Timely but sluggish and confusing.

Even for a third-rate farce with two stars who appear together onscreen for no more than a total of five minutes, it’s derivative and preposterous—worse than a rejected TV pilot, and about as romantic and funny as a root canal.

While this may be yet another potentially disposable action movie, it’s still worth seeing on the big screen at full volume if you can. The action is big and the stars give it their all, even if the dialogue leaves something to be desired.

The film has a restless, nomadic quality similar to Kerouac’s lifestyle, but there’s no there there.

This is a rare feel-good treat that nudges the heartstrings and makes you feel optimistic about the human race.

Ultimately, everyone in the movie is wasted, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, who provides great eye candy but has nothing important to say or do. Most of the roles are so ambiguous you end up scratching your head in the final reel, and some of the loose ends are so irrelevant they seem to have ended up on the cutting-room floor. With Russell Crowe, it really helps if you can read lips.

Sweet and well-intentioned but bland and disappointing, The Miracle Club is one of those slow, meandering Irish dramas that inspire more respect than excitement.

The result is respectable, but dull and tedious. Only half a loaf is not a three-course meal.

Things really have to be precisely calibrated for comedy to work amidst all of this vicious violence—blood pours from eye sockets, gushes from neck arteries, and spouts from nearly decapitated heads—but no such luck. Instead, a talented ensemble of actors must stumble their way through chaotic tone shifts and declarations of irony that feel both uninspired and cruel.

Murder mystery, romance, farce, war movie, political polemic with everything from racism to veterans’ care to American fascism in its sights — David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a whiplash smorgasbord of a period piece that’s sure to draw the ire of People for the Ethical Treatment of Taylor Swift.

In Downhill, it disintegrates because both parties turn out to be such unsalvageable bores — a misfire, in a feature-length movie, that is worse than stale popcorn.

Words and Pictures doesn’t possess the tender grace of "Enough Said," Nicole Holofcener’s wonderful film about middle-aged love. Nor does it have the kinetic energy of a high school movie like "The History Boys", adapted from Alan Bennett’s play. But it’s a winning effort from a director whose varied oeuvre has consistently charmed viewers.

The result is a juicy true story told blandly, but The Catcher Was a Spy is still a movie worth seeing.

The result is 96 minutes of excessive eccentricity and unfocused gibberish that seems like 96 days at hard labor with no hope for commercial success. Color it gone.

V/H/S/2 is a diabolically psychotic, sub-mental and completely unwatchable disaster that I happily deserted when a man with a retinal implant scooped out his bionic eye with a sharp object, splattering blood all over the camera. Your move, and you’re welcome to it.

My boy Viggo is always fascinating, but the movie is a concept searching for a story.

Empty, pointless and stupid, the barrage of gunfire called Welcome to the Punch is another unappealing entry in the overworked British gangster genre.

Terry George remains a director I admire, and as movies go, the integrity and importance of The Promise are irrevocable.

Reviews might be “mixed,” but don’t let that deter you. The Chaperone is a fascinating, exquisitely made film about the early life of sultry silent-screen star Louise Brooks, who traveled from Wichita, Kan., in 1922 to New York City with a proper chaperone named Norma Carlisle.

In the end, 30 Minutes or Less is a tidy, entertaining nerd action movie that should provide a good distraction for viewers this summer.

Jovovich binds the episodic action sequences, her face a mask of noble pain and isolation. She outruns zombies, orchestrates catapults of flaming gasoline, literally slays a dragon with a Hummer – and all without a single unnecessary quip or wasted kiss.

The Treasure of Foggy Mountain is not Please Don’t Destroy’s answer to Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and it won’t cement them as the next generation’s comedy saviors. They may well have such a masterwork in them, but this isn’t it.

The Mechanic runs on violence, and when no one's being riddled with bullets or getting their hand shoved into a garbage disposal, it lags. That said, the "action" sequences are so frequent and bloody that they render plot nearly obsolete.

Forced, contrived and slow as Christmas, it’s a pleasant enough time-waster, but what a treat to spend just under two hours in the hands of pros.

A film about mental health issues needs a good script and a first-rate cast to sustain a viewer’s interest, and this one has neither.

Maybe so much of Son of a Gun seems boring and directionless because so little of the dialogue is comprehensible. This is a problem that tanks so many imports these days.

If you cherish the rare opportunity to watch magnificent actors as perfect as Blythe Danner and John Lithgow giving it all they’ve got, in a film about grown-ups, then the line starts here.

The Front Room, the new horror-comedy from filmmakers Max & Sam Eggers and A24, boasts a strong premise and a game cast, but it’s not particularly scary or funny. It’s surreal, clever, and occasionally visually quirky enough to fit the “indie horror” mold, but a little too unsubtle and user-friendly to feel like arthouse fare.

The first of Kevin Costner’s monumentally ambitious four-part western cycle, Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter One is a vivid reminder of how rousing an experience it is to see a grandly produced epic in that most American of all genres, while falling well short of actually being that experience.

This awful rehash, badly directed by Vincenzo Natali (Splice), reeks of stale, recycled ideas.

Live By Night boils over with ambience and charged with details, from Roaring 20s flapper costumes to shootouts in period cars, but too many aborted narratives in Affleck’s lifeless screenplay intertwine, fanning the confusion, while other subplots are abandoned altogether.

The longer it drags on, the sillier it gets. A preposterous narrative, illogical red herrings, trick endings, bad acting and—shazam! — Spike Lee turns into M. Night Shyamalan!

Depression is a tricky subject for a movie aimed at a target audience that is depressed enough already. But this one justifies its challenges to feel-good escapism through honesty and integrity.

Equal parts courtroom drama, legal thriller and family saga, it’s also a synchronized duet for two terrific actors at the top of their craft that left me stunned.

The movie needs more of that charisma and fewer cigarette butts to make Golda a woman as memorable on the screen as she was in real life.

Seriously, nothing in this movie makes sense. Characters are introduced and then never appear again; the plot summation given near the end actually counters what we saw come before; the jarring editing doesn’t so much give you whiplash as it leaves you feeling like Jack Nicholson at the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest."

There are good things in it, but Ms. Hunt is smart, observant and bright enough to make films that resonate with more freshness than this. Maybe next time.

October Gale features picturesque scenery, crisply photographed by Jeremy Benning, and composed in shots that could pass for glossy tourist postcards. The two stars are pretty to look at, but Canada is hard to upstage.

After seven and a half years in the making, it’s a dumb, dull, lackluster letdown. Hugh Jackman still does everything right. It’s the film that gets it all wrong.

It’s nice to see a movie about kids that extols the virtues of intelligence over sex, sports, bad music, ugly clothes and tattoos, but aside from some nice autumnal shots of Ivy League college campuses, there’s nothing in HairBrained to sustain much interest.

Too relentlessly depressing to recommend to the everyday audience. It seems to be on automatic pilot. Horrible, sad things keep happening, but it just goes on.

Sometimes beauty and charm are enough to turn a middling movie into pure ambrosia. Diane Lane has plenty of both, and she uses them wisely in Paris Can Wait, elevating an otherwise mild and inconsequential film to unexpected heights of enchantment.

There’s so much to look at and think about that it is sometimes difficult to concentrate on the story, but a plot does emerge in the capable hands of Maïwenn, who keeps the facts straight while keeping one of the most shocking chapters in French history alive and kicking.

The only reason I wanted to see it at all is Kristen Stewart, but she is so wasted that she should have stayed in bed.

There are so many ideas rattling around in Backstabbing for Beginners that are never resolved, and so many duplicitous characters that are never satisfactorily explained, that the end result is a muddle of confusion and violence that could end the future of tourism in Baghdad forever.

The real star of the film is the magnetic, forceful and charismatic Matthew Fox, who steals the entire film as easily as if he were pitching a softball.

It’s just tired, desperate and preposterous.

As sports biopic, Gran Turismo is solid. As a video game adaptation, it feels like some of the key elements still haven’t downloaded.

The first thriller of the new season is a bomb called State Like Sleep, and it’s about as thrilling as a power failure in Antarctica. One of the January cast-offs that failed to make the cut in the 2018 year-end releases, it’s a good example of why January is always dreary, in more ways than one.

Well photographed, lurid enough to cause concern for the teen market it aims to captivate, and with enough blood to refurbish an abattoir, Kiss of the Damned creates an eerie, foreboding anxiety that comes uneasily close to terror. Too bad they seem to be making it up as they go along.

Red Right Hand, another routine crime-thriller with a title that makes no sense, is a violent and nauseating excuse to entertain the portion of what is left of that dwindling movie audience that lives for nothing more than a lot of posing, crunching and muscle-flexing, not always in the same order.

It's a sweet, harmless, meandering tale with an engaging gimmick, but a great love story - or a great movie - it's not.

You watch along as it unravels with the tempo of a funeral dirge, and before you check your watch, you realize you’re already bored to death.

This is bargain-basement moviemaking, and looks it. Here's wishing Mr. Pierce a vigorous movie career, and better luck next time.

A pretentious load of swill made in Portugal that should have been buried in a locked vault without a key.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is ultimately one of Marvel’s dullest and most unnecessary movies to date.

British character actors are the best in the world, and King of Thieves provides a perfect example of why. Like the distaff side of today’s British royalty that includes Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins, it’s a marvel to watch Caine, Courtenay, Broadbent and Gambon go at each other with an aplomb that dazzles.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, whose debut film Seventeen showed great promise, this maudlin soap opera is a disappointment, despite a strong performance by the extraordinarily gifted veteran actor Brian Cox. He makes every moment he’s on the screen throb with understated honesty, but Prisoner’s Daughter doesn’t boast much of anything else worth remembering.

Buck is lovable forever. If you think he’s perfection on four legs, he is. If you think he’s the most human dog since Lassie, Benji and Rin Tin Tin, he isn’t. Because Buck, you see, is computer-generated. Never mind. I guarantee you will love him anyway.

In a vacuum, without the headlines, Don’t Worry Darling is a thoroughly compelling watch that reveals a strong filmmaker in Wilde and genuine star in Pugh.

Sensitively written and carefully directed with keenly observed nuance by Leland Orser, who also plays the grief-stricken husband driven to the brink of madness by the sudden death of his son, it’s a film that touches the heart with the tenderness of understatement.

Labored and boring, The Mountain Between Us is a soap opera in the snow that fritters away the time and talents of Kate Winslet and Idris Elba for all the wrong reasons.

There are some pretty shots of nature and a few stabs at humor, but don’t be mistaken—this movie is background noise at best.

King Cobra is a cut above most homoerotic masturbatory screen fantasies, but not by much.

It’s next door to impossible to believe the dreadful Mary Magdalene could be the work of Garth Davis, the Australian director who caused a global sensation with the wonderful, award-winning 2016 film "Lion." That one was full of life and heart and adventure. The new one is dead on arrival. A disappointing theological follow-up to Lion, it’s dull as dirt.

Godzilla: King of Monsters is a film that seems to paint with sound — sometimes Pop Art, but more often large canvas Jackson Pollock splatter.

Simien has created a thoughtful movie experience that feels diverse, funny and visually interesting. Those expecting an exact recreation of the ride won’t find it here, which may be for the best. Despite a few cartoon-y scenes, Simien and his cast elevate Haunted Mansion to a thoroughly entertaining and oddly emotional good time.

The result is a film so personal you watch transfixed, caught up in a life that is constantly enthralling, with a universal appeal that extends beyond the exclusive Hills of Beverly.

You can’t fault the actors, who play the sadism for tough, two-fisted realism, but Crown Vic (a title that makes no sense; there’s nobody named Vic in it) is still a cheap copy of Training Day and a crash course in lock-jawed cynicism 101. Not to mention the worst P.R. the city of Los Angeles has had since the Rodney King scandal.

The awkward results are too contrived for comfort.

La Mission, carefully directed by Peter Bratt and beautifully photographed by award-winning cinematographer Hiro Narita (Never Cry Wolf), explores the human side of a culture we know almost nothing about, in a world usually exploited on film to depict drugs and danger.

In what is something of a movie miracle or at the very least an unexpected surprise, this adaptation of the much-loved Sega video game franchise launched nearly 30 years ago as a direct assault on Nintendo’s leaping plumber Mario, largely presses the all the right buttons—and even does so in the right order.

There’s plenty of magic in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, but viewers will need a summoning spell to conjure up a tangible plot.

Angel of Mine is a much better meld of psychodrama and soap opera than it appears on the surface.

It’s so sincere and admirable that it seems churlish to voice objections, but the fact remains that it isn’t very good.

There are aspects afloat reminiscent of the great 1946 sea epic "Two Years Before the Mast", but Chris Hemsworth is no Alan Ladd. He is to the majesty of a ship at sea what a clamshell is to the bottom of a canoe.

It’s a metaphorical stretch for a simple movie title, but never mind. Closer to the Moon still manages to be a strange blend of history, black humor and art.

Burlesque is the celluloid equivalent to a Big Mac attack, and any resemblance to a plot is purely coincidental.

A long, incoherent German horror film called A Cure for Wellness is well on its way to late-night cable TV. If you’re a dedicated masochist looking for torture, look for it fast. It won’t live to see a re-release.

Australian films are like local wines from Australian vineyards. They don’t always travel. A bore called The Dressmaker is the latest example.

It’s an impressive feat of comedic acrobatics to make a movie in this mold that creates a version of this madness that we can justify, relate to, become disgusted with, and ultimately love.

Primarily a psychological thriller and a small town drama, Halloween Ends is more interested in exploring the themes of the series than in its lore, and that’s a good thing.

It’s in the music that I Saw the Light best demonstrates how a tormented man named Hank Williams revolutionized the essence of country songs into a joy embraced by millions.

Shockingly un-cinematic and utterly devoid of dynamism, the film lacks anything resembling the well-researched insights or sharp-edged comedy that you have come to associate with the former host of The Daily Show.

Sweet but inconsequential, The Great Gilly Hopkins will satisfy family audiences and pre-teens with minimal demands for their money.

The human ensemble is here to provide exposition and cringy comic relief, annunciating the finer points of a plot that doesn’t really require explanation. This is a wrestling event, and they’re the commentary team.

Unfortunately, with only the bare outline of a script, no acting is required. The structure of the film is 89 minutes of brutality with a college degree. This is a warning, not a recommendation.

I haven't seen a movie this bad since "Battlefield Earth" and "Howard the Duck."

A Teacher is more in the vein of Michael Haneke’s brooding 2001 film, "The Piano Teacher."

In the avalanche of junk about aliens, alternate universes, digital effects and comic-book superheroes, it is a rare treat to see a sweet, low-budget film about real people that is as ingratiating as Lebanon, Pa.

Mr. Christensen the director betrays Mr. Christensen the actor too many times to count, but it’s worth noting that his eclectic tastes in source music includes Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” Bizet’s “Habanera” from Carmen, and Billie Holiday.

A well-meaning, expertly acted film, it unfortunately drowns in its own sorrow.

The generic title In Secret is as uninspired as the movie itself.

Despite the sight of so much cheesecake romping naked through the woods like the girls have never heard of poison ivy, it’s the usual disreputable grindhouse schlock.

It may not be one of the best, most inspired and fully realized classics in the master director’s oeuvre, but it towers above almost everything else in the junk pile of 2017 year-end releases.

The film investigates a gallery of kinks, fetishes, oddball turn-ons, and pent up sexual repressions like somnophilia (sex with someone who is asleep), dacryphilia (tears and sobbing), unconventional role-playing, and worse. The results are sad and often laugh-out-loud funny.

It's a special film of sacrifice, redemption and hope in the shadow of a holocaust that packs an emotional wallop from which there is no escape. I can't get it out of my thoughts, and I recommend it highly.

You can sum it up with a few smiles, a weak premise that never pays off, and a narrative that is nothing more or less than a big piece of zero.