brothers Grimsby is fitfully, sometimes outrageously, funny. But Cohen’s shtick of showing the backwardness and stupidity of unprivileged characters is starting to feel lazy, not to mention classist itself.

London Has Fallen is remarkable only because of how much worse it is than its inane predecessor.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies delivers what its title promises: a little romance and some undead villains, plus a bit of comedy. But this overly busy riff on Austen’s winning formula doesn’t justify all the tinkering.

Monster Hunt has visual appeal to spare, but the allure ends there.

The plot is paint by numbers, which puts pressure on the comedy to deliver. But it doesn’t.

It takes a very special director to make scenes of sky-diving, free climbing, big-wave surfing and BASE jumping something to yawn at. Yet Ericson Core must be that kind of miracle worker, because Point Break, his update of the 1991 cult classic, is basically a cavalcade of extreme sports, but with less drama than a highlight reel.

As the movie wears on, the plot points become increasingly far-fetched, and what started out as a moody if by-the-book thriller becomes increasingly silly. All the while, Roberts gives her all.

By the Sea is dazzlingly gorgeous, as are its stars. But peeling back layer upon layer of exquisite ennui reveals nothing but emptiness, sprinkled with stilted sentiments.