This veritable “Eat, Pray, Hike” leaves no trace of originality or dramatic consequence. The advantages it has over the likes of “We Wish You a Married Christmas” and “Royally Ever After” are twofold: A likable cast, and dignified source material.

Two decades and half a dozen films later, everything that made his debut film feel fresh has now curdled like bad milk with his latest pitch black comedy Riff Raff.

This tame exercise never quite jives and sometimes just bombs with one-note melodrama, but always maintains Thornton's conviction about the material.

Much like the music, Lords of Chaos is frequently unpleasant but oddly compelling — not least because Åkerlund ensures that the film never takes itself as seriously as its subjects did.

The only thing scarier than Prey at Night is the possibility that we might have to wait another decade for more of its very special mask-faced chills.

At heart, King Cobra compellingly traces the palpable tension between the performative nature of gay porn and the privacy of queer shame.

What emerges is the definition of a mixed blessing: a film of (often literal) peaks and troughs, scattering occasional moments of grace.

Godzilla’s interest in saving humanity never made much sense, but it’s this CGI creation with no dialogue that gives the film the continuity and character it lacks elsewhere. When Godzilla lights up his nuke-powered tail and lets loose his interminable scream, for just a moment, the MonsterVerse has something to offer.

The film mistakes stiff, literally buttoned up acting — you’ve never seen so many starched and fully done up dress shirts in one film in your entire life — as somehow being clever, but there’s scarcely a moment of Morgan that is genuinely shocking (though the undercurrents with Amy are at least unnerving).

Catechism sometimes feels intentionally obscure, much like Rohal's last movie. It's essentially a hilariously brazen lark, which is reason enough to embrace it.

The material simply isn’t strong or self-interested enough to support a cast as rich as the one Simien assembles here, a fact made all the more obvious by the director’s natural facility for staging ensemble comedy in the face of mortal danger.

A lot of jokes have been made at the director’s expense because of it, but if Lee Cronin’s “The Mummy” hadn’t been released as “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” it would be extremely difficult to tell who made it. Maybe the wet gore would give it away? The word “slop” doesn’t come to mind for once (bland as it is, Cronin’s film is far too effortful for that), but goop is its only defining touch.

Being Charlie may not be the definitive cinematic portrait of addiction, but it's the first Rob Reiner movie since "The American President" to palpably convey what it feels like to be anybody.

Perhaps suffering from the same kind of identity crisis as its heroine, Burger’s soggy mishmash of an adaptation struggles to thread the needle between pulpy fun and a probing character study.

And you thought fixing Sonic’s teeth would make this movie any less of a nightmare.

The series’ third outing, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, falls into precisely the same traps as its predecessor, offering up an unwieldy, mostly unsettling mash-up of adult themes and childish whimsy, made still more inscrutable by too many subplots, too many characters, and a tone that veers wildly off-course at every possible turn.

With a PG-rated humor that parents can enjoy too, Secret Headquarters feels like the movie equivalent of the fun uncle who speaks to you like an adult, but also drives a mean Mario Kart.

Between an over-reliance on woozy indie filmmaking staples — from its soft lighting to its plodding, overly delicate score — and a central family dynamic that never feels legible, the end result is more irritating than enlightening.

Inevitably, Tape will inspire conversations — its woefully conceived final sequence literally begs for them — but perhaps not the ones Kampmeier anticipated when crafting a film that, for all its missteps, is built on necessary storytelling.

Verbinski packs so much stuff into his giddy Grand Guignol, and the more he crams in the better it works.

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.

Cruise’s undeniable star power is all that keeps “Never Go Back” from feeling like it came off a studio assembly line, though you’ll still spend most of the movie wondering if you’ve been swindled into watching a movie about Ethan Hunt’s luddite twin brother.

Fine performances by Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth and Judy Davis help matters a bit, but the final product is so oddly cobbled together that the entire thing should be left hanging on the rack.

Series fans will feel cheated by such a chintzy and incurious take on something they love, while the rest of us will be left wondering how the source material earned itself any fans in the first place.

The way it reaches to find the humanity in a place devoid of hope shows admirable attempt at a singular vision. But Paltrow overestimates the timeless nature of the story.

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.

If there is one lesson that “Halloween Ends” — hell, that this entire trilogy, this entire franchise — easily imparts, with blood and guts and terror to spare, it’s that horror never really ends. It just takes a different shape. This story surely will, too, but for now, it’s concluded in fine fashion.

Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future.