Filled more with character studies than narrative intrigues, The Merry Gentleman also provides only sketchy personality details and background information.

Part metaphysical treatise, part educational primer, and part dangerously goofy self-help manual for the New Age set, this bizarre and not unentertaining documentary strives mightily to teach the lay audience everything there is to know about quantum physics in 108 minutes.

Talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

No matter whether the cast is male, female, or somewhere in between, the absence of a well-constructed story, particularly when the humor goes south (literally), will doom any movie to quick obscurity, no matter how many d**k or p***y jokes get told.

It was sweet, but it should have been better.

The sadness harbored by all the film’s characters is evident. Their passions, however, stem from ginned-up claptrap about love and hate being opposite expressions of one overwhelming emotion which can also substitute for each other.

Either you like your movies to be, well, movie-like: imitations of life, with musical accompaniment and artificial lighting and tracking shots and looped dialogue; or you like them to be re-creations of life, sans the artifice. The King Is Alive clearly falls into the latter camp.

The film isn't going to catapult Butcher to international stardom, but he holds his own in it and helps to sell its curious logic.

Tokyo Ghoul: S is at its best when it embraces its high weirdness (Shu setting up a cannibalistic threesome is hilarious) but it's never sure what it wants to be.

Mighty Aphrodite may take its thematic and structural cues from Greek tragedy, but it's second-rate Borscht Belt all the way.

Never rings true. It's a dramedy whose blend of melodrama and humor is awkward and incongruous, leaping between the two modes like a fat frog jumping lilypads.

Once again the title pretty much says it all.

But being Charlie – what’s going on inside this angry kid’s head, what made him turn to drugs, and finally turn away – that is more elusive. And that is the film’s great disappointment: that something so clearly conceived in earnestness and from real-life, first-person experience ends up feeling, well, kinda fake.

The laugh-out-loud jokery is in short supply, and Reynolds and Reid's kicky charm only goes so far. Bluto Blutarsky, we miss you.

Forgotten or subject to overkill as they are here, veterans still get the shaft.

Watching this all-too-predictable romantic comedy/drama, my overwhelming thought was this: Given all the great filmmakers and film projects that can't find funding, how did this effort secure its reported $35 million for production?

The film is ultimately unsatisfying, not as laugh-out-loud funny as it promises to be in the opening.

Oh, how I rued my failed foreign-language skills in the opening moments of Gemma Bovery. Who wants to read subtitles when a French baker is rolling out such pliant, such pokeable, such heavenly looking dough?

The story never drags – it’s too frenetically paced for that – but it’s still kind of a drag.

Can this be the end of Death? If only.

A throwaway film that in all the worst ways give summer movies a bad name: told by idiots, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing but first-weekend grosses.

There’s not a sympathetic character in the bunch.

Drained of much of its presumed power by a distinct "been there, seen that" vibe.

Inelegant but not uninteresting, Ramen Heads is a bronze contender at best.

The camp in Malignant is fun, but if only the camp was all the film needed to be as monumental as Wan’s previous horror entries.

The pat defense is that Skinamarink is not for conventional horror audiences, and that's obvious, but at the same time it feels overextended as a conceptual piece.

Just sputters along, albeit pleasantly, while revisiting the realm of the abundantly familiar.

It's not that First Knight is a terrible, embarrassing piece of junk; it's just a film of stunning averageness and not really good or bad enough to make any kind of a lasting impression which, depending on your point of view, may be even worse than a total failure.

As a character-driven narrative, it's a hollow beast, too often pedantic, that smacks of good-guy agitprop, shrill when it should be subtle and shrieking when a whisper would be far more unnerving.

August Rush is a rather prosaic, oddly anxious, contemporary take on Dickens' Oliver Twist, with Williams – in nasty-man twee mode, a newish one for him – thrown in for bad measure.

The thing is, the music that Jed, Shelby, and their respective bands make is actually pretty good. The performance footage is polished enough that it looks like it could be plucked from a TV show like "Nashville."

The script never knows whether it wants to be reverential or referential, and ends up being a hodgepodge of cameos and flashbacks.

Bottom line: costumed Goku and Chi Chi cosplayers may argue the finer points of this adaptation, but it is fairly dazzling it its own overextended, futurist-teenpulp fashion, and Chow makes a vastly more entertaining Roshi than he did a King.

Told from younger brother Doug's point of view, Phoenix's voiceover spans the length of the film and winds up making the images that unfold practically redundant.

Mutant Aliens would have been brilliant as a short; there's just not enough story for a full-length feature, so the film seems strung together.

Warmed my heart about as much as the cold cream Angèle slathers all over her wrinkling clients.

A clever idea that never stretches beyond just that -- a caterpillar that never blooms into a butterfly.

Dobkin, in his directorial debut, seems ready and willing to ply the conventions of film noir in the harsh Montana daylight, but Clay Pigeons never manages to reach the crucial suspense plateaus that noir demands.

Ultimately, Dark Blue feels roughly a decade too late with its back story of the Los Angeles riots. Gates’ department had its share of dirty blues, to be sure, but that hasn’t been notable since the smoke cleared back in 1992.

The blood and gore quotients of Punisher: War Zone are extremely high and are sure to sop the appetites of the series' fans and virtual bloodlusters.

It’s hardly the most original teen comedy we’ve seen, but, again, Schaffer, working from a script by himself, Alec Berg, and David Mandel keeps things borderline sweet throughout.

Submergence – despite much lovesick gravitas from its two leads – never quite coalesces into the epic romance that it should. It fizzles when it should ignite, leaving the viewer with a palpable yearning for something other than a shrug.

There is plenty here to enjoy for beach bums and fans of bikinis and six-pack abs, but others are likely to find themselves hopeless wet blankets.

But for what it is, I think it's pretty okay. It's not going to win an Oscar or anything. But I liked how it was actually made for tween girls.

The underlying narrative theme of sons who become greater – and better – men than their fathers is underdeveloped. Meanwhile, the animation feels oddly dated, as the decision to give visual continuity to three and a half decades of storytelling re-enforces this as fan service.

The next time he (Baumbach) attempts something similar, he might take care to lessen the bile and amplify the heart.

Stylistically thrilling but ultimately tedious French import.

Considering that the whole point of the Slender Man mythos is that it is so adaptable and mutable, to pour it into the most generic of formats is just lazy. Compared to the thematically linked and superior "The Mothman Prophecies" (where Richard Gere chases a pre-digital urban myth), it's the most generic choice imaginable, and stinks of focus group thinking.

For such a deft wit, Jane Austen sure has inspired some nitwitted entertainments. Actually, the Austen influence here is negligible.

Gray's signature long takes and overhead shots are in evidence and add to the film's fatalistic tone, and one rainy car-chase sequence is a real keeper. But, overall, it's impossible to shake the film's gloomy sense of eternal repetition.

For a film that is sold on the image and idea of a big, singing, dancing crocodile – who is otherwise mute when not belting out his tunes – there seems to be a real disinterest in any notable sight gags or physicality to Lyle as a character.

Unlike "Manhattan," this perfunctorily conceived film about an unhappy woman starved for romantic and personal fulfillment never lives up to its brilliant production values.

Just doesn't have it.

Hope doesn't float in this film so much as it rises to the surface and then stagnates.

Sometimes it works, but more often than not, it's just cute. In the editing, the characters, general style and attitude, Crowe seems to have drawn heavily from Slacker for inspiration, but in his insecure reliance on traditional narrative and Hollywood convention, he undermines his more interesting experimentations. As a result, Singles winds up being a date movie with pretensions.

The characterizations are sincere, but overly familiar.

Unfortunately, like so many movies that celebrate a historical hero, Children is plagued by an overblown sense of its own importance.

Even this director and the talents of three wonderful actors can't save this weak script.

Narnia is nearly saved by those immensely likable and altogether stiff-upper-lippy Pevensie kids.

An essentially toothless affair, poking fun at American imperialism and its attendant cluelessness while never illuminating much beyond the obvious.

Half the time the movie wants to be balls-out weird, and it is. But the other half – the half with the good guys – is plodding procedural fare.

Bottom line: Jonah is strictly for kids suffering from rescinded television privileges or adults seeking a nap in a cool, dark environment that reeks of stale popcorn.

Where has all the fun science-fiction filmmaking gone?

Pretty to look at, tamely racy, and fairly fluffy, despite its two-hour running time.

While nowhere near as mawkish at the abysmal "Pay It Forward," K-PAX nevertheless seems somehow unfocused and meandering; it's Spacey-light.

It’s as if Hot Fuzz was under the cultural and chemical influence of Sixties and Seventies psycho-pharmaceutical mind expansion conspiracy fantasies rather than Eighties action flicks and real ale.

Liberal Arts is not unlikable: There are some intelligent observations about how humans woo, and the film is so suffused with sincerity you want to give it a pat on the head just for trying so hard.

Rather than rising above the fray, Madea is very much the fray itself.

This is, disappointingly, a long way from being a Studio Ghibli classic. The essential plot may be archetypal, but it’s no "Kiki’s Delivery Service."

Not a man, but the romanticizing of him. A lot of jive-shit.

The reality-show producer played by Walken is described by his assistant (Suvari) as having the attention span of a "ferret on speed." I'm sure he would love Domino.

Burton and his writing team waste the opportunity of a sequel to fix the errors of the past, and instead double down on the most problematic elements of the original.

Director Miner (Friday the 13th, House) executes some of the scary scenes competently (one in which Sands gives his male host the ultimate French kiss is grossly memorable), but he never takes the material beyond its rather limited parameters.

Alexander's script considers context anathema, leaving us to wonder, among other puzzlers, why these two jerks are friends to begin with – and, perhaps, on what bad breakup or neglected childhood one may blame the film's dispiriting misanthropy.

You could do worse.

While director Bill nails the sheer spectacle of squads of SPADs dovetailing in flames into the wide blue yonder, the earthbound action (much as it was in another sputtering epic, Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor") is strictly laissez faire.

The performances are all solid, although the screenplay frequently bogs down with the complexity of palace intrigues and plots that could have been rendered more consumer-friendly.

A syrupy fable about love and family? What happened? Did they lose their nerves? Or did some meddling studio executive pull them back before they went too far out on a limb? The comedy gods hate a coward, so let’s hope it’s the latter.

For a comedy, The Sitter is frightfully spare on full-bodied laughs.

When Murray's around, he's the only hot dog in the room.

All I know is that guys are strongly advised to avoid this on a first date.

Unfortunately, Deneuve’s performance is not enough to elevate On My Way from the dredges of narrative tedium. Bettie may have gotten her groove back, but, in the end, the price the audience pays isn’t worth it.

Much of the original film's geniality – and all of its pro-environment stumping – has gone missing; what we have instead is a watered-down likeness that curiously turns disaster flick in its too-scary third act.

Bob Dylan might have been wrong when he sang that "there’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all." His new movie, although a complete narrative mess, is a thoroughly Dylanesque escapade.

Snail-paced and ultimately dull creepy-crawl.

There's a lot of angry prejudice toward women playing soccer in the film, and a semi-fun "Footloose"-esque scene in which Gracie petitions the school board for the freedom to play. But melodrama reigns supreme as the film disintegrates into movie-of-the-week predictability.

Suffers from a persistent case of narrative backsliding that only serves to make older members of the audience long for the days of the dwarves, beauties, and poisoned apples of Disney-yore, and younger ones squirm in their seats.

El Chicano is also a surprising miss from Raúl Castillo, the actor tasked with being the face of this would-be franchise. His talent as a performer is above reproach – his portrayal of the abusive father in "We the Animals" was one of the best performances of 2018 – but here he comes across as stiff and humorless in a movie that needed something to offset its own sense of gravity.

If A Thousand Words' formula seems familiar, that's because writer Steve Koren has tripped down this quasi-metaphysical path before in "Bruce Almighty" and "Click."

As out-of-whack and sophomoric as all this is, the movie sustains a rudimentary action interest.

Inside has all the surface trappings of an arthouse hit, but don’t look too closely – there isn’t much there.

Unaccompanied Minors isn't likely to become a frequent flyer but it could strike a chord among children of divorce for many holiday seasons to come.

What do you get when you mix Adam Sandler with SPAM gags, a trained vomiting walrus, a wall-to-wall soundtrack of calypso covers of 1980s pop hits, and Rob Schneider in native-Islander brownface? You get a pretty crappy movie, but for one major mitigating factor: Drew Barrymore.

It’s a shame, with this much talent in front of and behind the camera, a more precise picture couldn’t emerge from material so obviously close to the heart.

Rollicking is the term that best sums up Plunkett and Macleane, not in itself a bad thing, just, I think, not a very good thing.

Lack of imagination or subtlety.

For all its hot button, au courant moral messaging, Joe Bell is preaching to the converted and unlikely to draw in the type of audience that actually needs to hear its pleas for kindness in a mean and wild world.

The further director Vicente Amorim pulls out, the more exciting the film becomes; but he never really takes advantage of the supernatural overtones that swim around the edges, or the unique cultural background of Brazil's massive Japanese diaspora.