Wolves is consequently too violent to be a "Twilight" knockoff, and too cuddly to be an effectively freaky tale of a boy who, to paraphrase "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah," becomes a man while also becoming a wolf.

Lead actors Byrne and Deen do grounded, stalwart work, and director Mitu Misra occasionally succeeds in making the characters’ milieu’s register with force. But the storytelling is rickety.

There's a lot of inadvertently hilarious stuff in Fifty Shades Darker.

The pacing is so jarring that the emotional payoff doesn’t develop as intended. And the overall irony, of course, is that this is a movie about the need for magic that could have used a little more of the stuff itself. But if it makes you think of your mom and dad fondly, even for a moment, well at least that’s something.

There are some great ideas in “We Strangers,” particularly in how it explores the emotional labor inherent in domestic work, as well as some thoroughly committed performances by Howell-Baptiste, Dizzia, and Goldberg. However, those promising elements nevertheless settle into a sporadic, muted climax that ends up feeling more perfunctory than satisfying.

An arty tribute to violent, sensuous, over-the-top Euro-trash pulp fiction.

The truth is that manufactured spontaneity is almost impossible, and too much of “Honor Among Thieves” feels like it’s unfolding with a wink and a nod instead of being legitimately rough around the edges, in-the-moment, and fresh.

While we do indeed see the normalcy of her home life with her parents and younger brothers and the regular, teenage-girl instincts that exist alongside her courage, we never get a glimpse into her deeper feelings.

There is a good movie lurking within writer/director Cinqué Lee’s survivalist coming-of-age thriller “Last Ride.” It’s just suspended between two half-told stories.

There are certainly chuckle-worthy moments in the film, but they’re counted with a single hand.

This isn’t a story, but an evocative collection of asked-and-answered prompts. You buy a ticket to Pacifiction and then you react, until the nudging stops.

Semper Fi is best when it sticks with the journeys of the individual characters, each with their own backstory and struggles. These men have always known each other. But something goes wrong along the way, and Semper Fi suddenly decides it wants to be another kind of movie. The transition doesn't work.

The food in question isn’t a bon bon this time — rather, the movie is the bon bon itself.

The glittering cast of Death on the Nile is all dressed up but, alas, they have nowhere to go.

Partisan, Cassel’s latest movie that smartly keeps his innate menace on a slow, low simmer, isn’t nearly as convincing or compelling as its star.

This ambiguously humorous film with a shaky pace and viewpoint sets forth a tough proposition: will you be patient for its 80+ minutes of running time, accept that nothing much will actually happen throughout that duration and settle for occasional jolts of rewards only?

The lo-fi horror film "Night's End" tries to combine old-fashioned haunted house chills with more contemporary technological terrors, but never quite figures out how to do that.

Within the muchness of it all, there are both occasionally thrilling moments and too little in terms of substance.

The filmmakers do what they can to compensate for their unlikely hero’s prevailing lack of charm and agency, but not even the combined forces of Lloyd Dobler and the Fab Four can bring a spike of joy to this DOA period drama.

On paper, this sounds like a potentially fascinating combination but the film emerging from it proves to be anything but that. Instead, it proves to be such an overly ponderous exercise that, by the time it finally comes to an end, you may feel so sapped of energy that find yourself struggling to get up out of your seat.

I might have tolerated the film much more with the sound off. With the volume on, this movie feels like a mucho-macho Saturday morning cartoon—specifically Bugs Bunny toying with his eternal pursuer, Elmer Fudd.

A saccharine stab at a new holiday perennial that tries to fuse the classic Yuletide yarn with a “Shakespeare In Love”-style literary origin story and manages to let both of them down, not to mention a performance by Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge that deserves a much better showcase than the one provided here.

Writer/director Barnaby Clay successfully keeps viewers on our toes, even if a lot of his movie feels like a series of programmatic jabs at our complacence.

The East is essentially divided into two halves, and neither is more illuminating than the other.

It tells a not-especially-interesting story about a not-especially-interesting couple from two different worlds that goes on and on before reaching its not-especially-interesting conclusion.

Hubie Halloween is just generally entertaining enough to be harmless, while also being the kind of movie that people will have trouble remembering exists by the time he makes “Tommy Thanksgiving”.

The story overstays its welcome eventually, with the impending tragedy that would conclude the film fizzling as a result.

Bless the old school stars Roberts and Clooney for elevating this lackluster mélange and in certain instances, even making you forget about the non-sensical film that surrounds them. But that’s hardly enough, especially if you are hoping for a homecoming for the rom-coms of yore.