It’s an overintellectualized script that reduces its characters to broad stand-ins and mouthpieces for hot topics, bizarrely retrograde, and a few beats behind the times in interrogating both the post-#MeToo context of how assault charges are handled, reacted to, and also in untangling a tricky identity politics inquiry that brushes against race and gender issues.

Nothing about this moodily lit, dinner-party-from-hell film can compete with the real-life drama that unfolded in the middle of the Academy Awards. Or with any other home invasion thriller, for that matter.

McCarthy’s film, based on Lisa Klein’s 2006 novel of the same name, takes its best ideas (and its best performers) and traps them in a cheap narrative that would will likely rank among the worst of many Shakespearean adaptations. It’s such a good idea on paper, rendered totally inert on the screen.

The Search lacks the the credible emotions of the original and never assembles a convincing reason for its existence.

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.

No surprises here, folks; just half-hearted punchlines and unadventurous sentimentality readymade for marketplace consumption.

Oxygen is the sort of sly exercise in cinematic anxiety that demands a certain suspension of disbelief, and earns just enough of it to entertain.

Preoccupied with the idea that a lack of self-knowledge is what makes people mysterious, Parthenope denies its namesake any real interiority, convinced that depriving us the chance to appreciate her perspective might somehow enhance her rhetorical value.

Victoria & Abdul is an otherwise benignly toothless, pleasantly glossy affair, but it does force us to confront one tricky question: When treating a subject as fraught as British imperial rule, when does a film’s benign inoffensiveness become offensive in and of itself?

This material could make for a powerful work, but Viceroy’s House is certainly not it.

The whole thing is a fairly yawn-a-rific affair until the vengeful prologue establishes a wicked role reversal, hinting at the better movie that filmmakers more interested in storytelling would have made.

Borrowing from a dozen better movies as it tries to blur the line between a forgery and a masterpiece, Capotondi’s film manages to undercut its thesis with each new stroke.

At least it aspires to mine a fresh experience from the all too familiar tedium of watching Hollywood pick a franchise dry, even if it ultimately falls well short of that goal.

Costner is fully in traditionalist mode here, painting a quote-unquote sweeping American saga that feels like an expensive miniseries compressed into feature form.

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.

Erratic, petulant, and shot with a humor-killing hyper-saturation that smothers its Apatowian improv scenes under the sickly patina of a Gaspar Noé drug trip (the film was lensed by “Climax” and “Enter the Void” DP Benoît Debie), Outcome is nominally about a repentant soul trying to make amends with the people he’s wronged, but it seems more interested in focusing on the people who’ve wronged its hero in return.

In a world that often rewards mediocrity where true artistic greatness is hard to come by, a work like Opus had the potential to be a defining movie of our current moment, but the film’s half-hearted swipes at celebrity culture are never sharp or incisive enough to get under the skin.

The power of the Camps’ story is hard to deny, but it would almost be impossible to make it seem more hollow.

Ultimately, “Golda” holds three firm beliefs: That Meir is a leader to admire, that Mirren is an actress to adore, and that all interactions must be reverse engineered to fit this limited scope. It makes for a superficial biopic and blinkered bit of history, but does give the venerable performer a new accent to chew on and the chance to blow some smoke.

The result is an aggravating missed opportunity to tell a story that absolutely needs to be told to an audience that needs to hear it.

What kind of picture is it? Big, certainly: IMAX-scaled, and a hefty 150 minutes even after a visibly ruthless edit. It’s clever, too — yes, the palindromic title has some narrative correlation — albeit in an exhausting, rather joyless way. As second comings go, Tenet is like witnessing a Sermon on the Mount preached by a savior who speaks exclusively in dour, drawn-out riddles. Any awe is flattened by follow-up questions.

A slasher movie could be a compelling framework through which to subvert the (timeless but super Twitter-ified) temptation to reduce people to the worst thing they’ve ever done, but There’s Someone Inside Your House isn’t sharp enough to meaningfully subvert our bloodlust or eviscerate our need for blame.

Noelle is the sort of film destined to be discarded, a cheap holiday tchotchke with no staying power.

Naked Singularity is the work of an untested filmmaker who knows how to streamline but lacks the chutzpah to swing for the fences.

As the action progresses, the film seems more concerned with the hitting beats of the story than sending its characters on an emotional journey.

A peevish and self-satisfied procedural that unravels the Dreyfus Affair with all the journalistic doggedness of “Spotlight,” but none of the same integrity.

Even in this vision (this panorama!), Lopez only goes so far when it comes to excavating her own heart and its mysteries. Perhaps that’s why she eventually kickstarts that heart with a magical pink rose, the most expected piece of romantic paraphernalia, a symbol, but not an actual story.

The King of Kings does offer a theologically accurate message that’s largely about being kind and helping the needy. If you fast-forwarded through all of the Dickens nonsense, it would make an adequate introduction for a young child looking to learn the basics of the Christian faith.