Even if the film‘s ridiculous premise is at least chuckle-inducing — and sold rather convincingly by a cast that all seems to be on the same page about how stupid it is — its convoluted MacGuffin and predictable twists ensure that no amount of expensive action sequences from director Julian Farino or genuine chemistry between Wahlberg and Berry can elevate “The Union” into something worth watching.

In practice, City of Lies is so understandably overwhelmed by the sprawling mystery at its core that it never figures out what to ask of either history or itself. Or how.

Don’t be fooled by the lack of spandex: The Legend of Tarzan turns the Lord of the Apes into just another superhero, the newest movie about fiction’s greatest wild man memorable only for the dull irony of how housebroken it feels.

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.

The Emoji Movie might have been a boring and brazenly cynical piece of corporate propaganda, but at least it had the courtesy to be offensive. Kidnap, on the other hand, doesn’t have the the courtesy to be much of anything.

Predictability doesn’t have to be a sin when it comes to the often paint-by-the-numbers world of romantic comedy, but this awkward combination of expectation and disdain for it make for a film only fleetingly worthy of celebration.

A generic and diverting sequel that corrects some of the original’s biggest mistakes while also highlighting some of its more eccentric charms, “Uprising” drops us into a world that’s much richer than what the previous film left behind.

The film, of course, sets up for a sequel or two, another franchise for the algorithm to chew up, more artificial entertainment to consume, another screen to watch. Next time, we humbly ask, can we get a little more human?

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

Like most bad trips, Cary’s documentary is ultimately harmless. And like most bad trips, you realize something’s gone wrong after just a few minutes, and then start to freak out that it’s never going to end.

The comedy is as broad as it could be, knee-deep in political incorrectness and bad taste. But as ever with Cohen, it's fueled by such imagination and daft abandon that what ought to be offensive becomes hilarious.

The film’s bent towards revisionist superhero history is certainly compelling, but stuck in the confines of the horror genre, it flames out far more than it flies.

Long on voiceovers, short on specificity, and so high on the generic-brand Scorsese of it all that it glosses right over the gray areas that make its characters so tragic, Yates’ film is more focused on being easy to swallow than it is on meaningfully addressing the source of the pain.

The film’s tone is less cheeky and more serious, especially in the first half, but Vaughn and co-screenwriter Karl Gajdusek have their cake and eat it too by doling out standard “Kingsman”-esque thrills in between heady conversations about non-violence, colonialism, and the horrors of war.

Perverse as it is to cast two of the world’s most talented young actors as the two sides of a curdled marriage, Mescal and Ronan both excel at sinking into themselves, with the latter’s irrepressible force of will squeezing against the walls of the musty farmhouse as if her life were a shoe five sizes too small.

The funniest thing about Ricky Stanicky might be how recently its director was holding an Oscar on the stage of the Dolby Theater.

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

Despite being rife with crime, sex and darkness, Manhattan Night feels increasingly like a cheap ripoff of the genre it so very much wants to fit into.

The middling but enjoyable Voyagers is meant to be a timeless parable about the primitive essence of human nature; if its space-age shenanigans are broadly identical to the beats of a book William Golding wrote about a group of preadolescent boys who crash on a deserted island during World War II, that’s more of a feature than it is a bug.

A beautiful wisp of an idea that is seldom compelling and almost never coherent, Planetarium squanders an irresistibly alluring premise.

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

As I watched this turgid muddle, a messy ball of nonsensical threads and worse performances, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Roger Ebert’s old maxim: No good film is too long, and no bad film is too short.

Elijah Bynum’s debut embracing every last cliche it can find in a perverse attempt to forge its own identity. It’s a noble effort that comes up empty. Instead of something original, we’re left with a sweaty pastiche that shares its protagonist’s desire to be all things to all people, only to wind up losing any sense of itself along the way.

The Old Guard 2 is frustratingly — if also pointedly — rushed for a movie about people who’ve been alive for eons, and it never gives any of its characters the chance to meaningfully hash out how the bonds of friendship might pull tighter as they get twisted over the course of a few hundred decades.

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.

Rather than focusing on a cataclysmic showdown between pop culture's most famous men in tights, Zack Snyder's flashy, cacophonous follow-up to 2013's "Man of Steel" is basically one long teaser for the next installment.

There's nothing slick or entertaining about the crumbling existence of Pomes' unsalvageable antiheroes.

The freewheeling Jonathan Demme energy only grows more infectious as the film drifts along, Émilie Simon’s buoyant flamenco score finds the zest in each scene, and the lightly fantastical “none of this matters” attitude feels like manna from heaven in an age of interconnected cinematic universes