Both a heist film and a revenge story, Ritchie’s Wrath of Man is the cinema equivalent of a hollow-point bullet. It’s not weighty, but it causes a lot of destruction.

There’s little sense of jeopardy, which makes the parade of violence nothing more than a detached spectator sport, with implications that are not good.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) seems to be directing by template, never stopping to let us get to know anybody – least of all Neeson’s Alex, who for the most part is only there to kill people. Some things never change.

There are moments where director Bell seems to be positioning Esther as an anti-hero, which would have been interesting. But it’s not a path to which he commits, and it’s back to bloody business as usual. The fact that this is a prequel drains even more suspense from the movie’s resolution.

Thick with dank atmosphere and well-acted with a cast that includes Colm Meaney and Barry Keoghan, it’s a drama about angry men with mommy issues that starts with a slow burn and ends up to its ears in gore.

Performances are, predictably, strong with the 85-year-old Hopkins, bouncing about like a bantam-weight fighter, and Good, in the more restrained role, calmly watching the phenomenon as much as responding to it, eventually wearing down his opponent with compassion.

With the one-off low-budget Nutcrackers, Green says he wants to pay tribute to the rough-edged adult-child comedies of his youth, films like The Bad News Bears and Uncle Buck. The result is a film that often feels, beat by beat, like you’ve seen it somewhere before.

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: Force of Nature is fairly terrible albeit in some interesting ways that won’t change the way you think about film but will make a Monday night couch-sit more entertaining, if only to discuss the WTF elements while washing out the popcorn bowl.

Anyone considering a movie called American Sausage Standoff (a.k.a. Gutterbee) should expect an odd comedy, though they might not expect one quite as eccentric as this Western by Danish actor-turned-director Ulrich Thomsen.

There is absolutely nothing in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween that you haven’t seen before, and seen done far, far better.

Hot Spring Shark Attack is a broad spoof of Jaws, related monster movies, police procedurals, contemporary culture (think influencers) superhero sagas and other things. And it is initially quite a lark.

The cast is made up of some of the finest and most interesting actors working in film today. And for the most part they’re doing thoughtful work. Unfortunately, there’s only so much they can do. The film doesn’t go emotionally deep enough to pay off.

The film suffers from the over-interpreting mental “glitch,” eagerly connecting coincidence, mental illness, drug experiences, religious awe, computer gaming, and science fiction movies in an over-arching pattern.

There’s star power in front of and behind the camera in the new mob action-drama The Kitchen. But all that talent, unfortunately, doesn’t add up to a satisfying movie.

Despite being top-heavy in themes, Whannell’s Wolf Man is a plodding, uninspired tale that discards folklore—there are no full moons or silver bullets—and squanders the talent of its cast.

If you’re already on to the more sinister stuff, this is probably an unnecessary retreat into mild ickiness.

None of this is helped by Platt’s performance, with a petulant eye-roll to every impediment, as if he were the fussbudget Felix of The Odd Couple and Cindy his disaster-prone Oscar.

The trouble starts with the script, which wobbles between an investigative thriller and a psychological study.

Clocking in at a brisk 88 minutes, Coffee & Kareem doesn't provide much comic relief, though it is a relief when it's over.

Kawase’s attempt at a healing, nature-loving cathartic conclusion comes across as campy, as if a scene from The Blue Lagoon was accidentally attached to a Japanese nature documentary.

The Matrix Resurrections is an incoherent, narratively sloppy mess.

A Dog's Journey is a film that romanticizes the needs of the master over the beast. And while it's not untrue that domesticated dogs live to please, the willingness of the film to take full advantage of such unconditional devotion can feel exploitative.

Sadly, despite the film’s gallant efforts, I am forced to join the ranks of the naysayers. In the end, I did find that the CGI effects were as creepy as they are impressive, and there were more failed numbers than there were successful ones.

New Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we don’t always get the film we want. I doubt even Coppola did with this one. Megalopolis is what it is. You probably wouldn’t want to move there. But it’s worth visiting as a tourist, if only to gape at the locals.

It’s a heartfelt film that seems to be aimed at the strength of familiar love in spite of difficulties. The elements are all there, but the film’s repetitive structures render it frustratingly flat.

As the film progresses, the idea of using a school shooting as a subject for a thriller feels deeply ill-conceived, undermining the gravity of the subject it attempts to address.

Rebel Moon isn’t a terrible movie, but it pales in every comparison to the Star Wars universe.

As a study in mutual traumatic grief between doctor and patient, Marionette has some resonance, but the emotional core of the story is smothered by its irritating intellectual pretensions and altogether too much wood paneling.

Huppert is an actress of great depth, so playing a monster in the shallow end of the pool is no great accomplishment. But she is great at staring with piercing intent. And she knows how to make a scene.

Frankie Freako isn’t the film you’re going to rave about to friends. It will, however, be an excellent subject for conversation about how much films got away with in 1986. If you can watch this film through that lens, it’s definitely a freaky film you can appreciate.

Impossible odds and a furious deadline have propelled many great and not-so-great action films. Those factors are very much at play in The Ice Road, which stars Liam Neeson, several big rigs, and the province of Manitoba in a thriller that, though by-the-numbers in execution, boasts a watchable enough premise.

If this were a pilot for a TV series, home audiences might be willing to baby it along until it grows stronger. As a stand-alone movie, this particular mutation looks like a badly-adapted dead-end.

The Intruder is the sort of thriller where the audience is in on pretty much everything from the beginning, and spends the rest of the movie waiting for the dolts onscreen to catch up.

The Rhythm Section is especially disappointing given its strong cast in front of and behind the scenes and its obvious ambition to rise above a paint-by-numbers action film with a somewhat relatable protagonist.

Awash in good intentions and weighed down by its grim premise, Come Away is a fantasy that fails to inspire, despite its star power (including David Oyelowo and Angelina Jolie) and occasionally clever flourishes.

Technically, Supercell is not a bad movie. But it’s dragged down by the economics that insist a low-budget movie needs some minor celebrity voltage. It’s at its best when people aren’t talking.

Static… low energy… no spark to speak of. A weak biopic of Nicola Tesla, the man who defined our electric lives, practically begs for shameful puns. For that, I apologize.

That the movie also inspires more wholesome feelings is entirely thanks to Ferreira (Euphoria), whose character communicates enough warmth, energy and emotional fragility to make even a doubtful curmudgeon soften a little.

I accept the onscreen explanation that this Godzilla is simply on atomic steroids. It’s the movie that’s fat.

Director Sarin plays around a little with the candy-coloured palette, with lots of quick snapshots and backdrops (shot in Montreal and Mexico), giving the film a sort of photoplay episodic structure. But there’s little dramatic build-up.

It’s not clear what Clooney’s hope for his film was, but presumably it was grander than what lands on the screen.

And though you can sense the influences of Mad Max, Escape from New York, and even a few influential forces from Walter Hill’s The Warriors, The Forever Purge remains an uncinematic thriller unworthy of breaking a lengthy stay away from the theatre.

Despite its grand-sounding title, The Fall of the American Empire is another trifle, a familiar harangue against human perfidy wrapped in a creaky farce.

You want to escape? Well, there’s a couple of hundred million U.S. dollars up on the screen for action and special effects, and retro amusement provided by pastel-coloured shopping malls, big shoulder pads, and Sony Walkmans.

Although Let Us In is billed as a science-fiction/horror for young adults, it’s hard to imagine anyone identifying as a teen or tween finding much interest beyond a rudimentary curiosity of an online urban myth getting the feature-length film treatment.

Dasha Nekrasova’s bored gamine onscreen presence is quite funny (she suggests a jaded Emma Watson). But much of the acting here is atrocious and the slash-and-splatter ending disappointingly conventional.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this greatest-hits patchwork approach or the correct racially diverse, girl-power script from Ashleigh Powell. There’s also nothing new or necessary about this jumbled, pretty mess of a movie, which barely covers the seams between its varied pilferings.

Apparently intended as a gateway movie for future horror movie fans, Annabelle Comes Home is a sex-and-death-free haunted-house tale about adventures in demonic baby-sitting.

Pretentious, which might be defined as a showing an excess of ambition, is a modifier that clings to Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria — a remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 Day-Glo horror classic — like a wet leotard.

Unfortunately, love and enthusiasm doesn’t automatically add up to a good movie. The ideas here are well thought through, but the execution is tonally wonky, at times feeling like a stage musical translated to the screen. At other times, it comes across like a Hallmark movie. At two hours and 17 minutes, it’s simultaneously too much and not enough.

Despite a brief reprieve with films like Mandy (2018) and Color Out of Space (2019), both of which successfully harness Cage's outlier approach, he makes a swift and disappointing dip back onto Hollywood's B-list here.

The premise feels so quaint it might as well be framed by Cinderella-like animated bluebirds.

Possibly, Eat Wheaties! will age well, but at this point, there’s more cringe than comedy here. The character of Sid isn’t just endearingly awkward or amusingly fatuous, like Steve Carell’s Michael Scott in The Office. He’s just thickly insensitive.

Malcolm and Marie starts well, but very quickly, once the situation has been laid out and discussed, the film veers off in directions that don’t take the characters, or their situation very deep. Without that emotional heft, the film ends up spinning its wheels, and doesn’t take the characters, or us, far enough.

I have not read the graphic novel Sandcastle upon which Old is based so I can’t vouch for its faithfulness to the source material. But it’s hard to believe anyone would call this a winner.

This fourth film, featuring the same writers as two and three, but new co-directors Stephanie Stine and Mike Mitchell, isn’t a bad movie, but it does feel like it’s going through the motions.

I get why people want to make movies about comedy that make you cry. But making you laugh first – I mean, really laugh – would make for a potent combination indeed.

Ultimately, Spoiler Alert is earnest, emotional, good-hearted and edgeless.

Silent Night is not the second coming of Die Hard that we might have hoped.

The movie that can contain McKinnon, or the movie where she’s willing to be contained, has yet to be made.

There is a meanness of spirit to all of this, an uncomfortable awkwardness that seemingly can’t end well.

Though much of it is glum and muddled, it does find an anchor in Hugo Weaving (Lord of the Rings, The Matrix) as a gravely wise, ailing crime boss named Duke.

Reiner’s attempt to create Spotlight-like docudrama of newsroom courage and stoke fresh outrage about government lies is undermined by clunky old-fashioned filmmaking and Joey Harstone’s exposition-clotted script.

Neither version of the film — the talking-heads documentary or the period drama — has the depth to achieve much impact.

You may want to see Capone — a film so stylized and perverse it makes Todd Phillips’ Joker look like Downton Abby — but not for insight or amusement.

Their physical relationship seems highly unlikely in every element. It is weirdly mechanical and not remotely erotic, and worst of all, you never forget that you’re watching a movie.

There are a lot of moments that are quirky, but the film never quite finds the right comedic rhythm. Things that should feel funny rarely rise to make us chuckle, and too often the film, which does have a genuine warmth, falls flat.

Someone Like You is essentially a 30-minute Hallmark-like film stretched into two hours of romance novel fluff via playful-lovebird music videos and other visual padding.

Despite the presence and performances of the likes of Mira Sorvino and John Cusack, Fog of War fails to deliver what it promises: a war-time mystery filled with suspense and intrigue.

Ambitious, yes. You’d expect as much from Oscar-winning indie director Chloé Zhao, who’s taking her leap into the world of nine-figure budgeted blockbusters. Unfortunately, the net result is underwhelming.

Audiences looking for a so-bad-its-good bit of kitsch catharsis will likely be let down. The Meh – sorry, The Meg – is so calculatedly flattened out for international markets, especially its Chinese financiers, that even the dialogue feels as though it’s in translation.

Fourth of July is meant to be a comedy, but isn’t in the sense that there is nothing funny enough to laugh at. It is a domestic car crash with no edge or purpose.

Even Discovery fans will have to admit this spin-off is just simply a weakly told story. The characters are contrived and even a talent like Michelle Yeoh can’t save it.

Not to put too fine a point on this or anything, but Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is an interminable slog.

There are many reasons why The Exorcist worked and still does, and why The Exorcist: Believer doesn’t and never will. But to explore the difference between the films too profoundly would be to legitimize Green’s film as a worthy successor to William Friedkin’s masterpiece. It isn’t.

Except the real Nazis, every character in The Aftermath has good intentions, marred by some moments of poor impulse control. And they are a little dull.

Overblown, outrageous, exceedingly (at times giddily) violent and visually exhausting — does any of this sounds familiar? — the film is, to borrow a hackneyed phrase which somehow seems appropriate in this context, all sizzle and no steak.

Ana de Armas is magnificent as Norma Jean, her every expression and movement embodying the late star and suggesting countless hours of research and rehearsal. But the movie surrounding this possibly career-best performance is an overheated dud save also some genuinely novel camera work, notably in a threesome scene where intertwined bodies melt into a rolling taffy wave.

After the success of Ryan Coogler-directed Creed, an inventive series reboot, Creed II is a familiar disappointment though the "familiar" part will probably outweigh the disappointing part for audiences who enjoy the films as adult bedtime stories.

Dahl’s work demands darkness and an edge, but instead there’s a bright Hollywood-y antic sense to Zemeckis’s The Witches, and the overused and unconvincing FX only serve to trivialize what we’re seeing.

Cookson is engaging enough as Joan, mercurial politics and all, but it’s a prosaic tale considering its enormity. And it never really finds its feet as entertainment.

Conceptually ambitious and sporadically entertaining but more often confusing and ultimately kind of dumb, Serenity must have seemed appealingly high-minded on the page. But the zigzagging new thriller lands with a thud despite a skilled cast and writer/director Steven Knight’s commendable desire to scribble outside the lines of conventional narrative.

The parts of The Little Things that are good aren’t original, and the parts that are original aren’t good.

Both the Arctic survival story and the spaceship drama are derivative, and while action sequences are well done in isolation, they never develop a convincing momentum.

The Prom, as it progresses from camp to earnest messaging, is like a sermon you believe, but still find too preachy.

The Home has neither haunting atmosphere nor paranoid madness to recommend it; it’s just a weak story, badly executed and dragged along until it launches into a blood-spatter bonanza in the last five minutes.

This dull recreation of the animated film doesn’t strive for anything more than what was contained in the original version of this film and actually delivers less.

Ultimately, Shotgun Wedding seems like something from a different time, a time-waster full of tropes that exists to only to fill time with the odd boom and an occasional chuckle – and falls short of even that.

I was intrigued to find that Finding You was not produced by an AI romance plot generator, but an actual book — Jenny B. Jones’ 2011 YA novel, There You’ll Find Me.

Uncharted once again confirms my belief that video games make for bad to mediocre movies. At least Uncharted scrounges up enough fortitude to be mediocre.

Duty Free spends little time exploring the ageism that’s at the heart of Danigelis’ employment difficulties. There’s a quick mention at the end of the doc that 25 million Americans don’t have enough money to pay for retirement, but no exploration of the how and why. It would have made for a more satisfying film had Regis gotten beyond the road-trip selfies.

I'll admit that The Strangers had me on the edge of my seat, mostly because I wasn't sure if I planned on staying.

Geremy Jasper’s O’dessa is a dystopian rock opera lacking the essential elements of soul, rhythm, and the rebellious spirit characteristic of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a tone-deaf attempt at greatness that ultimately falls short.

Here’s yet another incident-packed, steroid-pumped, dumb airport novel of a movie, with a few flourishes of Spielberg-inspired titanic imagery (though the director is J.A. Bayona) and a wall-to-wall John Williams-like orchestral score (by Michael Giacchino), with scenes that echo from the previous Jurassic Park movies.

There’s a smidgeon more humanity than in the braindead Godzilla vs. Kong, but nowhere near the wit and spirit of Skull Island.

Unfortunately, despite these juicy elements, a star-studded cast, and a star director in Ridley Scott, House of Gucci is tepid and underwhelming.

Everything about The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part feels like a corporate obligation fulfilled.

The film improves in the dramatic final reel, as Quezon struggles to complete his task while facing the heartbreaking task of cutting the refugee list after pushback on visas, refugee quota increases and exit permits.