The hit rate gets better as the film lumbers along and the scenarios grow more extreme, but it takes a certain degree of perseverance to roll with this thing until it pays off.

What we’re left with is a benign, artless, nothing of a movie that feels cobbled together with the same app-driven, gig-economy mentality that Phil is trying to disavow. Entire characters are ordered à la carte and forgotten about as soon as they leave our sight, as “Jexi” races across its story with the listlessness of someone blankly scrolling through their social media feeds.

This is a movie of remarkable scale; on the level of sheer craftsmanship, it offers some appeal. If only Gowarikar had put the same level of effort into the story.

It’s a fun watch, to be sure; as a home invasion movie of sorts, it has a number of thrilling moments, and lead actors Freida Pinto and Logan Marshall-Green each do a stellar job with what they’re given. However, the final product also exudes trepidation about its most intriguing aesthetic and narrative elements — ideas which may have only enhanced its genre sensibilities, had the filmmakers further pursued them.

The Family Plan resembles the first Dan more than the second, too predictable and formulaic to excite, without the juice to become a family favorite.

The horror-comedy takes a mediocre stab at the meta jokes typical to post-“Scream” whodunnits, as well as blisters through more vague quips about American moderates than the old “Colbert Report.” They don’t land.

For a movie with so much stuff to look at, the only things you really see during The Nutcracker and the Four Realms are all of the recent movies that it’s flagrantly trying to recycle.

Flashier stuff isn’t up to task, from awkward character design (the adults are, let’s just say, crafted with less care than the kiddos) to shoehorned callbacks and an over-reliance on exposition to push story points that could stand a more artful approach. The mind-bending nature of this series doesn’t help matters. (

If we ever truly sympathize with Doremus’ nebulous characters, it’s only because they help us appreciate how painful it can be to spend so much time trying to divine meaning from utter emptiness.

Choosing to make a film about such an astonishing, rule-disregarding, inspirational woman and concentrate on her relationships with fellas...is questionable enough as it is – but if Herzog had managed to properly dramatize those relationships, he might have conceivably gotten away with it, rather than ending up with this exercise in syrupy, (sometimes cringe-inducing) banality.

Aftershock has no earth-shattering revelations to make its mayhem stand out in the wreckage.

Like “Green Book,” The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a broad historical outing based on real people and real events, condensed down into an essence that can only be billed as “crowd-pleasing.” The trick this time: Farrelly seems far more aware of how he’s playing fast and loose with history to offer a zippy feature to a fractured world. Dare we say it: It works far better.

That Zemeckis and cinematographer Don Burgess manage to pack multiple lifetimes of experience into a single space, a fixed camera upon it, and mostly pull it off is quite a feat.

Had Daniels explored all the underpinnings of a horror outing as a dramatic allegory for addiction — as the film‘s opening quote (“I need forgiveness for my sins, but I also need deliverance from the power of sin…”) suggests he might — the director could have fared better than going all the way to ghosts… or is it demons?

An execrable film that’s redeemed by almost nothing besides Leslie Odom Jr.’s well-modulated lead performance and the ambient sense of unease that Green casts over the story’s first half, “Believer” is so creatively spineless and bereft of its own ideas that its entire concept of sacrilege is limited to imperiling its franchise’s legacy.

Inherit the Viper is at its best when keyed into the disposability of human lives, but most of the film can hardly be bothered to care about the ones it chooses to follow.

The Wraith is hardly more than it’s surface. The synopsis says it all and there’s very little character development outside of gang leader Packard (Nick Cassavetes, making his parents so proud) being motivated to pound on or murder other guys because they talk, let alone make love, to a girl he likes (Sherilyn Fenn).

The film zips through its final act at breakneck speed, doling out answers and riling up new conflicts with little care for how they impact a standalone story, just setting up for a franchise that might never come to fruition.

The UglyDolls film makes the most obvious choice at every conceivable opportunity, and is all the more tolerable for that.

While it offers some necessary growth for all of its characters, The Kissing Booth 2 can never resist looking and acting like dozens of other offerings of its genre ilk, unable to grow beyond basic complications and done-to-death dramas. And yet there are hints that its evolution has a few more tricks left to employ, its winking conclusion only one of them.

Gans isn’t especially concerned with the outcome this coupling, instead reveling in overwrought and often bloated storytelling, lush details and some of the year’s most unnerving CGI.

While the premise of Chick Fight may be featherweight, it’s the film’s phony feminist execution that turns it into a real loser.

While the gentle mediocrity of it all is somewhat charming at first — even with such tired material, Atkinson is still a reliably sweet and well-intentioned screen presence — it doesn’t take long for the film to wear out its welcome.

Watching Ella McCay can sometimes feel like time travel, particularly for those vested in bygone eras of American filmmaking, but if you’re capable of tuning into its wavelength, an old but worthwhile spirit can be found.

Christmas with You is almost unwatchably dull, solely sparking the desire to fast-forward through the out-of-touch jokes about selfies and Milan Fashion Week to remind us that Angelina is famous and ask, aren’t we having fun yet?!

Kon-Tiki directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg are at the helm this time around, proving capable captains even if the script they’re working from isn’t always seaworthy.

Unfortunately, Stephen Chbosky’s poor directorial choices cancel out the rousing success Dear Evan Hansen was on stage, with a cascade of glaring distractions that continuously point out the artificiality of the genre.

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.