There are vikings in this movie, and there is destiny. Pure to its junky intentions, if you like your movies served to you without confusion as to the character or their narrative arc, here it is: The destiny of a viking.

The alternately cornball and self-aware dialogue and the clearly not state-of-the-art CGI would seeming charmingly retro (like something from a TV miniseries two decades ago) if the movie didn't trot out one epic action film cliche after another.

The effort is noble, to give Bishop a chance to tell her story, however compromised its framing and end product might be, but it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Is it a real film, or a feature that uses the porn milieu to turn out a piece of softcore titillation that’s halfway between porn and actual drama? No doubt some of the film’s makers and defenders would argue for the former.

It’s a film that seems to have no further point than to remind us that some powerful jerks were once powerful jerk kids. Point taken, but it’s not cinematically satisfying.

Detroit was directed, written, produced, shot, and edited by white creatives who do not understand the weight of the images they hone in on with an unflinching gaze.

The scenes under water are exquisitely beautiful, but it is the screenplay that feels soggy.

Ride On isn’t a generic beat-em-up but a stingy elegy to a bygone era of filmmaking and an unbelievable melodrama about an older artist and his estranged daughter. A lot of emotional baggage is attached to Ride On, and very little of it gets unpacked.

Unfortunately, “Back to the Past” doesn’t really stand on its own, and its creators don’t know how to offer viewers anything new.

The film isn’t necessarily terrible, but it proves to be deeply unmemorable by offering viewers little more than a rehash of things they have presumably seen before and then taking an unconscionable amount of time to do so.

A drama that’s tastefully restrained to a fault in a particularly British manner.

It’s a mismatched-buddy comedy. It’s a fish-out-of-water comedy. It’s a raucous girl-power comedy.

A moderately entertaining heist movie featuring an animated and reasonably diverting Eccentric Cage Performance.

The film is a little too scattershot for its own good, which becomes especially frustrating when some of these detours actually come across as potentially being far more interesting than the central narrative thread.

The film is beautiful in spots, and features a believably tormented performance by Vincent Cassel as Gauguin, but unfortunately it has only a hazy idea of what it wants to be about.

It's pretty standard man vs. nature stuff. It’s also a pretty simple parable about the perils of greed. All of this would be fine if “Gold” had more to it, but aside from its undeniable style, there’s very little there there.

Take Me to the River: New Orleans is essentially a feature-length version of a commercial put out by the city’s tourism board hoping to lure visitors by offering them little bits of a lot of different things in the hopes of attracting a wider audience. It has been made with plenty of sincerity but that alone does not guarantee quality filmmaking.

This isn't a bad film by any means: it does a creditable job of convincing us that Penn's heart is in the right place (as an activist) even when the execution is sometimes impulsive or clumsy; but it lacks focus.

Reminiscence aims for something existential within a well-recognized film-noir template. Sadly, the result is an unpersuasive, vaguely pessimistic dystopia at best, one that liberally pulls 101-level references from recognizable Hitchcock flicks and neo-noirs alike, only to drown their time-honored spirit in murky waters.

With its coming-of-age and its historical context, Beans concerns ideas of pain and conflict, but it’s too timid to really engage those ideas, to honor their discomfort aside from how horrific discrimination is (a few scenes of the family being ambushed by racist Canadian citizens are upsetting, but played too directly for tears).

The frustration with Lizzie is that a lot of it works, but the style - elegant, hushed, and period-appropriate - acts as a damper on all the fraught possibilities. Lizzie is at war with its own impulses. You can sense there's a sexy overheated melodrama in there, yearning to burst free of its corset stays.

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.

For fans of the genial, garrulous Gold, of Los Angeles culture or of films about food, City of Gold will easily merit four stars and its 90-minute length. For those less enamored of those subjects, its claim on any stars will be qualified by some serious questions about its cinematic worth.

If A Nice Girl Like You would have stayed the course of the book it’s based on, Ayn Carrillo-Gailey’s 2007 memoir Pornology, it might have been an interesting enough premise. Instead, Andrea Marcellus’ screen adaptation whitewashes the main character and moves the narrative into a more conventional territory, one centered on love over lust, tame over the risque.

It’s hard to feel freely when you are constantly and loudly reminded by every aspect of the movie that you are supposed to feel things.

You might think that a movie about the construction of one of the most iconic structures in the world would be carefully put together. But that is not the case with the sumptuous, often frustrating Eiffel, the story of a man whose name is as joined to the Tower emblematic of Paris as the 133-year-old beams that are still sturdily riveted (not bolted) together.

I kept thinking about “Lilo & Stitch” while watching Home, a decidedly disappointing effort based on the popular kid-lit book “The True Meaning of Smekday” from the already embattled folks at DreamWorks Animation.

A well-meaning and sometimes interesting effort written and directed by brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist.

With Radioactive, Satrapi eschews traditional biopic notions in favor of a more daring approach. But the execution is frustratingly inconsistent, with a time-hopping structure that’s more jarring than thrilling.

This is one of those movies that is as dull as it is well-meaning and man, is it ever well-meaning.

The movie’s off-putting and constantly foregrounded political agenda wouldn’t be so unpleasant if the action scenes were more plentiful and/or thrilling. They aren’t.

A young Lithuanian woman learns about the healing power of love in The Summer of Sangaile, a movie that ultimately is about as shallow as that central theme sounds.

There’s a version of Jerry & Marge Go Large that’s more like an early Tom McCarthy film, a movie that takes itself seriously as a character study instead of resorting to the simplicity of a generic comedy.

It’s not bad. It’s just not very good.

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.

With competent but unspectacular direction from Kyle Newacheck (“Game Over, Man!”) and an entertaining supporting cast, Murder Mystery does just enough to keep audiences engaged until its goofy mystery is solved.

Everything gets upended in the film’s final third, when its languid pacing gives way to sped-up plotting.

As relatively handsomely mounted as this movie is, it’s also kind of a shambles. Had I not read a press release about it prior to attending its New York screening, I would not know who the damn thing was even about until a whole half-hour in.

It has all the gloss of a Pottery Barn catalogue and all the depth of a "hang in there" greeting card, but if you are in the mood for a sad story about very attractive people learning to get the most out of the time they have, it will do.

With a movie like “Offseason,” you can tell that the filmmaker knows what the usual benchmarks for a “good movie” are—something you can’t say for all B-movie directors—and Keating does achieve them in some aspects of the production. That’s what makes it so confounding when other elements don’t live up to those standards.

With its amusing training montages, colorful supporting characters, and uplifting message of perseverance, The Phantom of the Open does exactly what you expect it will in the most familiar, comforting manner imaginable. It earns the politest of golf claps.

Though it starts with promise, Spiderhead is pseudo-heady sci-fi stuff that treats its most intriguing elements like an afterthought, and misses the opportunity to be a memorable oddity aside from its disappointments.

It's as messy as a teen’s bedroom and packed with all manner of distracting clutter that needlessly burdens a plot.

This is a modestly-scaled and exceptionally crafted independent film that is genuinely invested in its characters.

My diagnosis of why Morgan malfunctions as a chilling plunge into blood-splattered mayhem is that, before the midway point, it is pretty obvious what the eventual outcome and supposed big reveal will be. This is not the fault of the actors necessarily — there are highly respected talents involved here. It is just that we have seen most of this unfold before.

An odd film like this needs a charismatic anchor in its lead role to keep it from losing its human connection and Boyd Holbrook just can’t muster the energy to do that. It’s a strangely flat, unengaging performance that doesn't match the ambition of the overall piece.

The biggest problem is that the most touching moments are hammered so hard. "Redeeming Love" could have tried to reach a broader audience but settles for preaching to the choir.

Dolly sets viewers up for an experience that it can’t quite deliver, mostly due to small acts of self-sabotage.

This latest, a thriller about a photographer who might be a killer, is wild pop fly that disappears in the stands.

As social commentary, Joker is pernicious garbage. But besides the wacky pleasures of Phoenix’s performance, it also displays some major movie studio core competencies, in a not dissimilar way to what “A Star Is Born” presented last year.

This movie’s dry, facts-first approach does not have the capacity to pull it off.

An outrageously dull documentary.

Unfortunately, The Public Image is Rotten often feels like an illustrated airing of grievances that also happens to be an in-their-words history of Lydon's best band.

Unfortunately, for this viewer, the formal constraint foisted upon him by writer/director Jeremy Rush in Wheelman went right up his nose and stayed there, resulting in a little less than 90 minutes of annoyance.

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.

Most true crime fans know that the real stories that have enraptured them in film and television are much crueler and grosser than their fictionalized counterpart. If Akin’s goal is merely to pull away that curtain, it ultimately feels like a hollow unveiling.

The British WWII drama “Munich - The Edge of War” starts off as a prim spy thriller and ends as an insufferable civics lesson.

The gloomy turns in her film accumulate to such an extreme outcome in the end that you inevitably start raising your eyebrows to the contrived narrative. In that, Sadie shares its protagonist’s most defining attribute — a frustratingly manipulative nature.

While much of it is quite funny, the film ends up feeling like a good comedy sketch stretched out unnecessarily to a feature-length.

Then there’s a third act that’s so wildly out of left field, it shifts the tone completely. It’s an almost comical departure, but it’s certainly a disappointing one.

At any rate, Keaton and Gleeson are mostly a pleasure to watch as they enact the Inevitable Stations of the Romantic Dramedy, which include the mandatory misunderstanding that leads to breakup before inevitable reconciliation.

Both Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay do a remarkable job wrestling with their character’s inner and outer conflicts, but so much of “Femme” is about the pain of queer life, that it leaves out its joy.

In the end, Jung_E feels like a movie made by an undeniably talented director who just didn’t have quite enough ideas here even to fill a 99-minute runtime.

Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti’s film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other.

The father-son drama in Embattled might win some rounds, but the abundance of clichés leads to a loss overall.

Hirsch is his usual reliable self, trading in on the warmth and trust he generated as a shrink in “Ordinary People” to keep the audience off balance as to whether he’s going to turn out to be a savior or a monster. He’s the most distinguished player here, keeping the movie grounded when its plot mechanics and/or O’Nan’s histrionics threaten to throw it off the rails.

The fault is in Towne’s direction. People sometimes complain that flashy, ostentatious visual stylization takes them out of the movie; what took me out of this movie was its flat, lifeless, unimaginative and conventional visual style.

What could have been a salute to the power of imagination to heal damaged souls and broken relationships instead opts to focus on tragic events.

Touch Me Not is definitely abstract and intellectualized, although I didn't find it exploitative. But so much of the film left me cold, even bored.

It’s frustratingly simple, the dialogue over-explains everything and while there are a few solid moments of suspense, there’s too much dead air in-between.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 proves the old adage that you can go to the well — or in this case, the dog bowl — one time too many. And that’s saying something, given that this is only the second film in the series.

The end result is itself not especially intriguing.

Gandolfini's quietly magnificent performance is the only reason to see Violet & Daisy.

Anthropoid has one hell of a story to tell, a story that once again reminds us of a savagery that is not so far in humanity’s past that we need to stop being reminded of it.

It’s breezy and entertaining, certainly, but ultimately feels like little more than a 97-minute ad for the wrap dress.

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

And the matter-of-fact portrayal of a bi-racial relationship is presented just as it should be — unremarked upon.

Decoding Annie Parker is not a movie to which this critic can give a favorable review. I’d feel more like a heel about it if the movie hadn’t actually irritated me to the extent that it did.

I didn’t laugh once, but there were several lines that, in context, got a wide fool-grin out of me.

While the film is clearly telling a story that wants to come across as profoundly emotional, I always felt as if I was being kept at too far of a distance from it while watching it.

What’s scarier—someone yelling boo or the sound of someone, or something, whispering it in the distance? Blair Witch has plenty of yelling, but not nearly enough that gets under your skin.

The Gambler should have been called “Three Supporting Characters in Search of a Lead.” A gaunt Mark Wahlberg stares out from the poster, his name is above the title, and he’s in almost every frame of this remake, but his character may as well be non-existent.

What makes The Highwaymen particularly disappointing is that two solid pieces of character work get buried in the filmmaking.

The family trauma is so clotted-thick, a faster pace and tightened-up editing might have eradicated the slow-motion underwater feel of the whole.

From start to finish, Uziel’s packaging of the story seems more inspired than its contents.

Not even Hunter, who eventually wears out her welcome, can keep Strange Weather from going off the cliff.

Its lively finale is heartening, given the patience that Laaksonen was obliged to exercise before he could live his life out in the open. But the insights of the movie are too scant for much of a real impression to take hold of the viewer.

By this time in his life, Fischer (who was Jewish) was already into the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that marred his public persona long after his days in the sports limelight had waned. While Zwick and company do nothing to explain this bizarre mania, Pawn Sacrifice definitely conjures the feeling of it, thanks in large part to the movie's greatest asset: Maguire's edgy, charismatic performance.

It’s a pity that Jack Reacher: Never Go Back fails to support Cruise and his co-stars, all of whom are acting as if their lives depended on it. There’s a great movie buried somewhere in here—a strange but beguiling family comedy and a meditation on nature vs. nurture, with a bit of shooting and punching thrown in—but the filmmakers never figure out how to excavate it.

I often wished there was more to Hatching than just a few weak digs at bad mothers who are a little too online. Maybe you have to be Finnish to see Hatching as a blistering and culturally specific satire. Or maybe there’s just not much to get about the movie.

There's a lot to like in Ali's latest, Highway, which is a gorgeously assembled, ambitious piece of work, although it doesn't coalesce into a holistically successful film.

The Gunman isn't the worst action film that you will see this year — you will be lucky if you even remember anything about it a couple of weeks after seeing it — it will probably go down as one of the more dispiriting ones.

Obviously, this tale engages many hot-button issues in present-day Israel. But does it say anything particularly incisive or meaningful about their complexity? On the contrary, its ultimate message seems to rest on a kind of glib and simplistic equivalency.

The Thicket may enthrall those Tubi watchers looking for an icy, gunslinging thriller that wears its savagery and mercilessness with ghoulish, gruesome pride (the same folks who dig those DIY hood movies might get a kick of this). But the unlimited amount of Sturm and Drang on display will turn away those looking for a fun, engaging shoot-’em-up–like readers of the guy who wrote the book this bad ol’ time is based on.

There’s a surreal, dreamlike quality throughout, with bursts of violence and bad behavior. But while Grabinski certainly deserves credit for his ambition, the juggling act he’s attempting gets away from him, and Happily ultimately ends up being more frustrating than dazzling.

Putting on display the day-to-day reckonings of Palestinian life under violent Israeli occupation, Nabulsi’s film touches the heart but loses grip on the mind as it journeys to juggle more subplots than its hands can handle.

It’s a character-driven drama populated by sketchy characters who are mostly compelling thanks to the movie’s strong ensemble cast and Haugerud’s typically sensitive direction. So unfortunately, the suggestive power of Johanne’s journey fades as the movie slowly heads to its inconclusive finale.

The result is a disappointment that's more crushing than an outright bad movie would be. The original, despite its flaws, had moments of primal power and deep understanding of what drives people, qualities that are mostly lacking here.