Before I Disappear features several moments of genuine emotion in an otherwise underwhelming plot involving the main character coming out of his shell. It's a heartfelt journey, but we've seen it before, without the excess distractions.

It’s beguiling that a film with an almost religious aversion to subtext could be so unsure of its own subject, but Pellington knows from experience that it’s hard to put a finger on impermanence.

It takes a special talent to turn the romantic lyricism of Zola and turn it into chick-lit.

Black Rock never reinvents the rules, but it understands them just well enough to make its bloodless stabs at ingenuity stand out.

While Beliebers may be titillated by the mundane behind-the-scenes goings-on of the pop brat’s pandemic-era concert on the roof of the Beverly Hilton, there’s little else to invite in new audiences. Still, as a piece of adoring fan service, “Our World” fulfills its function.

Aussie director Nash Edgerton loads up on some of his signatures, including lots of bad guys, tons of twists, and a dark sense of humor. Unfortunately, his sensibilities are dulled by a sprawling story that never quite snaps together.

Winslet delivers her most powerful, emotionally resonant performance in more than a decade.

We used to watch movies and wonder “How did they do that?” The problem with Now You See Me 2 isn’t that we already know the answer, it’s that we’re not even inspired to ask the question.

In Her Hands is happy to tout Ghafari’s status, the easy headlines about her gender and her age, even tougher stories about the price she’s paid for her work. As to what Ghafari has really done, what she really means beyond those quick hits, there’s nothing.

In the Tall Grass is just a few minutes old before the emptiness beneath its Escherisms creeps up into the soil, and the movie only grows more enervating with each new wrinkle Natali introduces.

Broken Tower feels stationary, repeating the same motifs and attitudes ad infinitum until the credits finally roll.

Despite promising a welcome throwback to the sort of down-and-out milieu that authors like Graham Greene once put on the map, this Lawrence Osborne adaptation winds up feeling like nothing so much as a quintessential Netflix movie: Easy to watch and impossible to care about.

There are bigger questions to ask here, but when it’s easier to roll out some simple images and wrapped-up answers, Breakthrough breaks down, happy to just explain away everything good as a divine act that no one could possibly control. Movies, however, require a bit more than just faith.

Even Bautista and a genuinely cute kid co-star can’t enliven this predictable and humorless entry into a micro-genre long due for a refresher.

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 Super Mario Bros. Movie is a true masterclass in exploiting juicy IP, building out an intricate-yet-familiar world that’s littered with video game Easter eggs that could set up other movies.

If "Extremely Loud" came out in the weeks or months following 9/11, more audiences (and critics) might find an excuse to appreciate the way its soul-searching protagonist works through his grief. Ten years later, his struggle actually feels outrageously old-fashioned.

Softer and safer than a close cousin like “Adventures in Babysitting,” The Sleepover zips between its adult storyline and the wacky hi-jinks of the kids, scarcely noticing it’s the younger set who are far more amusing to watch.

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.

El Chicano feels less like a cut-rate version of a comic book movie than it does an insanely over-budgeted pitch video.

Save for dashes of Jeunet’s bespoke visual flair and an enthusiastic cast of actors whose go-for-broke performances scream for stronger material, Bigbug doesn’t resemble a late-career misstep from a beloved auteur so much as it does the product of a neural network that was simultaneously forced to binge-watch “The Terminator” and “The Dinner Game” until it spat out a shooting script.

Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon’s animated The Addams Family introduces the Addams gang to a new generation by way of a retrofitted origin story that shakily attempts to hold fast to its original charms while cramming it inside decidedly modern trappings.

Despite its title, this Rebecca is decidedly modeled after the second Mrs. de Winter instead of the first. Soapy where Hitchcock’s interpretation was stiff, the film is beautiful and hurried and eager to be liked by everyone in a way that will only lead to trouble. It dutifully respects Manderley’s past, while at the same time revitalizing that drafty mausoleum with an Instagram-ready sheen.

Bacon holds it steady, setting up residence in an uneasy, unwell character, unconcerned with making him likable or worth rooting for — the kind of person who gets left behind, and with good reason.

On the one hand, it’s a mediocre genre movie with a title as mundane as it is misleading. . . On the other hand, even as a muddy character study making only the weakest attempts to scare, “The Exorcis-m” is still a bigger treat for fans of “The Exorcis-t” than its recent flop sequel, “The Exorcist: Believer.”

Blindingly overlit, incoherently edited, and rife with baffling plot contrivances, the disappointing “Book Club: The Next Chapter” still manages to maintain the heart of its original story, but that only seems to be thanks to the chemistry of its central foursome.

Assisted by his playful cast, Arteta brings so much clear-eyed, character-driven comic mayhem to every scene that even the wildest script contrivances and most egregious McDonald’s product placements (one scene might as well be sponsored by the McGriddle) are graced with an actual sense of fun.

It’s a slight work that is too enamored with its own quirkiness to amount to much of anything at all.