The makers of Guess Who appear to have given more thought to targeting an audience than building a believable movie.

If Slingshot leaned into that character study, rather than roughly gaffer-taping it to a deep space thriller, maybe it wouldn’t stall out on the launch pad so badly.

Vromen does make some efforts at re-creating the period. But what links 1992 to the era is that it feels like part of that wave of low-budget late-Nineties Heat knockoffs, all featuring a cast that can do better but hey, a paycheck is a paycheck. 1992 is just Hard Rain with the riots standing in for a storm.

The ideas are there, hints of genius, but no one ignites them. Add Osmosis Jones to that list of universal enigmas, and, more specifically, how the Farrelly Brothers could have done so little with so much.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that just because we CAN use computer technology to give dogs goofy faces, that doesn’t mean we SHOULD.

With plot holes so large you could drive a HumVee through them, this debut film from director Shapiro is little more than a lousy hybrid, one part Fatal Attraction to two parts Lolita, only this time Humbert Humbert writes for trendy Pique! magazine and lives in Seattle (but doesn't everybody these days?).

The familiar narrative gambits of Finding Your Feet aren’t the problem here as much as their heavy-handed execution.

There are a number of cheeky winks from the filmmakers specifically aimed at Harryhausen fans; in the end, though, Leterrier's Clash of the Titans is nearly as messy an assemblage of mythic odds and ends as the original.

It works extremely well as a drunken, date-night midnighter or film-fest entry, all madcap bloodletting and surrealist non sequiturs.

I Served the King of England, like its hero, is surrounded by and infused with the potential for meaning but feels like a lark: a bit of nothing whistling past the graveyard of 20th century European history without a thing to do but indulge itself.

High Life is a meandering mess of symbolism, half-thoughts, ponderous exchanges, and emotional dead ends, one that confuses ambiguity for an unengaging air of vagueness.

It seems that no matter how many times pop chews up and regurgitates itself, it ain’t dead yet.

Ultimately, it's a very boring ride.

Sorvino and Kudrow, for whatever inscrutable reasons, seem to be having a blast with their ridiculous characters, and both shine in the loopy set-pieces and dream sequences that pepper the story.

It feels like Glander was hoping to create something that all the former kids that grew up on Cartoon Network’s wild, weird era will gravitate towards. But the reality is that it’s not as bizarre, creative, transgressive, or even just plain entertaining as the average episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, and that was about a 12-year-old cat boy and his fish friend.

From its marketing-impaired title on down, Event Horizon is a steadily churning debacle that promises much more than it can deliver and ends up drowning in a crimson sea of gore and maddeningly out-of-place steals from other, better genre shockers.

Malum has enough budget to be too glossy to be gutter fun, and adds little visually much beyond some very mediocre practical effects, often feeling that – yet again – its ambitions outstripped its grasp.

But absurdity alone won’t get the train into the depot, and no amount of quirky characters floating in their chairs or fish changing colors at random can make up for the film’s lack of real humor or meaning. Which is to say, if you’re going to make a comedy about suicide, you’d better make sure the jokes land. There are people out there who could use a laugh.

Barcelona does have brief flashes of brilliance.... For the most part, however, Barcelona offers nothing much interesting beyond some beautiful scenery and generally annoying characters.

There’s a distinct Eighties vibe that appeals to the intended demographic, especially in the bumbling school administrator Dean Bronson (Zissis, more stooge than villain), the sexual politics between the characters (they are in college after all), and the delicious bitchiness of mean girl Danielle (Matthews). Yet for all its ambition with loopy timelines and dubious scientific explanations, convenient logic only justified in pushing the plot along, the actual world-building falls flat.

A predictable affair that nonetheless ingratiates itself into your good fortunes by sheer virtue of its amiable nuttiness. It's mindless fun while it lasts.

The casting is the only part of the movie that feels genuine, with Hudson channeling the Dreamgirls emotive performance that earned her an early career Oscar.

With M3GAN out of her recognizable body for most of the film, it becomes clear how much of the success of both films comes down to Davis’ delivery.

In the end, it’s hard to rule out any Johnson movie entirely, but Skyscraper is more disappointment than summer sleeper.

Too bad their characters are comprised of nothing but the most hackneyed clichés and that it apparently never occurred to anyone to add even sketches of believable character development.

The questions being probed here about how to be vulnerable, what it takes to connect – y’know, the big stuff – aren’t exclusive to romance, after all. And I so admired the movie for having the daring and openheartedness to try to tackle the big stuff. I just wish I liked it more.

To its credit, the film rockets toward its conclusion with scant downtime. It's come and gone before you even know it, and, like death, that's a good thing.

A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.