Were it not for Byrne’s endearingly optimistic performance, most of the charm of Juliet, Naked would be swept away.

A big-budget, holiday-timed blockbuster about…racism, which may not exactly be the joyful, escapist entertainment families are looking for this time of year.

There are some interesting things going on, and some insight into New York's economic hierarchy, but the film veers off into a hard-to-believe crime heist, and, ultimately, none of it really hangs together.

While it does have a few things of interest going for it, this low-budget effort ends up arriving at its necessarily predictable conclusion in too many unnecessarily predictable ways.

Foster is at his best in roles like this one, where his emotions are tightly coiled and always close to exploding, but the storyline does not give him much to work with and Wallace cannot make much out of a blandly-conceived role.

The action stuff in The Raid 2, while likely to alienate the squeamish and summon dark thoughts of cinematic nihilism amongst overthinking highbrows, really IS like nothing else out there.

When a comedy is made about a real-life topic that is no laughing matter, it had better be funnier than Sameh Zoabi’s Tel Aviv on Fire. The premise is a richly flavorful one, but the execution is as bland as unseasoned hummus.

The East prizes an initial air of mystery over consistent drama, and as a result ends up squandering its intriguing premise.

It could be because of deviations from the source, the bland visual style of the film that’s just unambitious enough to be annoying, or the unengaging story, but The Amazing Maurice is, well, less-than-amazing. Only a game voice cast keeps it from total disaster.

This is a story that errs toward the familiar instead of embracing strangeness, its freaky kid becoming the distraction when you just want more time with the hole in the ground.

It’s a shame that the producers of Mortal Kombat movies are convinced that there needs to be long training/prep sections in the middle of their stories. No one wants to play a tutorial an hour after they’ve started the game.

The problem with this frustrating, formless movie is that Davidson’s leading man simply isn’t that interesting, and the film that should chart his trajectory ends up stolen by the people around him. Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Pamela Adlon, Bel Powley, Steve Buscemi — I wanted to follow each of them to their own movies and leave this disappointing one behind.

A sweet but ineffective comedy that cashes in on drag culture’s new mainstream fame. While the movie brings up a handful of important topics, the way it handles issues like drug addiction and physical abuse ultimately feel superficial and hollow. Fortunately, a few sparkling performances salvage the show from becoming too maudlin.

Diane Kruger is as inscrutable to us as she is to her fellow Mossad agents and the asset she seduces in The Operative, a solidly crafted if forgettable espionage thriller.

Finally, a woman — Sophie Barthes — has directed and co-written a film version of Madame Bovary, but strangely, that doesn’t result in any more richness or enlightenment.

The ratio of humor and action and parent-child bonding is so formulaic, and the character design and molded-figurine-like animation so typical of the genre in the age of Pixar (and Pixar imitators), that Epic evaporates from the mind within minutes of leaving the theater.

If The Locksmith offers anything new, it’s in neutering the genre.

While the film does subvert basic audience expectations, it doesn’t really do anything beyond that as it stumbles through a choppy and meandering narrative that not even an admittedly committed lead performance by Danielle Deadwyler can help save.

Overall, Les nôtres fails to dive into the depths of its subject matter, hinting at a dark underbelly that it never full explores.

If you DON'T go into this movie knowing it's a sequel, you're gonna have at least 20 minutes of rough sledding ahead of you, because there's no recap from the first movie.

I have to give Morgenthaler credit for what we used to call “moxie” — whatever the hell he’s doing, or thinks he’s doing, he’s fully committed to it, and while he doesn’t really pull off the unhinged apocalyptic fireworks he’s reaching for at the end (and I don’t think any director save Andrzej Zulawski, who’s clearly an influence, could pull them off), I give him credit for trying.

Fast 6 is solid entertainment, but it might have been great if it recognized that a human touch is a rare thing, and when you have it, there's no need to keep clenching it into a fist.

Somehow, neither the plentiful creaky floorboards that the story rests on nor Thurman’s spot-on, French-accented coolness manages to send shivers down the audience’s spine through this allegorical and bitterly timeless tale of female exploitation.

Nothing like a trashy, all-hell-breaks-loose onslaught of blood, bullets and babes that borrows inspiration from a recycling bin stuffed with leftovers from ‘60s grindhouse films, Japanese horror, “Kill Bill,” “Saw” and splatter-fest videogames to cleanse one’s visual palate of those highbrow Oscar contenders.

Watson's memoir and the 2010 documentary about her achievement, "210 Days," are altogether more thorough and nuanced looks at this story, though of course that's nearly always true of documentaries that tell the same story as works of fiction.

Because the "witchcraft" part is treated mostly as a fun thing to do at slumber parties, there are very few frightening sequences (as compared to the often-unnerving original). The result is a confused movie.

With the exception of a few strong sequences in the scare department, it’s an inconsistent, flat film that is too often reliant on jump scares instead of atmosphere.

It’s not an unbearable film, but it’s not a particularly consequential one either, despite the boldness of its themes. In this case, a star’s big comeback comes not with a bang but a whimper.