Paradise Hills posits that its entire world is a shell game built on outdated ideas and a resistance to originality, but it’s the film itself that’s most woefully unable to ever go anywhere new.

It’s fitting enough that “Brave New World” is a film about (and malformed by) the pressures of restoring a diminished brand. It’s even more fitting that it’s also a film about the futility of trying to embody an ideal that the world has outgrown. Sam Wilson might find a way to step out of Steve Rogers’ shadow, but there’s still no indication that the MCU ever will.

The full force of Union’s performance pushes the film to occasional crowd-pleasing results — give this woman a real action role, and fast — and Shaun’s ability to fight back is the one reliable element of an uneven film.

While there’s certainly room to explore Alcott’s biggest themes in the lives of modern women, here the results feel more hammy than revelatory.

For a film built on the wild concept that bonafide action bad-ass Kate Beckinsale has to wear an electrode-laden vest meant to shock her into submission before she maims everyone around her, there’s only one response: How dare this film be so lethargic.

While there are moments of committed physical comedy and a few good line deliveries, the circumstances are neither believable nor outrageous enough to add up.

The trouble with Holmes & Watson, a witless Sherlock Holmes spoof that supplies fewer laughs in its entirety than “Step Brothers” does in its deleted scenes, is that the movie can never decide how dumb it wants to be. Or, more accurately, what kind of dumb it wants to be.

As a feat of masochism, Phil is an impressive trick. As a movie, it’s a ghastly mess.

Aside from not being very scary, the movie is littered with missed opportunities.

Art can be affirmation, but affirmation cannot be art.

Alfredson’s direction proves yawnsomely methodical, ticking off surviving plot points as though filling in some I-Spy Book of Scandinavian Crime Cliches.

The film’s surplus of action and chase scenes follows the same rigid formula of swooping camera movements and game power-up deus ex machinas that no sequence ever proves particularly exciting. If anything, the film only loses energy as it goes on, with the final confrontation proving particularly anemic and rushed, as if the film is hurrying along to avoid having to delve into its storylines with more than a surface skim.

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.

This gender-swapped riff on “The Spy Who Dumped Me” was shot like a car commercial, lazily borrows from an obvious litany of actual Hollywood blockbusters, and constantly betrays the fact that it was made without any real financial interest in actually being good.

Tellingly, the most pleasurable moments in Nia DaCosta’s “The Marvels” don’t hinge on the audience having an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Marvel. . . . They’re just solid pieces of blockbuster filmmaking: charming stars (like the full-force charisma of Iman Vellani and the appealing vulnerability of Teyonah Parris), sprightly action, and zippy humor.

It’s a fitting third act for an overly safe film that only feigns at its ambition, and it leaves “The Adam Project” seeming less like a natural fit for Reynolds’ talents than an ill-fitting star vehicle for someone who’s never been less interested in stretching his limits.

It’s a fittingly ambiguous title for a directionless film, late night fare that will be enjoyed by just as many horny men as horny teenage lesbians.

It’s as if “Cabrini” is trying to separate the Christian ideals of the saint’s teachings from the political realities of putting them into practice; as if it’s trying to flatter the moral principles of its conservative audience without pushing that crowd to embody them. Just scan the QR code in the credits, pay a few movie tickets forward, and let the hard work of solving anti-immigrant discrimination become somebody else’s problem.

Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby has the hallmarks of a contemporary Hollywood spectacle. It's missing the explosions, but make no mistake: Gatsby is one glitzy misfire.

Focusing on cultural references and social cues, About Alex fails to give us a big picture compelling enough to overlook its flaws.

A(nother) disposable Netflix thriller that fails to do anything with its potentially clever premise, Brad Anderson’s Fractured isn’t the first modern riff on “The Lady Vanishes” — not even close — but it’s one of the few that finds a compelling new backdrop for that Agatha Christie-esque tale of conspiracy and gaslighting.

If superhero movies have unsurprisingly managed to outlive Stan Lee, a film as functional and flavorless as The Marksman suggests that Eastwoodism will die along with the man who inspired it.

Spencer and Alush turn in the film’s best performances, and Spencer’s natural warmth and Alush’s deep charm keep The Shack hammering right along.

Comedy has to be more than just cheap, gross gags that illicit a response steeped in revulsion. It’s got to have a heart.

A music biopic so broad and hacky it makes “Jersey Boys” seem like “All that Jazz,” Kasi Lemmons’ well-acted but laughably trite Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is an anonymous portrait of a singular artist — a by-the-numbers “Behind the Music” episode that needs 146 minutes to say almost nothing about a once-in-a-lifetime voice.

The film is trying quite hard to be a bracing and immersive depiction of rehabilitation’s hard toil. But “Steve” is instead a pantomime, an offhanded approximation of work that fails to convincingly show us the actual work.

Flatly directed by Stephen Herek from a screenplay by S.J. Roth, the movie seems to be at peace with its mediocrity. As a vehicle for WWE champ Paul "Triple H" Levesque, it's haplessly stuck on cruise control.

Trolls is a spectacularly empty fantasia of bad songs, bright lights, and militant happiness. But there’s no denying how well the film bludgeons you into submission when it gets into its groove.