It has so many things it wants to say about the state of modern America, but it finds no suitable or impactful way to say them.

Over time, Gold becomes nothing more than a masterclass in watching a great actor try to build a fortune out of dirt.

It’s believably fun, but best suited for the age group the actors embody. Any older audience member will surely roll their eyes at the spoon-fed cuteness. Yet for a 12-year-old, “Crater” just might feel like shooting for the moon.

A thin, dull, and by-the-numbers biography that fails to capture its subject’s irrepressible spirit or properly contextualize his importance.

For all of the favors that Howard does to the subject of his biopic, the director can only do so much to disguise the self-serving nature of a story that was always less about where Vance came from than it was about where he wanted to go.

The film’s threadbare story runs parallel to some compelling ideas about masculine insecurity, internalized pain, and the price of genetic privilege, but Anvari’s well-calibrated jump-scare machine is too preoccupied with gross effects, unmotivated jolts, and that strange rash that’s growing in Hammer’s left armpit to engage with any of them.

A short, patchy, straight-to-streaming piece of semi-amusing content that tries to fit several different romantic-comedies into a single movie that doesn’t have the bandwidth (or the interest) to mine any of them for major sources of romance or comedy, Claire Scanlon’s The People We Hate at the Wedding basically feels like watching a bunch of talented actors chug cheap red wine for 90 minutes.

Godmothered has all the pieces for at least an amiable enough production. Instead, the result is a paradoxical combination of sweet messages and dull execution, good-hearted ideas and bizarre subplots, a dull affair that very clearly sprang from a good place.

Occasionally, both Johnson and Penn — unquestionably talented performers — nearly get Daddio back on track.

Roxine Helberg’s directorial debut constantly reminds us that our world exists in complicated shades of gray, but the story that it tells is painfully black and white.

Despite the efforts of its cast, Crown Heights is too crammed and hectic to convey the immensity of the systemic evils that run through its ruptured heart.

The film is never funny, and its attempts to wink at the adults in the room are so lame that you wish they’d been left on the cutting room floor, but the deeper the film delves into Tim’s imagination the less imaginative it becomes.

After nine years and four movies, it might be time to hit the “eject” button on the “V/H/S” series once and for all.

As narrow as the universe is wide, this dull, sanitized dramatization of history’s tawdriest astronaut scandal has absolutely no idea how touching the heavens might transform a person — it only knows that it does.

There are bigger questions to ask here, but when it’s easier to roll out some simple images and wrapped-up answers, Breakthrough breaks down, happy to just explain away everything good as a divine act that no one could possibly control. Movies, however, require a bit more than just faith.

For all its vibrant, flamboyant aspects, “Dom Hemingway” is a resoundingly empty star vehicle. It gives Law a character too thinly crafted to justify his eccentricities. He acts his heart out for a role that has no heart.

Bad as this movie can be, there are far worse things in our world than a story about the value of love and kindness, and the joy of sharing those things with those who may never have known them before (kudos to Cumberbatch, who sells the climactic transformation).

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

The film’s best moments are hollow and derivative, as borrowed from better fictions as any of the names that Alice takes for herself.

A misfire that’s as stilted as it is inert.

The lurching between genres, whether horror or comedy or heartfelt father-daughter movie, becomes increasingly transparent and frustrating as the movie tries to win our hearts back over with sentimental weepie moments in the film’s last act.

Salt and Fire is by no means the most willfully obtuse film that Herzog has ever made — it seems as broad as a blockbuster when compared to the likes of “The Wild Blue Yonder” and “Lessons of Darkness” — but it’s the only one of his works in which his curiosity has completely eclipsed his insight.

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.

It’s queer and contemporary — a decent addition to an already lengthy Christmas horror movie marathon that can edge out 1997’s “Jack Frost” but doesn’t come close to touching “Gremlins” or even “Krampus.”

It’s all an approximation of fun, mirth in tiny portions, amusement of the thinnest variety.

It’s a decent Cliff’s Notes version of the narrative with glimmers of something far more fascinating. It just feels like Broomfield missed the point on saying anything ground-breaking.

Commingling an overwrought spin on something like “The Babadook” with the kind of bland nonsense genre fans should expect from a Blumhouse flick in March, The Woman in the Yard is effectively a cinematic garage sale peddling parts from better movies.

You may not want to spend more time with these characters, but you will want to sink deeper into their world — fortunately, the forthcoming videogame will allow players to do just that. Whether the game will make retroactively make “Kingsglaive” a more engaging movie remains to be seen, but there’s certainly room for improvement.