An obvious abundance of creative passion went into the two-fisted action picture Split Lip — a film that’s generally likable but ultimately too slight and derivative to recommend.

Zuhdi’s story is ambitious; and there’s something poignant about the way these characters’ roundabout schemes keep pushing them further away from what they really want. But the audience rarely gets to see these plans play out.

The film’s biggest issue is its balance between setup and payoff.

Days is loaded with effective visual razzmatazz, but what the eyes giveth, the ears taketh away. For whether it's the plot, the dialogue, the character development or the acting itself, anything that stands apart from camera style is a thudding disappointment.

Flowers in the Attic is a protracted exercise in morbidity, relieved only by moments of ludicrousness. In adapting Andrews' Gothic chiller, writer-director Jeffrey Bloom tries hard to establish an eerie fairy-tale-gone-sour mood, yet fails to work up the credibility necessary to sustain it. The result is a real turnoff. [20 Nov 1987, p.32]

The early glimmers of something soulful and sobering — rooted in investigative details and detention center realities — ultimately give way to the tired mechanics of give-it-all uplift.

Despite how good-natured this movie is, it just doesn’t stand on its own. It has the right kind of soul, but a shapeless body.

For every poignant keeper...there’s a clunker.

The Kirkes are attractive and intriguing actresses, Mendelsohn again proves one of the best screen actors around and Dornan looks great in scrubs. But it’s hard be sure exactly what Forrest is trying to say here and the film isn’t compelling or appealing enough to sufficiently care.

Though the family-friendly comedy has all the good intentions of a motivational puppy poster, it unfortunately also has the same level of intelligence and plot.

Winning lead performances and some uniquely quirky touches keep this dramedy watchable from start to finish, but an over-reliance on indie film clichés — from the plucky folk-pop soundtrack to the generic “dredging up the past” plot — add up to squandered potential.

This is just another buy-the-numbers POV fright-fest — like the B-movie version of walking through a professional Halloween haunted house.

Director Lior Geller brings an aggressive energy and jittery style to this action movie, but his sketch of a script feels like an all-caps reactive tweet to some news story about MS-13, a real problem in the D.C. area.

The problems may lie in Todd’s novel, but regardless, characters act illogically, as though written by someone who napped through most of Intro to Psych and skipped English 101 altogether. Character motivations go either unwritten or left on the cutting room floor.

Darkness Visible is disjointed and drags out for far too long, but it features some effectively creepy visuals.

Otherhood does have a few genuine and genuinely funny moments — thanks largely to its stars — but they’re overshadowed by the bad behavior of both the mothers and their sons.

Hardcore “Hunter” devotees may enjoy “Last Mission,” but the film lacks much of the good cheer and frisky élan of the broadcast series.

For much of this movie you may find yourself hoping that Zemeckis might somehow recapture the entrancingly macabre spirit of “Death Becomes Her,” still one of his greatest pictures and one of the few in which his flair for ever more outlandish visual effects feels perfectly in sync with the story he’s telling. But despite a few flashes of novelty . . . The Witches is pretty thin brew by comparison, concocted from mostly secondhand ingredients.

With its solid production values, Unplanned has all the appearances of being a real film, but viewers in favor of abortion rights will find it to be pure propaganda. Writer-directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon spend more time making their talking points than developing their characters, who exist merely to make their arguments.

Fans of the real-deal Chucky movies, with their cheerfully low-rent effects and bawdy, impish humor, may well regard this slick new offering as a desecration masquerading as an upgrade. Which is not to say that this Child’s Play is entirely without its brutish, haphazard pleasures.

It is hard to blame the audience for a movie that keeps daring us to envision a richer, funnier, more intelligent and imaginative version of it at every turn.

Spencer succeeds much more than the movie itself does; even when the writing and the filmmaking fail her, which is annoyingly often, she’s awfully good at using her beatific smile and tough-talking charm to elicit your nervous chuckles.

Unlike Medem’s best films, The Tree of Blood feels way too haphazard. It hops freely between timelines and characters, such that it becomes more of a compilation of sensual, stimulating scenes than a movie with anything in particular to say.

Due to the movie’s deliberate lack of narrative arc, thematic stance and clear characterizations (the soldiers feel interchangeable and Logaze’s interview style is weak), we’re never always sure what we’re watching — or why.

The story is thin and merely serviceable at best, and it often feels like the film has barely been written.

In order to make the situation more universal and existential, Raschid keeps the issues and stakes so vague that there’s no way for the characters or story to develop. The film, like its title location, becomes just another featureless box, designed to agitate and confound anyone who enters.

Despite Smaller and Smaller Circles being visually proficient, stagy performances fueled by formulaic dialogue do little to steer the film’s narrative.

While the European locations are picturesque, the cast lacks the chops and charisma to make this collection of killers and thieves imposing. Weight-room-sculpted muscles aside, everyone here comes across like too much of a lightweight — as if they’re just playing pretend.