As a performance piece, The Eyes of Tammy Faye connects. But is that enough?

Hence, the movie lumbers its way from intriguing to frustrating. But Berham does manage to keep your attention, even as his vision tends to irritate in the wrong way.

The best thing I can say about Daniel Isn’t Real is that it’s a promising early feature made by young artists who haven’t yet worked out how to express and/or synthesize what they like about their favorite artists and their work. It’s all style and very little substance.

This film muddies its entire concept with a bizarre, unrefined commentary on mob mentality that is quite simply some of the worst material in either Green’s career and the history of this rocky franchise (which is saying something if you’ve seen, say, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers).

Lonely Castle in the Mirror is dull and overlong, weighed down by its heavy-handed and intense discussions about teenage trauma and loneliness.

Not all the pieces of Boogie fit neatly together, but it’s a film about a family that doesn’t fit inside the box of a standard inspirational immigrant story.

I can’t recommend Mega Time Squad but it does have a few things going for it.

A lot of grappling happens. The community grapples. The characters grapple. People grapple alone, people grapple together. Grappling is more interesting to watch than certainty, any day of the week.

Both David-Stahl and Bell are appealing actors but unfortunately their easy-to-relate-to storyline is pretty much upstaged by the rowdy air-sex scenes.

Sonia Kennebeck’s Enemies of the State spirals and swirls in a way that’s meant to enhance the “isn’t this crazy” aspect of its true story, but its filmmaking tricks have become cliched in the era of True Crime obsession.

It’s as if the film doesn’t trust Frida’s images to speak for themselves.

The Banished, about a grieving woman’s search for her missing brother, sometimes feels like a compendium of modern horror movie clichés. That doesn’t always matter, since the movie is thick enough with dread to work despite its distracting familiarity.

Pleasant but unchallenging.

A Bad Moms Christmas has the shoddy look and frantic feel of a slapped-together, cash-grab sequel, because that’s exactly what it is.

It’s a sporadically fun movie with obvious influences, but it also lacks in stakes and personality, getting repetitive long before it ends.

The film captures a little bit of the flame of the original, particularly when it allows itself to be funny. It works really well as a comedy, almost of "manners," although manners aren't really in sight.

It feels like a film that has already gone through the remake process, casting all the stuff that made it interesting in the first place aside and leaving only the glossy surfaces.

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.

A mishmash that has as much of an identity crisis as its name-switching, past-hiding, resume-inflating main character. Perhaps there is a clue in the credits, where we learn that Lopez is the producer as well as the star. As is so often the case, here that means that the movie is more about what would be fun for Lopez to do than what would be fun for the audience to watch.

The Mexican film now has a Hollywood remake, one that adds new elements to the story but is less coherent in its message.

Wholesome in the most “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” brand of mythical Americanism, 12 Mighty Orphans is engineered to rouse emotions with uncritical pride, never reaching the less immaculate corners of the historical period it employs as canvas.

A curious, ultimately unsatisfying romantic comedy about two sisters in love with the same man.

As it is, “Land of Bad” is a pandering drama with some action movie thrills.

It’s an easy watch in a B-movie marathon but you’ll have forgotten it by the time you’re done with the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Lo wants to make a point, obviously, but I came out of this picture with some questions. And I also thought of an observation made by the music critic Robert Christgau, a metaphorical point addressing a type of artistic preciousness: “If I found a cat trapped in a washing machine, I wouldn't set up a recording studio there—I'd just open the door.”

Life struck me as several cuts above “meh” but never made me jump out of my seat.

Ultimately, this is one of those movies where it seems okay if you like this sort of thing for a while, but after it crosses the 90-minute mark, it seems irretrievably a little much even if you like this sort of thing.

What ultimately should have been borrowed from Spielberg’s oeuvre but isn’t is a sense of wonder and achievement whenever characters come in contact with the unknown or overcome a great obstacle as a team. Imitation should be flattering, not flattening.