By the time the movie arrives at its broadly sweet but emotionally hollow final scene, it seems clear that the Zucheros want the audience to feel everything, but all I felt was nothing.

There’s an actual pulse and beating heart to Comet; it feels vibrant, alive.

As “The Cow” sinks deeper into increasingly limp twists, turns, and choices, Ryder keeps hold of Kath, offering the film’s most genuine surprise: a real, lived-in, fully fleshed out performance. No one else can match her, but who could even try?

As knowing and perceptive as Howell’s script can be, it fails to galvanize its most sensitive ideas into compelling drama, and Meyer doesn’t recognize where a spark might be necessary.

It’s queer and contemporary — a decent addition to an already lengthy Christmas horror movie marathon that can edge out 1997’s “Jack Frost” but doesn’t come close to touching “Gremlins” or even “Krampus.”

Those who adore the original, however, will feel like they’ve been revisited by an old friend, or perhaps the dirty uncle, whose jokes are a bit frayed but still pointed enough. Produced at a time when big, brash studio comedies rarely crack the zeitgeist, Coming 2 America works far better than the market standard, in part because it does right by its roots.

An insufferable movie that wants to be profound and benign in equal measure.

Another End knows that we’ll never stop trying to cheat death (or at least to deny it for as long as we can), but Messina’s film is so entranced by the dull flame of that desire that it fails to consider what it might illuminate about the darkness that surrounds it.

For better or worse, Kandahar is a throwback to the kind of Tom Clancy-inspired geopolitical thrillers that used to be a bi-weekly occurrence in the 1990s.

A bonafide family drama, proof that the noir has humanistic roots. It left me feeling thankful for persistent movie traditions.

Hartnett is in on the joke, going against the type he was pigeonholed into by Hollywood as a teen matinee idol who won our hearts and other body parts in “The Virgin Suicides” as too-cool boy-next-door Trip Fontaine, or as a self-induced sexual ascetic in “40 Days and 40 Nights.”

Expensive but never fancy, and solid enough to emit a faint whiff of sophistication, this entire project is powered by the same eccentric confidence that allows Branagh to play Hercule Poirot like a neutered Pepé le Pew.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is easily at its best whenever it digs into the art of repression — repressed feelings, repressed desires, repressed pain.

By making such an unadventurous movie about how crisis breeds creativity, Marvel effectively illustrates why even the most independent-minded of filmmakers are powerless to evolve an apex predator franchise that doesn’t have any Darwinian impetus to adapt.

47 Meters Down sinks rather than swims, even if there are a few buoyant moments along the way.

Much like “Precious” and the Daniels-produced “Monster’s Ball” before it, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is somehow overbaked and raw as a bone at the same time, at all times. And much like those previous films, this one swirls around an astonishingly real performance that centers everything around it like the eye of a storm

Mostly, G20 has two major points in its favor, right out of the gate: a super-fun premise for an action film (what if money-mad mercenaries seized the 20 most powerful leaders of the world and demanded some really insane shit?) and a star both so good and so classy that it never feels as if she’s punching below her weight class.

Sewell’s book has always been a better fit for piecemeal storytelling — the book itself is divided up by Beauty’s owners — and while Avis’ script does keep the relationship between Beauty and Jo at its center, that lends an uneven treatment to many of Beauty’s later adventures.

The movie subtly examines whether people accustomed to a precise way of life can deal with cataclysmic change; by extension, it implies similar questions about Schwarzenegger's career as he heads toward his seventies, and makes a solid case that more new directions await.

As exercises in pulp go, this one yields a solid workout.

A handsomely furnished holiday movie that should have devoted more attention to its many ornaments and less to the tinsel at the top, this Murder on the Orient Express loses steam as soon as it leaves the station.

For all its comforting warmth, Sissako’s film ultimately lacks the deeper complexity of its namesake, even if watching it is often as soothing as sipping a freshly brewed cup.

A predictably terrific Sarah Snook goes full-blown feral in the Australian horror movie Run Rabbit Run, but its final-act destination isn’t enough to justify the journey.

It adds up to a fascinating, if often baffling first effort from Johannson and Kamen, one not afraid of big emotional wallops, but not always able to carry them into truly revelatory spaces. It’s a little predictable, a little bizarre, a little funny, and very sad, but it’s also an ambitious swing at what movies can still be.

Whenever Lee ventures away from the outrageous particulars of the plot, "Da Sweet Blood of Jesus" transforms into a stylish means of exploring contemporary struggles in urban black America by depicting it as a ballet of navigating personal and practical conflicts alike.

Nobody really asked for another “Charlie’s Angels” reboot, but this one will leave you eager for more. It seems these women might still have the element of surprise on their side, after all.

An aggressively competent spy thriller that has less use for logic than its lead actor does for his smile, this globe-trotting Robert Littell adaptation would have us believe that no one is more dangerous than a math nerd who refuses to think of himself as a killer, and the film makes a compelling enough case to sustain itself across the entire television season’s worth of plot that it packs into two hours.

A serrated but superficial portrait of how capitalism distances the rich from its consequences, Michael Winterbottom’s damning sendup is often right on the money, but its broadside attacks on the ultra-rich are too obvious to draw any blood or raise our hackles.

It works because the characters keep things anchored to some kind of dramatic reality.

It’s a film that relies too heavily upon its scenic location and not enough on building any real sense of story, let alone suspense, and only adds to the growing feeling that, when a work calls itself “Hitchcockian,” it’s more of a red flag for something half-baked than an enticing homage to the master himself.

Anyone but You actually works best when it leans harder towards the screwball comedies of the 1930s than it does the more grounded rom-coms they inspired at the end of the century.

Whatever philosophical nuggets were lurking amid Oshii’s tangled plotting, they surely merited closer consideration by a filmmaker who wasn’t just trading in gloss, and doesn’t merely regard human beings as elements of design.

The movie’s casting montage may feel stilted and long, but it’s easy to imagine Tatum’s actual thrill at assembling the best dancers from around the world. When they stop talking and start dancing, that’s when the real magic happens.

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.

You can almost feel the director coming alive behind the camera whenever Amelia’s Children shifts gears from a gothic horror story to a giallo-inflected satire about the European aristocracy’s penchant for self-preservation at any cost.

This could be entertaining in the right hands. Here, it just feels smug.

If Silent Night ultimately aces its peculiar tone, it struggles with having anything to say.

If you’re going to make an R-rated horror wank about Dracula slurping throats with a smile on his face, make sure that the rest of the movie doesn’t suck as hard as he does.

While great direction isn’t the worst problem to have, the fact that the writing and acting couldn’t quite live up to their gorgeous surroundings hollows the experience of watching it.

Regardless of who it sets its sights on, How He Fell in Love tells a complete tale without being tidy, fitting for a tale representative of love’s fickleness.

Materna has some good ideas, but the surrounding landscape feels generic.

It’s an overintellectualized script that reduces its characters to broad stand-ins and mouthpieces for hot topics, bizarrely retrograde, and a few beats behind the times in interrogating both the post-#MeToo context of how assault charges are handled, reacted to, and also in untangling a tricky identity politics inquiry that brushes against race and gender issues.

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.

Exodus: Gods and Kings illustrates a typical contradiction of commercial entertainment: By playing it safe, the movie fails to enrich the material, and never captures the energy that has made its narrative so captivating for millennia.

It's hard to believe that The Devil's Double doesn't intend to be a put-on. Despite a real-life basis of its plot, Lee Tamahori's fierce depiction of hedonistic Saddaam Hussein spawn Uday Hussein relegates the character to a farcical cartoon.

As impressive as the final showdown is (it’s easily one of the most impressive setpieces in this fledgling franchise) and as shocking as the film’s closing revelations are (yes, they really are), this magic needs a spell of its own.

It turns material that could have resulted in a sporadic narrative into a profound statement that the Arab Spring is a continuation of humanity's constant efforts to make a better, more just world.

It’s all perfectly well-done, and it all recedes into memory the instant you leave the theater.

It’s always been clear that Ayer is a sensitive guy, and you can tell that he delights in forcing Statham to embrace his vulnerable side.

One of those late-summer releases that’s just good enough to make you wish it were better, The Spy Who Dumped Me aims to please every step of the way, but it never earns the nearly two-hour running time.

An affectionate love letter to a bygone era of growing up, Ping Pong Summer brims with specific pop culture minutiae, making it easy to assume the movie has been intended as a farce, but it has more going on beneath the surface.

Those expecting a balanced perspective might be tickled by the couple's chemistry but disappointed when the film opts not to make that relationship more central to the plot.

Set aside the contrivances and creepy plot twists, and Michael Suscy’s Every Day offers up a timely message about acceptance and the nature of love that’s especially welcome at the moment. Unfortunately, the movie falls short of doing justice to that idea.

By trying to provide a little something for everyone, it ultimately offers precious little to anyone.

Apocalypse, for all its faults, has the audacity to make the MCU look small, and the conviction to make the DCU — if there even is such a thing — look foolish for confusing self-seriousness with gravity. If only these characters were allowed to be as complex as the ideas they fight for, Apocalypse could have represented a new beginning for superhero cinema.

Dazzling but disjointed, ambitious but unconvincing, Mirzya stumbles under the weight of its own epic aspirations.

Despicable Me 4 already feels like six episodes of just such a show, crammed into a single unwieldy, disconnected, and oddly episodic outing.

Smothered by its lighthearted approach, The Monuments Men attempts to make a grand statement about the valiance of dying for the sake of art, but fails to create it.

Red Christmas rarely deals in gore for gore’s sake in its early going. By the end, however, it becomes such an exercise in sensibility-testing brutality that any message about the fragility of the family unit is as murky as the cinematography.

Even if the execution isn’t always where it needs to be, Katz and screenwriter Simon Barrett still deserve their flowers for conceiving such a purely cinematic idea and swinging for it with so much confidence.

Thin and politically disengaged as this diverting Euro-thriller can be, it never forgets how even the most desperate of people can be left to suffer in plain sight — nothing but figures in a landscape.

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

It may not break the mold in many ways but one, but the impact of that one is far from trivial.

Heimann is so focused on the spectacle of it all that he forgets to do anything with it emotionally or formally, dragging everything to a close, as we return back to the beginning with little of anything meaningful or engaging occurring over the film’s running time.

Although not exemplary, Janie Jones at least manages to give its tired scenario a sense of legitimacy.

There's a certain elegant simplicity to the movie's execution that maintains a spirit of familiarity but also keeps the material afloat.

Who are these people? Why should we care about them? Not only does this inauspicious debut struggles to answer those basic questions, it never finds a believable way to ask them.

A minor cult classic that cast a long shadow. Its cinema verite aesthetic, which combined deadpan narration, publicly available music cues, and chilling reenactments, created a kind of true crime sensationalism that would be borrowed by everything from Unsolved Mysteries to the current found footage horror craze.

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.

Côté often frames his protagonists in such precise compositions that the world they inhabit is inescapably artificial and symbolic, rather than dramatic.

Hamm’s adaptation of the material is competent enough, offering all the striking shots of the Swiss Alps and extra-laden battle scenes that any historical epic connoisseur could ask for. Bang checks all the boxes as a leading man, emitting the rugged sexiness and unflinching bravery required of a historical figure who transcended his own lifespan and achieved true immortality.

While it’s less than the sum of its parts, those parts know how to deliver.

Slack and shambling ... Often hectic and sometimes heartfelt but very seldom funny, “Final Cut” is disappointing because it lacks the boldness of the original, yet even more so because it abjectly foregoes the kind of “fuck it, we’ll do it live!” creative mania that it’s meant to embody. Some of the movie’s jokes are just too well-constructed to fail, but too few of them land hard enough for the movie itself to succeed.

A music biopic so broad and hacky it makes “Jersey Boys” seem like “All that Jazz,” Kasi Lemmons’ well-acted but laughably trite Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is an anonymous portrait of a singular artist — a by-the-numbers “Behind the Music” episode that needs 146 minutes to say almost nothing about a once-in-a-lifetime voice.

The film suffers enormously from its slippery grasp of history, all of its narrative thrust slipping through the cracks between fact and fiction.

The Fallen Kingdom is at its worst when attempting topicality (the testosterone-fueled Wheatley refers to one of our heroes as a “nasty woman”) or when beefing up its crass plot.

While always an amusingly twisted ride, The Neon Demon is marred by pensive stares and monotone monologues about superficial desires that drag on, and on. Fortunately, Refn treasures shock value over all else, and his movie delivers on that promise with a depraved third act.

Whatever inherent value there might be in gender-flipping such a generic template is mitigated by the movie’s reluctance to seize on the unique energy that its women bring to the table.

Forestier and Seydoux are both fantastically desperate as dead end citizens who met each other at a very dangerous time in their lives, but Desplechin fails to make full use of his actors; instead of allowing them to shade in their characters, he pummels the audience into an ambiguous state of forced sympathy.

This cut-rate military drama makes an admirable attempt to bridge the gap between the Vietnam War and the veterans it cut loose, but there’s no hope of reconciling the two in a film where each scene feels hopelessly disconnected from the ones that came before it, and every character feels cobbled together from the stiffest clichés that other war movies left for dead on the battlefield.

There’s an element of finding yourself, of course, because that’s what you do when you’re coming of age in a summer set film on screen, but the script feels underdeveloped still — a work in progress like Annie, herself.

The gags are fun, but like everything else they feel unfinished — the seed of a full joke that will leave you wanting more. There are laughs aplenty, and Singh is completely at ease in a starring role, selling the material even in its weaker moments.

It’s so earnest, so vulnerable in its portrait of the disappointments and anxieties of young adulthood, that one tends to forgive its tweer flights of fancy.

The film is somehow both glancing and melodramatic, a strange and underwhelming cocktail of blasé Euro sleekness and TV-movie drama. Ah well. At least the clothes are nice.

It’s a gorgeous, romantic drama that earns its emotional resonance without venturing beyond the most familiar beats.

The lurching between genres, whether horror or comedy or heartfelt father-daughter movie, becomes increasingly transparent and frustrating as the movie tries to win our hearts back over with sentimental weepie moments in the film’s last act.

Spry enough to sustain its wisp of an idea but too contained in both story and setting to resonate beyond its most basic thrills, Next Door is a pleasantly unfulfilled promise of a debut.

The devil isn’t just on the screen, it’s in the details, and Latif’s film can’t pull those together.

A diverting Western that’s almost worth seeing for the unsaddled performances that director Vincent D’Onofrio gets from his cast, The Kid only makes a few small adjustments to the dustiest of American genres, but these errant wrinkles — a far cry from any serious revisionism — provide much of the fun.

Love plays out like the fragmented outline for a more engaging movie. But the one found here lacks substance both on the level of story and graphic reveals.

The first 25 minutes of this movie should be mounted as an installation at the Louvre and played on an infinite loop. Only then can our planet know peace.

Desierto throws subtlety to the wind, but not without purpose.

Directors Daniel Junge and Kief Davidson at least manage to cast a broad enough net to put the great big celebration in context: Legos are hotter than ever, and this new documentary effectively tells you why.

Bier’s direction is coolly efficient, which fits the material to a t — anything more ostentatious would just feel wasteful.

While too muddled and morose to hold together as a psychosexual thriller, Wash Westmoreland’s Earthquake Bird can be compelling for how it both explores and subverts the idea that everyone gets a little bit lost in translation.

Ultimately, Robbins’ domineering character is so well-calculated that it appears Berlinger couldn’t peer beyond the curtain even if he tried. That fascinating dilemma makes the movie worth watching even though it presents an incomplete picture.

It’s a lot for one film, and Project Power never revs up enough gusto to power through its biggest, best ideas and deliver on their promise. Perhaps the (inevitable) sequel can pack more juice.

A zany, imaginative, and extremely kid-oriented “Avengers” riff that combines major stars with Snapchat-level special effects in order to lend a live-action Saturday morning cartoon vibe to a story about seizing your own destiny, “We Can Be Heroes” is the ultimate Troublemaker movie.