In not knowing whether it wants to be a heartfelt, chilling or activist story, Irada ends up being none, suggesting that perhaps good intentions aren’t always enough.

If not for Newton and Sprouse’s performances, “Lisa Frankenstein” would be fully embalmed well before Lisa realizes that she’s totally, butt-crazy in love with the shambling corpse she hides in her bedroom.

The romantic scenes are cute, but they feel at odds with the drama. The laughs land like chuckles, the love registers as mere fondness, and the salient observation that countries recast themselves during wartime is reduced to a fleeting detail.

Not only is it the only movie she hasn’t written from scratch, and the only movie she hasn’t centered on a woman, it’s also the only movie Holofcener hasn’t been able to make into something more than the sum of its parts.

Whenever things seem really dire, Martin saunters in with attitude to spare, and puts everything in perspective. With talent that big, the rest of the movie seems little by comparison.

The work of everyone involved — from the sleepy performances to the crew doing an okay but never exemplary job — suggests a first draft, a sense of wanting to get the thing out and move on. At every minute of “Mercy,” you can practically hear the filmmakers saying: “Eh, it’s January. Good enough."

Simply put, Cox is the saving grace of his latest feature, Prisoner’s Daughter, a predictable family drama that has heart thanks to grounding performances by Cox, Ernie Hudson, and breakout child star Christopher Convery. The rest, however, leaves a lot to be desired.

There’s some fun to be had in the Brando-like flickers of Cage’s performance, but Polsky’s film is too practical and logic-driven to indulge them.

It turns a major tragedy into a minor disaster movie.

Where “Bajrangi” effectively harnessed the actor’s mega-star persona into a simple character that still — in true Salman tradition — had a significant moral undertone, Tubelight struggles to strike that balance, too often veering into naivety and exaggeration both in terms of performance and narrative.

If there’s any interiority to Fields, Toller isn’t interested in finding it; Danny Says would much rather provide the umpteenth account of Andy Warhol’s social circle (to mention but one of the movie’s many asides) than dig beneath the dirt in an attempt to learn more about one of the key figures who helped shape that scene.

A well-intentioned but wearisome jolt of prefab holiday cheer.

This may be a forgettable movie about the forgotten man — a blue-collar morality play disguised as a very contrived hostage crisis — but at least it’s shlock with something on its mind.

The result is a movie that registers as slight by its end, despite the talent found within its confines. What is nonetheless evident, however, is that Bemba and Gohourou are worth watching as they go forward in their careers.

Despite a strong start, Bertino’s grim and gruesome The Dark and the Wicked never coalesces into anything more than a collection of chilling images and a paper-thin logic.

Next Goal Wins is largely a misfire, one that’s too unwilling to stop kidding around for even the most important of moments.

This is irrefutably Kinnaman’s movie, but Connolly fatally undervalues him. He doesn’t trust his actor to walk the emotional tightrope his film stretches taut before him, to sell us on the idea of a father digging himself deeper into a hole of his own design.

The Fabulous Four might feel like a series of math problems that don’t quite add up, but it’s still an enjoyable time at the movies — especially if you choose to gobble down gummies at the same rate as the “geriatric” cast of Jocelyn Moorhouse’s raucous comedy.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of day-old champagne: the taste is almost there, but the bubbles disappeared long ago.

This is a bizarre movie that disappears up its own empty gastrointestinal tract.

Margherita's failure to elaborate on her grief is mirrored in Moretti's failure to construct a coherent film where the spectator can find a way into its meaning, rather than being caught in a confused web of suggestions, half-baked ideas and circular exposition.

We’re left with something handsome but safe, a film that tries to bridge the gap between children’s characters and adult concerns without ever anchoring itself to either side.

While McCarthy and Spencer do their damndest to make the family-friendly feature work — McCarthy in particular brings real texture to her charming slacker with a heart of gold, a role she’s played so many times before — Thunder Force isn’t clever enough to break new ground in the superhero milieu, nor is it silly enough to mine its material for the kind of jokes that would make it distinctive.

I’m not quite sure how this group of actors came together or how any of the ideas coalesce into something that a) makes sense or b) is meant to make us feel anything. It’s impenetrable with no intellect: a true curio in the worst way.

A clever but unformed hunk of speculative science-fiction.

Stars Alexander Skarsgärd and Mia Goth deliver terrifically unhinged performances as a failing novelist and a mysterious tour guide, and Cronenberg has absolutely no shortage of original ideas, but the whole thing feels bloodless, cold and clammy as a speculum.

The movie is like one thin satiric lark inexplicably slowed down to the point of lethargy.

Murder Mystery 2 is the perfect background noise that Netflix has built an empire out of.