Magic in the Moonlight belongs to the pool of lesser Allen comedies, yet Firth and Emma Stone — as the alleged necromancer Sophie Baker, the object of Stanley's scrutiny and eventually his affections — bring all the zany energy they can muster.

Try as it might, its story of a good man caught in a bad situation is bogged down by empty reveals, and by a plot that tries to fool you without first earning your investment.

Sagawa is disturbed and alienated, but that doesn’t make him a compelling documentary subject in and of itself. Maybe that’s the point: Demystifying Sigawa takes away some of the near-mythic power that’s been attributed to him over the years.

Like its tattered setting, The Rover is scattered with intriguing ideas never successfully fleshed out.

As a 92-minute commercial for a deeper look at the case, Amanda Knox is unquestionably intriguing; as a standalone offering, it makes one hell of an airtight case for something bigger and better.

With its use of body horror taking a backseat just when it might have worked best, Nell Eu is seemingly reluctant to make a B-movie, having written a script that could make for a fantastic one. That makes “Tiger Stripes” good, rather than great.

It may not be a great zombie movie, but it’s a uniquely powerful reminder of why zombie movies are great.

Athena effectively taps into the class, racial, and religious angers of modern France, which it sees as a powder keg that’s just waiting for the right spark to explode, but the film’s broad saga of brothers in crisis is so thin and symbolic that any deeper connection to the real world is sacrificed at the altar of intensity. An intensity that resists psychology, muffles sociopolitical context, and eventually swallows itself whole.

While Much Ado About Dying strives to be a tribute to caretakers and Chambers’ dearly departed uncle, its baggy structure, dictated by David’s declining health, renders the film frustratingly inert.

Ideally, you want your action comedies to contain compelling action sequences and funny comedy. At the very least, it’s fair to expect one of the two. Despite a semi-compelling relationship at its core, “Old Guy” isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is, and its set pieces are quite flat by action standards.

Antebellum might have been a movie that met this awful moment, but its confused attempt at seeing yesterday in today resolves as a throwback to a time when anyone could actually overlook it in good faith.

Expert craftsmanship can't rescue Triple 9 from the constant feeling of a pulpy remix.

It’s entertaining enough, but this is a story that doesn’t feel real, mostly because it isn’t.

Sam Levinson’s exasperatingly gorgeous Malcolm & Marie is a lot like the two people who lend its title their names: confident and insecure in equal measure, stuffed to the gills with big ideas but convinced of nothing beyond its own frenzied existence, and reverent of Hollywood’s past at the same time it’s trying to stake a new claim for its future.

Ludicrous and dramatically unsatisfying as Pompo the Cinephile might be, its kid-friendly portrait of life on a movie set captures the same electric crackle that make far better films like “Day for Night” and “Irma Vep” such irresistible ads for joining the circus.

Maybe the pictures should get small again; it might be the only way to save an MCU that seems dangerously close to getting too big to do anything but fail.

If you can vibe with that whiplash-inducing comedic opening — gallons of vomit mixed with some magical holiday sweetness — you just might be in the right frame of mind to receive what’s to come in this hyper-violent, occasionally funny, and often oddly charming holiday trifle.

It’s a story that has its share of unnerving sequences, but like its pivotal character, it feels stuck between two worlds.

Daphne shouldn’t be this captivating, but with Woodley’s vulnerability and full-scale charm backing her up, Endings, Beginnings is able to capitalize on a seemingly thin premise.

Iron Lung is audacious and at times astonishingly boring. Still, it feels more enthusiastic and celebratory than many blockbuster adaptations built on safer math.

Powell is an exceptionally promising filmmaker, but by the time he arranges all of his ducks in a row for the finale, he’s lost track as to whether Lucas is continuing the cycle of vengeance that has poisoned so much of his family, or if he’s breaking it.

With a thinly sketched premise and a Hail Mary pass at emotional depth arriving late in the final act, the film feels like a series of vignettes draped around Stalter’s charms. Unfortunately, charisma alone doesn’t make an interesting narrative.

Connery more than proved he could carry a movie away from 007, and the film remains pretty enjoyable, even if it’s an uneasy blend of the kind of gritty crime picture that Lumet would make his stock-in-trade, and the lighter caper flick so popular at the time.

Wildcat is too tame in its portrayal of suffering to let its Catholic undertones sing or take powerful cinematic form, resulting in a work where paradoxes are half-baked dilemmas that seem too conveniently solved, and life itself is something that happens far off-screen.

Freeland is clearly having fun behind the camera, but broad and superficial performances mean the fun doesn’t always translate.

Brosh McKenna knows her tropes, and when she finally, finally brings rom-com vets Witherspoon and Kutcher together IRL (for an airport-set love declaration, of course), we’re reminded why these things work so well, how cozy and comfortable the inevitable it is, how wonderful to wrap everything up with a big bow, even if we saw that gift coming from a mile (or 20 years) away.

When Tomb Raider digs into its more creative action, it’s about as entertaining as popcorn entertainment gets these days. It’s when the film falls back on the old tropes that things grind to a halt.

Psychokinesis doesn’t leave you with much more than a bittersweet feeling about it all, but it’s an appropriately different takeaway from such a refreshingly different superhero movie.

None of the characters in Klaus are as delightful as they are well-drawn, and Pablos’ film never earns the holiday spirit it tries to manufacture down the home stretch. But there’s no denying that the future of “traditional” animation looks a little brighter than it did yesterday, and that’s reason enough to celebrate.

For all its of-the-moment charms, Escape Room can’t shake its more basic genre trappings, eventually giving itself over to tired and predictable revelations and flimsy twists.

Hacking Hate can charitably be construed as a subversion of social media incentivization, a filmic attempt to channel free-floating rage towards powerful entities who make money off of human fragility and social discord. But as an exercise in positive or progressive radicalization, it falls short of its aims by communicating well-known problems without offering solutions beyond the need to soldier on in the face of such vast hatred.

A riveting but utterly ridiculous melodrama about the burden of guilt and the value of bunny shit, Atom Egoyan’s “Guest of Honour” layers one absurd turn on top of another with the confidence of a veteran architect, and yet — even at its most perversely entertaining — this very unpredictable movie only feels as if it’s working in spite of itself.

How we look from the outside versus how we are on the inside doesn’t always lineup, and that disparity can shake the visions we have of ourselves. The metaphor extends to “Skincare” itself as a film that looks bright on its face but ends up dull despite its best efforts and self-care.

Trial by Fire is completely reignited by the scenes between Dern and O’Connell, who form a compelling bond through a thick sheet of plexiglass. More than just an acting masterclass, the probing, delicate conversations between their characters build towards a harrowing tap dance between hope and surrender.

It’s not that darkness isn’t a part of the film, but that The Short History of the Long Road approaches even the most tense interaction with a bent toward positivity in all people. It’s, in short, nice.

The director excels at generating a nervous energy around his character’s mounting desperation, and the movie’s intermittently engaging for that reason alone.

In a Netflix movie that’s so breezy and enjoyable because of its complete lack of stakes, Leterrier’s approach gets the job done. In the penultimate installment of a gazillion-dollar franchise whose fans have come to expect vehicular mayhem on an interstellar scale, it probably won’t be enough to avert a slow-motion car crash.

It’s a shame that You Don’t Nomi, a new documentary about the failure and reevaluation of Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 pulp film “Showgirls,” doesn’t live up to its truly inspired title.

A smattering of individual moments achieve the kind of madcap insanity that a movie like this needs for momentum, but “The Shitheads” is plagued by stop-and-start plotting that does more to stifle its energy than build to it.

There need to be more films like this, if only so the LGBTQ kids seeking them out will realize how normal their own experiences are.

Bloodshot is a throwback actioner that likely would have killed in the late ’90s, but now feels every inch the product of that era’s humor and innovation. In a rapidly changing world, however, that might not be a bad thing.

Theater lovers will enjoy seeing these actors take on such iconic roles, but they’ll find themselves wishing they were seeing the same great talent on the stage.

Lindy’s passion for and connection to the material is obvious (how could it not be?), as is her desire to twist a sad story into something fresh and often funny. Sweet, even! But an unhinged final act, plus a jaw-dropper of a finale, seems at odds with everything else she’s revealed, and this genre-spanner goes from, well, spanning to something else: not being able to hold onto any of its many spinning plates.

While Redford frames the drama with a tense atmosphere, it doesn't shake the sense that we're watching a tame made-for-TV affair.

Nearly (but not quite) redeemed by its good nature and the megaton charisma of its two stars, Central Intelligence is a dopey blockbuster diversion that will surely keep United Airlines passengers entertained during the dog days of summer.

While the film is understandably concerned with its titular characters — Ed Helms as straight-edge Detroit cop James Coffee, young star Terrence Little Gardenhigh as his plucky pre-teen foil Kareem — its real standouts are supporting talents like Gilpin and Taraji P. Henson, who end up holding together a film that perhaps should have focused on them instead (cutesy title to come).

It seems that this particular game of Pokémon needed more time at the gym. Yes, that’s a “Pokémon Go” reference, and if you can’t follow it, don’t bother.

Capaldi doesn’t go for neat and tidy endings, so it’s a real shame that this too-glossy documentary does.

As much as the suspense remains in play, its main threat has a certain robotic quality, and the humorless tone doesn’t help.

Slight and discursive even by the filmmaker’s idiosyncratic standards, Introduction refuses to auto-correct for anyone who doesn’t already speak conversational Hong.

Eastwood remains a deeply purposeful filmmaker, and The 15:17 to Paris clearly has a plan — it builds to a riveting showdown, with a unique kind of payoff enhanced by the authenticity of its design. It’s a fascinating gamble even when it doesn’t hold together.

Acting as the film’s teetering anchor, Seyfried channels a fascinating blend of composure and chaos that, in a less muddled movie, would have sung. Yet here, her portrayal of an assured woman unraveling under pressure merely lends a haunting note to a tale that strikes as simultaneously laborious and opaque.

Despite the good vibes and amiable callbacks to the previous film, “Zombieland: Double Tap” is only ever amusing when it’s breaking new ground. That just doesn’t happen nearly enough.

For almost 45 minutes, Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan is on pace to become the best, most urgent zombie movie since “28 Days Later.” And then — at once both figuratively and literally — this broad Korean blockbuster derails in slow-motion, sliding off the tracks and bursting into a hot mess of generic moments and digital fire.

If The Villainess sounds like derivative junk, that’s because it is — but rarely is derivative junk executed with such panache and personality.

This spry yet increasingly bitter romantic drama is so vague and un-targeted that its social critiques feel less defined than ever. The anger is palpable, but its targets are hard to pinpoint.

While it certainly offers up a necessary-if-dour vision of patriarchy-dominated life in this particular corner of Europe, by-the-numbers storytelling and a flat, visual style occasionally lead to dramatic intertia. Still, Gashi is powerfully, effectively steely as a woman who must take matters into her own hands, even when they are tied by society.

By the time this hard-nosed genre exercise arrives at its ambivalent final scene, whether or not the criminals get away with stealing a few million Krone feels all but irrelevant to a world in which real fulfillment is so hard to keep.

Though Latimore and Cole have enough charisma to skate by, the movie lacks the originality and scrappiness of its inspiration. Trading on celebrity cameos and impressive set pieces, House Party feels like an uneven amalgam of so many studio comedies that came before it.

American movie-watchers are used to consuming their history lessons with a heavy layer of artificial butter on top, but William N. Collage’s script filters Gordon’s saga through so many creaky Hollywood tropes that the over-cranked genre stuff begins to feel more honest by comparison.

“Life Comes in Flashes” doesn’t go out of its way to highlight the more salacious details of Bogart’s story, but it’s also not as bowdlerized as some viewers might expect from an estate-approved doc.

Though often lethargic and listless, Is This Thing On? does stir up a vivid portrait of the New York City underground comedy milieu, even when New York City as a character feels more like the afterthought it isn’t supposed to be.

There’s plenty of intrigue to the dissonance of a hard-rock lifestyle and Malick’s gentle touch, but much of the movie’s potential is overshadowed by the impulses of a director unwilling to get there.

A Girl Missing is a story about someone trying to make themselves whole again, but so much of its energy is spent on keeping her apart.

Still, with a distinct POV, strong visual design, and the ability to see his strange slow-burn vision of semi-realistic domestic torture all the way through, Skotchdopole serves up a strong enough debut that he should someday get a shot at making another.

Fincher likely prides himself on turning coal into diamonds at this point, but Flynn's script can feel so retrograde at times that one wonders whether it might have been better served by a De Palma, Bigelow, or even a Verhoeven — which is to say, a filmmaker less concerned with making the lascivious seem prestigious.

Shlesinger’s leading performance has the stuff of a star-making turn, though the film isn’t distinctive enough from its peers and predecessors to match the actor’s obvious onscreen charisma.

Slash is much sweeter than it is satisfying, but it smartly observes that the road to adulthood has never been paved, and it makes a convincing enough case that teens shouldn’t be afraid of driving down their detours.

Like “I’m Not There” before it, “A Complete Unknown” would rather celebrate Dylan’s mystery than attempt to explain it (each of their titles emphasizes his elusiveness as a defining factor), but where Haynes’ solution was to make Dylan infinite, Mangold’s is to make him as small as possible.

The whole Brit falls for an American trope has been done to death, and Love at First Sight doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. While Richardson turns in the best performance of the film, even that’s not enough to push Love at First Sight to higher rom-com heights.

This is still a pretty familiar journey that's easier to pity than hate -- much like Caplan's character.

While Farrier is extremely likable — and his subject the polar opposite of that in every possible way — the documentary he’s made about Organ inadvertently complicates the matter of who is trapped with who, or if anyone is trapped at all. The finished product often feels more like watching a strained pas de deux than it does someone latching onto their prey.

In making Water Makes Us Wet, the filmmakers have embarked upon the noble pursuit of moving people to care about climate change as if their lives — and their sex lives — depended on it.

Given the brief period of time that separated romance and tragedy, it’s understandable that McGann might have been grasping at straws, but omitting certain voices — for what seems to be the benefit of cheap suspense — can’t help but cut her movie off at the knees. The result is a fascinating but frustratingly superficial portrait.

The mythology of Bring Her Back is dizzyingly unclear and patched-together from what feel like studio notes commissioning both over-explication and also less of it, as if ambiguity alone can pass for scares. But the emotions and the performances in the present day are there.

While Grant’s film nails certain elements necessary to the genre (like casting a pair of likable, capable stars who generate some real heat), the film is also prone to falling into just as many bad habits and limp tropes synonymous with big screen romance.

The pace picks up when the slashing finally begins in the third act, but it’s too little, too late to get the blood going.

A true story so pure that it almost grants its teller the permission to be sloppy, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Megan Leavey is a bit of a mess from the moment it starts, but it’s hard to completely dismiss any movie with a soul this strong, just as it would be hard to dismiss a disobedient puppy so long as its tail keeps wagging.

Mesmeric but frustrating ... An explosive third act shootout may be the most remarkable sequence that Lou has ever shot, but all of the hard-boiled fireworks in the world can’t diminish the feeling that he can’t identify his muse on a canvas this big.

While Lovesong fails to coalesce, Malone and Keough emerge with two of their best performances yet, bolstered by an on-screen bond that deserves far richer material that what is offered up here.

While watching Andrew Ahn’s amiable dramedy, which expands on the original premise while maintaining its central themes of found family and tolerance, one rarely questions the story’s relevance. More vitally, it lacks panache.

It’s light entertainment meant to be shared, a big glass of summer fun that goes down easy.

A nice enough time that never really aspires to be anything more, “Military Wives” isn’t just the kind of movie that ends with Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” it’s the kind of movie that ends with the entire cast singing along.

Hiding behind a shaggy beard and a stoner grin, Paul Rudd plays an amusingly oblivious shlub in Our Idiot Brother, but the movie can't keep up with his comic inspiration.

This sloppy, scattered documentary, very much lacking the refinement of Merchant Ivory’s own films, is a missed opportunity to explore why their films are great, what exactly is it that makes viewers return to them time and time again.

Straight Up is meticulous in building its hyper-stylized aesthetic, but doesn’t have much to say about the human condition.

“Haikyuu!!” makes this climactic moment come across as rushed. Due to the short running time and amount of story to cover, this movie is not for newcomers at all.

The film seems destined to live on as in-flight entertainment on nursing home-sponsored trips to Vegas, but a good cast and some well-placed sentimentality elevate it into something almost watchable.

The film is both sci-fi/fantasy and Bollywood romance, an ambitious introduction to a mythological cinematic universe with the expected hiccups of building a massive world from scratch. It’s an admirable attempt and unmissable theatrical experience for any Bollywood fan.

Evil Eye packs plenty of compelling cultural specificity inside its frames, it never attempts to dig any deeper into the wider world of that stuff that would scare anyone.

The director is so eager to make a spectacle out of this scenario that Good News begins to feel as self-insistent as its characters.

It’s only towards the very end, when the film’s satire and surrealism pull apart from each other like a party cracker, that the tension brewing in Orson’s department becomes compelling enough to justify the busywork of creating it.

The Happy Prince largely amounts to a bland rumination on Wilde’s lesser-known decline.

Watching Ottolenghi’s achievement from the other side of a screen only serves to reaffirm his point that looking at the world isn’t the same as feeling it on your tastebuds. A more nuanced documentary — one that didn’t just feel like evidence of an event that happened at a museum, but a work of art unto itself — might have made a meal out of such ideas, rather than just offering them for dessert.

Rosewater is lacking in sophistication, but its attitude is infectious.

This morbid film takes body horror to a new level, but leaves its brains behind.

Marshall-Green is just finding his way, and his debut is very much a first film. ... Modest and unfussy, “Adopt a Highway” fails to ground its fable-esque qualities in a deeper bedrock of emotional truth, but its best moments offer a tender glimpse at what people do with several decades of pent-up resentment.

Slow West certainly makes a valiant effort to reach beyond expectations of its genre, even leaving room for some welcome tongue-in-cheek humor when it's least expected. But at the end, all its waffling between various stylistic touchstones fails to hold much interest.