Håfström’s noir vision does have some slick atmosphere, including some great things to look at, but it has very little to grab onto, never mind take out of the theater, other than a headache.

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.

Jordan Weiss's feature debut, "Sweethearts," has its charming moments but feels uneven overall.

It’s a dancing elephant of a movie. It has a few decent moves, but you’d never call it light on its feet.

It’s all the more disappointing when a techno-driven montage of dark imagery kicks in or some other choice that feels cheaper than this movie needed to be. No Man of God ultimately sinks into the shadows of so many similar and superior projects, and it feels cheap. It just doesn’t have enough to add to the conversation or a strong enough artistic POV to justify its shallowness.

A morality play wrapped up in gothic horror tropes, “The Dreadful” is definitely committed to the bit, and its darkly medieval setting is a refreshing change of pace. I just wish it were a medieval tapestry that worked as a whole, rather than just in fits and starts.

There are flashes of interest, and even some welcome screwball elements, but PVT Chat doesn't coalesce in a meaningful way.

It really isn't even a bad movie, or a bad movie of its sort. It's just not good enough to really distinguish itself.

It has solid performances by an eccentric ensemble cast, charming moments of banter, and sex scenes that seem shockingly frank by American standards (they still take their clothes off in France). But it's too slow, disorganized, and muddled to make coherent points, and it often has to remind itself that it's based on a fairy tale.

Nowadays it seems when European filmmakers want to make pictures in North America, it’s always some gritty backwoods blood-drenched drama or thriller. Same with young actors like the Fiennes fella wanting to play black-eyed scruffy snotty miscreants. Is this some wayward pursuit of a kind of authenticity? Because what it is, ultimately, no matter how much competence is brought to bear to such exercises, tiresome.

It inadvertently puts Hawke in the position of having to carry a film that's more of a series of half-formed notions, some intriguing, others ill-advised, and a few verging perilously close to cute.

Some exciting moments are scattered throughout “Consumed,” but they’re never as compelling as the movie’s initial promise.

For better or often worse, It Happened in L.A. has a vision.

The failure of The Wanting Mare is in how superficial its world building is, and how unexplored its greatest questions remain. Technically, the film’s use of visual effects is unquestionably impressive, but all that CGI is in service of a narrative so underdeveloped that its 88-minute run-time sometimes feels like an eternity.

Broad themes like staunch hope, and vital human connection, become cheap sentiments, vanishing into air. “IO” isn’t science fiction storytelling distilled so much as it is vaporized.

Morris & Anders, who also directed, literally repeat many of the same set-ups and punchlines from the original “Bosses,” only more crassly this time and with more discussion of bodily fluids. And nothing is quite as cinematically desperate as someone telling you a joke you’ve already heard only louder.

The Lodgers needs to be better than a great mood in need of a decent story and stronger characters.

Filmmakers have arguably lost the plot, turning “War is hell” into a “Can you top this?” competition.

Instead of focusing on gastronomic nirvana, this listless culinary drama feels and looks more like a glossy European travel commercial.

The film’s heart is in the right place, but its focus is not.

Bailey has achieved the purpose she set out at the film’s start. She’s made a film that’s optimistic, ultimately. But it would have benefitted from being a lot more real.

The kid is the most mature person on screen. Otherwise, it is gripe, gripe, gripe and snipe, snipe, snipe, all served family style with a bare minimum of relatability.

Bliss is far more kooky and tedious than it is good, and it's so confusing that even the movie's sense of humor is a question mark.

Ultimately, these shocking and violent sequences become repetitive and gratuitous, making Red Sparrow feel more like a cheap exercise in exploitation than a visceral tale of survival.

Green and McBride are playing with some interesting themes and there’s a female empowerment story of trauma here that’s interesting (but underdeveloped), but do you know the biggest sin of the new “Halloween”? It’s just not scary. And that’s one thing you could never say about the original.

There are a lot of ideas swimming around in “The Pit,” but most of them aren’t arranged well enough to demand your attention.

There are about half a dozen bright spots in the new animated feature The Addams Family, but in between them is the unbright and unoriginal storyline about how the real monsters are the ordinary people, not the weird people.

Sharks, while undeniably lethal, are also, studies have shown, kind of dumb. And “The Last Breath” is a cheesy new thriller that is even dumber than a real shark.