Wayans has always been an underrated physical comedian, and the movie works best when he’s allowed to unleash that side of his persona, but that’s too rare and not enough to rescue the rest of this comedy ceremony.

Nothing about this inert, dull project feels like a movie. It’s a half-idea, half-heartedly filmed. Yes, it’s a kids’ movie, but kids are smarter in 2020 about their action entertainment and putting this alongside all the Marvel movies on Disney Plus feels almost mean.

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

To her credit, Callies has an accessible presence and tries to provide more pathos and humanity than were supplied on the page, even as her character makes increasingly idiotic decisions in the name of parental love.

There’s no real tension in this murder mystery (or much mystery, for that matter), the kills aren’t clever, and eventually this part of the story ends up feeling entirely unnecessary.

If there is such a thing as a pulse in movies, there are sections of this one where a defibrillator would come in handy. This is not due to a lack of action scenes but those included are strung together with long, slow stretches.

All these “what incredible irony!” moments are designed to…well, I’m not quite sure. The movie’s final line, an appropriation of the dying words of a black man killed by police, is an exploitative and cheap reversal that legitimately addresses precisely nothing.

The movie's promise collapses under the weight of inconsistent characters and a generic, cliché-ridden plot.

While Lutz might possess the beefcake to fill out his chest armor, he lacks the acting chops to make us much care about the fate of his gleaming hero who looks as if he just stepped out of a Beverly Hills salon.

It’s a film filled with half-hearted ideas and thin characters, all in the service of a story that wallows in its trauma in a manner that gives it little purpose.

There’s a definite beginning, a doughy middle, and a gaping end to “Project Wolf Hunting,” but they somehow don’t cohere into a feature-length spectacle.

It wants to inspire as well as entertain. It’s "The Hangover" aimed at Christian audiences, and if that sounds like an impossible prospect, well, that’s because it is.

Aside from a rock-solid performance by Thomas Jane as the grizzled cop, Crown Vic, which is named after the Ford model car that is the default of the LAPD black-and-white, has very little to offer the discriminating moviegoer.

Shook, about an influencer being tormented by a mysterious caller, takes the bait on making a movie about such social media vanity, but its touch-and-go terror hardly offers commentary or cleverness.

Unlike “Stranger Things,” The Wretched is a little too cute about teen angst, and not light enough on its feet to make you want to root for its ostensibly typical adolescent.

The pieces are all there, but they never really snap into place.

As an enormous fan of Argento, I would love to be able to report that “Dark Glasses” is a worthy entry in his filmography, even if I had to go out on a limb to make my case. However, there's no branch long enough that would allow anyone to defend this particular effort, perhaps the only way in which the word “effort” could be used in conjunction with this film.

So hectically overdone in style that it already feels dated despite its timely leanings, Levinson’s film vaguely shelters a compelling story about today’s unforgiving online mob mentality beneath its convoluted layers.

This sluggish tale of remorse and forgiveness mostly remains bland and distant, like the many generic aerial shots of Rome that it offers.

The movie goes for grin-and-cringe-inducing, and instead achieves “excruciating.”

Very little about this movie works, in spite of a certain ambition in telling a story based solely on unfathomable decisions.

Some of the familiar and faithfully recreated twists and turns of the original “One Cut of the Dead” still land here, but not enough to make this leaden remake seem endearing or zany enough to pick through.

Justice may have a striking screen presence, but she can only do much with material that’s less than heavenly.

There are no people to watch in Fantastic Four, only collections of character traits and attitudes brought fitfully to life by actors who might've mistakenly thought they were hitching a ride on the superhero movie gravy train by signing up for this misfire.

A tepid situation comedy in indie drama drag, "The Black Sea" lacks a sense of urgency beyond a few moments of canned tension between Khalid and Georgi (Stoyo Mirkov), a haughty Bulgarian fisherman.

It's all a bit overheated, and while there is certainly nothing wrong with melodrama, the problem arises when the script (also by Tornatore) keeps insisting on explaining its own symbolism and subtext, to make sure we get how deep the thing is.

The ultra-violent take on “Home Alone” with a precocious teen girl who dispatches bad guys like a killer in a slasher movie? That’s where Becky falls apart.

Whether you think Casanova's a hero worth idolizing, or a dull-as-dishwater man whore from a sexist past, Casanova, Last Love will make you believe he deserved better than this.

You can soak in the movie’s basic premise and overacting just as long as you know this pool’s shallow.

It’s a messy movie that produces frustration instead of fear, and its nods to commentary on gender roles and the need to become and stay beautiful feel shallow and insincere.

The end result is that particularly crumbly kind of book-to-film adaptation that comes across more like a SparkNotes you can watch, a story told at double-speed with much of its impact missing.

Granted, the movie does feature a few endearingly goofy scenes where Cage acts like Humphrey Bogart, with sweat on his brow, a stogie in his mouth, and a haughty putdown for anybody who makes eye contact with him. But he basically already did that in Paul Schrader’s underwhelming 2016 Ed Bunker adaptation “Dog Eat Dog.”

The hazy horizons and warmth of the Wild West lend to stunning cinematography, but the bones of the visuals are not enough to support the film. Mandler’s direction is effective for the genre, but there’s a fatiguing number of posed cowboy-against-the-horizon shots that begin to feel kitschy on account of their frequency.

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.

As a bland addition to the already low-stakes tradition of Xmas rom-coms, Let It Snow could use a whole lot more tinsel.

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.

The final exchange between Paisley and McGuinness, when they shake hands, is the best, but by then it's far too late.

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.

Once the mercenaries start tooling around wearing actual Ku Klux Klan outfits, the pretenses to allegory have gone out the window. And yes, it is salutary to see guys with pointy hoods getting blown away by righteous African-American avengers. But the cinematic cost of getting there was not, for this viewer, worth it.

The more curdled-than-cuddly holiday film already had offended this former copy editor even before I entered the theater. Its crime? The lack of punctuation in its name.

This is Allen’s 48th movie (a 49th, “Rifkin’s Festival,” premiered last month) and while he has certainly made worse films than this one during that time, rarely has he come up with something as utterly inconsequential as this collection of rehashed themes, characters, and punchlines.

Neither the tacky ending nor the very existence of this second installment is earned. Instead, it languishes as the squeezing of the final drops of a once bright idea.

Whether you're new to Inside or a fan of the original, the change that Vivas and his team do make to the ending will leave you scratching your head.

The problem with “Deep Water” is not that it is a bad movie (which it is), but it’s a gratingly familiar one that doesn’t have a single point of interest to call its own. Instead, it prefers to spend two hours rehashing elements that even newbies to shark-based cinema will find devoid of any real inspiration.

Only the really strong cast, including great chemistry between the leads, keeps Playing It Cool from totally derailing.

With the added threads of female-specific and child celebrity woven through, “Trust” had the potential to be not just thrilling but thoughtful. Yet with an unfocused eye and clumsy pen, it falls way short of the mark.

Jenny Slate and Charlie Day deserve better than “I Want You Back,” a leaden rom-com that gives them a shot at being funny, charming, and sweet, only to squander it scene by scene.

Once in a while, you see a film where it's clear that everyone involved is operating at the peak of of their skills, yet the whole is so misguided that the result is still awful. Such is The Desperate Hour.

I kept thinking one thing during most of Don Verdean: What would Christopher Guest do with his company of ace ad-libbers with such material? And the answer suddenly came to me — probably toss it in the trash and start all over again.

Sadly, Jones’ passion has not made it to the screen in a way that’s likely to make viewers feel the same excitement he had about the project so many years ago.

There’s minimalist filmmaking that’s quietly intriguing, and then there’s emotional detachment that’s stultifying to the point of being nap-inducing. War Story falls into the latter category.

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.

Unlike the actual video game, Assassin's Creed isn't ridiculous and fun, but rather ridiculous and turgid.

The end result is pretty much what you might expect—a work so desultory that you wonder how all involved managed to work up the energy and enthusiasm to make it to the set each day.

The best thing about “Invader” is that it’s short. But for much of its 69-minute runtime, it is thoroughly unpleasant, which makes it feel much longer.

That commitment to terrible humor is one of the few unquestionable things about Entertainment, which is openly designed to provoke unease and uncertainty.

Boarding School has some edge by being told from a child’s perspective, even though it's not for kids. A lot of great directors have told this kind of story, and while Guillermo Del Toro might be the most popular living one to do it, it’s Louis Malle that comes to mind.

Not enough happens in The Loneliest Boy in the World. There's not enough conflict. The film relies too heavily on cliche and hopes the audience won't notice.

Admittedly, the logistics of filming a Tyler Perry film with Perry performing multiple roles is not what most viewers will be thinking about. But there’s little else to recommend it except for the performances.

The Whale is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

Writer/director Sam Hoffman's trite dramedy about personal redemption delivers mediocre performances.

After sitting through this rather unpolished production as it lightheartedly bumbles its way around a serious subject, I mostly wished that I could un-see it. To say that Half Magic, in which Graham also stars, is half-baked would be kind.

This is a warmed-over remix of crime comedy and thriller tropes, as awkwardly paced as it is murkily shot.

Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, and Meredith Hagner travel to Mexico in Vacation Friends, but they never really go anywhere.

Khumba is disastrously uninspired. Not even a galaxy of stars, united in their willingness to take a check, can save Khumba from being the boringest plucky outsider of all.

Its star, Jeremy Irons, certainly appears to be relishing his role as an unapologetically bad-mannered actor, savoring each profane syllable of his dialogue like a fine wine.

Schwartzman's approach is sluggish and poorly-paced, the film color-corrected to within an inch of its life and unable to balance the delicate tightrope act of comedy and drama that good examples of this kind of movie can attempt.

There are plenty of perfunctory jump scares as well as some especially cheesy visual effects. But there is exactly one inspired sight gag and one funny line of dialogue, so you have those to look forward to, should you land on The Curse of Bridge Hollow while absent-mindedly scrolling for timely holiday fare.

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

An awkward and mostly unpleasant hybrid of social critique and horror-comedy, detailing how this psycho kid decides to take the gloves off and become internet famous.

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.

Again, merely watching Brody engaging in such painstaking work is interesting; the generic bloodbath that ensues, less so.

There is a real seed of dramatic possibility in Hannah, but Pallaoro smothers it beneath the lacquer of the film’s fastidiously mannered minimalism.

Expecting is a fairly laidback movie that isn't serious and isn't funny and isn't much of anything.

If you didn’t know Beckett was a thriller, you’d think it was about two mismatched people with dry interests, mundane conversations, and zero attraction.

The desperate straining for laughs isn't nearly so off-putting as the abrupt tonal shift Girl Most Likely makes as it trudges toward its conclusion.

Between its amateurish direction, pedestrian cinematography, and overly plotted script, the narrative and visuals don’t coalesce into a story that feels restorative, cathartic, or even joyful.

Yes, it's all as clunky and tasteless as the description suggests, and the awkward casting doesn't improve this overlong drama.

The nostalgia of Ponsoldt's film is curdled and rotten underneath its summery sheen.

Kirkland does some fine work here, but her Margaret deserves a better script and a better movie.

Scherfig’s latest effort pursues something naively magical, only to end up with a mélange of miscalculated, cheap sentiments.

Through the playing of the game, the real life characters' true personalities emerge, and we can see that this is a pretty heartless bunch.

Millers in Marriage isn’t a science fiction movie. Which is unfortunate, because if it were, we might’ve gotten a decent explanation for why one minute of the characters’ lives makes you feel as if you’ve aged a month.

If this is truly the end, it’s a whimper, not a bang.

Like these other actresses-of-a-certain-age movies, the entire story is grounded on some notion of a deep and sustaining friendship. But it's hard to believe these women have any genuine connection other than cashing a check for a film that is not fabulous but forgettable.

Sure, I was never bored, but this movie makes zero sense, and contains some shockingly bad filmmaking, acting, writing ... pretty much everything. It is remarkably grisly and violent, containing a body count that tops the double digits, and almost all of the victims of its quality kills see their insides before they die.

No matter, after much sound and fury the movie is more of a molehill than a mountain. Betty Gilpin deserves better and so do we.

To Marcello and and co-writer Jay S. Arnold’s credit, there are a handful of surprises that defy some of the more expected youthful rom com tropes. But the rest is a lot of the same teenage romantic tribulations we’ve seen before.

Willis really might as well have phoned in his performance. Part of me doesn’t blame him, but another part of me would like him to cut it out.

One of the loudest laughs arrives when we get to enjoy a scowling James re-imagined as a game character. Points for greater diversity in the cast as well, but, if there is a second sequel in the offing, please allow the women to be more than the sum of their body parts.

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

You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro in your life until you see the reboot of “Hellboy.”

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.

This is the same "young man's coming-of-age story" you’ve seen over and over. Nothing new has been added. The poster calls this “a feel good movie,” but who is supposed to feel good here? Certainly not the average viewer, who has seen this tired material so many times they can practically recite the dialogue.

You can’t make a movie called Monster Hunter that’s boring to look at it, and this is one of Anderson's flattest films in every way.

Come for the murky action, and stay for the shudder-inducing feeling of nostalgia for Mao's Cultural Revolution. It's a very odd movie, indeed.

The film is quite repetitive, essentially a very long sketch, and offers little in the way of character development for supporting players. In contrast to the original "The Office," everyone else is there mainly to stare in shock at David as he offends people or does something stupid.

While I appreciate writer/director/Canadian horror slinger Lowell Dean for helming a thriller where the most sensible, resilient characters are either dark-skinned or an ally to dark-skinned folk, the rest of the movie ain’t that deep. In fact, it’s insanely clumsy.