The Vault is not, in other words, just derivative—it’s also flabby and bland.

Sweetly goofy and joyous.

The comedy is bigger, the supporting players are wackier and the antics move to the bouncy beat of an incessantly perky soundtrack.

No matter how feverishly Gilliam directs and no matter how enthusiastically his actors act, the whole thing remains too, er, theoretical.

Ultimately, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is like a hyperactive kid at a punk rock show—full of great energy and ambition, but not too sure what to do with it.

The work by the two leads is consistently committed, not to mention oozing with old fashioned movie-star charisma.

The nostalgia of Ponsoldt's film is curdled and rotten underneath its summery sheen.

American Ultra tries to combine a sweet, slacker romance with a slick, super-violent action flick. If that sounds jarring to you, that’s probably because it is.

The problem is not that it tells a story that's been done many times before, but that it never finds a new or interesting way of approaching the familiar material.

The romantic fantasies and the time travel plotting of “Meet Cute” are a total mismatch.

The film's tight construction and prolific action scenes carry it, and Blunt and Johnson do the irresistible force/immovable object dynamic well enough, swapping energies as the story demands.

Much like any child, even a supposedly surefire nugget of an idea requires careful nurturing. In this case, The Boss Baby often tries too hard and succeeds too little.

It’s unfortunate that the finished tribute doesn’t quite come together, and the tension between needing a compelling narrative and paying respects to bands whose music changes our lives never gets resolved.

While the strange and unusual world of Samuel Bodin’s Cobweb has ample enough unsettling energy thanks to Philip Lozano’s ominous cinematography, it fails to reach its scary ambitions. Jump scares feel less jumpy, and the twists are predictable.

Boundaries ends the way most road trips do — by running out of gas. But being in the presence of Plummer these days is always time well spent.

Nothing in “Shelter” develops beyond the suggestion of an idea. A sleepy vehicle for action star Jason Statham, “Shelter” piles on cliches and expects viewers to supply enough goodwill to compensate for its shortcomings.

Daldry’s latest, Trash, co-directed with Christian Duurvoort, not only pitches the same Academy woo, it shamelessly mimics Best Picture winner “Slumdog Millionaire.”

This is a Sad Rich People movie, no more so than a lot of American films dating back to the dawn of cinema, but it's no "The Leopard" or "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "The Great Gatsby" or you-name-it.

Fatima is told simply but emotionally, prioritizing the sensorial reality of the children's world and the people inhabiting it. This devotion to the "real" makes the holy vision palpable and plausible.

One of the best family films of the year, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken has humor and heart, buoyant energy, witty and imaginative visuals, and never-less-than brilliant voice talent.

The latest film to attempt to find the lighter side of bloodsuckers and it even adds a reasonably inspired idea into the mix. Alas, the result is a thoroughly mediocre movie that is never as amusing as it should be.

By the end, “Find Me Falling” lands on uneven ground. It’s as if this lighthearted romantic comedy has its frothy bubbles burst by the sudden encroachment of dramatic interruptions and uninspired pop music and lyrics.

Based on the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones,” Bobby Farrelly’s Champions follows the basic plot of every other inspirational sports movie about a hangdog coach in need of redemption. But it has the added cringiness of using its team of Disabled basketball players solely as a method towards this redemption while completely failing to see their humanity.

An angry movie that’s angry about the right things. But it's so angry that it gets a little crazy about it.

My Policeman is surface-level queer representation lacking in visual imagination and begging for better performances. It’s the kind of glacially paced movie that sticks around for two hours and tells its viewer nothing new; a series of moving images without any sense of emotion or wonder. “My Policeman” commits the gravest of crimes—it’s soulless.

Bless the old school stars Roberts and Clooney for elevating this lackluster mélange and in certain instances, even making you forget about the non-sensical film that surrounds them. But that’s hardly enough, especially if you are hoping for a homecoming for the rom-coms of yore.

3 from Hell has moments of abject horror, but fans of Zombie’s autumnal provocations will be rewarded with his most earnest and laid back nightmare yet.

There's a lot of interesting things here and yet Flannery feels incomplete, and — worse — a little bit scared to go in for a much deeper dive.

What follows is a movie that wants to be a teen movie and an allegory for the immigrant experience but never wholly coheres.

One thing is certain: for all the strain the movie exerts, it never comes close to touching the hem of the writers it purports to depict. And it leaves the mystical and erotic dimensions of their lives and works far outside of its belabored vision.

A modern attempt at something like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” from the creator of “Black-ish” and co-written by star Jonah Hill, Netflix’s “You People” is a stunning misfire, an assemblage of talent in search of an actual movie.

Which isn’t to say the film is without merit. It is utterly fascinating to see classic literature re-enacted as if it were theatre, and it takes courage to grab up something as iconic in its darkness as Child of God and just play it straight.

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.

The film was originally titled “North Star.” Yet, despite a few moments of connection and insight, that is precisely what this story is missing.

Likable yet tonally untidy.

Much of what makes Now You See Me so entertaining — in a gaudy, disposable, Vegas act sort of way — is its ever-escalating ridiculousness.

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

Dreamland is a half-remembered nightmare. It’s full of incomprehensible flashes of striking imagery, most of which won’t make sense in the morning. But in the moment you’re watching Dreamland, you’ll feel the restlessness of its messy story, the fitful starts-and-stops of its erratic editing and the leaden quality of its action sequences, which has all the grace of someone who took a Benadryl pill too early.

In extending itself to reach a conventional feature length, however, it becomes a below-average programmer in which brief moments of interest are interrupted by long stretches of boredom.

It lacks form, edge, politics, coherency, and the grand vision necessary for vast world building. It’s a film that begins on volatile ground only to tumble down a tonally rocky hill before settling on a conclusion so emotionally dissonant that its clang rings louder than the minor laughs the film engenders during its bloated run time.

This genre hybrid has its moments — way more than several of the films this week being made widely available to critics. It won’t change your life, but it won’t make you angry either.

This may all sound too shameless and syrupy, but to its credit, A Dog’s Way Home scratches the surface of something I, as a pit bull obsessive, have never seen a “dog movie” do.

I’d applaud the movie for taking the form of its heroine’s pathologies if the result was something more than a good try with a lot of heart.

So weak on a basic storytelling level that it makes you want to nitpick everything about it, from characters' generically illogical decisions (ex: Why are you running towards mounted guns?) to its cheap-looking, jiggly hand-held cinematography.

A promising but self-thwarting movie like this is more depressing than an outright bad or dumb film.

Blonde abuses and exploits Marilyn Monroe all over again, the way so many men did over the cultural icon’s tragic, too-short life.

Against the Ice delivers all the delirious period drama thrills and survival horror angst that you could want from a movie with that title.

The acting is good all around but that, too, improves in the quieter moments. Monroe, best known for her work in “It Follows,” is tough and committed, and Jennifer Garner’s portrayal of a mad housewife sprinting to a meltdown is acute, even if its does require her to tamp down pretty much all of her engaging life-positive qualities.

Things Heard & Seen is partly a Gothic horror movie and partly a portrait of a marriage falling apart. It’s more effective as the latter than the former, but by the end these two seemingly separate kinds of movie dovetail in a way that’s surprisingly clever and effective.

Calling Space Station 76 a spoof of 1970s science fiction doesn't do the trick. It's quiet, slow movie that's often funny, sometimes sad, and occasionally uncomfortable.

So while not everything works in Black Christmas, the stuff that does is ultimately what matters most.

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.

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.

After sitting through this rather unpolished production as it lightheartedly bumbles its way around a serious subject, I mostly wished that I could un-see it. To say that Half Magic, in which Graham also stars, is half-baked would be kind.

It's a disappointment when so much goes unexplored, when the film bows to the demands of a cliched plot driving the story forward.

Yeah, it's a mishmash of good, strange ideas and generic nonsense, barely held together by Sly and Arnie.

Paradise Hills wants so badly to be a sci-fi movie with a message for right now — perhaps to tap into the feminist anger out there now or to cash in on the interest in women filmmakers — but it feels like a rushed draft. There are a few good ideas, a few good twists at the end but not enough to make up for the rookie mistakes that undercut its potential.

The lo-fi horror film "Night's End" tries to combine old-fashioned haunted house chills with more contemporary technological terrors, but never quite figures out how to do that.

Starbuck is one of those high-concept yet formulaic, sitcom-like comedies that gets by on charm and speed. It is manipulative and ingratiating but totally worth your time if you manage to pass one crucial test: Does French-Canadian actor Patrick Huard's smile make you happy?

A solid adult drama, a movie that’s too soft at times but more often tender with its characters. It’s not a film designed to break any new ground, but Wight has skill with character, finding nuance in those moments that many other writer/directors would have turned into pure cliché.

This is a surprisingly toothless and ultimately flat film. It’s salvaged by a truly genuine, sometimes great performance from Josh Brolin, but he’s the only reason to take a look.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose work as the villain in Enemies Closer is the only reason to see this film.

While Watts is reliably vulnerable, it’s Judah Lewis as her son Chris who does the heavier emotional lifting.

Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, and Meredith Hagner travel to Mexico in Vacation Friends, but they never really go anywhere.

The best family films capture the imaginations of younger viewers and teach them the power of storytelling in ways that can affect them for their entire lives, possibly inspiring them to create their own stories as well. By comparison, “Sing 2” serves no other purpose than to waste a couple of hours.

We experience the sharp pain of a sad loss, a young father and a beloved neighbor and friend. But the larger story, the one about the failure of the Israeli military to respond quickly, about the normalization of having to have a safe room in every home, about the culture of a country where every citizen serves in the military, and about the return to Murrow’s perceptive warning 70 years ago is what we will carry with us.

Any movie with a cast that includes such live wires as Marisa Tomei, Sam Rockwell and Natasha Lyonne is bound to have something going for it. But the actual stars of this film, directed by playwright/novelist Adam Rapp, turn out to be two veteran second-tier players making their feature screenwriting debut.

Please Stand By is a sensitive character study whose story beats are a little bit overly familiar, to be frank. Dakota Fanning is excellent as Wendy.

West is such a technically accomplished filmmaker, and his cast of semi-regulars so committed to the narrative, that the resultant movie gives enough unsettling atmosphere and upsetting gut-level shock that this viewer didn’t mind too much all the stuff he wasn’t getting, such as intellectual coherence, not to mention any kind of profound insight into the cult hive mind.

A disastrous movie, Don’t Look Up shows McKay as the most out of touch he’s ever been with what is clever, or how to get his audience to care.

Body feels downright old-fashioned: a thriller with tension that doesn't stem from gore, jump scares, or other cheap shock tactics, but rather a creeping dread that grows with each red herring, and slow-burn plot twist.

In the end, Raymond & Ray doesn’t really get to know anyone, merely pushing them toward the inevitable finish line, where they can start their new life chapters with the father who defined them for decades in the rearview mirror.

Someday, we may get the true story of One Direction behind the scenes, full of fears and fights, egos and eccentricities. But today is not that day, and Spurlock is clearly not that storyteller.

Perhaps in one of the alternate universe versions of this movie, the characters come across as human beings acting out of understandable motivations, but the version in this universe tries too hard to both be and comment on the genre of crime stories, and does not succeed at either.

As tedious as Set Fire to the Stars gets, it remains watchable courtesy of the stunning black and white cinematography by Chris Seager.

We don’t need funky tea to know what Ali is thinking; we just need Henson, who makes us care.

For a movie about a larger-than-life personality who shook up the world with his brazenness—and since has had to seek political asylum because of it — The Fifth Estate feels unfortunately small and safe.

As gory as it is corrosively cynical, a supernatural mood piece that's equally influenced by the arthouse horror movies of David Lynch and Roman Polanski, and the grindhouse-ready Satanic Panic films of the '70s, like "To the Devil a Daughter," and "The Devil Rides out."

“A good movie is never too long, and a bad movie can never be too short.” That famous quote from Roger Ebert helps me explain why the Canadian indie comedy Sundowners, though it runs only 97 minutes, felt to me like it lasted 14 hours. Longer than “Lawrence of Arabia.” Longer than “Shoah.”

The plot thickens ... and thickens ... and thickens. Gudegast is clearly an avid student of heist pictures, and he layers this one with a lot of spectacular complications even while he muddles the average viewer’s potential rooting interest.

Rubikon never offers viewers deep answers to its bigger questions, but it does pose enough questions to keep things moving while you watch.

It ends up being little more than a rambling, undisciplined clip show that misfires as both history and entertainment.

Despite the occasional rough patches, there are still some things about Krampus that I did like quite a bit. Although the humor is not always successful, I liked the fact that Dougherty played the material in a relatively straight manner and resisted the urge to go for a more campy approach throughout.

While hardly perfect, a movie that frequently displays surprising sensitivity and sensibility.

It's all a bit overheated, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with melodrama, the problem arises when the script (also by Tornatore) keeps insisting on explaining its own symbolism and subtext, to make sure we get how deep the thing is.

Your Place or Mine begins in 2003, and it feels like the kind of superficially agreeable and instantly forgettable romantic comedy that came out around that time.

It’s a silly piece of popcorn entertainment that too often forgets that this kind of venture needs to be fun.

Apartment 7A seems afraid to stray too far from Mommy, justifying its existence through the sheer power of the great Julia Garner’s skill level, but leaving little else to recommend it.

Porno belongs in the “hot and murderous butt nekkid lady” sub-genre of horror alongside “Species,” “Lifeforce,” and the film it shares its villain with, “Def by Temptation.” Like that 1990 Troma movie, this horror-comedy details the exploits of a succubus, a female demon who tempts men to their own destruction via the deadly sin known as lust.

Jane Got a Gun has its good points and less demanding fans of the Western genre may find some value in it, especially considering how few films of its type actually get made these days.

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.

Set in 1967 Ireland, The Miracle Club stars three powerhouse Oscar-winning and/or nominated actresses (none of whom are Irish) and features period clothing and cars, sweeping cinematography, location-shooting, and a heartwarming message, where each character gets a satisfying arc. Cliches work for a reason.

The film will play well among standup comics who feel they've been muzzled by humorless slogan-spouting liberals, bluenoses and the generally squeamish.

There are some nice lessons about confidence and teamwork, a more-funny-than-scary villain, and impressive guest stars voicing minor characters, including Kristen Bell, James Marsden, Lil Rel Howery, and Kim Kardashian (as a pampered poodle social media star) and her children.

And yet, while it does not really work — at least not enough to warrant a full recommendation — it is one of those films where some of the stuff that did work was good enough to inspire me to hold out hope practically right up to the closing moments that it would all somehow all pay off in the end.

Bohemian Rhapsody is bad in the way a lot of biopics are bad: it's superficial, it avoids complexity, and the narrative has a connect-the-dots quality. This kind of badness, while annoying, is relatively benign. However, the attitude towards Mercury's sexual expression is the opposite of benign.

Millers in Marriage isn’t a science fiction movie. Which is unfortunate, because if it were, we might’ve gotten a decent explanation for why one minute of the characters’ lives makes you feel as if you’ve aged a month.

Misguided effort to once more stage the fateful stormy summer night at Lord Byron’s Lake Geneva villa in 1816 that would give birth to a tale that continues to spark our imaginations today.