Zachary Barnes

The movie has its funny moments, and even some halfway-poignant ones, but it occasionally gives one the feeling of watching a bawdy New York-set sitcom and listening to a segment of “This American Life” at the same time.

The new movie has all the oft-mocked pretension of classic art film and none of the poetry. It’s a work of almost ostentatious mediocrity.

While Mr. Holland is a clear talent with a screen presence at once natural and vivid, his character is passive to the point of emptiness. Any interesting resonances that might have been found in the idea of an actor having to relearn his own character, so to speak, are unfortunately absent here.

With “Seven Veils” Mr. Egoyan has done something more interesting, weaving a new narrative into and around the opera until the two become a dense, dark thicket of their own.

A mawkish core remains, though, and the resulting disjuncture—between the film’s indie style and its sludgy sentimentality—makes the whole effort feel phony.

A cast this good would have a hard time delivering something less than watchable, and Goodbye June is watchable, even if little of it works.

What can’t they do? Properly craft a shot, for one thing.

The movie . . . doesn’t have the smarts to embrace its own stupidity.

We live in an age choked with unfunny comedy, from winking advertisements to recycled memes to the limp quips that punctuate most superhero movies, and yet Flight Risk still stands out for the laughless void that opens up beneath its putative comic relief. It’s almost eerie.

While “Kraven,” like “Venom,” is refreshingly Earth-bound relative to the soporific celestial bombast of the Marvel films, it’s still low on real liveliness.