A potentially interesting premise is handled so badly that what might have been a provocative drama quickly and irrevocably devolves into the technological equivalent of the old anti-dope chestnut "Reefer Madness," squandering the efforts of a strong and talented cast struggling mightily to make something of the ridiculously trite material.

Ben Young’s atrocious Devil’s Peak is a case study of excellent performers being given so little to work with from a script.

An action comedy with feeble fight scenes and little laughs creates a film that feels more like a screen test than a finished product.

I’m not qualified to say whether it’s an effective delivery system for its Christian message, but I think I can credibly pronounce it a good popcorn movie.

Both actors are gorgeous, of course, which heightens the romantic fantasy of it all, but there's also a naturalism to them that's appealing.

Ninety minutes of footage like this, minus any characters or plot at all, probably would've resulted in an artistically better use of a couple hundred million dollars than "Jurassic World: Dominion," which will doubtless be a smash on the order of all the other entries in the franchise, even though it doesn't do much more than the bare minimum you'd expect for one of these films, and not all that well.

The devil figure is Federico (Riccardo Scamarcio, last seen in "John Wick: Chapter Two"). He's eloquent, charming, faintly sinister man who, as Bryan points out, seems to magically appear in their lives at moments of crisis.

Despite the obvious sincerity of the filmmakers, the best efforts of Jean Reno and Anjelica Huston, and some lovely scenery, it remains overly didactic, talking down to even the middle school audience it is aimed at.

Tulip Fever reveals itself to be so nutty because it explicitly believes it’s not crazy, rambling through its odd events and obsessions without an ounce of 17th century kitsch.

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.

It's not a great or even particularly distinctive movie, but it's heartfelt and plain-spoken enough that it might connect with viewers whose families have dealt with addiction and recovery, domestic abuse, financial deprivation, and other problems highlighted in the story. Advertisement

Extraterrestrial never settles into a groove, and therefore never becomes more than a collection of effectively icky scenes.

With a bigger budget and a longer runtime, Cell could easily have been elevated above its current station as a worthy 2 AM viewing on cable — not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s cursed with some really cheap CGI, but blessed with actors who are game for, and respect, the material.

All goodwill from that first hour is dead and buried by the last scene, abandoned by a screenwriter and director who had no idea where to take this story.

Even with an embarrassingly rich cast, The Estate chokes on its own airlessness.

Adore is, as my late mother would say in describing Sidney Sheldon novels, "good trash."

The director called this “mayhem porn,” a designation and ideology fitting for the latest from indie director Mickey Keating, Psychopaths. This is an active, obnoxious test of an audience’s appetite for blood and how long they can go without novel ideas like purpose or plot.

There’s nothing in “Ice Road: Vengeance” that isn’t in any given Redbox/Saban Films Neeson actioner you’ve seen in the last dozen years, and you’ll at least get to the good stuff quicker there.

This sequel makes up for some of the problems with the 2019 "Addams Family" animated family film, which suffered from an uneven tone and a meandering storyline.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin feels less like a chance to creatively reboot a hit franchise and more like a way to cheaply profit off any residual interest left in it.

The first half of Point Blank moves and hums. And then it stops moving. A movie that needs to fly from first frame to last slows down, loses its momentum, and never recovers, limping across the finish line with a climax that doesn’t work.

This is not the best of the family body switch movies, and for sure, it is not the last, but the irresistible concept and outstanding cast make it a worthwhile family watch.

The film desperately tries to be wild and out of control, but it ends up as more of a slapdash portrait of cartoony desperation than any sort of realistic depiction of millennial angst when it comes to current-day female lifestyle choices.

Nothing is compelling about these characters, and Bennett and Riley have little chemistry with each other playing them, even though they’re supposed to be estranged exes experiencing an unexpected spark.

These behind-the-scenes factoids are the most interesting aspects of the film — and, regrettably, the only interesting aspects, as well.

It’s tedious at best, almost unwatchable at worst.

Traffik begins with that classic cinematic lie “inspired by true events” and ends with statistics for women who have been victims of human trafficking. Between these two bookends is a steaming pile of exploitative horse manure masquerading as a feature concerned with the sexual enslavement of women.

Ultimately, Winnie is a woman who seems to embody the paradoxes of her country's turbulent history.

Throughout the film, you can see Hawke trying to bring resonance and truth to a movie that is plotted like a “Crank” sequel and has dialogue that sounds like it was written by a teenage boy. Watching the actor fight against the deep flaws of the film he’s in is almost more interesting than the plot itself. At least it’s more entertaining.

Science fiction is often used in allegorical fashion. It may not be fair to judge Automata by this gauge, but the film is so deathly somber and heavy-handed that I can only assume director Gabe Ibáñez wanted to tell us Something Important.

It never quite works on its own. What’s crucial at the core is creating a character who feels like a real human being; Susan is more of a collection of quirks and bad choices. There just isn’t much to her. And the novelty alone of seeing Hayes play a woman is not enough to recommend this, although he does offer sporadic glimmers of vulnerability and humanity.

If you saw the trailer, you got the best the movie has to offer.

It's infectious, and the daffy, breezy way they play off each other makes Ass Backwards way more enjoyable than it ought to be.

Over and over again, this is the level of humor in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 — this is the shrill note it hits.

Aardvark doesn't know how to do what it wants to do. It's not that the tone is uneven or uncertain, it's that the film doesn't have a tone at all. Because a specific tone isn't established, earnest moments come off as insincere, deep moments seem like they're supposed to be a joke. It's not clear if all of this is by design or an accident from a first-time director.

The film never says the words "pro-life" or "pro-choice." It genuinely seems to be about how the system has broken down entirely, and how sometimes it is up to privately funded charities to provide a light at the end of the tunnel.

Yes, Burying The Ex, I thought as I watched, I AM on your side conceptually already. Now could you start being genuinely funny? Or scary? Or something?

Son of God's earnest-ness is not necessarily a strike against it; it was made by earnest people who want to spread the word. But it's a tough draught to swallow if you're not in the mood for a sermon.

Terrible and insane, and will surely end up being one of the worst films of 2019. But it’s also such a wildly ambitious roller coaster ride that it must be experienced, preferably with friends, to laugh together at its cheesy dialogue, over-the-top performances and multiple, major plot twists.

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.

There’s nothing wrong with a little cheese in a message about life, it’s just that with The Professor there's nothing more to it.

The Devil Conspiracy is nuttier than the proverbial fruitcake and twice as difficult to swallow, regardless of where you reside on the theological spectrum.

Atlas does have Jennifer Lopez in all her starry glory in the driver’s seat. It’s not nearly enough, but it’s something.

For all its miscalculations, this is a personal picture, violent and sweet, clever and goofy. It's as obsessive and overbearing as Steven Spielberg's "1941" — and, I'll bet, as likely to be re-evaluated twenty years from now, and described as "misunderstood."

To get at the heart of what’s wrong with The Face of an Angel all you need to do is consider the professional stones it takes to adapt the Amanda Knox case into yet another movie about the existential/amorous crises of a white male filmmaker. (And then have the nerve to dedicate the results to the memory of the murder-victim in the real-life case!)

A film that is not so much bad — although it is quite bad — as it is utterly inexplicable.

It offers surface level scares without the undercurrent of humanity needed to make them register.

Aside from the vividly bleak atmosphere, Eve's performance is the main reason to invest any time in Cold Comes the Night.

The movie does gain in stature just by letting Cage be Cage. When he’s riding in a car right after his release, Frank rolls down the window feeling a breeze on his face. Cage puts on that “shine sweet freedom” expression he used at the end of “Con Air.” If you’re a fan of the actor, this is a moment when all is right in the world.

A comedy with no laughs. A drama disconnected from any known reality. It’s tempting to diagnose Are You Here with schizophrenic genre disorder.

A consistently intelligent (or at least bright), coherently constructed comedy that is on occasion a rather pointed critique of the American education system in the early 21st century. Don’t let that keep you away, though. It’s more often than not really funny.

There’s actually a not-too bad caper plot underneath the incoherent over-direction from Mann.

Steeped in Southern Gothic melodrama, Jessabelle is interesting in some of the small details, and in its strong sense of the Louisiana bayou atmosphere, and then it completely falls apart when it starts being a horror film.

As with the many trend pieces complaining about millennials spending too much money on avocado toast over home mortgages, Echo Boomers gets a lot wrong about the generation it wants to discuss. Maybe the filmmakers should have listened more.

Star Trek fans have been waiting nearly a decade to see a proper film in the franchise since 2016’s sorely underappreciated Kelvinverse entry “Star Trek Beyond.” “Section 31,” a cynical whimper of a Trek adventure, isn’t likely to scratch that itch.

Too bad that the makers of The Nut Job eagerly purloined Scrat's primal motivation—food—but failed to note the charm of his minimalist approach.

There’s no denying Hill’s instinct for identifying the heart of a dramatic scene and turning the volume of the storytelling down low enough for us to hear it beating.

While it looks beautiful, and Thomas Newman’s score does a lot of heavy lifting given the lack of dialogue, there needed to be more actual storytelling beyond a few key beats of new life and tragic death.

So much money, so much charm, so much movie, and yet it adds up to so very little. Red Notice is as disposable a movie as you’ll see this year, something that most Netflix subscribers will have trouble remembering exists weeks later.

Speaking of the characters, they are as bland and uninteresting as can be.

A terribly uneven narrative that doesn’t especially work as drama or noir and which manages to waste a pretty good cast in the bargain.

Many of the film's backdrops are admittedly breathtaking, yet the foregrounded people never seem to be actually populating them. The character animation is so flat and uninspired that it causes Dilili and her fellow humans to resemble stickers grafted onto postcards, with the subtle use of shadows and reflections doing little to add dimension.

Wolves is consequently too violent to be a "Twilight" knockoff, and too cuddly to be an effectively freaky tale of a boy who, to paraphrase "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah," becomes a man while also becoming a wolf.

Not only is this take on human relations unoriginal, it's also sophomoric and blatantly untrue.

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.

There’s nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it. So it’s too bad that “Four Letters of Love” is nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it.

The Cloverfield Paradox is a bit of a scam job, promising to reconcile entries in a series that have little in common save for a shared genre. It fizzles so badly at the end that you might legitimately wonder if it ever had anything to do with the other two films in the first place, or if it was produced independently of the series and retroactively added.

Entries in this genre like “The Same Storm” and “Together” made us care about the characters who were isolated or stuck with each other because of COVID. “Life Upside Down” never does.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie moves through you so briskly that you’ll get whiplash by the time the film reaches its deeply abrupt ending. But maybe that’s the point—after all, this is not a movie to be scrutinized, but to allow beleaguered elder millennial dads to sit their tots down for a precious two hours (if you count the trailers) and get some much-needed rest. It’s cute, and breezy, and rock-stupid, and will probably make a billion dollars again.

The makers of The Possession of Hannah Grace clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty — and mostly scare-free — horror film ends up being.

Nearly every aspect of this feature from Tyler Spindel, formerly a second unit director for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, is derivative and desperate and, at the same time, bizarrely pleased with itself.

Whatever is keeping Neill Blomkamp so reserved that he delivered a film as dispiritingly rote as Demonic—that’s what needs an exorcism.

Mainstream may be up-to-date on stylistic grounds, but its narrative could use refreshing.

It is a sweet little end of summer sorbet with appealing young performers and a script that refreshes the original without overdoing it.

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

While Bautista is still as engaging as ever in the woeful action-comedy “Killer’s Game,” not even he can save this dud from quickly devolving into 100 minutes of blood-drenched tedium.

Older audiences are likely to find the film less amusing than risible.

This is a glacially paced movie, filled with sickly picture postcard imagery that seems designed to put you to sleep.

Håfström’s noir vision does have some slick atmosphere, including some great things to look at, but it has very little to grab onto, never mind take out of the theater, other than a headache.

Trigger Warning is a self-serious, brooding film without the wherewithal to know how righteously dumb it could be if it committed to the bit. Or, at least, the expertise to elevate it to the suspenseful level it so desperately aims to reach.

The bad behavior on display, instead of emerging organically from the characters, seems frequently chosen from a menu of sorts.

Anyone who’s dealt with a teenager can relate to the baffling surliness that emerges out of nowhere — but like needless sequels, this, too, shall pass.

With little wit to its name, Sherlock Gnomes becomes far more tedious than playful.

The Unholy is not designed to be deep, but since glimmers of depth are present, the lack of follow-up makes this a disappointing watch.

Maybe the joke’s on us, and all the pre-release hype suggesting that a micro-budget train wreck was barreling our way was merely part of the marketing strategy.

There may be a big, corporate, algorithm-like formula deciding that a quarter-century later it's time for another Space Jam, but it's good to see that the insouciant anarchy of Termite Terrace is still pure, unrepentant id.

Victor Frankenstein is, despite bravura performances from committed young leads Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy, all kinds of obnoxious and pointless.

I am probably indulging in a rather obnoxious form of criticism-as-parlor-game-psychotherapy by positing that each of the three main white male characters in director Denis Henry Hennelly's Goodbye World is meant to represent a facet of the director himself. Unfortunately, such activity is about all the movie is any good for.

Criminal is the kind of dunderheaded enterprise that leaves viewers reeling from the idiocies they have just endured, wondering how something like that could possibly get made in the first place.

For a film supposedly about the transformative power of faith, Captive has very little to preach in that regard, apart from the importance of purchasing megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s hit book, The Purpose Driven Life.

Now, Diaz and Segel co-star for Kasdan again in Sex Tape, but their characters are so indiscernible as actual human beings, it’s hard to tell who they are, much less whether they have any sort of enjoyable, raunchy chemistry.

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

There’s so little “fun” here, feeling as if everyone is merely fulfilling an obligation. I was excited for another time jump movie with a twist. After this one, I just wanted my time back.

There’s a rather disturbing sense of privilege in After the Fall. It can’t help but justify Ben’s actions by stacking the deck against the victims.

How It Ends had me thinking about endings in general. How it felt like the close of this film would never come. How we so commonly return in cinema, especially lately, to visions of the end of the world. How the actual ending of this film is an atrocious cheat. Trust me, you’re better off not even beginning.

To begin with, the very premise feels off. Peter Pan isn’t a superhero and doesn’t really need an origin story, especially one that opens at a London orphanage for boys during the Blitz and borrows heavily from the “Oliver Twist” handbook.

This cast of old pros may not be up to flips and basket catches, but they keep things lively. Keaton is as radiant as ever and Weaver is clearly having a blast.

The film tries to pack in a little bit too much in its running time, and there isn't a comedic moment until well into the film, a strange choice in a movie for kids, but The Wild Life has its moments of charm, hilarity, and slapstick that worked really well.