Rather than dig into what’s specifically changing about their relationship, Duplass and Eslyn focus on armchair psychology and black-box speeches to explain away what’s really going on with these two men.

There's a flatness in the end-result. The quirky is utterly predictable.

Individual scenes can be tense but the arc as a whole lacks momentum. I Smile Back should have been devastating. Silverman is willing to take you there. What it ends up being is frustrating.

It’s all overly precious and just not funny enough, even if it is a blood-soaked tribute to those who would look at the story as just another day of underpaid work.

There are some wonderful sequences in Battle of the Five Armies, and the attention to detail is breathtaking (each different space rendered with thrilling complexity), but the film feels more like a long drawn-out closing paragraph rather than (like "The Desolation of Smaug") a vibrant stand-alone piece of the story.

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

While there's undeniable creativity in the film's visual and metaphorical aspects, there's a glaring neglect in the power needed for this film to find its own voice.

It’s antagonistic comedy that’s brilliantly designed so that nobody actually gets hurt.

Say what you want about his onscreen vices, but Branagh has always been a charitable director and it really shows here.

Champs is a documentary that wants to say something sociological about the sweet science of boxing. In this regard, it has an undeniable power.

It’s a rambunctious, often hilarious, and carefully-constructed story about a teenage boy starting to question his sexuality in the midst of his Evangelical Christian world.

It is reported that this movie’s scenario was inspired by the life of Schroeder’s own mother, and the film has a personal tone that is not always detectable in his other movies. It enhances a film that’s one of the most thoughtful in his body of work.

The actors never once seem engaged with the material beyond the surface. Thus, Crooked House feels as lifeless as the corpse at its center.

The debut feature from Australian writer/director Mirrah Foulkes eventually provides enough of a revenge fantasy to satisfy, even if the road there is a bit windy and bumpy.

A lot of this is figuratively and literally standup material, with the interview subjects framed head-to-toe in front of bright, primary-colored backdrops, and keeping things as light as possible.

The premise isn’t thoroughly uncomfortable so much as it is simply tedious; Barbara Hershey’s focal character Tabitha is made to appear more and more helpless in the film’s scant psychological thrills, and yet we’re stuck with a flat anxiety for a feature's length.

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.

We might not come away understanding Jacobs or his world better, but we can still enjoy spending time with him.

"Cloudy 2" is undeniably dense with ideas, images, and characters but slight on anything of thematic interest at all.

Too bad The Djinn is often as plodding as it is impersonal. This movie crawls whenever it needs to sprint.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a crowd-pleasing, smash-'em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in "The Tree of Life" had been subcontracted to the makers of "Yellow Submarine."

The film's plot is articulated cleanly, if a bit too plainly at times, but as is so often the case in Sayles' movies, that's not where the director's interest lies. Go for Sisters lacks the epic quilt qualities of such sprawling Sayles pictures as "Lone Star" or "City of Hope," but this seems more a matter of intent than evidence of any sort of failure of vision.

This one has familiar beats but appealing performers, better dialogue, and more depth of character than many more formulaic movie romances.

If it wasn't for Lawrence and Barth Feldman's joint comedic excellence, with their commanding charm and chemistry fueling its laughs, No Hard Feelings would have been a disaster. But thanks to them, it's a serviceable summer comedy that should keep the J. Law lovers happy, even though her talents are better used elsewhere.

In its attempt to cram too many narratives and subjects into too short of a running time, it ends up coming across as both overstuffed and oddly undernourished.

The best thing about Flanagan’s film by some stretch is the work by Rebecca Ferguson. The director of “Gerald’s Game” and “Hush” proves again to be a very capable filmmaker when it comes to directing actresses, getting Ferguson’s career-best work to date.

Any movie that can bring to mind a Joni Mitchell song as the credits roll — “Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone” — has earned its keep.

It's better than OK, and a few elements sing; but overall it frustrates. Its delights come from its willingness to depart from formula, but formula still rules it.