“Godzilla vs. Kong” director Adam Wingard and a trio of credited writers probably make the right decision in treating all this with grave earnestness, which doesn’t render most of the situations, dialogue and the climactic encounter any less laughable.

A sort-of psychological, semi-erotic drama that, despite its literary pretensions, possesses roughly the intellectual heft of a perfume ad.

The star’s latest film should attract flies, all right, not with honey, but rather the stale aroma of its inane premise.

Splitting the movie into three chapters seems appropriate, since the film delivers a trifecta: overwrought, overacted, and overlong.

Those who fell victim to the over-the-top animosity directed at Amber Heard during the Johnny Depp trial – as chronicled in the docuseries “Depp v. Heard” – will alas have fresh ammunition thanks to “In the Fire,” a pretty awful starring vehicle for the actor that she also produced, a film unlikely to produce many sparks beyond those set off by the morbidly curious.

Again rated R after softening the rougher edges the last time, the body count is certainly off-the-charts high, but the action – under the guidance of stunt coordinator-turned-director Scott Waugh (“Need for Speed”) – is about as generic as these things get.

For Cox, a veteran actor with no mountains left to climb and few concerns about speaking his mind, Prisoner’s Daughter plays like one of those movies where you just take the money and run.

The kill count generally provides the requisite thrills, but everything else seems stitched together from genre clichés.

The near-four-year gap between movies does help in one respect, allowing people to largely forget what left them unimpressed about the original.

65 represents such an uninspired effort as to look like a fossil even before the credits roll.

Even for an action comedy, this Lopez-produced effort is inordinately skewed toward putting everything that might entice someone to watch in the trailer, beginning with the shot of Coolidge hoisting an automatic weapon to defend the wedding party. As hot as she is off “The White Lotus,” she can’t redeem the tiresome execution.

Most notable as a vehicle for Jason Momoa, this wannabe spectacle from “The Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence serves up lots of special effects desperately in search of a story.

Forty-four years, 13 movies and innumerable corpses later, it sounds naïve to think “Halloween Ends” will really mark the end of anything, but like the holiday for which it’s named, it’s fun to pretend. The producers do seek to bring finality to this latest trilogy featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, although that turns out to be the only original idea they conjure in an odd, tedious film.

Even taking it as a given that Disney’s animated classics will all receive live-action makeovers eventually, Pinocchio feels like an unnecessary exercise – a movie so flat that it never sparks to life, and barely feels as if it’s making the leap into a different medium.

It’s the kind of star-driven vehicle that yields obvious benefits to Netflix even if, qualitatively speaking, it doesn’t deserve to see the light of day.

Horror movies are no strangers to social commentary, or the desire to be cathartic in how they use violence. Yet the latest example of those impulses, They/Them, illustrates how tricky that proposition can be, in a story that at various times feels creepy, exploitative and preachy, without becoming particularly tense or scary.

Zombies 3 is creatively dead on arrival, reviving the concept at least once too often.

This is one of those movies that’s forgotten almost as soon as it ends, and it doesn’t even require any chemical intervention in order to erase the memory.

There’s something unfortunately symbolic about Jurassic World: Dominion, which combines old and new DNA from the near-three-decade-old franchise and generates a pretty mindless mess … an XL-sized mediocrity out of the gene pool’s shallow end.

A new do-over that can barely generate enough heat to qualify as a thriller.

Watching The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe serves as a reminder, to paraphrase Elton John’s musical tribute, that her candle burned out long before the exploitation of her ever did.

Apatow serves up some clever lines, but they're mostly lost in the overall noise and manic tone. While it's not necessarily too soon for a funny Covid movie, The Bubble labors to achieve a sought-after level of zaniness right up until the ending.

While some might find it possible to have fun by surrendering to the silliness, this bad moon doesn't quite rise even to the level of a guilty pleasure.

While ‘Resurrections’ again offers a choice between the red pill and blue pill, the one thing that won't be necessary -- especially for those choosing the home-viewing option -- is a sleeping pill.

Home Sweet Home Alone is a very odd duck -- a movie that basically replicates the three-decades-old "Home Alone" template, but in a way that feels slightly weird and ill-conceived. Dropping on Disney+ in connection with the streaming service's two-year anniversary, it's a reminder that not all well-known intellectual property ought to be let out of the house.

If the previous movie conjured a bit of excitement by eradicating everything that had transpired after the original, that sense of novelty has quickly worn off.

Two head-chomping symbiotes aren't better than one in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a mind-numbingly tiresome sequel, filled with uninspired comedy and a CGI monster fight that seems to drag on forever.

An understated, uneventful slog of a movie that feels like a misguided merger of "Gran Torino" and "Bronco Billy."

Look, we get it, people are looking for new stuff to watch, mindless escapism included. Still, in terms of any sort of inspiration or originality, "Kate," the movie, is every bit as D.O.A. as Kate, the character.

The resulting movie, however, hits the wrong notes, repeating mundane lyrics without uttering the words that keep coming to mind, which are "precious" and "pretentious."

After about 15 minutes of The Last Mercenary, though, even if you can't do splits like Van Damme the temptation is to split -- and to paraphrase "Scarface," say goodbye to him and his little friends.

Debates over LeBron James' greatness compared to Michael Jordan on a basketball court will continue in perpetuity, but "Space Jam: A New Legacy" won't fuel much chatter about who's the better actor. Putting James in Jordan's shoes, as it were, isn't a bad idea in theory, but despite the odd moment of inspired Looney Tune-acy, this reboot shoots a very loud and thudding airball.

The Forever Purge's once-over-lightly politics don't merit much of a fuss, playing like a cynical exploitation of real-world issues.

Although streaming provides a logical venue for this small-scale film, it's hard to think of a time or platform where this adaptation from British director Joe Wright ("Darkest Hour," "Atonement") would have felt satisfying, with an ill-considered, twisty finish that's a sizable letdown from the already so-so material preceding it.

Spiral, however, doesn't chart its own course as much as simply try to have it both ways. And if the title implies a certain motion, the main direction the movie heads is essentially down the drain.

A comedic dud that's aptly titled, since it makes loud noises without really needing to be seen. The one thing unlikely to be heard during this Netflix superhero spoof is a whole lot of laughter.

Me You Madness serves as a reminder that you can clearly try to be funny, and still produce something that turns out to be kind of a joke.

Strange and more than a little sad, You Cannot Kill David Arquette -- a documentary about the actor's adventures in wrestling -- derives most of its strength from the discomfort associated with watching it. As the son of a showbiz family, the fact that Arquette is reduced to this cry for attention more than anything reflects the enticing lure of the spotlight.

A small-scale movie with a throwback drive-in feel that loses nothing in an at-home setting, and based on its minimal merit, has little to lose in any event.

That seed of potential, however, sails away on a tide of numbing stupidity.

The aroma of "Cats" has yet to fade, but Universal follows it up with another animal-related stinker in Dolittle. Robert Downey Jr. produced and stars in the title role, but even charitably taking into account that this was designed for a younger family audience, talking to animals in this retelling is somehow a colossal bore.

Cats isn't quite the unmitigated disaster that some feared -- or perversely hoped -- but it's not good, delivering a mostly incoherent adaptation of the long-running musical. An eclectic roster of stars claw out a few meager moments, but as screen experiences go, this is a memory best forgotten.