The Gray Man was directed by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, though it’s such a synthetic, soulless bundle of goods that it barely feels touched by human hands. Full of smirking one-liners, blink-and-you-miss-’em international locations and acts of gratuitously unpleasant (if more implied than seen) violence, it’s basically Netflix Winding Refn; it’s globe-trotting comic nihilism for the whole streaming-loving family.

Iñárritu, rather than answering them or leaving them provocatively unanswered (either one would be fine), does what he seems to do with most of his stories and ideas nowadays: He flings them around, roughs them up and rearranges them into an imposing, finally insufferable monument to his own awesomeness.

If the goal is to relay what a miasma of suspicion and despair the water crisis created, “Flint” certainly suggests that, if regrettably by being its own well-intentioned if messy, unilluminating chronicle.

The depiction of teenage acute depression settles for shallow character development and self-indulgent tropes that distract from a strong Hugh Jackman performance.

But the magic has deserted him with She's the One, which turns out to be one of those remixes that creates nostalgia for the original.

While Beauty doesn’t really work, it does fail in interesting ways.

The disappointing western-mystery hybrid Murder at Yellowstone City strands an excellent cast in a slow-paced story with a muted tone, too far removed from its pulpy inspirations.

Zemeckis’ Pinocchio prompts one to wish upon a star that Disney would stop diluting the legacy of its beloved animated features with these soulless knockoffs.

A silly action-adventure written and directed by the master of movie disasters, Irwin Allen. It stars a stiff Walter Pidgeon as the admiral of a U.S. nuclear submarine whose mission is to save the Earth from the Van Allen radiation belt that has caught on fire. [24 Jul 2002, p.2]

It’s too facile to connect deeply. Everything in Natalie’s life is depicted on a surface level: motherhood, work, romance, friendship and even her passion for drawing. The differences between her two selves never seem too wide because both are barely rooted in reality.

Joyride is a jalopy of a film. This Irish-set story of a brand-new single mother and a precocious 13-year-old boy who end up on the road together is so scattershot and far-fetched it overwhelms its better intentions — of which there are many.

The forced hybrid of a preposterous potboiler plot with genuine questions of medical ethics, Extreme Measures is weakened, not strengthened, by its strange bedfellows shenanigans. And the fact that director Michael Apted is able to put considerable realism and skill into his filmmaking merely emphasizes how out to lunch this picture’s story is.

The Immaculate Room tests the audience’s patience as much as it does the characters’.

Take a ridiculous premise, marry it to a situation that is bound to resolve itself in the most obvious way, and keep the whole thing rolling with juvenile gags. What do you have? Television. Or “If Lucy Fell,” whose writer-director, Eric Schaeffer, certainly knows television. Or knew it.

Except for a couple of bright patches of dialogue by screenwriter William Goldman and a sharp performance by Peter MacNicol, this new Reynolds vehicle never builds up heat--or momentum. It’s just another bumpy, tedious ride through the seamy Vegas streets, which serve as home court for a bitter, lonely guy’s battle with an oafish gang of high-rolling thugs.

Ruben’s stylistic devices, his high angle shots and his black-and-white recountings of courtroom testimony, become just so much cinematic corpse-rouging.

Canvas has some aesthetic appeal, but beneath its surface there’s not much of a narrative foundation.

But whenever a film has hysteria as its subject, as this one does, the danger exists that it will become hysterical itself, and “The Crucible,” all its promise notwithstanding, falls into that trap with a demoralizing thud. Rife with screaming fits and wild-eyed rantings, this film is too frantic to be involving, too much an outpost of bedlam to be believable.

Meet Cute falls into a rut fairly quickly, because it lacks the breadth of imagination that makes the best time-loop stories work.

Even with the Gen Z-friendly touches — and Dever delivering a winning performance — Rosaline still feels frustratingly stale.

While Colman peels back Hilary’s layers of grief and rage with all the ferocity and subtlety you’d expect from an actor of her caliber, even she can’t sell the joyfully beaming pivot required of her in an interminable sequence in which Empire of Light essentially becomes the ’80s equivalent of Nicole Kidman’s AMC commercial.

The film is a case study in why critics say “show, don’t tell.” It’s 90 minutes of people talking about routine gangster stuff, peppered with occasional gunfire.

What it isn’t is especially insightful or memorable. Just because evil is banal doesn’t mean a movie has to be.

Garcia holds back too much, perhaps trying to avoid any phony epiphanies. As a result, his two main characters are too preoccupied with re-litigating old grudges to do or say anything notable.

Hill, who brings considerably less humor to his film than Kurosawa did his, unfortunately hasn't anything new to add that makes it worth sitting through his blood baths, as skillfully staged as they are. [20 Sep 1996, p.F10]

The actors all ham it up to a degree suited to a project so flat, cheap and derivative, which helps keep Mindcage at least watchable, if never exceptional.

There’s something wrong with the children, all right. The filmmakers can’t figure out what to do with them.

The cast is fine, but there’s a dispiriting dourness to the film. Nevertheless, after a slow start, Kitamura does offer up some impressive splatter scenes — peaking at the end, with a wild climax that partly justifies the movie’s existence.