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

Life might be messy and weird and scary, but it possesses more honesty than this cinematic misery.

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.”

This is a bizarre movie that disappears up its own empty gastrointestinal tract.

Varley’s homages and nods can’t help save The Astronaut from a sudden tonal shift that takes away what makes the first half of the film interesting and brings it into redundant — and honestly, quite baffling — territory.

“The most original movie of the year?” Not quite. But sometimes, if a film is this hard to sell, perhaps that’s a sign that it shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

The pop icon’s stardom is so etched in concrete at this point that he could tell his fans just about anything and they would never stop listening. So it’s a pity that the documentary vehicle that surrounds him isn’t more forthcoming about the man beneath the wife beaters and airtight skinny jeans who sends so many swooning, but surely must, at times, feel lonely late at night like the rest of us.

The sincerity of Without Blood can’t be denied, but alas, the road to mediocrity is paved with good intentions.

Too conventional to function as shock comedy and too angry to spark spontaneous laughs, The Comedian is a film without a purpose.

In its revelations of Salinger's flaws, the documentary capably strips away the fanaticism associated with his books to create the impression of a human being.

The real crime of “Lift,” however, is not that its poised as an “Ocean’s” movie lacking all of the glamour. No, it’s that director F. Gary Gray has made some incredible films in the past and “Lift” simply isn’t one of them. This is the filmmaker behind Oscar-nominated “Straight Outta Compton.” This is the director who helmed the American remake of “The Italian Job.”

The Lost Village may be awful, but it’s not malicious. It doesn’t flaunt its mediocrity or celebrate its ugliness — it isn’t “Sing.”

The most damning thing about Domino is that it reaffirms what all but the filmmaker’s most deluded fetishists have long since concluded: The world has caught up with Brian De Palma — his fascination with voyeurism and violence have been sublimated into the stuff of everyday life — and the guy is basically just circling the drain.

Equally hobbled by an amateurish script and vaguely defined characters, the movie's long list of mediocrities have an anonymous quality, as though the director has been completely reborn as a hack.

Fortunately, Green’s sequel doesn’t have much interest in frustrations; this is a movie about unbridled joy, about transposing a cartoon veneer over a bleak human world.

Some of the goofier bits from Pitch Perfect 2 has been excised, and this latest entry focuses more firmly on the bonds between the ladies after its somewhat mean-tipped predecessor, though it never hits the girl-powered highs of the original. But mostly, it’s yet another unholy mashup of disparate tones that’s never as fun or frisky as the original material.

Inconsistent tonality, uneven pacing, and far too many self-referential winks dilute this tale of unrequited love before it even has a chance to fully develop.

The in-between moments when Mine is simply a guy stuck in the desert, trying to use his own wits to save himself, is when the film is at its very best, but that’s precisely what makes Mine such a disappointment: those moments are the in-between ones, not the bulk of the film.

It’s hard to get the same feeling of awe and epic scale that the series’ best installments can offer when you’re essentially watching ten guys squabble in a forest.

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.

Beyond Walken and Jones’ considerable contributions, A View to a Kill also contains a robust assortment of action sequences.

It’s awful, and yet it’s almost objectively Sandler’s best movie since “Funny People.”

Between the setting, the production design and a majority of the cast, Outlaws and Angels has the individual pieces to be something of merit. This particular revenge tale isn’t an example of incompetent filmmaking, just sadly misfocused storytelling.

While The 355 might not be the boundary-busting breakthrough it was sold as, it’s something better: a solid spy flick that adds something new to the genre without totally upending it. That’s refreshing in its own way.

This thing should be light on its feet, fleet and fast and fun. Instead, it drags down the court, taking plenty of shots, but never quite sinking any of them.

Less of a soft reboot than an emergency root canal for a series at risk of being removed from the release slate forever, this dogeared new chapter “from the Book of Saw” might lack the discipline to escape from the same traps that have always shackled its franchise to the grindhouse floor, but it still manages to squeeze a few drops of fresh milk out of Lionsgate’s oldest surviving cash cow with a back to basics approach and some unexpected political bite.

Slumberland is nothing if not an exhausting roller-coaster of missed opportunities, virtually all of which stem from the film’s lack of a solid emotional foundation.

The question with a movie like Jigsaw, which was preceded by seven “Saw” movies and did not screen for press, isn’t “Is it good?” but rather “How bad is it?” The answer, dear reader, is “quite.” Jigsaw is quite bad.