Ultimately, “La Dolce Villa” is about as authentic an Italian experience as a night at the Olive Garden.

The Dancer clearly needed a better task master behind the camera. There are too many scenes of Fuller physically and mentally suffering for her art as she questions if what she does actually qualifies as dance.

Needless to say, the shapely Aniston pulls it off without a hitch — even if she never actually appears without a stitch. If this gutsy performance leads to better opportunities—a remake of Demi Moore's ill-conceived "Striptease," perhaps — I might sleep better at night.

Though Sean Penn executive-produced the film and voices its spare narration, the doc has a very generic tone, so much so that it might seem to belong on TV rather than in theaters.

The film is a disappointingly empty experience.

These characters possessed far more soul in the prior film: they walked through every scene with centuries of baggage and loss; they spoke of times gone by with wonder and awe; they cared for one another. None of that is present here.

While “The Gates” itself isn’t a total smash, it’s a more than sturdy final effort from a beloved actor.

The result, I’m afraid, is a big disappointment, a disjointed mess that tries to create a point-counterpoint narrative with these two savvy showmen, which inevitably tips the scales in favoring one of them. The problem is, it’s not the one you think.

Wolf Creek 2 isn't much different than "Wolf Creek," but it is markedly worse.

It's depressingly easy to chart where this film is going to go and who's going to make it to the inevitable sequel. There’s one thing a great horror game can never be (and something one couldn’t really accuse the Anderson movies of being either): predictable.

The Long Night wants to create a sense of encroaching fear and unease in viewers but cannot inspire much of anything other than boredom and apathy.

Allen’s direction, with Vittorio Storaro lensing, is typically fluid. If you’re at all inclined to view this movie, you’ll find it’s very easy to take in.

Darkly funny and deeply twisted, 13 Sins grabs you from its startling opening sequence and doesn’t let go.

There are a few brilliantly realized moments, the acting is mostly strong despite the weak script (Affleck and Cavill are both superb—Affleck unexpectedly so), and there's enough mythic raw material sunk deep in every scene that you can piece together a classic in your mind if you're feeling charitable; but if you aren't, “Batman v. Superman” will seem like a missed opportunity.

The kid is the most mature person on screen. Otherwise, it is gripe, gripe, gripe and snipe, snipe, snipe, all served family style with a bare minimum of relatability.

There are few surprises here after the narrative’s turn to survival horror as the film plods to its inevitable conclusion, and even that final shot feels unearned.

An uneven but satisfying hostage crisis thriller that is also a perfect example of the type of late-period films martial arts star Jackie Chan has decided to make after entering middle age.

Inert to such a degree that one wonders if the film has been slowed down, The Night Clerk doesn’t really go anywhere, truly disappointing for how much it wastes the talents of its young stars on a movie that doesn’t deserve them.

It’s not hard to think that there could be an interesting remake of “Going Places” or an interesting spin-off “The Big Lebowski” to be made — it’s just that this film doesn't work as either.

It’s a shame that the producers of Mortal Kombat movies are convinced that there needs to be long training/prep sections in the middle of their stories. No one wants to play a tutorial an hour after they’ve started the game.

This ostensibly edgy comedy didn't wring a single laugh out of me until maybe fifteen minutes before the finale.

The most noticeable influence is “Universal Soldier,” a film that shares so many plot elements that Bloodshot can be classified as a blatant rip-off. That movie spawned three sequels; I can only hope Bloodshot’s bloodline ends here.

Save for a few references of being abandoned by his birth parents and adopted later, the source of Jobs's jerky behavior never is revealed.

The film's short-comings are especially upsetting since Schwarzenegger is actually rather good in the film, and proves once again that, despite a severely limited range, he knows how to brood.

Birthmarked ultimately falls short of bringing the emotion home.

There are shootouts, a car chase, some heroics and some hard life lessons—but this film isn’t breaking new ground on either the action or socio-political front.

At times, Blood, feels like a slightly-filled-out television police procedural with better cinematography, but the performances have an almost Shakespearean grandeur.

It mostly feels like a very long pilot for a Netflix show that would go to series, build a modest but loyal following, then get canceled after two seasons so the streamer doesn’t have to give everyone a raise for going to three. But there's loads of talent in it.

Fistful of Vengeance is a movie in duration only; it’s pretty slapdash in terms of its execution, even during its glossy-looking action set pieces.

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 problem with The Drowning isn't that the characters are insubstantial, but rather that they don't dry up and disappear fast enough.

Larger than its predecessor, last year’s “The Maze Runner,” in every way: in its cast, scope, set pieces and (unfortunately) length. But “more” also means more convoluted.

The action here, directed by Le-Van Kiet, is reasonably entertaining, but everything that’s hung on that skeleton feels remarkably thin.

Even if you can sense the fun Crowe is having with the camera setups in certain scenes, Poker Face is simultaneously a lot and not all that much.

It’s also an odd time to release a movie that embraces collaborating with the Russians and painting bad and good guys with such broad strokes. This puts Hunter Killer in murky geopolitical waters I don’t think it knows how to navigate. Neither the movie or Butler is nearly entertaining enough to distract us.

Merely being violent and unpredictable does not make a film like Jackpot funny. Therein lies the biggest problem here.

By indulging in the exact same instincts it insists are problematic artistically, Peter Rabbit 2 wants to have its carrot and eat it, too. But maybe that won’t bother you. Maybe you’ll be grateful for a return to the theater and the opportunity to do so with your kids. In that regard, the sequel hops along in sufficiently bouncy fashion.

There are really no surprises here. But the action is bracing, Johnson’s performance is solid and, within its extremely narrow parameters, entirely convincing, and Gugino and Daddario are both gritty and attractive. The result is a pretty exemplary popcorn movie.

A staggering misfire on two discrete levels. As an adaptation of the 1997 novel by Philip Roth, it is lead-footed and inept. The screenplay, by John Romano, treats the narrative in a way that strongly suggests what I hope was a willful misreading of the book. But even considered entirely separately from its source material, American Pastoral is hopelessly weak.

At least until its bonkers final act, Choose or Die consistently fails to fulfill on the truly hallucinatory promise of its premise. Without that, it’s a choice that’s ultimately forgettable.

It’s a film with select moments, largely because of the screen chemistry of its leads, but it never coheres into anything consistent. And then the film, which was shot in late 2021, rushes to an ending that feels like the product of messy post-production.

A flattened biopic devoid of a perspective or originality. It follows a long list of musical origin stories that feel designed to sell new pressings of former hits more than tell an engaging story.

While Antebellum is dazzling to the eyes, it also leaves an icky taste in your mouth in its leering, exploitative depiction of violent, slavery movie tropes.

The Angry Birds Movie isn’t a total turkey. The animation itself is OK and I did laugh out loud once.

No One Gets Out Alive builds its suspense through scares both real and supernatural. While I’m less satisfied with its ultimate execution, Jon Croker and Fernanda Coppel's script has a lot going in its favor.

Equals goes for the Vulcan solution, and while the movie feels a bit thin and padded as a feature, it believes in itself completely, and there are moments when the sincerity of the lead actors and the director's addiction to the narcotics of Kristen Stewart's eyes, lips, neck and hands puts the whole concept over the top.

There are a lot of promising ideas here, but none are developed so much that this remake feels essential.

The whole experience feels like a generic inventory of recognizable tropes—the possessed child, the creepy old woman, the deeply-concerned priests, and the Ouija board are all here. Except, the cumulative fear bizarrely fizzles before it reaches something significant or emotionally meaningful.

The shooting is picturesque, the acting overbaked.

The worst thing about The Girl in the Spider’s Web — the element likely to enrage most fans of the franchise — is how it betrays its central character by eradicating almost every aspect that made her so initially fascinating.

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.

One of those films that expends so much time and effort in trying to become the next big cult sensation that it never gets around to simply being a good movie.

An admirable attempt at presenting a difficult subject that suffers from an eventual pileup of melodramatic happenstances.

Real quicksand may not drag its victims down, but Quicksand sinks beneath the weight of its missed opportunities.

Of course, all films, good or bad, are good or bad in their own way. I don’t know, though. All I See Is You seems extra-uniquely bad somehow.

How can we be interested if the movie we’re watching is as unimpressed with itself as we are?

As mundane as its title, with characters whose color-by-numbers personalities and motivations shift randomly to fit a predictable storyline, “A Family Affair” is a low-wattage rom-com.

Nothing about it makes a lot of sense, but then, nothing about classic old comedies starring people like W.C. Fields or Laurel and Hardy made much sense, because they about oddballs getting into trouble and then trying to get out of it.

Yes. It is good. It is sincere, funny, thoughtful and spiritual, often poignant, and with a deep strain of existential worry running underneath the whole thing.

Calling a movie like Madres by-the-numbers would be a compliment, and an overstatement, because that would indicate that the makers were even mildly successful.

As visually uninspired and ideologically conservative as it may be, there seems to be something beguiling about the series that keeps one (including myself, admittedly) on a short leash.

Vita & Virginia wastes the talents of four people — its two subjects and the two women that play them. It is a deeply frustrating movie, a film that not only can’t find the right tone from scene to scene but feels disjointed in individual moments too.

Once we're able to see Harlin's new trilogy as a whole, “Chapter 1” might feel more essential to the 4.5-hour experience. Right now, it just feels overly familiar.

While Where the Crawdads Sing is rich in atmosphere, it’s sorely lacking in actual substance or suspense.

Bleeding Steel is also unfortunately just one film in a string of lackluster globe-trotting action films that struggle to confirm Chan's decades-old self-image as a pop cultural ambassador.

Black Butterfly communicates all of its empty-headed ideas idiotically, but still retains a knowing smugness regarding its intentions, like it’s pulling a rabbit out of a hat while acting like no one’s ever seen such a trick.

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

I fully endorse the message blatantly expressed by Beemer’s picture, but as a work of cinema, it drove me nuts in how its style was antithetical to the principles its numerous subjects were championing.

The Western may not be entirely dead yet, but The Old Way is not exactly doing it any favors.

There are a couple of hallucinatory sequences that don't quite work, and the score by Paul Mills comes swooping in, insistent upon being inspirational in a way that feels like unnecessary underlining.

From the “how do you mess that up” school of filmmaking, Blood Red Sky takes a phenomenal concept that mixes genre hits like From Dusk Till Dawn, Snakes on a Plane, and Train to Busan and just blows it on poorly choreographed action, momentum-draining flashbacks, and an interminable runtime.

The result is a listlessly soapy melodrama, save for a little bit of modern-day nudity and bloodshed, could have been churned out 60-70 years ago and then gone largely forgotten in the ensuing decades.

Flat is the kindest way to describe A Good Marriage, a King novella turned feature that could have worked as a short or an episode of “Masters of Horror” but truly tests viewer patience at 102 minutes. It’s arguably the dullest King film yet, despite solid work by LaPaglia to save it and a decent set-up that goes absolutely nowhere.

Vincent N Roxxy is a nasty little piece of B-movie trash that lacks both the verve to grab you as a guilty pleasure and the artistry to be taken seriously as a dramatic thriller.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey illustrates a principle endorsed by many legendary directors: Casting the right leads will get you ninety percent of the way to success.

So while Clover may not be original, it is pretty watchable.

Franco fills his ensemble with recognizable faces, many of whom give great one-or-two-scene performances. Most notably, Vincent D’Onofrio shines as London.

It’s baffling, more than anything, as to how all of this talent could create something so uncharacteristic to their collective abilities to make us laugh, or feel something.

Here is a film so devoid of thrills, excitement, or purpose that it seems to have been custom-made to play in empty multiplexes during the traditionally dead last weeks of summer.

There is some panache to the film’s visuals and a lot of heart in the actors’ collective dedication, but “Mother/Android” feels like a bland mash-up of genre staples to forgettable effect.

Taylor-Johnson’s film, penned by Matt Greenhalgh, is concerned with Amy the addict, making “Back to Black” a dreadful, dastardly attempt at a biopic.

The Takedown works overtime to uphold the façade of heroic policing in the most generic way possible, for god knows what greater good.

The earnestness brings the movie from mildly irritating pastiche status to actively awful, and that is all she wrote.

This movie is designed for an audience already dedicated to the music of Millard and Timmons, and to the particular Christian tradition they represent. Those who are already fans will appreciate this chance to share his story, but those who do not know him may find it uninspiring.

It is a joyless, lifeless, boring affair that repeats ideas from better X-films and feels more like an obligatory reunion cash grab than a deeply considered goodbye to iconic characters.

The tonal weirdness and the philosophical fallacies and the general level of treacle did not sit very well with me. Then again, I have to admit I’m really more of a cat person.

A wannabe-thriller about artificial intelligence with little wit of its own.

Last Days is a scattered, superficial depiction of a sad tale that requires deeper analysis.

More often than not, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins is a dire checklist of clichés that were already gathering moss back in the 1980s, when G.I. Joe was a popular children’s cartoon.

Has a lot of good ideas and a few engrossing sequences, but it never quite finds a groove, or even a mode, and it ends in an abrupt, unsatisfying way.

Ultimately, To Catch a Killer blames all of the gruesome violence it depicts on the perpetrator’s mental health and offers only a surface-level exploration of the system that failed him.

Several of the changes to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s brilliant manga have already been widely reported, including the whitewashing of the entire project by relocating it from Japan to Seattle, but those are just the symptoms of a greater disease known as complete creative bankruptcy.

As competently put together as this movie is, it imparted to me no sense of a higher calling, and thus left me unmoved.

Petroni, in any case, is a skilled storyteller with a strong visual sense.

There’s a truly ambitious film buried in Glass, and I do mean buried. The problem is that Shyamalan can’t find the story, allowing his narrative to meander, never gaining the momentum it needs to work.

More disappointing, the performances just aren't quite as funny and focused as they should be. Willard and Kind are both very funny guys when they are used right, but they both seem a bit at sea here, and their characters never come into sharp focus.