Deadpool 2 likes to situate itself as the subversive alternative to so many bloated X-Men films, with all their grave self-importance and bombastic action, but even more of this go-around resembles those movies than its predecessor, and if it reads to you as more than a bit hypocritical, just know you’re hardly alone.

There’s a same ol’, same ol’ wash to X-Men: Apocalypse that wasn’t quite as apparent in the previous two entries.

The film is less effective, unfortunately, at trusting its audience to remain invested in Cedar Creek’s drama, which results in two grating subplots that become the A-plot in the draggy third act.

At its best, Paint is a delightful and occasionally awkward ode to art, and how it defines us as creators and consumers. But at its worst, Paint feels, well, pointless.

There’s just no subtlety to any of the proceedings and while there’s an argument to made in how the film’s fairly transparent about these intentions, none of it rises above being anything more than an average historical recap.

Bloodshot accidentally calls out the hollowness of every superhero movie by trying to beat them at their own game. It admits Vin is a tool to be deployed in very specific circumstances, it comes so close to self-awareness but drops the ball. In order to actually play as auto-critique, it would have to be a much better movie with a real director, but I admired the attempt, as I always do whenever Vin’s on screen.

Even its ornamental excesses become beside the point, because the core conceit actually works. Boy, those George Michael songs bind the scenes together like Gorilla Glue. Nothing says quaint like Tom Ford storefronts, too. But these things fade into something warmer, grander, and even a bit telling.

It’s a sequel full of more that still feels like less.

SpongeBob fans of all ages will find plenty to like about Sponge On the Run: It’s funny, well-animated, and high-spirited. But it’s ultimately more of a franchise play than a creative endeavor.

It’s not that the film doesn’t have an opinion on Lewan, it’s that the opinion seems to change every few scenes.

When we’re able to take a breath and spend some quiet time with the Eternals, their family dynamics and desire to reconnect resonates. And if you’re able to pay attention, the story’s implications for the scope of the MCU are tantalizing. Unfortunately, you have to sit through two-and-a-half hours of muddled motivations and facile exposition to experience any of this.

Gringo’s obvious debt to the works of Tarantino and the Coen brothers give it a tone that’s too arch and haphazard to keep the audience rooted in its characters. The movie’s sense of humor is about twenty years too old, manifesting in glib jabs at other characters’ expense for being fat, or mentally challenged, or poorly-endowed.

Nerve is refreshing and frustrating in equal measures, mining a genuinely inventive concept for some memorable, Mean Girls-esque pathos about the ways in which the Internet is changing and magnifying social structures for young people today.

What saves this head-scratching, relentlessly portentous movie is what also saves the games: the action is on point.

The experience of watching Ticket to Paradise is pleasant enough; it goes down easy, like a smooth sugary mai tai. And for a while, it’s nice to just luxuriate in the confident hands of Clooney and Roberts, two movie stars who can coast through any old crap and make it fun. But after the sugar high of the honest-to-goodness blooper reel in the opening credits wears off, the rest of it is liable to give you a hangover.

At 90 minutes, Becky should be a taut, hair-raising thriller, one that keeps you at the edge of your seat. It doesn’t. Instead, the thing ebbs and flows, peaking when you expect it to, and sinking when your heart’s just beginning to race.

It’s a big, vulgar, Saturday morning cartoon of a film, to both its benefit and detriment.

Sure, it may be a little rote, and even thrifty, but it offers more than enough yuks to earn its way into your Netflix queue.

Blonde is a maddening watch, a frustrating fumbling of the delicate tonal balance required to say what Dominik’s angling to say about his subject. It both condemns the conditions Marilyn suffered under while elevating it to the status of beautiful sacrifice. It’s demonstrably not a biopic, and yet its usage of a real-life figure, and the miseries she experienced, feels too cavalier to completely separate the two.

Windfall has all the ingredients for an unusual crackerjack thriller: a game trio of actors putting in solid work (and, in Segel’s case, tapping into previously unseen layers of menace), some stylish direction, and a cheeky noir aesthetic from the credits to Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’ brass-heavy score. But the whole thing never quite builds on its mercurial concept the way it ought to; the characters are meant to be mysterious, but instead come across as mere ciphers.

Unfortunately, what The Belko Experiment delivers in face-twisting gore and deliciously taut suspense, it lacks in insight.

Honestly, points go to Chaves and crew for trying something different with The Devil Made Me Do It: perhaps recognizing the formula was getting stale, they decided to try balancing it with some new procedural tricks. But all it ends up doing is scattering the film’s sense of identity even further; we still get the scares, but they don’t work as well, mostly because they deal with people we don’t care about.

XOXO is goofy and stickily sweet, like a mystery lollipop handed to you at an Avicii concert, but the film also lacks a strong take on the culture it’s documenting. It’s full of rave and fury, signifying nothing.

This is a mild return to franchise form, which is like saying that one of the descending plane’s jets started working again. Despicable? No. Deal-able? Sure.

While he has a decent enough handle on the right tone for the proceedings, Caruso’s action sequences are slapdash to the point of incoherence.

Wind River is also a potent example of how form isn’t always enough when the story is as frequently unnerving for unintentional reasons as it is for the horrors it aims to present.

Despite great direction by Mortensen, who also delivers a strong performance alongside Henriksen and (briefly) Linney, Falling is a repetitive and exhausting exercise that never gets around to unpacking why the audience should care about its ailing patriarch character. It’s too long and too one note for too little pay-off.

Payne’s heart might have been in the right place with this one, but the execution feels flippant at best.