In the end, the fine acting cannot salvage the uninspired material that fancies itself cutting-edge yet is paradoxically dated. Madeline’s Madeline might have been innovative in the mid-’60s, but its novelty has long expired.

As fascinating and well-crafted as it is, The Public Image Is Rotten is ultimately a vanity project, authorized by Lydon and his manager and meant less as an unvarnished journalistic documentary but as a burnishing of, well, his public image.

It’s not a great movie, but it’s a good reminder of why Rockwell’s admirers have happily stuck with him for decades.

Part Two, Walk With Me Awhile, is overstated and adds nothing story-wise short a few snippets that could have been incorporated into its predecessor.

The contrast between young and old, life ending, life continuing, is leaned on too heavily.

While she is a fascinating contemporary performer—one who certainly merits introducing, as many dance aficionados don’t even know who she is—this extended cinematic look at Molina might have been more effective as a documentary short.

This is a movie that ripples with sublimated fury well before the bloody and shocking long take that ends everything without much of an answer. But it is also a movie that leaves too much unsaid and takes too long to end up nowhere.

Charlie Hunnam as Parisian safecracker Henri “Papillon” Charrière and Rami Malek as his pal-in-hell, counterfeiter Louis Dega, were sorely in need of richer characters written (or directed?) with more complexity, coloring, backstory, tics, or whatever might humanize them more.

Marking her feature debut, Frizzell’s direction is competent, but her screenplay, which is semi-autobiographical, is a series of vignettes that narrowly add up to a narrative.

Unfortunately, Bryan's case quickly turns into a dense, confusing slog through a bewildering array of newspaper headlines, TV news clips, splashy graphics and talking heads.

While this culinary-themed doc offers a little kitchen sizzle and artistically plated tastings (a delicious shrimp dish sautéed, a daring soy sorbet, etc.), the film has more of a scattershot, look-at-me Facebook feel.

Rather than working so hard to steer viewers’ emotional reactions, Wardle could have trusted in the provocativeness of his material and endeavored to provide broader context for this entrancing tale.

The unrelenting gloom and oppressive atmosphere verge on the exploitative.

The film’s disparate elements add up to less than the sum of its parts, and this would-be fiery take on the failures of the American higher-education system never really ignites.

It’s a completely new crew, on both sides of the camera, dispensing warmed-over chills.

For fans of this goofy sort of comedy, or of Atkinson’s similarly loopy “Mr. Bean,” it may be a gentle treat.

Aside from a witty montage near the start of the movie and sparks of his cheeky, goodhearted subversiveness later on, most of Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is bludgeoningly broad and obvious.

The switch between moods—obvious comedy and sermonizing message—comes often, and clumsily.

Ultimately, then, for all its attention to historical detail, not to mention pictorial splendor, Goyo: The Boy General offers American audiences a puzzling, inconstant vision of the past.

Despite committed performances across the board, I left the film craving a deeper, more conventionally attentive character study.

Griffiths never quite manages to convincingly shoehorn her loftier themes into the modest narrative, resulting in some disconcerting tonal dissonances.

In story and in visual style, The Predator feels less like a Shane Black movie than a generic, middling Hollywood blockbuster helmed by a workmanlike studio hack who occasionally asked Shane Black for advice.

Given the magnitude and complexity of the topic, an entertaining film is almost irrelevant, at moments trivializing. This particular story cries out to be viewed through a new, fresh lens. Otherwise, why are we hearing it? Why now?

Unfortunately, a solid premise can only carry a film so far, and Goldhaber fails to deliver on Cam’s potential.

The film does mix up the formula in some ways. Unfortunately, these changes are by and large for the worse. It edges away from horror and more towards action, favoring shootouts to scares. The latter are in short supply.

Despite its novel plot, and some lovely music and incidental artwork—the title fireworks, the rugged seaside and that glittery magic ball are all beautifully rendered—the film quickly drags.

There is only so much a director can do to bring surprise to certain stock elements—it would be refreshing to just once see a convoy survive a movie without being ambushed—but Sollima knits together big, sweeping aerial shots and tight-in, juddering angles that work each nerve not already done to pieces by all the automatic weapons fire and exploding vehicles.

The film—Weitz’s first since 2015’s indie Grandma—feels a little cheap and shortchanged.

The acting is not the problem. It rarely is. And, within parameters, the movie is not dull. Just don’t expect to feel much short of guilt in response to your own apathy.

What might be considered devastating or dead funny here will be highly subjective, but none of it captures the wit of producer Eminem’s “Slim Shady,” which rolls under the closing credits.

It’s strange that The Equalizer 2 is such a sluggish ride. Fuqua and Washington have developed a body of work over the years that is, if nothing else, reliably kinetic. But with Wenk’s pedestrian writing, there just isn’t much for Washington to work with here.

There are few elements of suspense or intrigue in this drama, as it’s largely an inward journey into Duras’ agonized, shaky state of mind over the unknown whereabouts of her Resistance-member husband, Robert Anselme.

The simplicity and wonder of Sól’s quest for identity is muddled by pretense, and by circumstances and subplots that are tangential to her.

Duncan’s film is at once obvious and repetitive, ably depicting the in-depth study required to be a doctor and yet failing to convey anything that isn’t readily apparent–including the sheer unpleasantness of seeing deceased men and women carved up for scientific inquiry.

The game plan seems to be to make the film as impenetrable as possible so no one will notice it is actually flatlining over pretty familiar turf.

Funny little Nazis require rather more finesse than The Littlest Reich possesses.

Despite all of the mediocrity, there are a handful of sweet moments in the film.

Ross’ debut is scattershot, and lacking in the consistent purpose that articulates a filmmaker’s intent.

There's something for everybody in The Lost Village, but it's like a beef-casserole milkshake.

There are disjointed elements here—a modern-leaning script, driftless performances and an overwrought score from Jeff Russo, its clanking piano more suited to an out-and-out Gothic thriller—that Macneill is ultimately unable to wrestle into a cohesive, compelling whole. The result is a dull retread of a story that deserved better.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Selma seems to understand King best when he's behind a podium or at the head of a march. After all, that public Martin Luther King, Jr. is the one engrained in our collective memory, representing the kind of person we all should be so lucky to aspire to be.