The first English-language film from Norwegian director Eric Poppe is a conscientious and beautifully shot movie that ultimately bogs down in its own disinclination to come to any kind of dramatically useful conclusion about its subject.

The Bad Kids is interesting enough in what it shows us to spark interest in what it leaves un-shown. In its case, the information supplied by a few well-chosen talking heads could have given it additional clarity and appeal.

Sure, Mortal Kombat II has enough fight scenes and gore to deliver exactly what fans of the games expect from these movies. Then again, the makers of this new franchise-booster don’t seem to know how to fill the rest of their movie’s 116-minute runtime. They tie up loose ends from the last movie whenever they’re not nudging their new protagonists through the motions of another patchwork action-fantasy that’s too hip to be sincere and too hacky to be moving.

Slathered with a score that makes the sadness of each passage unmistakable, Pray Away narrows its purpose to be simply informative; it is too artistically flat to have the emotional peaks that would give its own otherwise vital message some dynamic, or make it more impactful beyond its very subject matter.

Much of Matthias & Maxime is pedestrian to the extreme, and there is a general lack of character development across the board, but the way Dolan chooses to frame things, the visual choices he makes, the way he revels unashamed in the big-ness of the emotions, makes it an entertaining ride.

No Exit is imperfect and struggles to get going, but it's a grisly piece of work that earns your suspension of disbelief.

What’s intriguing about The Maze Runner – for a long time, at least – is the way it tells us a story we think we’ve heard countless times before but with a refreshingly different tone and degree of detail.

While “The Love Scam” isn’t breaking new rom-com ground, it sufficiently checks the expected boxes and features a formidable romantic pair with Folletto and Adriani.

It’s very clear that Braverman has a lot of respect and reverence for his subject, and it’s worth a watch for those who are curious about this goofy guy who used to slap on a foreign accent and play with bongos & people’s perceptions.

The quiet character-based scenes are often mesmerizing, as are the dreamy sequences where time seems to stand still. When the plot makes its demands, the spell is broken.

Ultimately, my problem with so many religious horror films like “The Offering” is that they’re insulated in a way that makes them more often boring than terrifying, willing to let a languid pace try to set the mood instead of actual plotting.

Director Ruth Paxton puts you on edge from the beginning in “A Banquet,” and holds that unsettling mood throughout. But because the sound design is so vivid and Paxton’s eye for disturbing detail is so creative, it’s even more frustrating that the payoff is so unsatisfying.

Kijak's film can remind a new generation that, despite seemingly insurmountable difficulties, some of our queer forebears could find a little slice of happiness, despite living in a world that told them they were not welcome.

Although some of the footage seen in “Porcelain War” is grim and hard to watch, the film is ultimately a celebration of the resiliency of the artistic spirit, even in the most horrifying of circumstances.

It may not be quite as entertaining as the last time Weaving ended up in a murderous melee after a wedding ceremony. But there’s a least a few bits and bobs to keep “Borderline” from borderline failing.

As all movies about this stage of life must, among obvious jokes about aches, pains, and Viagra—apparently it is okay to sexually objectify someone if you're old—Queen Bees touches gently and sympathetically on the inescapable challenges of aging, loss of loved ones, loss of independence, cancer, strokes, and dementia.

Cohen and West's approach is so adulatory that the documentary becomes a surface-level work of hagiography.

Ballerina is a halfway decent action movie that will suffer because it lives in the massive shadow of John Wick, one of the best modern franchises.

The problem, though, is that American Underdog doesn't ever really connect the modest virtuousness of Kurt and Brenda to Kurt's ascension as a quarterback.

It’s still a movie about giant space robots talking trash and smashing into each other, but Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is better than most offerings in the franchise.

My Salinger Year sometimes drags and falters with questionable tonal shifts. But it’s never a complete waste of time to witness a young woman grow into her voice on her own terms, especially when her canvas is this cinematic.

It takes its sweet time getting to the point, and generally speaking, the less interested it is in moving the plot along, the weirder and funnier it becomes.

It’s an undeniably haunting piece of work, a story that’s out of place and time in a world that’s like our own but not quite. Rod Serling would have dug it.

While some material may hit with younger audiences, Luca makes for Pixar’s least enchanting, least special film yet.

Directed by Pappi Corsicato and executive produced, typically, by the subject himself, the movie is never uninteresting but is often surprisingly low-energy and, even more surprisingly, visually drab.

M3GAN 2.0 doesn’t seem to set out to do much more than show off and get laughs, and it accomplishes it well enough. The film is bigger, but not better, delivering precisely what fans of the sassy android will come to the theatres to see.

A general lack of urgency are the main things holding Get Duked! back from being as good as it is promising.

Thor: The Dark World's characters are often very charming, but they're only so much fun when they're stuck going through the motions.

Though Overgård spends a lot of time alone with his thoughts, Arctic lacks what makes for the best movies of its ilk: it does not inspire much imagination concerning what our hero might do first if he does get back home.

Ultimately, the cacophony of all these plot lines converging and the weight of the messaging being conveyed is almost too much to bear.

The action filmmaking, from interstitial chases to fight choreography, looks good, and so does the monster and its practically-effected victims.

On its surface, “Onlookers” is a movie that can be described very simply. For about an hour and twenty minutes, a series of very neatly composed shots depict natives of Laos and tourists observing a variety of sights and sites.

It’s more like a reusable ribbon bow. It's not great. It's nothing special. But you can keep it year after year and place it on presents as long as you have scotch tap—or Lohan’s irrepressible charm—to hold it together.

Marianne and Leonard turns out to be a rather run-of-the-mill documentary about Cohen's journey, taking us down well-documented paths.

In fits and spurts, it casts quite the campy, thrilling spell.

Even for a movie about a theatrical sport, focused around an actor who wants to learn what it's like to wrestle for real, You Cannot Kill David Arquette rings far too much like a vanity project.

Intimate and impressionistic but ultimately a little self-indulgent.

There are endless horror movies out there in which a slow burn seems like it's just killing time before it's actually time to kill. But "The Feast" does well with that dread—it's the main course that proves to be the rip-off, however gory, indulgent, and horror-ready it is.

It isn’t bad, per se, but I just never felt the emotional impact it's clearly hoping to achieve.

As much as Henderson is looking for answers, she’s demanding an appreciation for the implication of asking. She doesn’t seamlessly connect her investigations into Levi, Yucca Mountain, and Las Vegas history, leaving parts of the documentary feeling disjointed, but the effort is emotionally recognizable enough to leave you with impactful questions of your own.

It has a smidge of depth and takes chances that similarly worshipful documentaries probably wouldn't. But it also cracks a lot of doors without actually opening them up and walking through them.

Good Burger 2 is a sentimental slapstick sequel chock full of fun cameos and absurdity, yet it doesn’t divert itself enough from the familiar path. It serves up little more than nostalgia, with some solid laughs but too little that are memorable.

The movie doesn't quite hold together at times, and some of the darker elements (like what it feels like to be shamed and shunned at every moment of your life) are soft-pedaled. But it has a strange charm nonetheless.

You have to take the bad with the good here: Green Room may be too schematic to fully capture the essence of its characters' groddy milieu, but it's also economically paced, and gorgeous.

Instead of relishing the specific details of this story, you wind up enjoying its familiar pleasures and then maybe its creators’ proficient execution.

So while Enid’s investigation never goes anywhere noteworthy, Censor still fosters an increasingly desperate, anxiety-inducing effect.

The smartest decision Budreau made at any point during production was to call his former collaborator on “Born to Be Blue,” Ethan Hawke, who keeps this sometimes frustrating film nimble and entertaining.

This one is a mostly likable effort, but it doesn't quite feel like a self-contained movie with a shape and a discernible point; it's more of a collection of material arranged in a way that more or less makes sense.

Thankfully, Zuleta conjures enough effervescence to make us invested in their search for a place in the universe, even if the path is well-trod.

Loud, trashy, sweet and weird, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers reboot Power Rangers is not merely an ideal film for rambunctious and undemanding 12-year olds, it actually sees the world through their eyes.

It’s a fairly predictable thriller with few emotional moments apart from anxiety, and even fewer revelations.

This suggests that in old age, any one of us could revert to a vindictive version of ourselves, obsessed with getting justice for whatever wound we thought healed but is still throbbing.

The YouTube Effect is a chronicle of extremely recent history and doesn't cover much new ground. If you follow YouTube, big tech, or any controversies surrounding social media, you will be familiar with everything here.

As ambitious and vibrant as it is ugly and scattershot, Pain & Gain is the most charming Michael Bay movie in a long while.

By expanding the play’s world, Gaines opens himself up to new scrutiny. Beetz does the best she can with a thinly drawn character, but it’s hard not to wonder what The Dutchman would look like if Gaines showed any real interest in her.

It’s a testament to .Paak’s own journey, and the seemingly healthy relationship with both this genre of music and his child, that this movie eschews so many of those struggle-bus tropes. I just wish it translated to something with a bit more oomph, rather than another blandly sincere family film.

While Wilson peters out at the end, one can’t totally dismiss a movie that gets away with a visual “Umberto D” joke and showcases probably the worst tramp-stamp tattoo ever.

If you are hungry for dazzling eye candy and don’t mind a less-than-meaty narrative, this might please your palate.

The film is good to excellent in every way except morally, and there it's questionable more often than it should be, not because it's an evil film, or because the filmmaker or actors are bad people, but because the interplay of means and ends have been under-thought or misjudged, to the point where the film becomes a catalog of obscenities.

There are two movies in Jackie, Pablo Larraín's film about Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) immediately before, during and after the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. One of these movies is just OK. The other is exceptional. The first one keeps undermining the second.

It’s as if Lim and fellow co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao saw the antics in Malcolm D. Lee’s “Girls Trip” as a challenge to top. It’s safe to say the crew in Joy Ride do top the outrageous factor, but whether or not it’s as effective will depend on the viewer’s stomach for bawdy humor.

Claire's Camera is, like many of Hong's best comedies before it, amusing without necessarily being laugh-out-loud funny.

Hardcore Henry is like a good roller-coaster in that it does not require a complex reason to be: it's there, it's fun, you ride it, and that's about it.

The good news barely outweighs the bad in Dracula Untold, a lightweight war-adventure that is ultimately stranger and more enticing when it remembers it's also a horror film.

Writer/director Chad Archibald still shows some promise here, especially whenever he lets his actors, cinematographer, makeup, creature, and production designer sell what is, at heart, a generic possession story. He thankfully does this often enough to keep the plot’s familiar and slowly dispensed beats from feeling too rote.

That mashup — of feminine beauty and insanity-inducing toxicity —is a good cipher for everything about Belladonna of Sadness (“Kanashimi no Balladonna”).

For Plummer’s plum of a performance alone, you might want to make an exception for The Exception.

It would be reductive to call it a “girlboss” story, but it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to, either.

Whatever one thinks of “The Last Jedi,” if that film was trying to build a new house on familiar land, this one tears it down and goes back to an old blueprint. Some of the action is well-executed, there are strong performances throughout, and one almost has to admire the brazenness of the weaponized nostalgia for the original trilogy, but feelings like joy and wonder are smothered by a movie that so desperately wants to please a fractured fanbase that it doesn’t bother with an identity of its own.

Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda’s film, on the other hand, narrates a true-life crime but fails to provide an element that might’ve lifted it above tasteful art-house ordinariness—an engaging point of view.

When you’ve hired human actors to do nothing but sneer, shout, and shoot guns, their onscreen function can get ever so slightly monotonous. This is not the movie’s only reliance on commonplaces but it’s the most prominent.

While this remix of "House Party" may leave some nostalgic for the original, it smartly doesn't try to copy the first film. However, it does stay true to the first version's celebration of friendship.

Customs Frontline is not quite as thrilling or as relentless as Yau’s other recent successes—particularly “Moscow Mission” and “Raid on the Lethal Zone”—but it still delivers more twists and surprises than you might expect from this tip of sudsy, formulaic cop drama.

This is not a film for people unfamiliar with Tsai and Lee’s work. It’s a film for cinephiles who loved “Stray Dogs.”

It would be impossible not to be emotionally moved by this story, and in that way, The Rescue delivers. But between Vasarhelyi and Chin’s inability to speak with the boys or their families, and the documentary’s initially languid pacing, The Rescue feels like half a story told fairly well, but still, half a story.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is laid-back and funny but ultimately whiffs on its swings too many times to make a lasting impression.

I've never participated in Blackout, but based on The Blackout Experiments, I can tell you that it's an intense, aggressively confrontational and deeply disturbing recreational experience.

Director Raoul Peck, no stranger to connecting the past to the present as he did with “I Am Not Your Negro,” collaborates with the Orwell estate to retell the story behind the man who gave the world 1984 and Animal Farm and explore the themes Orwell illustrated in those works to current events to show how Orwell’s warnings have gone unheeded through the years. The result, “Orwell: 2+2=5,” is an ambitious work that is provocative but sometimes convoluted.

Fans of cheap thrills and cheesy B-movies are sure to be frustrated by The Requin, a new shark pic that waits about an hour before introducing major carnivorous fish action. That alone might turn off viewers since The Requin only lasts about 89 minutes, and most of the movie plays out like a soapy two-hander about survivor’s guilt.

Saw X returns John Kramer to the root of his mission, showing people the error of their ways and asking them what it truly means to be alive. A few severed limbs along the way are just a bonus.

At 105 minutes, Elstree 1976 became a bit of a slog for me. Visually, the talking heads-style of documentary can be very dull.

The blurring of that line between performer, reality, and fiction adds another layer to “Jim and Andy” that Kaufman would have adored. And Carrey likely does too.

The people in this movie have intelligence in their eyes, but their words are defined by the requirements of formula comedy. If this had been a European film, the same plot would have been populated with adults, and the results might have been magical.

Though it ignores the many situations that could go wrong in the ever-evolving universe of virtual reality, this fascinating ode to touchless connection proves beyond doubt that the intense emotions born in the skin of their avatars transcend into their flesh-and-blood hearts.

Guest Artist feels like a typical one-act, intelligent but not especially distinctive or compelling.

The film’s clever editing (credited to Klinger and Geraldine Mangenot) jumps back and forth through time in intriguing, sometimes intoxicating ways, and even when the drama flags there’s always a stunning image to stare at.

I suppose the fact that I was affected as I was by Wedding Doll is testimony to its emotional effectiveness. But while Hagit is able to crack a smile at the movie’s end, I feel a pall wrapping around me every time I contemplate her predicament, or the predicament of her real-life models.

Proves to be a kind of career rehab for Dad.

Radio Dreams is an example of both the compelling passion and polarizing fallibility that can arise when a director works primarily from the heart.

Attachment very much wants to set its horror within Jewish mythology and Ultra-Orthodox life, and yet this specific choice always creates an exposition overload, which has a more distancing than inclusive effect.

Really, whatever you do, don't watch "The Last Key" without the emotional support of a buddy who can confirm that you're not just imagining this: these movies are still getting incrementally better.

Between its evocative ensemble, fluid editing, and interest in Aboriginal culture, High Ground is worth a watch, even if it ultimately feels overshadowed by the message it’s trying to send rather than being defined by the story it actually tells.

It’s the simplicity of the story combined with the excellence of the filmmaking—again, often deceptively simple—that makes it work.

Producers Jason Blum and James Wan, both horror titans, once again show they know how to freak audiences out while maintaining a sly sense of humor.

The gooey center of the film works for those with a high tolerance for things that might make a majority of the population queasy.

What's missing is a sense of how Monroe, seemingly a law-abiding young man before his family's financial dark days, suddenly went from being a go-along-to-get-along type to a budding criminal mastermind.

This Quake delivers with skill. The build-up to the disaster nicely intensifies with a feeling of dread, and some of the subtlest early effects are the most powerful.

The pacing works referentially to its namesake and real-time ambition, but the characters aren’t quite interesting or engaging enough to sustain attention for the whole runtime, and the film’s crawl eventually wears on weary knees.