When Lawrence plays to the cheap seats, the film comes to life. When she’s the blank slate expected of a spy thriller, it falters, because it doesn’t play as though she’s concealing or deceiving. It plays as though she’s empty

Compared to a lot of other Adam Sandler movies, Hubie Halloween is watchable without being actually very good.

Things move at such a breakneck pace and the film is so manic tonally that Rough Night winds up feeling more like a series of vignettes than an actual movie.

Peninsula combines components from I Am Legend, Mad Max, and the Fast & Furious series for a nonsensical joy ride that, while entertaining, lacks the sharpness of its predecessor.

While The Call of the Wild is silly, and never completely pulls the wool over the eyes with respect to the CGI, there’s enough meat on the bone to gnaw on before burying it in the backyard.

Eve’s backstory proves relatively trite, and the character is given nothing to connect with before or after she sets off on her quest.

While the film’s intentions are noble, and its story worth retelling, it struggles throughout to lend a lasting weight to its straightforward plotting.

It’s great to see Arnie and Linda Hamilton in the saddle again, and Davis and Reyes are welcome additions to the cast, but it’s probably time to terminate this franchise for good, and be thankful they went out on this serviceable note.

The Monster is worth watching for Kazan and Ballentine.

Gray’s many fans will probably love Armageddon Time, and it may even win over some more neutral viewers who respond to his decidedly non-nostalgic look at a pivotal (and not especially promising) moment in U.S. history. But anyone who has found his movies less articulate than the ideas behind them will only get occasional respite here.

With its wacky space shit, off-kilter gore, creepy atmospherics, and hammy breakdown, most of which happen all at the same time, Colour Out of Space is, inarguably, one hell of a trip. It’s just not a trip that everyone is going to enjoy taking.

For its unconventional structure and occasional flights of fancy, The Glorias all too often reads as a bog-standard biopic more interested in recounting history than telling a story.

Better than My Super-Ex Girlfriend, sloppier than Hancock, it’s nothing dynamic but fun all the same. And frankly, not every superhero flick or comedy needs to be the Super-person of its domain. Likability is sometimes an underrated super-power, and Thunder Force is bursting with it.

Murray and Wever are as attuned to their roles as Smith is awkward and miscast in his. But perhaps that’s an appropriate fit for Harron and Turner’s divisive-yet-gripping take on this story: at the end of the day, the Manson women are deeper, more fascinating, and more worthy of exploration than the insecure man that connected them.

Towards the end of the film, Bale’s character embarks on a monologue about the “power of kindness” and the “tapestry of life” that is so wildly heavy-handed it almost veers into parody. Perhaps it wouldn’t feel so hollow, so blatantly fraudulent and insincere, if it were written by someone else, but we’ll never know.

Watching John Wick: Chapter 4 sometimes felt like watching an above-average assembly cut. At an unwieldy two hours and 49 minutes, your eye will immediately be drawn to what cuts through the noise — and there are plenty of these moments. But “moments” does not a well-told “movie” make.

Underdeveloped characters and a mishandling of their queerness make the film feel both exploitative and disappointingly flat – and while all the whimsy, color, and dance-punk needle drops are welcome, they’re only brief distractions from Drive-Away Dolls’ speedbumps.

McDonagh seems to have more to say in this film, but it’s lost among the narrative and stylistic inconsistencies.

In fits and starts, the film matches the fire of its lead performance. Miles Ahead is far from a traditional, boilerplate music biopic, for better and worse alike.

To watch it is to open a pizza box that’s been jostled a few too many times. Inside, the cheese clings to the cardboard, sauce splashes against the sides, and pepperonis drip with grease. It might be sloppy, but you’ll be damned if it don’t still taste good.

The performances are so strong in Other People that they just about make up for the weak storytelling. Maybe “weak” isn’t the best definition for writer/director Chris Kelly’s debut feature film, but its structure definitely pales in comparison to all the effort given on screen.

It’s refreshing to see a buddy movie reclaim some of the grit and emotional connection of bygone decades, but for all of its killer fight sequences and shootouts, Stuber just isn’t all that funny after a while.

This Ben-Hur is closer to an ‘80s actioner about two men who once loved each other parting ways, only to reunite and settle their differences through vicious means.

The problem is that something never adds up to much of anything. Even thematically, the whole picture feels all over the place, oscillating hazily between half-baked meditations on man vs. nature and unfinished portraits of family values. Even so, Saulnier’s scope and visual endurance is admirable, to say the least, and it’s clear that he could do something this brazen eventually with a much stronger script.

How To Be Single doesn’t break much at all in the way of new ground, but it’s a decent walk over well-trodden territory.

The film’s belief in and commitment to the simplicity of its premise takes it a lot farther than it might otherwise go.

It’s handsomely made, and Erivo carries the film on her shoulders, but its movements are too clumsy to give Tubman the actualization she deserves.

The faults of Gemini are in its screenplay, and Katz’s inability to sustain interesting character dynamics and maintain a consistent narrative. As a director, Gemini is easily Katz’s most confident outing to date.