There is no hero or villain, only a murky undercurrent questioning whether having a muse is inherently predatory or not. And that story is worth writing.

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.

It might seem a bit showy and cheesy in its final moments, but that kind of over-the-top shock is missing from most of the rest of the film. It’s a thriller missing the thrills, and we’ll take them where we can get them.

The scenes where Creech and co are outracing the Terravex death squads are playful and inventive enough to provide a glimpse of what this movie could have been if it weren’t so remarkably bad in most other respects.

Though Latimore and Cole have enough charisma to skate by, the movie lacks the originality and scrappiness of its inspiration. Trading on celebrity cameos and impressive set pieces, House Party feels like an uneven amalgam of so many studio comedies that came before it.

Taking a sturdy, mainstream premise — a big-city careerist reflecting on her life path during a trip back to the holler, in a setup that faintly echoes “Sweet Home Alabama,” among a hundred other rom-coms — and shading it with moral grays, natural light, and a more unvarnished turn from a well-known star, Leave One Day plays uncannily like a Gallic cover of a Sundance movie, gussied up and vaunted onto the international stage.

With every note as predictable as the next, the movie just blends into a discordant mess. Even Rodriguez’s smile can’t salvage this disappointing remake, but at least it provides a welcome reminder to check out the movie that inspired it.

While Carrillo-Gailey’s book was flinty and fresh, A Nice Girl Like You is more predictable than wild, more staid than sexy, but at least Hale injects some refreshing fun into the outing.

The movie stumbles through its shaggy comedy aesthetic with mixed results.

Brief moments of brilliance, including a riveting performance by Riseborough and a number of gorgeous frames, only shine with momentary appeal before the whole thing slips back into vapidity and convention.

At 108 minutes, Staten Island Summer does wear thin around its middle, and it suffers from a conclusion that just never seems to know when to wind down for good, but it's an amusing feature that just might be destined for the kind of cult affection heaped on its ilk.

The overarching problem with Mojave is that the two tones don't mesh well together, to the point where it seems Monaghan can't decide if he wants to make an ominous neo-western or a dark satire. Fortunately, the filmmaker's committed lead actors make some of the storytelling issues bearable.

Every performer conveys sincere enthusiasm to be on screen with other Filipino actors, but their joy is squandered by a cartoonish story that squanders its honest core. Easter Sunday will likely please Koy’s fanbase and possibly anyone eager to find grandma-and-kid-friendly entertainment, but everyone else might find it lacking.

The Most Hated Woman in America makes it abundantly clear that Madalyn Murray O’Hair was a riveting human being whose story is worth telling in our messed up times, but the film never has the slightest idea of what that story might be about.

While it has a few appealing qualities, as a whole it amounts to a well-intentioned bag of missed opportunities.

In practice, mincing up the miniseries’ plot without losing any of its main ingredients — and even adding several new ones to the mix, including a whopper of a third act twist that turns Ruth into a martyr and all but completely erodes the movie’s emotional core — results in an undercooked stew that isn’t given the time it needs to find any real flavor of its own.

Erin Lee Carr’s Britney Vs. Spears feels like a movie not searching for scandal but a genuine desire to help, to say something to Spears, to remind us why we love her and how we failed her.

After 85 minutes of mediocrity, The Week Of finally lands on one inspired bit, and then there’s another half hour to go.

Caldwell’s Infamous, at turns nihilistic and uncomfortably believable, may be built on a thin premise — what if its star-crossed pair of criminal lovers was, as the kids say, doing it for the ‘gram? — but an appropriately nutso performance from its star and some sharp writing keep it from feeling as disposable as its worldview.

In a film where several of the major story beats fall somewhere between far-fetched and Tolkien-level fantasy, it’s impossible not to appreciate the raw human texture that Haddish brings to her under-written role.

Lohan is just fine with self-deprecating quips at her expense and looking silly while getting messy by way of physical comedy involving toilets, raccoons, and the aforementioned ski accident. Lohan shines in these moments, and the blooper reel in the credits shows that shine even extended to the set.

This bland stab at seasonal entertainment is too enamored by its own edgy revisionism to deliver on that promise, and after the 2020 that we’ve been having, everyone — young, old, Christian, and not — deserves something better in their stocking this year.

By the time it’s finally over, the only person more exposed than its star is her director.

Blitz manages to land the occasional punchline, but the smattering of decent jokes only call further attention to the film’s complete lack of rhythm.

Melissa McCarthy is hilarious in every scene of The Boss, but the movie rarely keeps up with her.

The only people for whom this situation isn’t terrifying are us, the audience, who feel nothing but the purgatorial torpor of sitting through a movie that’s too afraid of its own concept to do anything truly provocative with it.

You’ll get little more than a refresher course in the art of gaming from this documentary.

Dressed heavy-set, Crowe is all grimaces and frowns in disgust at everything around him. His only emotional note is all ANGRY, resulting in a parody of his own performances. It’s Crowe on overdrive, and it’s horrible.