The Holdovers is a flat, phony, painfully diagrammatic movie masquerading as a compassionate, humane one.

This downbeat drama is as overwrought as Killian’s muscles — it’s a steroidal portrait of a man in distress.

Deadliest of all, Fear is just not scary. The jump scares don’t land, the fears themselves are all a bit silly and it feels like Taylor is holding back for the majority of the run time.

The elements of a good, “Winter’s Bone”-like depiction of the rural social order are here. But they only really coalesce — and combust — when Thornton’s on the screen.

The movie’s handful of action sequences are good, but they’re too sparsely deployed and overwhelmed by lots of slow-paced scenes of characters stewing in self-pity.

It may have benefited from a quickened pace, or touches of humor, or heightened stakes because — at least in this film — watching Nazis get theirs is a vein of amusement that runs dry.

Boutella often has an otherworldly screen presence that makes her perfectly suited for this kind of material, but the fussiness of all that is happening around Kora means that the character and performance never get a chance to breathe and blossom, or to fully come to life.

The execution struggles from the outset to find a sustainable comedic pitch.

While ideas concerning the awakening of the dead are rife with transformational potential, in The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster the means used to materialize them leave much to be desired.

While there are a few chuckles to be had here, mostly courtesy of Wilson’s gee-willikers delivery, the rest of the cast fares worse, including Haddish, whose bumbling clairvoyant is stuck cracking moldy jokes about PayPal and CVS.

Despite some nice mood-setting, too much of Wolf Garden is spent talking around the story rather than just telling it.

If nothing else, this movie is an effective demonstration of the directors’ ability to lull the audience into a relaxed state before knocking them around.

The cat-and-mouse action is uninspired and slackly paced; and any pizazz that Wilson, Lundgren and Fehr bring gets lost once they stop talking and start shooting.

Last Sentinel is more geared toward delivering a message about humanity’s bent toward paranoia and self-destruction than in producing any tension or thrills. It’s a very heavy film — really too heavy to move.

Despite all the familiar faces, Simulant still feels too bare-bones. It asks some pretty remedial questions about freedom and humanity; and it is ultimately too tasteful and earnest to get pulses pounding and minds racing.

The idea behind this film is to celebrate James’ first and best teammates. In the real world, what they achieved as a basketball team was remarkable. But dramatized? On the screen? It’s stubbornly undramatic.

There are really two movies happening here: one, a cat-and-mouse game between two manipulative schemers; and another that skewers self-involved, “anything for a click” influencers. Both have their merits; but they don’t mesh well.

George C. Scott plays a gentle wacko who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes. He's being treated by a psychiatrist (Joanne Woodward) named Dr. Watson. If you think that's funny, then this movie is for you. The point of all this is that losers can be winners. The cast labors valiantly in a lost cause. [24 Apr 1987, p.19]

Nothing in the story really sticks, or stings. The ace cast makes the movie better. But they deserved a better movie.

That Bagiński’s Knights of the Zodiac amounts to a well-intended disappointment doesn’t mean it has zero merit as a work of entertainment, but it will neither satisfy the fandom’s demands for a true-to-the-bone homage to their childhood favorite, nor will it transmit to outsiders why this tale of blind courage in the face of insurmountable odds has inspired such decades-long devotion.

More often, the weirdness and affectations seem gratuitous. Even for a movie meant to be offbeat, the rhythm is jarringly askew.

No situation or character really gets a chance to breathe or grow here. Even the best casts can flail when the vibe is more antic than comic.

Peter Nicks’ documentary Anthem is a broad-strokes film about a nuanced topic: the promises and failures of the American experiment.

The effects look cheap, the Louisiana accents are broad and the characters are one-dimensional, but veteran B-picture stars Nicky Whelan (as a tough sheriff), Casper Van Dien (as a notorious criminal) and Louis Mandylor (as the raiders’ leader) all throw themselves into the film’s cheesy spirit.

The film’s chaotic structure and panting sensibility leaves Veil feeling more like the star of a fast-moving timeline than someone we get to know.

Saltburn is shocking only in its puerility. No sophomore effort should feel this sophomoric.

Despite its cult status, Hollywood Knights is pretty much a guy flick with its share of bare-breasted females, cheerleaders without undies and crass jokes.

Jones, never winking at the rampant absurdity, gives the proceedings a little grounding. But Besson wants off the leash and his instincts lead him astray.