This super-cheap Netflix Original is so determined to satisfy the algorithm that it would lack any coherent sense of self if not for the fact that it was chiefly designed as a star vehicle for Disney Channel grad Sofia Carson — but there’s something rather stubbornly honest about the heartbeat of desperation that thrums below its Walmart veneer.

If, when printed and sent off for posterity, a snapshot like “Coma” offers a small degree of archival value — while answering the question Bonello poses at the start — it might also arrive as a postcard from a time all-too-thankfully gone by.

At times Midnight's Children balances off its earnestness with a sweeping view of history and tangible human drama, but the allegorical qualities of Rushdie's novel fail to translate as anything but a shrill, on-the-nose instance of thematic overreaching.

For every moment of sick visceral genius (e.g. whenever Hernandez or Evoli are left to their own devices), there’s another of clumsy metaphor (e.g. the limp punchline of the movie’s final minutes).

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.

Reworked from Yeon’s comic of the same name (co-written by Choi Gyu-seok), “Revelations” is the kind of layered yet messy adaptation that results from someone trying to find new ways of telling a story they’ve almost thought to death already.

The wit of Robinson’s series still occasionally peeks out in Someone Great, especially when her central trio are interacting, but smushed into a 92-minute running time, little of the best bits can actually breathe.

Life spends its first act building up some big ideas, but eventually unravels into another monster movie in space.

Gyllenhaal's alarmingly effective presence is enough to act circles around the soapy narrative of a fallen athlete's comeback so tightly that it crumbles in the very first act.

Foster’s performance is ultimately the only thing that holds The Survivor together across its three parallel timelines.

Clipped from the start and increasingly uncertain of its purpose as it fumbles toward the Trump we know, this origin story certainly isn’t as painful to watch as the future that it portends has been to endure, but it’s every bit as banal and unnecessary.

In Yann Demange’s bland retelling, the kid’s downward spiral has been reduced to a series of crude, unremarkable encounters and the very thing this true story shouldn’t be: poverty porn. Nevertheless, Demange manages to stitch together a number of involving scenes that track Ricky’s harsh upbringing and the events that precipitated his downfall.

No filmmaker is better equipped to capture the full sweep of this saga (which is why, despite being disappointed twice over, I still can’t help but look forward to “Dune: Messiah”), and — sometimes for better, but usually for worse — no filmmaker is so capable of reflecting how Paul might lose his perspective amid the power and the resources that have been placed at his disposal.

Even at its worst (which is where it often resides), “Mortal Engines” is still a rousing advertisement for the theatrical experience.

While Meri Pyaari Bindu isn’t entirely clichéd, it also never quite finds its footing in terms of tone, narrative, or chemistry between the lead characters, coming off instead as both confused and confusing about where it’s going or what it’s trying to say.

It’s a real credit to Black’s irrepressibly unique comic energy that “A Minecraft Movie” never feels quite as hypocritical as it should.

The director's murky, ill-conceived take on the world's oldest disaster story contains some of the most pristine visuals produced on a mass studio scale in some time. But it's also constantly tethered to a dull, melodramatic series of events out of whack with any traditional interpretation of the material.

The Night Comes for Us is an alternately giddy and exhausting ordeal — a film that somehow manages to squeeze in way more plot than it needs, but not enough to make you care about who’s kicking who, let alone why.

Though imperfect, if it were the Peaky Blinders’ last hurrah, it’s certainly a spectacular way to go.

Call it a case of the Mondays, but this kitty needs to go way back to the drawing board.

The King is so eager to be a mud-and-guts epic about inherited violence and the corruption of power that it loses sight of the rich coming-of-age story at its core.

Finley often seems to be at the mercy of his material’s strangeness. He stages most scenes with a vacuum-sealed flatness, as if unsure how else to focus our attention on what’s sucking the life out of the film’s world, and his cast — who can only stretch their characters’ shared frustration so far — are left with little to do but lean into the anti-drama of intergalactic domination.

The way that the film resolves — or doesn’t — leaves the distinct impression that Waltz simply ran out of interest in this story, which would be an explanation as understandable as it is frustrating.

Alone Together has the momentum of a reclamation of sorts, but the plot tries to do too much, say too much, when it really should just be about love. Who cares if it’s formulaic or not? In the middle of this pandemic, maybe being something we can rely on is a good thing.

Fans might be appeased by a successful bunt in a long summer of disgraceful strike-outs, but this is still a maddening failure when compared to the remarkable artistry of “Into the Spider-Verse” or the raw pathos of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.”

As sturdily crafted as Knock at the Cabin may be, Shyamalan’s funny games never achieve the profundity they’re reaching for, ending up as a preachy end-times message movie wrapped up in a slick horror package.

An interesting but not entirely rewarding inversion on Lumet’s continued study of law enforcement.

Gilroy’s film needed to be 60% better or 20% worse in order to transcend the forgettable silliness of its existence, but it could stand the test of time as a lasting monument to the idea that our own personal taste is the only real thing we ever had.

A handsome little biopic that’s sopping wet with the same clichés that its whiny hero so adamantly disavows, Mark Gill’s England Is Mine distills the early days of one Steven Patrick Morrissey into an anonymous coming-of-age story that — if not for its keen sense of place — could really be about any mopey white boy whose talents are dulled by torpor.

The story suffers from a distracting aura of self-importance. Vikander brings a remarkable tenderness to her character (who, in real life, left her husband's side much earlier) but Redmayne's sharp gaze and toothy smile make it virtually impossible to ignore the actorly feat on display.

As “First Steps” limps to its total nothing of a conclusion, it feels less like a victory than it does a total surrender. You have to walk before you can run, but at this point the MCU is back to crawling on its knees, and at this point it seems like it might be too afraid to ever stand back up again.

I was bored or exasperated by almost every minute of “Aggro Dr1ft,” but there are only 80 of them, and not a single second of this AI-inflected nightmare experiment feels insincere.

My Old School seems to believe its surprises are more revelatory than they actually are, and for the sake of avoiding spoiling the whole thing, it’s hard to sum up what the filmmakers were so fascinated by in the first place.

The more that America: The Motion Picture relies on straight parody, the sparser those laughs feel.

Adapted from the Melissa Hill novel of the same name, Something from Tiffany’s starts with a premise sweatier than Patrick Ewing at halftime, forcing Tamara Chestna’s script to untangle some ultra-messy story beats when it needs to be more focused on sparking a love connection.

The greatest value to Emmett Malloy’s broadly unenlightening Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, a new documentary laced with intimate and never-before-seen camcorder footage shot by Damien “D-Roc” Butler, is how bluntly it reaffirms that Wallace was real, even if he always seemed larger than life.

Costa is, above all, an excellent chronicler of the moods swirling in her nation, but there is a flipside to the way she paints the picture.

These stories are all tragic and sad and complex, and more than worthy of innumerable explorations. Many of them are even present in this film, even if nothing about them satisfies. Consider this one a crisis of its own: a well-meaning look at a world that never goes deeper than the surface.

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.

Plot is often the cruelest fate that could ever befall a cool premise, and so it goes with Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge, a high-concept genre exercise whose shallow depths are all too eager to come to the surface.

The film also boasts unexpectedly great voice acting; it’s not an exaggeration to say that Oscar winner Foxx thrives as the voice of Bug.

As urgent and necessary as their story is, it also feels too familiar on cinematic terms.

As the film explores San Sebastian — with its marvelous architecture and sprawling beaches — it starts to feel like Rifkin’s Festival is content to get lost with its anti-hero rather than trying to find a substantial narrative to support his existence.

An energetic yet hopelessly convoluted espionage thriller that doesn’t tell a story so much as it chronically bumps into one. ... Lee’s debut is little more than a chattering Pez dispenser full of plot twists.

Despite a fun premise and a well-structured first act, “The Man from Toronto” tries to do too many things at once and devolves into a strange bouillabaisse of studio comedy tropes.

The documentary is hesitant to dip even half a pinkie toe into genuinely harsh subject matter, because to do so would contradict its clear mission to coronate Perry as an industry great. All that nuance gets elided for a fluffy, forgettable hagiography that purports to tell Perry’s story, but keeps him constantly out of reach.

What this movie has — courtesy of Kurt Wimmer’s upwardly mobile script — is a rickety ladder that it climbs from comically low stakes up to the highest levels of power.

Grillo and Butler may be on the marquee but it’s Louder’s movie. And what’s being marketed as a clash between the two brutes is actually a showcase for the actress, who exudes a natural badassery.

While the original story remains undeniably excellent, “Pinocchio” fails at re-telling it because it ignores its own advice. Each failed attempt to modernize its beautiful message serves as a reminder of how little it needed updating in the first place.

There are a few laughs to be found in the film, little moments of wit or weirdness, but the film is otherwise a mirthless drag rescued only by its bright leads. Maybe let them make the movie next time.

The UglyDolls film makes the most obvious choice at every conceivable opportunity, and is all the more tolerable for that.

If nothing else, Charlie Says succeeds in demystifying the man with a pentagram carved into his skull: He may be society’s go-to conception of evil, but he was also a drugged-out racist who wrote forgettable songs that even his acolytes probably didn’t enjoy as much as they were letting on.

So much of Respect is about Aretha wanting more — and so desiring to work for it — and it’s disheartening that this well-meaning exploration of her legacy seems doomed to inspire that same hunger in its audience.

Sharpe’s portrait is so determined to capture the full rainbow of Wain’s singular hues that it soon becomes a muddled soup of mismatched quirks.

Jason Bourne adheres to an existing format so robotically that it never manages to surprise or engage for longer than the occasional passing moment.

Alloway’s debut is a beautiful disaster that even at its weakest points has just enough glamor and guts to justify most genre girlies taking the journey eventually. Just don’t expect to find anything especially ripe, or rotten, once you check it out.

Based on the experiences of producer Samantha Housman, 6 Balloons is too short and stunted to leave much of an impression, but the film convincingly illustrates one of the core truths about addiction: It doesn’t really give a shit about your agenda. It’s chaos, it cares only about itself, and it feeds on collateral damage.

It amounts to little more than frothy summertime entertainment—occasionally fun, but almost immediately forgettable.

It’s an earnest look at the collateral damage surrounding addiction, and the movie is at its strongest when it homes in on the experiences of Ethan and Derek. But as the main characters of the movie learn, compassion alone isn’t always enough.

For all its promises of an inside look into the Dalís’ lifestyle, the film never does much more than document it.

Madness is difficult to convey on screen, and less is often more. McLean opts for most, sacrificing Radcliffe performance — so alert and responsive that you can feel the life draining out of his body once the Amazon takes hold — at the altar of some empty affectations.

The film would have benefitted from either committing to Carter’s growth or taking the comedy in a much darker direction, but the middle path it trods is ultimately unsatisfying. Lousy Carter might be a reminder that middle age is filled with monotony and unsolvable problems, but that doesn’t mean our movies have to be.

Unfortunately, while Julianne Moore and Ellen Page go great lengths to make the central romance convince, Nyswaner's undercooked script and Peter Sollett's direction have the opposite effect, reducing Freeheld to a tired formula.

As a spare and sexy thriller, Michael Winterbottom’s “The Wedding Guest” is far too undercooked; there’s little flavor, and even less to chew on. As an audition for its star to be the next James Bond, however, this aimless Dev Patel vehicle is virtually perfect.

Racer and the Jailbird speeds along at an engaging clip, but never overcomes the fundamental simplicity of its plot.

By the time it’s finally over, the only person more exposed than its star is her director.

Statham remains an appealing summer movie fixture, but sharks deserve better than this.

Once The Traitor earns its title, the movie is overwhelmed by legal intrigue and mafia infighting, and flattened into a repetitive and somewhat impenetrable courtroom drama.

Brother and Sister seems more like a retread (and a retreat) than anything that’s come prior, marking a new step forward for the lauded director by taking a disappointing step back.

Little in Senior Year will surprise, and the film chugs through its predictable beats with good humor, but there’s not much else to recommend it. Wilson makes for a fun heroine who’s worth rooting for, bawdy, and down for whatever, but the film isn’t willing to let those tendencies run wild.

As dour in practice as it is bright-eyed in principle, Potter’s film makes an earnest but enervating attempt to erase mental boundaries.

“We make our own destiny,” someone intones during the film’s closing voiceover, and by the end of Ethan Hunt’s story, it’s hard not to take those words to heart. I only wish that Cruise and McQuarrie had managed to make a better one.

Subtle as a great dane, and less convincing than a show poodle that’s trying to pretend she’s an untamed stray, Dogman is an obvious and strained little movie.

Every original drop of Bleed for This is lost in a sea of cliché and convention, and Younger seems totally incapable of separating the singular verve of his protagonist from the hackneyed arc of his defining ordeal.

As soon as you find yourself getting potentially sucked in by its sweetness, it throws out a fart joke or another gag that hits at the lowest common denominator. Most grimly, it assumes that its viewers need to be convinced to give the humanity of the intellectually disabled. As a society, we should be better than Marcus Markovich, and it shouldn’t take a movie to remind us of that.

The pop icon’s stardom is so etched in concrete at this point that he could tell his fans just about anything and they would never stop listening. So it’s a pity that the documentary vehicle that surrounds him isn’t more forthcoming about the man beneath the wife beaters and airtight skinny jeans who sends so many swooning, but surely must, at times, feel lonely late at night like the rest of us.

Some of the goofier bits from Pitch Perfect 2 has been excised, and this latest entry focuses more firmly on the bonds between the ladies after its somewhat mean-tipped predecessor, though it never hits the girl-powered highs of the original. But mostly, it’s yet another unholy mashup of disparate tones that’s never as fun or frisky as the original material.

Bernstein’s debut is at once both too grounded to be so broad, and too heightened to honor the tragic reality of its circumstances.

It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and all of the supernatural gobbledygook definitely slows things down. But as an early indicator of the director’s ability to conjure forth wide-eyed wonder, Making Contact is a delightful little romp, and at only 79 minutes, it won’t take up too much of your time.

Though born of an inventive idea, Camera Obscura comes out underdeveloped.

Sweet Girl is dumb in all the ways you expect, and yet with Isabella Merced things feel understandable. It’s just frustrating that the twist undermines her, outside of being utterly weird. That being said, if they wanted to greenlight a “Sweet Girl 2” and give Merced her due, I’ll be waiting.

Eubank’s talent for creating impressive worlds with few resources is the movie's strongest aspect, but the concept feels like a never-ending exposition of technique without sufficient depth.

Not only is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny an almost complete waste of time, it’s also a belabored reminder that some relics are better left where and when they belong. If only any previous entries in this series had taken great pains to point that out.

The more bizarre The Man Who Sold His Skin becomes, the less original it gets.

Despite appearances, The Independent isn’t much interested in the implications of a three-horse race for the Oval Office, or the viability of a down-to-earth superman uniting the country with promises that appeal to both sides of the aisle. No, that stuff is just a pretext for a tense but ultimately toothless polemic about the value of truth and the need for an independent press

Dower, like so many of the obsessives he interviews here, grows too enthralled by the “who” of it all to stay on mission and meaningfully explore why it still resonates.

[A] frustratingly glib biopic.

Mike Leigh’s expansive, exhaustive, and extraordinarily thorough portrait of early 19th-century political activism is, to put it one way, deliberate in pace and tone. To put it bluntly — and in an argot more readily familiar to its cast of working-class characters — the film is bloody well dull.

While it still dilutes Tolkien’s memory by molding his life to the narrow dimensions of a middle-brow feature that’s too safe for the arthouse and too small for the multiplex, at least it does so in a sincere attempt to trace the etymology of Tolkien’s work, and to emphasize that where stories come from can be as meaningful as where they take us.

The Family Plan resembles the first Dan more than the second, too predictable and formulaic to excite, without the juice to become a family favorite.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and this scattershot crowd-pleaser renders them both in such broad strokes that it seems as if Branagh can only imagine the Belfast of his youth as a brogue-accented blend of other movies like it.

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

The ultimate sin of Wrath of Man is that it doesn’t realize it’s really a story about pride.

The many logic-defying developments in “Missing” make it difficult to hold one’s attention, especially considering that the film gives viewers plenty of time to think about the countless ways it doesn’t make sense.

The action scenes are so inexplicably painful — and the character work in “Snake Eyes” is so unexpectedly strong — that your heart sinks whenever the swords come out.

An honest but insistently scattershot true-life tearjerker ... Most of the fault lies with the fragmented, nonlinear structure “The Friend” uses to approximate the flowing nature of the Esquire piece.

In Reitman’s hands — which are confident and clumsy in equal measure — these hefty matters play out as a mordant political comedy that tries to split the difference between “Veep” and “All the President’s Men.” That’s a tough needle to thread, and it doesn’t take long before “The Front Runner” throws in the towel on that idea.

The fatal flaw of Freaks is that Lipovsky and Stein’s tantalizing approach gives way to mundane results, as the questions raised by their screenplay are considerably more interesting than any of the answers that follow.