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.

The performances — especially Stevens’ — are silly and sincere, and the action competent enough for “Cuckoo” to have worked as pure pulp. But this film takes itself too seriously and pokes fun at its own silliness, a fatal combination.

With muted characters and a conventional structure, the movie struggles to find the fun or the spirit, humming between high notes and low notes to fall flat in the middle. While its heart is in the right place, Gay Chorus Deep South just doesn’t sing.

No, it’s not what you’re expecting, and what it is isn’t very good, either.

Shot and directed like a sitcom episode, The Parenting runs on (good, awkward, creepy) vibes, which is probably why Parker Posey, who plays the home’s “mysterious” owner and exposition dispenser, injects energy into the film just by being her off-kilter self. . . Unfortunately, The Parenting isn’t a hangout movie where tone can reign supreme.

Yeon eventually just throws his hands up and surrenders to the cheesy spectacle of it all with a frenzied third act that finds the entire cast in a death race to the border. It’s here — in an amusingly unmoored but ultimately exhausting sequence that looks like someone trying to recreate “Fury Road” on a Nintendo 64 — that Yeon stops being able to afford his own ambition, and the film’s budget suddenly feels like a rubber band stretched over a hula-hoop.

Between an over-reliance on woozy indie filmmaking staples — from its soft lighting to its plodding, overly delicate score — and a central family dynamic that never feels legible, the end result is more irritating than enlightening.

A terse and streamlined dad movie that’s shorter than a Sunday afternoon nap and just as exciting, Greyhound bobs across the screen like a nuanced character study that’s been entombed in a 2,000-ton iron casket and set adrift over the Atlantic.

The whiz-bang joy of the first film is wholly absent, and Despicable Me 3 limps along for nearly an hour before finding its footing.

The film’s scattershot focus — in stark contrast to the breathless immediacy of “The Rescue” — and advertorial tone diminish the sheer thrill of watching the company land an orbital class rocket for the first time.

“Mektoub, My Love” is never about anything more than its own style.

It’s always been hard not to admire Hausner’s audacity, but this time around the boldness of her storytelling finally spills into trollish provocation.

Unfortunately, the unbridled shock value isn't matched by a similar investment in other ingredients that might have made this low rent B-movie worthwhile.

No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts.

Entering boldly into this bunch is Happiest Season, a shiny holiday comedy which is by all accounts indistinguishable from the rest save for one little detail: It’s gay! Unfortunately, this tiny tweak isn’t enough to make a lasting impression on the genre, especially with a lackluster script that offers little in the way of surprise or delight.

Cruise’s undeniable star power is all that keeps “Never Go Back” from feeling like it came off a studio assembly line, though you’ll still spend most of the movie wondering if you’ve been swindled into watching a movie about Ethan Hunt’s luddite twin brother.

Overwrought with visual style but relentlessly one-note, The Front Room is willfully annoying and dubious in its purpose.

It's a shame that the divine and human elements of this story are put into competition, because either one might have flourished on its own.

There’s just something retrograde about the entire thing, a copy of a copy, a “new” story with some very light edits to the “old” one, that bogs down even the lightest touches of merriment.

While the initial perimeters of The Re-Education of Molly Singer are simple and perfect for some laughs and character growth, little of that happens here.

Forestier and Seydoux are both fantastically desperate as dead end citizens who met each other at a very dangerous time in their lives, but Desplechin fails to make full use of his actors; instead of allowing them to shade in their characters, he pummels the audience into an ambiguous state of forced sympathy.

A shocking misfire that nevertheless demonstrates the sheer confidence in his storytelling that Dolan has cultivated over a decade of movies. It’s the only possible explanation for this baffling ensemble piece, a campy (if at times inspired) burst of melodrama and ludicrous scenarios caving into each other in a spectacular mash of half-baked ideas.

Perhaps the film’s Walmart approach to its action would’ve been more forgivable if the Uncharted games weren’t so frequently suffused with Spielbergian flair, just as the film’s archetypal characters may have been less underwhelming had the games not managed to establish 10 times the pathos with none of the same flesh and blood.

The Fallen Kingdom is at its worst when attempting topicality (the testosterone-fueled Wheatley refers to one of our heroes as a “nasty woman”) or when beefing up its crass plot.

Despite the refreshingly experiential flavor of Szumowska’s approach, her film is handcuffed by the facts of its true story, and Pam remains at such a pronounced emotional remove that it sometimes feels as if she’s only hiking up that mountain because the facts of the matter demand that she must.

The good news is that the fans of Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer” — a bland and pulpy 2014 riff on the ’80s TV series of the same name — are in for more of the same. The bad news is that the rest of us are, too.

Becky is as grim and gruesome as any horror movie in recent memory, but that alone can’t save this gross-out thriller.

In trying to thread the needle between a tribute and a testimony, Pelosi in the House ultimately succeeds as neither.