The film has a good comedic rhythm, and there's a rambunctious bickering energy in every scene. It's often quite funny. But Permanent feels like a short film stretched to feature length. It never quite rises above the level of its premise.

On paper, Wild Canaries sounds like it has all the ingredients for a reasonably diverting comedy, but they just never quite pull together into a cohesive or entertaining whole.

War Dogs is a film about horrible people that refuses to own the horribleness.

Worst of all, it wastes the meta-idea that a lot of horror films are basically like “Groundhog Day” to an extent, as we watch relatively indistinguishable counselors at Camp Crystal Lake, for example, get killed again and again.

It’s no exaggeration to say there are scene transitions in “Salem’s Lot” in which it honestly feels like maybe you accidentally fast-forwarded a few minutes and missed the connective tissue.

While Bloch's emotions and thoughts about the Holocaust and the Israeli occupation are deeply felt, the documentary’s finer points are a little less clear.

Stretched out to 90 minutes in Sponge on the Run, the pacing lags, the goofiness sags, and you discover over time that there’s not much holding these antics together.

The sad subtext of Made in Italy is more intriguing and poignant than what we see on screen.

Planes modestly succeeds. Very modestly.

Zlotowski’s stylized depiction of Rachel’s life is overly fastidious. Many creative decisions, from the score to the camera blocking, took me out of the movie. Instead of a complex character processing involved, compound emotions, I saw a talented filmmaker lightly touch upon a range of emotions while also studiously avoiding dramatic clichés and stereotypes.

As a Latina critic who has been writing about my community’s stories for as long as I’ve had a career, I want better for us and our storytellers. While I enjoy some aspects of this movie, I’m not sure the means justified the lackluster result.

Evocatively moody atmosphere, a timely subject, and a fine performance by Josh Hartnett cannot help Inherit the Viper overcome its clunky dialogue and formulaic storyline.

Coming 2 America is like attending your high school reunion: You’ll enjoy seeing the familiar faces of those with whom you once shared such fond experiences, but then you’ll realize that the nostalgia of that past is far more fulfilling than the harsher realities of the present.

The living legend certainly deserves little blame for this misfire but she can't handle the heavy lifting required by a script and director that feel as unfocused as the film's protagonist for at least an hour.

At some point, the movie forgets comedy and dwells on cruel calamity. It almost makes one wish García Bernal could reboot it, with a more polished text.

Moving from in front of the lens to behind it, the former ‘80s sitcom star clearly has something personal and piercing to say. Her film will surely resonate with so many others who hear their own nagging voices in their heads.

It draws together a first-rank cast of character actresses and actors, most of them over 50, then mostly fails to invest the material with the invention and snappiness needed to invigorate it and make it memorable, as opposed to merely agreeable.

You know you're in trouble with a film when you're so bored by it that you wind up asking why things seem so implausible.

The cast is terrific, and there are a couple of sequences that made me laugh out loud, but the movie as a whole is baffling.

There’s some appreciable serenity and a lot of personal grief on display in Out Stealing Horses, but it’s only visible in fits and starts.

A film so obedient to current academic fashions in both politics and cinema aesthetics that it ends up feeling both contrived and a bit dishonest.

A modest little suspense puzzle that simulates rather than builds on vastly better “my neighbor may be a murderer” stories from “Rear Window” to “Stranger Things.”

The optimistic, twisting core of what 2067 is about will keep genre fans engaged even as the increasingly bad performances and frustrating writing pushes them away at the same time.

There’s a lot of potential in the ideas that King plays with in “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone.” If only they had been given to a filmmaker willing to answer the call.

The film version of the best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars feels emotionally inert, despite its many moments that are meant to put a lump in our throats.

There's a good movie in Romano the feature filmmaker, but this isn't it.

The project of Anthem is special and compelling, but the documentary lets itself down.

Ultimately amounts to a visually ambitious tone poem about the none-too-surprising caprices of male adolescence.

The film patly confirms what "The Lion King" already taught '90s kids: we should take comfort in knowing that everything in life is natural when seen as part of the "circle of life," as surprisingly effective voiceover narrator John Krasinski reminds us.

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story is one of the most frustrating Martin Scorsese films as well as one of the most out-of-character.

This unabashedly trashy project from director Peter Thorwarth has its moments of invention and excitement in the early going, but the constant spray of bullets and body parts proves numbing.

This big, splashy blockbuster is perplexing because it's full of loosely-connected incidents that are rarely character-driven, or even narratively intelligible beyond a point.

I cop to not being a fan of Lynn Shelton’s work. Her films fall apart in their third acts. Rather than simply crumble as they have in her prior work, the third act of Laggies implodes in grand fashion, spewing contrivances, bad clichés and an ending that is simply unforgivable.

Drunktown's Finest shows a filmmaker struggling to find her voice. It's a whisper here, but we can hear it.

The movie doesn’t quite make it to two hours, but my patience was tried pretty much any point at which the movie went a long stretch without a song.

Typically, when Araki misses the mark, he misses wildly and with fascinating aplomb. White Bird, despite the best efforts of stars Shailene Woodley and Eva Green, is flat when it should be edged; something I never thought I’d say about the man who made a movie called “Totally Fucked Up.”

Free Fire is neither the best nor the worst of the Tarantino wannabes; at its worst, it's tediously unoriginal, and at its best, it's funny and reasonably involving.

Black Water: Abyss is one of those movies that isn’t particularly good but may not have to be if you’re in the right mood.

The first and maybe biggest problem facing viewers when they watch The Spine of Night is its drab and dramatically inert animation style.

On the whole, his (Griffin) indecisive The Wolf Hour tick-tocks its way to an underwhelming finale. And when it gets there, the most shocking realization you’ll have is how forgettable an affair it all has been.

A few compelling emotions and themes are suggested but rarely well expressed in Nimona, a sometimes cute but mostly hyper and overextended animated sci-fi fantasy.

If The Covenant were only an interrogation of the hollowness of American exceptionalism, as its first hour suggests, it’d be among the most honest portrayals of the country’s role in the region. But Ritchie eventually awakens from his stupor, pushing this combat-action flick to gonzo territory.

The film that Memphis most reminds me of is Bruce Weber's "Let's Get Lost," a meandering, ostentatiously gorgeous black-and-white documentary about Chet Baker.

It ultimately results in a cold, unsatisfying experience.

It may not be his worst film overall, but Stonehearst is Anderson’s flattest film, a disappointingly shallow affair that wastes an opportunity to breathe life into a timeless Edgar Allen Poe short story.

It is nowhere close to being the worst thing that he (Travolta) has ever done, but it never for a single moment makes a plausible case for its own existence.

Despite the sincerity that’s in every scene with Rylance’s performance, the movie's good intentions remain wistful, and thoroughly frustrating.

The acting starts off capable even if it reflects the same lifelessness of the film itself, but as the story continues the performances only magnify script issues that become unbearable.

The film’s winsome, self-satisfied comedy will no doubt appeal more to viewers who prize juvenile hi-jinks over the cultural moment it depicts.

Ultimately, there’s nothing offensively bad here—other than a waste of talent who should be doing better work—but it’s so forgettable that you’ll have trouble remembering if you saw it or not when you scroll past it on cable in a few months.

Its biggest crime is that the whole thing, in the end, is just kind of pointless, and doesn’t offer viewers anything that they haven’t already seen before and it's never as amusing or thought-provoking as it would like to be.

Takes on the topic of gender dysphoria with a talented cast but not much to say.

As a performance piece, The Eyes of Tammy Faye connects. But is that enough?

Hence, the movie lumbers its way from intriguing to frustrating. But Berham does manage to keep your attention, even as his vision tends to irritate in the wrong way.

The best thing I can say about Daniel Isn’t Real is that it’s a promising early feature made by young artists who haven’t yet worked out how to express and/or synthesize what they like about their favorite artists and their work. It’s all style and very little substance.

This film muddies its entire concept with a bizarre, unrefined commentary on mob mentality that is quite simply some of the worst material in either Green’s career and the history of this rocky franchise (which is saying something if you’ve seen, say, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers).

Lonely Castle in the Mirror is dull and overlong, weighed down by its heavy-handed and intense discussions about teenage trauma and loneliness.

Not all the pieces of Boogie fit neatly together, but it’s a film about a family that doesn’t fit inside the box of a standard inspirational immigrant story.

I can’t recommend Mega Time Squad but it does have a few things going for it.

A lot of grappling happens. The community grapples. The characters grapple. People grapple alone, people grapple together. Grappling is more interesting to watch than certainty, any day of the week.

Both David-Stahl and Bell are appealing actors but unfortunately their easy-to-relate-to storyline is pretty much upstaged by the rowdy air-sex scenes.

Sonia Kennebeck’s Enemies of the State spirals and swirls in a way that’s meant to enhance the “isn’t this crazy” aspect of its true story, but its filmmaking tricks have become cliched in the era of True Crime obsession.

It’s as if the film doesn’t trust Frida’s images to speak for themselves.

The Banished, about a grieving woman’s search for her missing brother, sometimes feels like a compendium of modern horror movie clichés. That doesn’t always matter, since the movie is thick enough with dread to work despite its distracting familiarity.

Pleasant but unchallenging.

A Bad Moms Christmas has the shoddy look and frantic feel of a slapped-together, cash-grab sequel, because that’s exactly what it is.

It’s a sporadically fun movie with obvious influences, but it also lacks in stakes and personality, getting repetitive long before it ends.

The film captures a little bit of the flame of the original, particularly when it allows itself to be funny. It works really well as a comedy, almost of "manners," although manners aren't really in sight.

It feels like a film that has already gone through the remake process, casting all the stuff that made it interesting in the first place aside and leaving only the glossy surfaces.

If it wasn't for Lawrence and Barth Feldman's joint comedic excellence, with their commanding charm and chemistry fueling its laughs, No Hard Feelings would have been a disaster. But thanks to them, it's a serviceable summer comedy that should keep the J. Law lovers happy, even though her talents are better used elsewhere.

A mishmash that has as much of an identity crisis as its name-switching, past-hiding, resume-inflating main character. Perhaps there is a clue in the credits, where we learn that Lopez is the producer as well as the star. As is so often the case, here that means that the movie is more about what would be fun for Lopez to do than what would be fun for the audience to watch.

The Mexican film now has a Hollywood remake, one that adds new elements to the story but is less coherent in its message.

Wholesome in the most “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” brand of mythical Americanism, 12 Mighty Orphans is engineered to rouse emotions with uncritical pride, never reaching the less immaculate corners of the historical period it employs as canvas.

A curious, ultimately unsatisfying romantic comedy about two sisters in love with the same man.

As it is, “Land of Bad” is a pandering drama with some action movie thrills.

It’s an easy watch in a B-movie marathon but you’ll have forgotten it by the time you’re done with the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Lo wants to make a point, obviously, but I came out of this picture with some questions. And I also thought of an observation made by the music critic Robert Christgau, a metaphorical point addressing a type of artistic preciousness: “If I found a cat trapped in a washing machine, I wouldn't set up a recording studio there—I'd just open the door.”

Life struck me as several cuts above “meh” but never made me jump out of my seat.

Ultimately, this is one of those movies where it seems okay if you like this sort of thing for a while, but after it crosses the 90-minute mark, it seems irretrievably a little much even if you like this sort of thing.

What ultimately should have been borrowed from Spielberg’s oeuvre but isn’t is a sense of wonder and achievement whenever characters come in contact with the unknown or overcome a great obstacle as a team. Imitation should be flattering, not flattening.

I’m all for a juicy, action-packed Gerard Butler movie. A Gerard Butler movie that wants to have its geopolitics taken seriously is a different matter. And honestly, it’s an even more different matter when the movie is not particularly juicy or, you know, action-packed.

In a lot of ways, Crisis is a classic example of a movie that wants to be a little bit of everything, only to add up to a much lesser version of something you keep waiting to see.

The flywheels of the plot machine keep it churning around, but it chugs off onto the back lot and doesn't hit anybody in management. Only Penn and Willis are really funny, poking fun not at themselves but at stars they no doubt hate to work with.

At some point, queasy horror-comedy Another Evil stops being about one man's comically vain attempts at exorcising his home, and starts being a weird character study about a laughably desperate wannabe exorcist.

God & Country is an illustration of that classic conundrum faced by so many political documentaries with an alarmist tone. Even when its concerns are justified, such a project tends to alienate rather than entice, and those who are inclined to agree with its points will come away feeling that their worldview has been reinforced, while the viewers who are arguably most in need of seeing it will remain unaware of it or dismiss it as propaganda.

A classic, and classically lamentable, good-news/bad news proposition. In the good news department, it’s largely a sturdy, enjoyable domestic comedy drama.

The movie is well put together, enough so that if you’re not entirely tired of its clichés, it might constitute a tolerable entertainment. I’d rather watch “Double Indemnity” for the 15th time.

Towelhead presents material that cries out to be handled with quiet empathy and hammers us with it. I understand what the film is trying to do, but not why it does it with such crude melodrama. The tone is all wrong for a story of child sexuality and had me cringing in my seat.

Akilla’s Escape is undone by its own lack of faith in the viewer, opting to explicitly tell rather than rely on its fine actors to show us who their characters are.

It’s a film that’s been thought out but doesn’t reach any new conclusions; that assembles some good elements, but doesn’t really consider how they all fit together. The truthful elements are not enough to overcome the clumsy and cliché ones, and in the end it’s a film that’s more satisfying before you know how it ends.

Jimmy & Stiggs is a slick wallow into a cranked-up, self-destructive headspace that frequently over-compensates for what it lacks in plot and character development with sheer vigor and volume alone.

A tedious and only occasionally amusing comedic riff on “The Purge” franchise.

The array of TV veterans assembled for the film don’t necessarily do anything wrong, and their charisma sometimes translates from small screen to big, but, as is so often the case with the indie dramedy, an unrealistic script lets down a talented cast.

The World is Full of Secrets concerns text more than anything else — not the visuals within filmmaking or performance, but the stories being told. As an experiment with the sensory experience of film storytelling, it backfires. To best engage Swon's massive amounts of text, you’re better off closing your eyes.

A typical Hong character performs the same actions over and over again, with minor, but noticeably different results.

In his bleak film, Guðmundsson combines the kitchen sink drama of growing up in a cycle of violence and/or poverty and the magical realism of teenage fever dreams, with mixed results.

A strong sense of style and a promising premise are undone in a film that never quite figures out how to write itself out of its corner.

Lean, sincere, impassioned filmmaking, yet it fails to leave as much of an impression as it clearly wants to.