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.