Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The voice talent and character design are second-tier, and there are too many characters. But the action scenes are exciting, and the pacing, along with its reassuring humor and some nice character arcs, makes it a mildly appealing watch.

Though not without its entertaining moments—the cast, led by Sandra Bullock, is energetic, sharp and gets a fair number of juicy bits to rock out with. But as a whole, Our Brand is Crisis is a messy affair that sputters along when it should be humming with assured cynical momentum.

The movie is so relentless in its desire to pull everything together and not leave any threads dangling that it sprints through scenes where you might’ve wanted it to linger, rushes through the final tournament, and rarely gives any character or subplot its full attention.

The movie’s fun, if a bit staid, when it’s in all-monsters-attack mode, but Ultraman: Rising doesn’t stand out whenever it requires more of your attention.

Unfortunately, early hints that the the actor-filmmaker's latest will be a brilliant, bloody, sustained workplace satire don't pan out. This is an intelligently composed, crisply edited, sometimes amusing, but otherwise unremarkable cross/double cross gangster picture.

For as incomplete as “The Bad and the Beautiful” feels in terms of addressing criticisms leveled at Newton, the inclusion of so many women’s perspectives is its own defensive statement.

It is just plain fun to observe Frost as Bruce while he happily shimmies and shakes his way to regaining his once-renown "feet of flames."

I prefer, and recommend, the original, but I’m on the fence about this one. Your mileage may vary.

There is one highly genuine scene that feels as if it could be an outtake from “The Grand Budapest Hotel“ that nicely underlines Birkenstock’s theme of the ephemeral nature of art when it comes authenticity and originality.

Thankfully, some climactic fight scenes, featuring strong action choreography and a clear overall presentation, give “One Spoon of Chocolate” the great emotional release it needs after so much dramatic buildup.

Austere and old-fashioned almost to a fault, The Railway Man offers tastefully safe treatment of a horrific subject.

This should be a haunting, claustrophobic nightmare, but Natali over-complicates the source material — just like his characters, our reasons for investing in what happens next get lost in the fields.

Thankfully, there's a considerable nasty streak that runs throughout Furies, and it isn't limited to the movie's antagonists.

You may not walk out humming the tunes, but you’ll leave with a smile.

The Bieber fans aren't going anywhere. And Justin Bieber's Believe is best when it shows us why.

Luckily, many of the plot’s maudlin pitfalls are greatly mitigated by the film’s utterly infectious leading lady. Emilia Clarke’s performance is winningly immersed in charming gawkiness and heartfelt sincerity.

If only the half-baked story could also meet our expectations, or at least match the logic of the previous two “Annabelle” films.

A rather uneven Bond, one with a great story but a few too many problems, belonging somewhere in the middle section of the series' canon.

Throughout To the End, there is a clear sense of urgency to the call for action.

Right to the end, Música becomes more than just another bland romcom. It’s about finding love when living with a disability, it’s about finding music wherever it may be, and it’s about our connection to our culture and our family.

Hamnet actually works best as a sensory experience, before its major plot points fall into place.

Back on the Strip is qualitatively somewhere between a mid-level "Saturday Night Live" cash-in movie and a '90s indie comedy where the cast greatly outclasses the screenplay.

As easy as it is to like Hank and Asha, it’s impossible to look past the many screenwriting and filmmaking flaws of the film about them.

There is a sense at times that Johnston has over-compensated for Dahl’s cynicism with his wondrous children and their magical friends, and a bit too much of “The Twits” feels like it desperately wants us to love Beesha and Bubsy, even if they’re kind of shallowly conceived and designed.

While some of the film's wide emotional turns—from over-caffeinated road movie to magically-realistic melodrama and back again—are not handled with care, the film is more than the sum of its unequal parts.

While the script has a problem sharing why it was excited to place conjoined twins in such a predicament, the Fontana sisters boast a special emotional eloquence.

Director Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo, a crowd-pleasing, genre-bending sports drama, approaches wonder with an odd tepidness; it maneuvers around any modicum of character development by taking all-too simple routes and swerves away from formal experimentation, opting instead for simple enjoyment.