The film isn’t a genre changer, but it’s elegant and admirably remorseless—and when it breaks bad, it breaks very bad indeed.

although it’s far too fannish—this is not a movie that wants to dig deep into anything uncomfortable—it does give the rocker her props, while reminding fans of some modern rock history.

The stories are all heartfelt. Epstein wants Weed the People to provide folks with hope. It may jerk tears when one subject encounters a setback, or another patient loses their battle with cancer, but there will also be tears of joy with the film’s multiple success stories.

Director-producers Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, along with narrator Wendell Pierce (of TV’s “Treme”) keep the tone light, but the underlying message is both timely and worth remembering: You can mess with Mother Nature, but she will mess back.

There’s a “Let it be” sense to McAlpine’s soft exhortations, which struck me as a little ironic, since her Cielo might have garnered more of the appreciation it deserves if she herself had quieted and simply let it, the sky, be, in all the reverent glory she with the silent poetry of her camera was already showing us.

Credit director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire and Cole for an impressive achievement that takes viewers on an intense journey.

It’s clearly meant to be a light romp –a party movie to be enjoyed in group settings—and it is.

The Kindergarten Teacher is a flawed movie, but it presents an onscreen character original enough to be worth knowing.

Kendrick’s interplay with Lively’s big, alluringly langurous temptress is deliciously diverting, but the script could have used some judicious editing; a surfeit of credibility-straining, overly antic plot developments crowd the last third of the film, which until then had an intriguingly languid pace.

A Whale of a Tale only skims the surface of the many matters it raises, be it cultural imperialism, tradition, animal rights and socioeconomic necessities. Still, its objective approach, and subtle plea for middle-ground compromise, makes it a worthwhile addendum to Psihoyos’ celebrated predecessor.

Is it a particularly great movie? No. Does it have some pretty major structural problems? Yes. Does Jason Statham fight a giant, prehistoric shark in it? Yes. Verdict: See The Meg. The Meg will cleanse your soul.

It's the camerawork by director of photography Brett Lowell and cinematographer Corey Rich (along with many other contributors) that impresses the most here. Close-ups show just how precise and physically challenging the climbers' moves are.

With its star-studded cast of experts, from Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk to automated warfare experts like Peter Singer, and a brief that is nothing short of the survival of humanity, Do You Trust This Computer? is a more sprawling and diffuse piece of work. It has a larger frame of reference than Paine’s battery-car docs but never hammers it into shape.

The movie...is a visual feast, one of the rare 3D films which was clearly designed with that extra dimension in mind.

First-time feature director Eytan Rockaway (also producer and co-author, with screenwriter Ido Funk, of the film's story) does a commendable job of ratcheting up the scary atmosphere and images.

Larger Than Life presents a vividly comprehensive picture of Aucoin’s work...and the intoxicating era in which he thrived, when models were gorgeous and sensual women. But Bartok leaves out certain key incidents that would have lent greater depth and interest.

Don’t Go is sufficiently subtle that some viewers will find it dull and lacking in traditionally “scary” moments. But others will appreciate the care with which it walks the line between supernatural and psychological horror.

Bayona fights against the script’s weaknesses to craft a movie that, against all odds, feels fresh, fun and even a bit vital. A lot of it’s dumb, and the human characters haven’t gotten any more compelling than they were in Jurassic World, but dammit, everything involving dinosaurs is top-notch.

It’s a smart reimagining, but not a particularly compelling one, which is the problem overall.

Damsel is a worthwhile effort gleefully carried out by a dedicated ensemble—including the impossibly charming Butterscotch (Daisy in real life), who steals the screen one miniature step at a time.

The Old Man & the Gun is never less than pleasant, and Redford's fans might even find it resonant. Others may think it's cute but underwhelming, sweet-natured but forgettable. There are worse ways to spend your time.

Night School pushes no buttons nor breaks new boundaries, but it pleases and entertains enough to get a diploma for good effort.

It’s a deliriously silly, often preposterous movie...but director Susanna Fogel keeps things moving too quickly to leave much time for complaints.

While the film’s vision of Nelly Arcan may ultimately remain just slightly out of focus (a notion that’s duly literalized in its final shots), Mylène Mackay’s powerhouse turn seems certain to resonate.

The fun of Uncle Drew is to be had in the energy of its athletic cast, all of whom appear to be having a grand old time playing around.

The performances in Beautiful Boy are superb, and overall this intense father-son drama, helmed by Belgian directorFelix Van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown), has the ring of authenticity.

Working with Keaton’s own material, Bodganovich is too busy praising the artist to bother saying anything novel about him.

As it is, it’s a bit of a slog. A well-crafted slog. But a slog nonetheless.

The whistleblowers of the NYPD 12 definitely deserve a comprehensive chronicle of their struggle for justice, as their struggle affects so many. Crime + Punishment speaks well on their behalf, but not emphatically enough to close the case.

No spoiler here that all unfolds with twists and complications but lands in a colorful kibble bowl of happy endings. Surprise does lie in the fact that such familiar material can deliver some unexpected pleasures.

What makes it play is Archambault, who gives a strikingly unpleasant performance as Gerald.

It’s a bit self-glorifying, but you can’t deny that Garcia’s story of job-hopping and success won on charm, passion and hard work is compelling.

Although uneven, both its conclusion and its hero make Izzy Gets The F*ck Across Town a journey worth taking.

Technically splendid but emotionally distant, The Third Murder will seem more like a detour than a destination for his fans.

Bo’s secret weapon in The Island is Shu Qi, an effortlessly magnetic star who enlivens even the dullest material. Kept in the background for a lot of the story, she still brings a welcome human touch to a plot that keeps threatening to turn into a lecture.

This doc is far more about being gay than being a gay dancer, with not enough extended performance footage to give you an idea of their real capabilities. This lack also softens the impetus of the movie’s inevitable contest climax, which takes place at the Gay Games in Cleveland, with one of the featured couples winning big.

It cannot, unfortunately, boast a taut pace and narrative to match the mood of unease that fills the air like dust in this depressed desert outpost.

The film’s pleasures are small ones, but they’re perfectly pitched and anyone who’s ever collected anything will empathize with the depth of Alan and Paul’s passion, if not their actions.

Ultimately, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is fun enough, if unmemorable. If you’re not already invested in the property, you probably won’t find enough in it to make it worth your time.

Cassel, one of France's singular talents, delivers an absorbing performance, committing to his role on both mental and physical levels.

Better than mid90s’ treatment of adults is its evocation of the euphoria that comes from discovering one’s place in the world, and confidence—highlighted by Stevie’s nerve-wracked first sexual experience—as well as the way skating provides a liberating release, and a surrogate family, for these unruly teens.

New paint can't hide the worn-out frame behind Mile 22, a gung-ho workout that pairs Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg for the fourth time. Cribbing from themselves as well as tons of other action films, they manage to throw enough firepower on the screen to placate genre fans.

It’s a flashy film, but also rather derivative. In the end, Hot Summer Nights is a study in the power of talented actors to elevate material.

Weightless is a bleak slice-of-life movie that’s tightly focused and stylistically cohesive. The narrative is not without interest and the film’s atmospheric mood is effective. But ultimately its slow pacing (unremittingly so) grows tedious and the ending is a non-ending.

Joel Edgerton produced, directed and adapted the film—much too gingerly and gently to have the powerful impact that it should.

Chu is definitely not an actor’s director, being far more concerned with splashy spectacle than intimate human emotions, and often you can feel scenes go slightly dead, with his performers likely called upon to improv their lines and motivation as best they can.

Dyrholm fully immerses herself in the iconic legend that was Nico, at the same time investing her with so much desperately pulsing life—a true artist portraying another—that it uplifts what could have been a very dreary slog of a movie.

Character development and backstory needed more work and would have added to better, more engaged storytelling.

The Rock retains his uncanny ability to elevate his material. Through sheer will he makes it seem possible that he could shimmy up a fraying rope outside a burning building's glass wall while carrying his own leg.

Welcome Home also features surprisingly strong performances from Ratajkowski, Scamarcio and Paul (“Breaking Bad”) and ends with a nifty little parting shot whose implicit condemnation of mindlessly consuming the lives of others should give audiences a little chill.

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.

I Am Vengeance showcases Bennett playing tough and taciturn, but he nevertheless comes off a bit stiff. He has potential, but Bennett is going to need to try a little harder to have a career on par with his Eliminators co-star Adkins.

The Nun resorts to makeup effects to put a frightening face on its supposedly scary sisters.

The filmmakers believe they have better emotional beats at the end than what that hack Dr. Seuss came up with—and in the process make the Grinch pathetic and practically groveling.

Peppermint is a bloody crowd-pleaser, but it’s fundamentally forgettable, the kind of movie whose details begin to disappear the moment the credits roll.

Some of the visual compositions are impressive to look at, but the overall self-consciousness of the enterprise, paltry attempts at wit such as describing Bacon as “a screaming queen who painted the screaming Pope,” and basic thinness of this wistfully wish-fulfilment material make it hard for a viewer to stay involved.

Ultimately, Speed Kills feels startlingly like a 1990s direct-to-video action movie with an inexplicably inflated budget.

In the end, Skate Kitchen is a frustrating film that’s supposed to elicit a heady sense of freedom, girl power and a rush of sisterhood. It doesn’t. Instead, one is left feeling vaguely hollow.