An impression of much better action films, spy thriller The Gray Man (directed by Joe & Anthony Russo) wastes its all-star cast by giving them little to work with beyond quips. While it eventually becomes watchable, it spends most of its runtime being visually and emotionally indecipherable.

Me Time has bursts of energy and vibrancy, mostly involving its two leads and their snappy chemistry, but it's also a hodgepodge of predictable buddy comedy beats that doesn't do much to separate itself from what's come before.

Persuasion is a disappointingly limp adaptation of one of Jane Austen’s great romances. While Dakota Johnson does her best to give director Carrie Cracknell a contemporized, charming version of Austen’s heroine Anne Elliot, the screenplay’s foundational reframing of the character strips away everything that makes the book’s version interesting and quietly heroic.

Aside from an unexpected ending, director Robert Zemeckis is basically doing a paint-by-numbers version of the studio’s much better original, just with modern animation and Tom Hanks. And while Tom always tries his best, even he can’t make this redo memorable on its own merits.

The Reef: Stalked is another middling mid-budget fin flick that’s tonally confused somewhere between Shark Week and Lifetime.

[A] one-note, flat comedy.

Despite game performances by a slew of returning cast members, it doesn’t justify its existence as anything other than a mercenary attempt by Paramount+ to cash in on audience nostalgia for familiar faces.

It’s an odd “rock and a hard place” production about survival of the fittest mentalities that can’t help but indulge soapy relationship dramatics amidst an otherwise dire entrapment, which will probably leave most laughing and irritated at the wrong times.

From its anachronistic homages to its tensionless filmmaking, Pearl — Ti West’s prequel to X — doesn’t have nearly as much to say as its predecessor. Mia Goth gives it her all as a villainess who dreams of stardom, but the film can’t decide what to do with her.

Peter Farrelly's follow-up to Green Book is a war drama with some solid laughs and a great Zac Efron performance, but a manipulative script with ugly optics and boring visuals that never achieve the prestige it clearly wants.

Captain America: Brave New World feels neither brave, nor all that new.

Goodnight Mommy might be passable as a standalone, but it’s impossible to recommend over the original. Matt Sobel and ​​Kyle Warren venture somewhere new that still doesn’t differentiate nearly enough for its quieter approach.

A muddled mix of '90s teen flicks, curated for a new generation (with a Hitchcock premise swirled in), Do Revenge is a lukewarm high school vengeance tale that never settles on a tone and is barren when it comes to laughs.

What should be a high-spirited family film instead feels leaden and overstuffed, more concerned with laying the groundwork for a hypothetical sequel than spinning a quality mystery. The result has the look and feel of a traditional Sherlock story with a feminist spin, but little of the substance.

The Retaliators tries to transform musical stardom into a rock n’ roll horror epic, but suffers from “too many cooks” syndrome as the end product plays disjointed and can feel like a music video demo reel.

There's nothing uniquely surprising or exceptionally rousing, which is a shame given the unfathomably dreadful predicament and an interesting turn of a performance from Dave Bautista. It's a film without sensation that feels like it's pulling its punches across the board – development is stunted, ideas lack passion, and the camera avoids visible violence – before the ending strolls off into the sunset with barely any goodbye.

Even Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell aren’t charming enough to redeem AppleTV+’s humbug musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

While Sharper is visually stylish and is driven by some excellent performances from Sebastian Stan, Julianne Moore, and Brianna Middleton, this con-artist thriller overuses the same plot twists so much that they lose all their impact, and later the initially shrewd characters become too easily bamboozled.

Despite a stellar performance from Willem Dafoe as a contemplative art thief, Inside lacks the smarts and visual panache to make good use of its single location.

Kids vs. Aliens brings gloopy, grotesque practical effects to a childlike sci-fi thriller that fails to shine outside kill sequences and costumes.

Casper Kelly psychotically spoofs the strangest of strange horror titles that turn anything into a murderous entity while unraveling deadly severe social commentaries. It’s abstract art, theater camp, found footage foolishness, hunt-and-stalk depravity — Adult Swim Yule Log is a whole lot of things but, even with a full 90 minutes, few angles feel fully fleshed out.

Sword Art Online Progressive: Scherzo of Deep Night won't woo any new fans into the fold, but it's an enjoyable enough return to the world of Aincrad for longtime viewers to dig into.

Despite a talented cast and great director, Netflix’s Lift proves to be an exceedingly unremarkable heist film.

Heart of Stone is so busy trying to start a franchise that it forgets to be a movie good enough to merit a sequel in the first place.

Netflix’s The Monkey King is an example of a potentially great film that’s undone by poor pacing, uneven animation, and a truly unlikable protagonist.

For a movie about a guy trying to save himself and his kids from a car that might blow up at any moment, it's curiously low on thrills and complications.

All Fun and Games is an appetizer of a movie served as the main course, lacking in creativity when it comes to turning childhood games into pure horror.

Dear David tries its best to scare, but it never quite brings the spookiness it promises. It suffers from trying to do a bit too much with the living characters and not enough with the dead ones. Also, way too much lens flare.