The wolf and the lion make a great team; the humans and the script do not.

This is a bleak nugget of a film that is trying so hard to take the typical sports movie narrative and unleash its darker and more nightmarish side that it runs out of steam long before arriving at its frustratingly oblique conclusion.

The scariest thing about “Humane” is how genuinely believable its nightmare vision ends up being. However, the film’s micro approach to a macro crisis never connects because we’re never given a reason to care about these specific people.

This "lack" of a serious critique makes Between Two Worlds the story of a pampered journalist confronted with how "these people live," plus the fallout when her lie is discovered, rather than a real shot fired at an unfair system.

Horror ultimately gives way to irritation as the film veers into violent shock tactics and misplaced blame. What begins as a righteous indictment devolves into an unnecessary vendetta.

While there’s a lot to like about “Everything to Me” (Abigail Donaghy’s performance, in particular), Lacob’s heart-on-sleeve script and uncertain direction often leave the whole thing feeling a bit scattered.

The bigger sin here is that “Nobody’s Fool” wastes its comic goodwill and performances by wallowing in the same tired story elements Tyler Perry has been milking on TV and in his movies for decades. He’s done this before, and you’ve seen it before.

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

The best thing about Emily is that she’s played by Evanna Lynch. Lynch, who played the charmingly abstracted Luna Lovegood in some of the Harry Potter pictures, has grown into a young woman who looks like a rougher-edged Saoirse Ronan.

If mid-level dank atmospherics attending well-replayed semi-dystopian “dark” mechanics are sufficient to hook you into a genre movie, you’re all set. If you demand better, this won’t do.

Michael Pearce’s grim thriller “Echo Valley” is a melodramatic mess redeemed by the performances of the film’s exceptional cast.

That is actually one of the key problems with the film as a whole — there are times when it tries to embrace its silliness and times when it wants to be treated as a serious action film and the clash of tones is simply too jarring.

The biggest problem with “Nobody 2” is that the surprise factor is gone, and nothing has taken its place. The wow of seeing a generally comedic actor like Bob Odenkirk go John Wick in the fun 2021 sleeper hit isn’t there anymore.

The Threesome ends up kind of a mixed bag, cute but a bit disjointed.

An unconvincing sequel to the 1994 original that’s basically the Scandinavian answer to recent trauma-minded American horror legacy-quels like “Halloween Ends” and “Scream VI.”

In spite of the available chemistry and charisma from Hathaway and Ejiofor, Locked Down proves to be a bewildering mess, in part because of choices made in how to tell a story that mixes two-hander drama with a heist.

With a script by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder and Shepard, The Perfection has a gory grindhouse sleaze overlaid with the tony gleam of the upper-crust, a very sick combo.

While the performances are stronger and the narrative is more coherent than you’d see in a “Madea” movie, for example, Perry’s latest still features many of the auteur’s trademarks: dizzying tonal swings, awkward blocking, drab lighting, jarring edits and a mixture of the salacious and the puritanical.

A genre movie that's at war with itself.

Those who go to see “Dead Men Don’t Tell Tales” might just recognize that hollow feeling as they leave the theater.

Outlandish as its action often is, The Captain is based on a true story. Schwentke’s film, though, has an allegorical/satirical axe to grind, and it more often than not frames the narrative in dark archetypal terms.

There's a lot of chutzpah on display throughout the film, even during essentially soggy, dialogue-intensive sequences, which are broken up by disorienting flashbacks. But Jung's biggest failing is his inability to make Sook-hee a heroine worth caring about.

A figure as unusual and distinctive as Fields certainly deserves a commemoration. The bad news here is that he deserves better than what Danny Says serves up.

If this particular kind of performance is not your cup of tea (and, admittedly, it is not mine), you might find yourself resisting the journey of female empowerment and the uplift that's ultimately in store.

A puzzle movie with too many unnecessary pieces and not enough essential ones, but it's superior to its predecessor in a few basic ways.

Features some of the worst post-synching seen in any recent movie. If Eisenstein, the consummate craftsman, would have regretted Greenaway’s penchant for pointless and overdone circular tracking shots, he surely would have groaned at how the actors’ lips here and the words they speak are so often on different timetables.

Dark Harvest misses many beats necessary for a fully realized narrative. And yet the concept and its action-driven execution make a fun watch with some laughs of incredulity.

Feels more like a collection of interrelated short stories cobbled into an flavorful but ultimately unwieldy narrative.

The exceptionally talented Richardson does her best with a woefully underwritten character.

The particularly outstanding cinematography is by Dante Spinotti, the craftsman who also shot the likes of “Heat” and “L.A. Confidential.”

The film's retro, John Carpenter-esque synthesizer score, composed by Jeff Grace, further pushes viewers away.

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.

Someday, there will be a take on the life and work of John Belushi that is as fascinating, complex, and entertaining as he was. Belushi, however, is not quite that film.

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.

Players, written by Whit Anderson and directed by Trish Sie, struggles with the inherent artificiality of its setup. The tropes are so front and center that real life barely has any room to breathe.

Outpost only succeeds if we are invested in Kate’s trajectory and ultimate fate, and I never was.

A gentle low-key comedy.

The problem with “Vice is Broke” is it never quite gets around to answering what went wrong with Vice, content to mimic its “quirky” form of filmmaking as interview subjects recall the toxic workplace atmosphere that undeniably produced some formative journalism.

By playing with formalism, using faux documentary, and cranking out hedonistic scenes of excessive drug taking and partying, Yates aims to blend “Erin Brockovich” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” But the director’s filmic language never offers quite enough sex, quite enough excess, quite enough of capitalism’s depravity. Pain Hustlers just doesn’t know how to commit.

Castañeda and Van Damme's scene-stealing performances don't significantly improve writer/director Lior Geller's frequent reliance on racial stereotypes and gangster movie cliches.

While the settings may indeed be beautiful, every frame here has been location-scouted and dressed to a fare-thee-well that sucks all the life out of every image—the viewer might also rest easy at the near-certain prospect that The Unfortunate Events will be conveyed as antiseptically and tastefully as possible.

At Middleton is the just the sort of trite if inoffensive diversion that barely tiptoes into theaters before landing in the cable and video-on-demand listings.

A grueling coming-of-age thriller on the cliché-heavy side, with little hook to offer other than Wolff’s aching screen presence.

Lasse Hallström‘s latest film, The Map That Leads to You, has the makings of a Gen Z “Before Sunset” meets “Eat Pray Love,” but unfortunately, it also has the depth of a mediocre beach read weepy. That is to say, I enjoyed it as I watched, but it has had no lasting effect on my memory or, even worse, my heart.

The Woman in Black 2 might have served as an effective tribute to movies like "Curse of the Cat People." That is, if it hadn't completely squandered all this goodwill in its last third.

As a gangster film, “The Alto Knights” does little more than putter along, taking in very few new or interesting sights along the way.

For every delicate element there are many others that are heavy-handed or cringe-inducing, including some painfully on-the-nose musical selections. (Salt-N-Pepa’s perky “Push It” plays while Collins’ character, Rosie, is giving birth. Get it? Because she’s pushing!)

Your appreciation for this film will depend in large part on where this all falls on your personal continuum from “funny” to “funny-ish,” to “eww.”

For despite how much I liked about Hunnam’s work here, I could never completely engage with Papillon given how little it adds to the story that’s already been told and the overdone genre of humans surviving outright torture.

Fourteen simply runs too bland to have that vital sense of curiosity that comes from watching a movie where people talk about seemingly superfluous memories and interactions.

You wonder how high “Sea Fever” could have risen, if only Hardiman had truly embraced the bare bones of the genre, indulging in some well-wrought group dynamics and even a pair of sneaky jump-scares to boot.

Danish documentarian Janus Metz — making his first feature, and working from a script by Ronnie Sandahl — feels the need to hold our hands and oversimplify these two titans of tennis.

It has a couple of interesting ideas, a certain degree of style and one impressive performance but never manages to pull them together into a cohesive or satisfying whole.

We come to it with high expectations and it is especially disappointing that this movie never comes together.

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

Roach is a director who can do stylish, clever compositions when it suits him, as demonstrated in his flamboyantly silly “Austin Powers” movies. But you wouldn’t know it from this film, which prizes information delivery over visual pizzazz to such a degree that it often feels more like a pilot for an HBO comedy series than something that can only be properly appreciated on a big screen.

Moonshot is the kind of movie that’s frustrating because of what makes it endearing—there’s so much that makes you wish it were more original. No rom-com set in space should feel this ordinary.

The proceedings are not entirely unamusing in their lurid way, but they’re also not nearly as clever as the filmmakers believed or hoped they would be.

Full of dazzling images that suggest a rich, profound narrative the film is never able to achieve.

Truth be told, Get on Up isn’t really interested in exploring how important Brown’s music was to any of the numerous styles it influenced. Instead, it just wants to play some of the big hits you love while ticking off a checklist of standard biopic milestones.

Unfortunately this film has none of their urgency or sense of control; for long stretches it just doesn't seem to have any idea what, exactly, it wants to say, or be.

There doesn’t seem to be a single original bone in this film’s body that gives you a parade of half-baked comedic scenes braided with a trite thriller and family mystery.

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.

A sweetly-intentioned though somewhat awkwardly structured spin on a Hallmark Channel-style dramedy that strives to shed light on the disorder from a female perspective.

Written by Franklin, “Salvable” struggles to find its footing as both a family and crime drama, but it does one better than the other.

Believe it or not, Action Point in 2018 feels too safe. There’s way too much plot and even the stunts that gave Knoxville concussions feel routine. It’s not unlike seeing a once-great athlete attempt a comeback. There are flashes of what once worked, but it’s also a little sad.

The performances and the inherent power of the true story keep it from being a complete disaster, but one hopes Serkis moves on to more challenging material with his follow-up.

They all ultimately seem as if they are participating in a dubious enterprise, devised by gifted individuals who somehow can't take a big picture view of a story that would seem to demand one. London Road is brilliant in all the wrong ways.

Ultimately, True Memoirs of an International Assassin isn’t entertaining enough to recommend, but it’s certainly not the torturous experience of recent James vehicles like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” or “Pixels,” and parts of it actually work.

Its narrative and visual approach almost suggests a compendium of the clichés one should avoid in a film like this.

A lot of substantial or just different material might have enriched this documentary’s tidy fall-and-rise story.

The Deer King looks great (and has a lovely score) but it’s repetitive, predictable, and downright dull.

Director Joshua Erkman shows promise throughout “A Desert,” his first feature, but his movie’s unyielding scenario, co-written with Bossi Baker, makes it hard to want to hang around while thinly drawn characters vaguely establish the movie’s themes.

A high-altitude soap opera, woozy with overly telegraphed peril and determined to make the audience root for a couple who clearly aren’t meant for each other and played by actors who deserve a generous C-minus in chemistry.

Like bad houseguests, the creators of Hell Baby overstay their welcome.

Speedway is pleasant, kind, polite, sweet and noble, and if the late show viewers of 1988 will not discover from it what American society was like in the summer of 1968, at least they will discover what it was not like.

McDonagh’s film is well-crafted throughout but ultimately has nothing fresh or insightful to say about the ugliness of white privilege.

The premise here is not unpromising but the execution—indeed the whole aesthetic—is something like The Grifters-Lite.

Unfortunately, Afflicted is as emotionally involving as a really accomplished special-effects sizzle reel.

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.

That “Deepfaking Sam Altman” is earnest and curious and full of fun thought prompts ultimately makes it more frustrating than a flat-out bad movie would have been.

Rustin was undoubtedly made in admiration of its subject. Yet, with a stale approach to its plotline and confused narrative priorities, the film is more like an educational outline than a spirited story.

Bad River gains a cumulative power in the way it consistently counters these tragedies with moving interviews with the proud, vibrant people who have refused to leave, illustrating the courage of resistance that takes place across generations. If it's sometimes like a movie that’s trying to tell a few too many stories at once, it’s hard to blame it. There are so many stories that need to be heard.

The performers get their jobs done without leaving much of an impression. In terms of who or what Footnotes can win over, I think only hardcore Francophiles will find its charms genuinely compelling.

There's not much wrong with this film on paper—there's just something wrong with the execution.

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.

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.

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

Critics have a habit of calling movies tonally inconsistent, but this should now be the textbook example, a film that veers wildly from war movie to character drama to satire to history piece to a blended gray of nothing.

There’s a quiet intensity that runs throughout The Audition. Although most of it feels like a subtle family and teacher drama, sharp anxious pangs occasionally disrupt the film’s otherwise gentle pace. Eventually, these feelings spin the film’s main character out-of-control into a truly baffling conclusion that feels neither right nor earned. It’s almost as if it were the ending of another movie entirely.

These moments remind us of the mindless summertime excitement the “Jurassic” movies have long provided, albeit with diminishing returns. But that giant footprint just isn’t as imposing as it used to be.

Amber Alert sometimes works as a thriller, but it has serious aspirations. It wants to “say” something. These two things don’t come together.

Clearly there is a severe case of “Paddington” envy here and a hunger for yet another animated franchise. But easy chuckles are no substitute for genuine charm.

Nearly four years into the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan, this story, now more than ever, needs the attention and awareness of an international audience. One only wishes for a deeper telling of it; maybe with at least one less Black Eyed Peas song.

A trip recommended strictly for Almodóvar's hard-core fans. Throughout the movie, I wished not so much for the plane to land, as for the movie to finally take off.

It's awfully tasteful and emotionally detached in its blissed-out depiction of beautiful young people cavorting in the sunlight.

Ultimately, “The Surfer” proves to be not much more than an audience endurance test that offers up plenty of upsetting imagery and moments of emotional torment but never quite manages to make them pay off.

The strongest point Gutnik makes with his film is that we all have a concealed story when we share common spaces in silence. But that sadly isn’t enough of a hook to carry out this scattershot effort.