King worked on the script for Cell, which isn’t that surprising given that many of the worst adaptations of his work have his name on them. It only proves how hard a job it is to adapt King. Even the author himself can’t ace it.

At 107 minutes, Tulip Fever has been trimmed of every ounce of fat. But connective tissue, muscle and even the heart are gone too, leaving a lifeless frame.

Bits and pieces of the gay-themed drama Beautiful Something feel real and essential. But this slow-going film often suffers from a forced, navel-gazing quality that can prove exasperating.

Director Mario Van Peebles brings real tension and excitement to the scenes where these men are surrounded by predators, but the tone of the film is awkwardly split between the grit of modern cinema and the boisterous adventure of old Hollywood.

For a movie seemingly concerned with clarity and enlightenment, it’s woefully lacking in both.

It’s bland enough to serve as a kind of palate cleanser at the end of a long and punishing moviegoing summer.

Although this film never really makes sense, Sesma’s years of experience means that it’s at least competently shot, with locations around the world. Plus, it’s admirably gonzo. And when it comes to cheap genre fare, bizarre always beats boring.

As directed by Stuart Hazeldine, even its jolts of surrealism feel curiously stilted; what it needed was a director whose reverence would be tempered by a healthy sense of the ludicrous, an ability to tap into and draw out the material’s stranger undercurrents.

While a fictionalized account of Lee’s career certainly held some sex, drugs & rock ’n’ roll potential, the blandly pedestrian film Spaceman seldom delivers despite an engagingly game lead performance by Josh Duhamel.

Begos gets the texture and atmosphere right, but there’s nothing beneath his cool ’80s fog.

The title of this strenuously crude and crotch-obsessed movie may be lazy, but it’s also pretty apt.

Italian director Roberto Andò’s film feels entirely manufactured, distancing itself from its audience and blunting its points in the process.

Too much of this project feels like it’s been coldly calculated for maximum international box office.

As it is, so much obvious care has been taken to reproduce and update the charms of the Robert Stevenson-directed original — to deliver an old-fashioned yet newfangled burst of family-friendly uplift — that Mary Poppins Returns winds up feeling both hyperactive and paralyzed. It sits there flailing on the screen, bright, gaudy and mirthless, tossing off strained bits of comic business and all but strangling itself with its own good cheer.

Like something you peer at rather than absorb, Salt and Fire is both awful and a tad fascinating.

It’s at once talky yet emotionally remote, and while posing a risky set of questions about sexual abuse, power and relationships, the experience is an unsatisfactory and draining slog.

It’s unusual to see a film like this make its nominal hero into a jerk, who learns something essential from his nemesis. True or not, the complex characterization does make for a better story.

While their last movie managed to temper the outrageousness with an underlying goofy sweetness, the biggest offense here isn’t that it’s offensive, it’s just not all that funny.

Though its obvious message may not translate well outside its intended audience, the converted will likely be entertained by the well-produced package the moving themes are delivered in.

An intriguing casting gimmick can’t mask a story — and a relationship — that’s largely unremarkable.

At its best, “Max Steel” shares elements with “Smallville” and “Teen Wolf,” using the supernatural as a metaphor for awkward adolescence. At its worst, it’s more like “Transformers” — an extended toy commercial, noisy and forgettable.

Even a talented cast can’t overcome the script from five screenwriters, whose uneven final product is surprisingly bland for all its raunchiness.

The film has all the emotional resonance of a dog-themed novelty coffee-table book. Adorable, but ultimately forgettable.

Although he effectively establishes the downtrodden milieu, Lee’s script ultimately succumbs to mounting clichés and plot contrivances.

A film that deserves scrutiny for its treatment of its young female protagonist.

Paradise and its predictable waltz of suffering, choked consciousness and monstrosity adds little to the problematic subset of camp-themed World War II movies, which feel like nostalgia for hell.

This melodrama struggles with serious post-production issues and an unnecessarily complex story, losing any of its intended impact in the process.

Loserville is somehow two different movies — a traditional teen comedy mixed with a message-driven drama about the dangers of bullying — without enough connective tissue linking characters or scenes to lend it cohesion.