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.

Just like the dog it’s about, Fixed has plenty of balls, but its big heart is what really matters.

Skyscraper plays out like a metaphor for diminishing returns — Johnson keeps climbing, higher and higher, until there’s nowhere left to go but down.

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.

The numerous belly laughs are undermined by jarring flashes of darkness that never organically sync with the plot.

The third act is crammed with twists and revelations that ultimately seem forced, and can only offer truncated reconciliations. And yet there’s something to be said for the pleasure of watching Sasha, still a bit silly and definitely in need of more life experience, succeed on her own terms and in her very own movie.

The warts-and-all honesty that Baker brings to the table doesn’t prevent Sutton from repackaging his story as a simple cautionary tale about an industry — and a society — that will fatten people up just to eat them alive. At least it’s a tale that Baker lived to tell, and refused to let anyone else tell for him.