It should be impossible to turn this kind of raw material into such an interminable slog, and yet somehow writer and director Marc Abraham...managed to do just that.

Yes, Irresistible is a farce about political theater, and an often painfully funny one, but it’s also a deeply unnerving manifesto on the pundit economy, campaign financing, and the narcissism, ego, and collective amnesia it all fosters.

The steam runs out fast with one generic chase after the next, forgettable gunplay, and gory violence. Its ham-fisted double crosses and half-baked moral dilemmas amount to little.

There was a point, midway through the film’s major third-act climax, CGI beast raging against CGI beast, when a thought came to this humble critic: “This shouldn’t be boring.” And yet this is what happens, when there’s no emotional weight to the stakes, and the characters themselves feel as hollow as the earth they live on.

Blair Witch is disappointing on multiple levels, all of which have nothing to do with the franchise.

There are just enough goodies here for parents and well-prepared kiddies alike. The nifty VFX, performances, and modern updates are what make this remake an easy-enough treat.

Mortal Kombat II ends with a pretty clear set-up for a third movie, which is already in development, and fingers crossed it'll do what this movie did: Improve on what came before, take the piss out of itself whenever possible, and never forget, at the end of the day, the reason people want to watch movies like this in the first place.

Winstead may be a bonafide action hero, but the world around her just isn't interesting enough.

Fury of the Gods tries to recapture what made the first Shazam! a disarming breath of fresh air, but it just can’t quite do it.

It may exhaust you, it may offend you; it may guide you through Hell into something more revelatory. And how you receive the film may depend greatly on how you feel about the man who made it.

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.

There are some marginal but still noticeable stylistic improvements in the sequel. John M. Chu (a veteran of music videos and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never) brings a peppy energy that Louis Leterrier’s first film lacked, especially when showing off the flashy spectacle of the Horsemen’s almost-superheroic magic abilities.

The strong atmospherics and performances aren’t quite enough to keep In the Tall Grass from feeling like, well, wandering through a bunch of tall grass.

For any parents reading this — it might not be the best film of the year, but you're going to be able to watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie more than once without losing your dang mind.

It’s impressive what Jeunet is able to pull off with a shoestring budget, but the ideas and characters underpinning his visual imagination leave a lot to be desired.

At the end of the night, The Addams Family is a comedy, and a good one at that, delivering the kind of morbid humor that reminds us why we’ll always accept their invitations.

Rebecca is a psychologically rich story with so much to pick at and probe. That means decisions need to be made on where to focus, and Wheatley bats about .500 in that respect.

Though the ensemble is too large, Frozen Empire does successfully find a decent balance between the multiple generations featured here, letting the younger cast drive most of the action without leaving the older characters on the sidelines

When Joy lets us peek in these tiny, intriguing corners of her speculative world, Reminiscence comes alive the most. Otherwise, the rest of it fades like a memory you’d just as soon forget.

It’s about as effective as a Walgreens Halloween display, where any terror derives from uninspiring shock value, and given that each and every pop-up scare can be seen from over a mile away, the movie fails in that respect, too. It’s exhausting even.

Trank’s had to suffer a lot to get to make his art, and Capone is one of the most bravely singular and uncommon films you’ll see this year.

Animal shelter/prison facility parallels become too heavy-handed, and performances packed with emotion give way to on-the-lam clichés.

It’s not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but The Meg is a perfect outing for a balmy late-summer evening at the movies. It’s a little preposterous, a little moving, and a lot entertaining.

Phillips’s sequel proves to be a muddled love story that falls apart due to its inability to express anything thematically substantial or original.

Although its leads find the odd moment of charm together, even Kidman in what’s somehow the worst-shaded part of all three, The Upside fumbles far too often when it attempts to enlighten or edify its audience.

While Kevin Smith may never appear on a list of great filmmakers, his movies do understand something essential about getting older and growing up. Sometimes, we all just need to go back to the well.

Wolves is more affecting than it should be by virtue of its cast, who deserve better, but the drama is so schematic that their Herculean efforts leave little impact.

For the majority of its runtime, They/Them seems to entirely forget its pretense of being a horror movie, with long stretches devoid of any sense of tension at all. If its drama was interesting then this wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, but as it stands, the sharp turn into slasher promised by its title feels like a last-minute remembrance in a series of plodding vignettes, something unfortunately furthered by how incredibly toothless the film’s climax comes to be.