Despite consistently astounding production values, Prometheus is hobbled throughout by a screenplay that would have been jettisoned out of the airlock normally reserved for scripts rejected by the SyFy Original Channel.

In reality, Triangle of Sadness is neither as smart nor as interesting as it clearly thinks it is.

Ghosted is a little breezier and less blatantly synthetic than the plastic Red Notice or the smirky Gray Man, but put together these failed attempts at action-packed romance still feel like a psy-op for the superhero industrial complex: With star vehicles like these, maybe movie stars will have to stay in capes forever.

The Public Image is Rotten’s soundtrack is, of course, great, and the candidness from former bandmates regarding their backstabbing and youthful mistakes is certainly refreshing, but it’s all wrapped in a package wearing dad jeans: too safe, too simple, too given to a happy ending.

Oldroyd...maintains such a rigorous distance from Katherine that she gradually seems less like a human being than like a mere carnival attraction.

In Rounding, you can see the basic outline of a worthy psychological drama, but its screenplay fails to turn that vague shape into a fleshed-out story, instead relying on the viewer to fill in the gaps, while the horror elements merely detract from the material that might have worked otherwise.

As opposed to relishing in the eerie yet widely disputed history of the creepy old house (re-dubbed the Morley Rectory), the film steeps itself in awkwardly placed commentary on fascism and feminism, effectively diminishing any ambiance invoked through the otherwise alluring 1930s set dressing.

Rather than embracing its premise’s unique potential, Boss Level mires it in tropes and convention.

As a commentary on the modern blockbuster, the movie’s fascinating. But as an actual movie, it’s fairly disheartening.

Where The Big Short was bold and enlightening, this is just well-trodden ground, trod over once again in a fashion that feels decreasingly novel.

At the end of the day, Sweethearts just feels wan and inconsequential as a result of its lack of focus.

Orienteering from an unsure script, Slumberland’s uninventive visual language dithers around in unreality while leaving its feet firmly planted in the saddest parts of the real world.

MaXXXine is iterative to the point that it might be too repetitive of previous entries, but at least it has a good time getting to the point.

Charlie’s Angels talks a good talk, but struggles to back up the talk with the drama necessary to make it worthwhile. At least Stewart, Scott, and Balinska are having a good time, but they’re so switched on, and Charlie’s Angels is so switched off, that it sometimes feels like they’re in a totally different movie than the one Banks is making. You may end up wishing that you were in that movie with them.

Its performers make the most of their meager resources–they get a lot of mileage out of that baby doll–but in a genre powered by questions of ideology and ethics, Daddy is too milquetoast to memorably deliver its opinion.

Occasionally funny in spite of itself, particularly when relying on tried and true slapstick zaniness and the admittedly irresistible performance of Christopher McDonald as Shooter McGavin, it steadily becomes a punishing endurance run that belabors the same handful of gags to the point of nausea.

Most of the time, though, How to Train Your Dragon’s live-action craft fails to match the equivalent in its animated counterpart, even with original filmmaker Dean DeBlois on hand for his live-action feature debut.

For all its supposed irreverence, the movie feels product-tested to the moon; there isn’t a single shot that isn’t trying to sell you something. The movie also has some of the creeping bro grossness of some of Vaughn’s other films.

Aronofsky can be a moving, almost disorienting stylist, but he’s all blunt force trauma here.

When the film makes its hairpin turn from comedy to drama, it doesn’t really fully commit, which has the effect of negating the power of its more serious ideas.

Brigsby Bear is so committed to its brand of self-congratulatory uplift that the filmmakers refuse to contemplate any of their material’s darker aspects.

Like a sack of shiny baubles, there may be plenty of sparkle, but the story being pieced together from the jumble is told with all the narrative flair—and nearly equal amounts of exposition—of a Wikipedia entry.

If Sakra wanted to enter into the wuxia canon, its lucid, lovely excess shouldn’t have stopped with its ceasefires.

At no point does Godzilla x Kong skimp on the kaiju action, but despite—or, perhaps, because of—this Titanic overabundance, it never quite feels big enough.

A Good Person winds up with the ambition of a novel, but little of the richness.

Ultimately, Zack Snyder’s Justice League feels like just another name for a Special Edition Blu-ray that contains all the scenes.

White and Arteta have a solid foundation but seemingly no idea of where it could go.

An assembly line of ostensibly “hip” gestures and snarky attitude, The Hitman’s Bodyguard wants very badly to be a naughty, R-rated guilty pleasure. Nobody tell its makers that it’s mostly just mildly boring.