It’s dull and low-energy stuff to begin with, but that a story premised on the infinite potential of a child’s imagination should end by cribbing from the most creatively bankrupt stuff of modern cinema is a perfect microcosm of how far Harold and the Purple Crayon misses the mark. Saldanha and his writers had the entire world at their disposal, and they ended up drawing a total blank.

Repetition grinds Lizzie to a halt, and the film lacks anything resembling energy, cycling through the same beats until something happens only because it has to.

As a critic who’s professionally obligated to reckon with the latest trends in Christian cinema, I have to admit that Wahlberg’s R-rated conception of godly entertainment seems almost divine when compared to the culture war militance of “God’s Not Dead” or the Sunday school hokeyness of “I Still Believe.”

While Moriarty’s novel functioned as a compelling story about two women from different backgrounds converging during a pivotal time in American history, Engler’s film turns much of its attention to Norma’s story, jettisoning the very best part of the film along the way.

With Vermont jokes that read like the musings of someone who’s only ever been for ski season, and the embarrassingly half-baked attempt to critique sexism by writing a kind-hearted womanizer, every stroke of Paint misses the mark. Bob Ross deserved better.

The film suffers enormously from its slippery grasp of history, all of its narrative thrust slipping through the cracks between fact and fiction.

Nothing connects, nothing gels, and every thread is lost.

With whispers of another film already looming at Warner Bros., McQuoid’s best defense might be tapping out — before he’s tasked with delivering an even more insufferable cinematic fatality.

It’s great that “Stormy” might buy its namesake a small measure of the sympathy she deserved from the start, but 110 minutes of your time shouldn’t feel like this steep of a price.

The cheerless, choppy nature of A Bad Moms Christmas keeps each storyline feeling oddly singular, and it’s worse for it.

Unfortunately, Lawless lacks the same darkly energizing spirit that made "The Proposition" such a revelation: It has plenty of gunplay, scowling showdowns and dust-caked setpieces, but little in the way of dynamic filmmaking to imbue those elements with life.

If the first film was ploddingly, airlessly faithful to its source, this follows the second in being frantically paced, chaotic and increasingly exasperating.

Hardy’s grotesque performance doesn’t invite any sympathy for the devil, but it hobbles him in a way that renders Scarface human.

Tonally, IF never finds a happy medium. Story-wise, it doesn’t bridge the gap between pure imagination and basic narrative flow. We don’t know what’s happening most of the time, and worst yet, we don’t know how to feel about it, no matter our age. That’s much more than a failure of just imagination.

That “Michael” skirts around the controversies, legal troubles, and horrifying allegations that marked the entertainer’s later years — and, for so many, have forever marred his legacy — isn’t a shock, as the film was supported and financially backed by Jackson’s estate. What does rankle, however, is that that by glossing over such matters, the final film has been mostly stripped of any humanity, good and bad.

From beginning to end, The Six Triple Eight never trusts its audience to actually engage with the material beyond its inspiring surface, evidenced by a lengthy coda featuring title cards that literally restate the film’s plot over archival footage of the 6888th Battalion. Unsung heroes deserve better.

Yet another seemingly unassailable combination of story and filmmaker that fails to capitalize on any of its obvious promises.

It’s a simple enough conceit, but one made consistently confusing by a distinct lack of energy, excitement, and cohesive editing. Never before has 83 minutes felt so very long.

Where the previous “Aquaman” was psychedelically high on its own supply and so eager to top itself that it eventually led to Jason Momoa talking to a mythical sea monster who sounded a lot like Julie Andrews, “The Lost Kingdom” becomes more and more formulaic as it digs into its mythos, as if the movie were caught between being its own thing and being nothing at all.

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.

The result is a dull and deeply compromised movie that would rather be a mediocre crime saga than a nuanced character study, but can’t quite bring itself to commit to that choice.

Frank & Lola is scattershot from the start, and never makes a compelling case for why its story is being told.

Passengers refuses to really wrestle with the compelling questions at its core, instead opting to lean on Lawrence and Pratt’s collective charm to keep things ticking amiably along.

The scariest thing about The Devil Made Me Do It is the possibility that it will set the stage for more of this, and less of what made the franchise so compelling in the first place.

Caught in between a love story and a ghost story, the film accidentally disproves the very epigraph that opens it — “Every love story is a ghost story” — because this is one that fails to haunt or to hurt.

As with most films that are eventually suffocated by their own eccentricities, Sometimes Always Never is strange enough to hold our attention for a while.

This Italian post-apocalyptic film from director Alessandro Celli angles for child soldier depravity without any of the heart.

Abrahamson seems so coy about the haunting of the Ayres’ house that he refuses to allow the movie’s strongest aspect to take center stage, and the perils of The Little Stranger hover aimlessly throughout the movie like a specter in search of some elusive white light.