Bullet Train is at its best when it's a comedy about self-styled badasses who think they're free agents but are really all just passengers on a train rocketing from one station to another, oblivious to the desires of any individual riding on it. The abstractness and "it's all a lark" humor ultimately undo any aspect that might otherwise sink its roots into the viewer's mind.

Y2K doesn't want to break stuff; it wants to dig it out of the trash and pine nostalgically for it. That's just not as interesting.

Daniela Forever, Nacho Vigalondo’s first film since his excellent “Colossal,” eight years ago, is a baffling disappointment, a sci-fi mindbender with echoes of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Inception,” but no idea what to do with its many ideas or what it’s ultimately trying to say.

Alas, David O. Russell has concocted all manner of adventures and detours, wacky hijinks, and elaborate asides to occupy his actors, none of which is nearly as clever or charming as he seems to think.

Django is for the most part everything Reinhardt’s music was not: listless, glum and meandering.

Every movie, even a remake, deserves to be viewed on its own merits. But that’s easier stated than done when you have a film like Downhill, a largely inferior American knockoff that's far less dynamic than the 2014 dark comedy it's based on.

Unfortunately, Words and Pictures fails at portraying both titular nouns.

There’s a big meaning to all of this, and yet the movie can’t eloquently express it, even though the metaphor is in the title.

The Cellar doesn't even need to be a smarter or even more faithful homage. All it needs to be is a little more of something—energetic, gross, thoughtful ... something!—to make it compelling enough to withstand comparisons to its many generic precedents.

Unfortunately, the film never finds a way into Berg's personality that explores his many facets without reducing him to a blank-slate character at the center of a traditionally-made period thriller.

Whittaker’s performance finds a balance between the tragic and comic scenarios her character experiences.

Hall and Martin do their considerable best, but Rae's April is the far more interesting character.

Like so many horror films in recent years, V/H/S/2 appears more lightweight the more it tries to impress with its inventiveness and grotesquerie.

It’s a harmless animated adventure that will provide a bland diversion to young viewers.

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.

Reminders of Him is so preoccupied with tragedy that the romance becomes secondary. Now, after our third Hoover adaptation, it feels like we’re getting love with diminishing returns. There’s less to enjoy, even if the movie is almost two hours long.

Does not quite make the grade. For every great joke, hilarious anecdote, and keen insight, there are cringe-worthy dramatizations, narrative groaners.

Last Looks works best in its twisted often-incoherent plot, where no character is generic. Everyone has a secret. No one is on the level. Surfaces lie.

Twohy's script contains macho dialogue so ripe it's embarrassing to hear it.

Cooties is a midnight movie for those fine with dozing off about twenty minutes in, once the charm of its single sentence log-line has worn off.

An insipid buddy-cop mystery that feels like a forgotten artifact of the 1980s.

A lot of thrillers are exciting but empty. “In Cold Light” is thrilling but very full in unexpected and complicated ways.

You could get mad at Seifert for being so bad at being so nakedly manipulative. Or you could just give up all hope, and counter-intuitively root for Monsanto. This is a David-vs.-Goliath movie, but David's aim is so spotty that Goliath has nothing to fear.

This not-quite-horror movie is so indulgently languorous — some might describe it as poetic and mournful while those who are less kind would dismiss it as plodding and downright depressing — it is likely to test the patience of many viewers.

This film encourages us to explore who and what he was most loyal to.

How to Make a Killing makes a half-hearted effort to surprise and maybe disturb us with some late developments, but by that point we’ve been numbed by the film committing the unforgivable crime of being dull.

It has a goofy grin on its face from frame one. But it never quite figures out how to pass its good vibrations to the audience.

It's a mixed bag overall — hence my star rating — but it's worth seeing nonetheless, largely because of the explicitly Russian qualities its sustains.

The film does an excellent job of letting us inside Lakshmi's physical and emotional experience.

The movie hits its cinematic stride, as it happens, when events are at their worst. The Promise is drenched in production value and replete with ravishing shots of sunrises and sunsets, but it’s in the scenes of fleeing, of battle, and of horrendous loss that the film is at its most effective. The depiction of the savagery inflicted on Armenia is bracing.

The film is constantly undercutting its own ability to generate any real suspense because whenever one of the stories begins to generate any real head of steam, viewers are jerked into another one and the whole process starts over again.

Thérèse never goes beyond that level of psychological complexity because after a point, Miller and Carter aren't interested in exploring the murky depths of Thérèse 's feelings.

A depressingly rote piece of corporate product that has so little on its mind other than presumably making hundreds of millions of dollars that you half expect the ticket sellers to hand out copies of Comcast’s latest earnings report along with the 3-D glasses.

And it mostly doesn’t quite work, because Fred, as written by MacBride and played by Dylan O’Brien, just isn’t a compelling character.

With these two top-drawer talents anchoring Michael Engler’s The Chaperone, one expects the picture to be terrific, and for the majority of its running time, it does not disappoint.

The cuteness of Godmothered is a winning one overall, especially in how it uses a playful sense of humor and good heart to find its own way to Happily Ever After.

Like most films of its type, “The Final Chapter” is utterly ridiculous in every possible way but unlike a lot of them (I am looking at you, “Underworld”), it at least has a healthy sense of its own absurd nature that comes as a blessed relief. And a couple of the action bits are gloriously goofy to behold.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is zippy and breezy.

They Remain is such a slow burn of a film that it fizzles out. It’s one of those movies that mistakes meandering as building tension, and wastes an intriguing presence on weak characters and an overbearing sense that it’s being made up as it goes along.

This one is more forgettable than it could have been but also nowhere near the disaster that often comes when members of Lorne Michaels' troupe are allowed out during the day.

Despite an appealing cast, though, this film is as aimless as its characters, a slight story about one night in the life of a group of 20-somethings in a small town.

This movie isn’t just tone-deaf, it’s ass backwards.

This film is a bittersweet love story about characters burdened by oppression, but the theme of liberation is as palpable as the sense of loss.

It’s a shaggy hangout film where McCartney and Wonder are dimwitted adversaries who spend their days getting high, insulting one another, and eating veggie dinners. In short, it’s incredibly fun.

The character is so one-note, always tying everything back to his need to redeem himself and his dad and articulating so many of his concerns verbally rather than through his eyes or body, that after a while I wanted to put in earplugs to get a break from him.

Let’s hope the upcoming projects in this fully-formed franchise learn a lesson from this gang of thieves and steal some ideas from better movies.

There’s a horror and truth that comes from staring into the abyss, and Son of a Gun could stand to learn a little more from Michael Mann about how to convey those cinematically. It’s a little heavy on incident, and a little light on soul

A Tourist’s Guide to Love is as harmless as its blandly forgettable title would suggest. It’s not quite a Movie to Fold Laundry To, because the scenery is quite lovely, so you’ll actually want to pay attention. But it is a pleasant escape if you’re seeking lazy Saturday afternoon viewing.

Weirdly sluggish and dull.

The actors bring a great deal of humanity to keep a wobbly script from going too far off balance.

A by-the-numbers sequel that mostly ignores the stuff that made its predecessor stand out in exchange for formulaic would-be thrills.

It’s passable for an easy watch and some uncomfortable chuckles but is bearable only on behalf of Hunter’s loyal antagonism while falling short just about everywhere else.

As much as Costner tries to play an even hand, attempting to give the Indigenous and settler perspective equal attention, it doesn’t wholly work.

The story is simple — too simple, in fact — and some of its more intriguing elements could use further developing, but the presence of Huppert makes Souvenir well worth a look.

Rio 2 has exhausted its limited amount of charm. Most regrettably, Rita Moreno appears in her first movie in eight years as Jewel’s overbearing Aunt Mimi but is barely allowed to make an impression.

Once Haunter's story snaps into focus, and its creators pull you towards its inevitable conclusion, the film's flaws become that much more apparent.

It’s a movie with effective scenes and character choices, they’re just not linked together in any way that makes them entertaining or emotionally resonant as a whole.

A frustratingly inert film in every way, The Beanie Bubble has no POV and nothing to say.

This American version of Park Chan-Wook's Korean thriller is Lee's most exciting movie since "Inside Man" — not a masterpiece by any stretch, but a lively commercial genre picture with a hypnotic, obsessive quality, and an utter indifference to being liked, much less approved of.

The one humanizing slice of Cake that is tolerable is Claire’s relationship with her Mexican housekeeper, Silvana (the terrific Adrianna Barraza, who was Oscar-nominated for 2006’s “Babel”).

This Apple TV heist flick is underwritten, dreary, tedious, inert, and without any stakes. I almost hesitate to write too much about it because this soulless dreck feels so unworthy of adding blemishes to the white page.

As an action movie and as a historical document, it is a bombastic and wholly inauthentic mess that displays precious little interest in the men whose actions and sacrifices it purports to honor.

An unabashedly adult drama and a steadfastly old-fashioned one.

Human error—or uncertainty—is the biggest source of tension in this movie, and it goes a long way towards making this sequel (a little) more than the sum of its flashy parts. You may not need another Escape Room, but this new one is good enough to leave you wanting more.

The anecdotal, multi-narrative approach is useful in personalizing the phenomenon, but the movie still brought me up short. The approach also has liabilities. I wanted more context, more history.

For the most part, Buffalo Boys is a decent folk tale, despite Lee and Wiluan's periodic application of "Game of Thrones"-style sensationalism.

The film itself falls short on two crucial levels: it’s neither sufficiently profound nor intoxicating enough to justify or transcend its self-seriousness. As good-looking as the movie and its stars are, Ardor, whose title refers to a literal state of burning, never manages to catch fire.

Given that she’s one of the greatest actresses of her time, Mirren naturally finds ways to reveal glimmers of humanity in her portrayal of former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. But the artifice of her physical transformation too often smothers her, resulting in a stoicism that makes her an elusive figure.

A movie that lacks the energy, wit and heart of its predecessor and is the kind of project that probably never should have happened.

Lady and the Tramp scratches an itch for dog lovers and may satisfy the young viewer’s curiosity when digging through the family’s new Disney+ subscription. However, so much of the movie is just fine when not feeling rushed or stilted, but doesn’t offer new surprises to stand on its own.

Shane Black’s The Predator is a fun, brutal, fighting machine that wastes no time getting down to business — not unlike its title character.

The film is high-strung, nervous and slightly chilly in the New York scenes, but once the action shifts to the beaches of Venice, it slows down considerably, and fittingly.

Maggie Q and Michael Keaton have such snappy, sexy chemistry with each other in The Protégé, it’ll make you wish their connection were in the service of a better movie.

If you squint you can nearly see the kind of movie Gutto might be aiming for.

It's less effective in the run-with-a-gun scenes, as is the acting and the writing, which all fall off sharply in the final third. The issues of individual, cultural, and national loyalty—and when and how to respond to aggressive actions by other nations—are relegated to the background of some weak chase scenes and plot twists.

4 Minute Mile is efficient in its storytelling — which is fitting, given that it’s about a sprinter — and Jenkins and Blatz have solid chemistry with each other.

The best parts of this tepid thriller, which seems designed to actually lower audience’s heart rates, arrive before the plot kicks in.

TRON: Ares is spectacularly designed, swiftly paced, thoughtfully written, and directed within an inch of its neon-hued life.

Aside from race jokes, Ted 2 offers a nearly staggering number of weed jokes, a couple of which are mildly funny, or at least funnier than the rape jokes.

The adaptation (by Josh Boone and Jill Killington) lacks any inference, mystery, or discovery: it is all text. Any complexity that there may be is all on the surface. Problems are easily solved, since there's nothing left unsaid, or if something is left unsaid that Ruthie says it for us in the voiceover. This makes for predictable viewing.

Woodley, though, by virtue of the sheer likability of her presence, keeps you hanging on, keeps you rooting for her.

If having their own Momo is Netflix’s latest attempt to grab viewers, they’re gonna need a much more disturbing monster.

The Greatest Showman, directed with verve and panache by Michael Gracey, is an unabashed piece of pure entertainment, punctuated by 11 memorable songs composed by Oscar- and Tony-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

Ravager does have an internal logic that makes its time and subplot-jumping story easy to follow. But this new Phantasm will not be of interest to anyone who doesn't already know who the Tall Man is, or why he needs to be stopped.

Mothers’ Instinct gets by on its pulpy potential more than anything else. There’s something intrinsically appealing about watching two phenomenal actresses go head-to-head in an old-fashioned melodrama.

Despite a few strong production values and performances, Smith’s film simply crosses the lane into incoherency and not the surreal David Lynch-esque kind of incoherency that sets a tone, but the this-needed-a-better-edit-or-rewrite kind of incoherency that gets people wondering what else is on Shudder.

The picture begins vanishing from the memory the instant that its final credits roll, and its laid back attitude suggest it's fine with that.

Luck truly is best suited for small children with low standards. Older kids will be bored. Adults will find it especially dreary, even though there’s actually a relevant message in here about the merits of failure and the perils of lawnmower parenting, buried somewhere beneath all the sparkles and desperation.

HairBrained is painfully contrived and self-consciously quirky from the word go.

Dashcam succeeds as a barrage of icky stimuli that may go great with a rowdy audience.

Are you consumed by an overwhelming desire to fork over the price of a movie ticket in order to see the kind of meagerly funded nonsense that the SyFy network provides for the price of a basic cable package? If the answer is yes, then Bounty Killer is right up your alley.

While this documentary from Alison Klayman can be insightful in taking us inside a phenomenon, its approach can be too broad, with filmmaking that relies on its own weaning sense of trendy.

Jungle succeeds in communicating the young Israeli kid’s horrible situation, as well as the camaraderie between him and his new friends, but falls short when trying to visually explicate his mental state.

What works for him (McCarthy) in a novel cannot be said to work for him here.

Often, Song One feels like the timid B-side of last summer’s more satisfying music-biz saga, the much less woe-is-me and a lot more let’s-have-some-fun “Begin Again.”

It may not come together as smoothly as the best feel-good movies of its kind, but there's an unwieldy charm to Joyride that makes the trip memorable.

Lane, still an incandescent knockout at 52, continues to pull off expressing sensuality and sexiness better than most actresses of any age.

Jeanne du Barry cares more about the love affair between two non-distinct people wearing exquisite clothes in stunning rooms than the reality that would sweep away those rooms, those clothes, and those people in just a few years' time.