The script is often very witty, peppered with sharp observations and two very entertaining performances, but there are underlying problems the movie cannot overcome.

A wildly inconsequential action comedy that contains a couple of genuine laughs but which otherwise feels like an extended version of its own television ads.

This is not a particularly fascinating movie, unfortunately, despite being well-done in most of the superficial ways.

If you’re going to check out the social media “Bonnie and Clyde” riff Infamous, do it for Bella Thorne’s performance. From the get-go she has the classically great presence of someone like Sandra Bullock, but with her own scraggly edge.

As it turns out, this literary curiosity proves to be far more interesting than the finished film, which takes an undeniably interesting premise and then fails to make good use of it.

Unsung Hero could have used more of such emotional honesty. But it ultimately must deliver a broad uplift that’s palatable for the whole family, so it tends to skim the surface.

The name is right there in the title. And every time that Benicio Del Toro shows up as Pablo Escobar, we’re reminded of the movie that this could have been, making it easier to criticize the movie it chose to be instead.

The wolf and the lion make a great team; the humans and the script do not.

[Aselton's] excellent playing Erin, despite scenes of questionable worth concocted by the screenwriters. But it’s not enough to save a collection of ideas that never quite cohere.

This is a bleak nugget of a film that is trying so hard to take the typical sports movie narrative and unleash its darker and more nightmarish side that it runs out of steam long before arriving at its frustratingly oblique conclusion.

The scariest thing about “Humane” is how genuinely believable its nightmare vision ends up being. However, the film’s micro approach to a macro crisis never connects because we’re never given a reason to care about these specific people.

This "lack" of a serious critique makes Between Two Worlds the story of a pampered journalist confronted with how "these people live," plus the fallout when her lie is discovered, rather than a real shot fired at an unfair system.

Horror ultimately gives way to irritation as the film veers into violent shock tactics and misplaced blame. What begins as a righteous indictment devolves into an unnecessary vendetta.

While there’s a lot to like about “Everything to Me” (Abigail Donaghy’s performance, in particular), Lacob’s heart-on-sleeve script and uncertain direction often leave the whole thing feeling a bit scattered.

The bigger sin here is that “Nobody’s Fool” wastes its comic goodwill and performances by wallowing in the same tired story elements Tyler Perry has been milking on TV and in his movies for decades. He’s done this before, and you’ve seen it before.

A promising but self-thwarting movie like this is more depressing than an outright bad or dumb film.

A meta reading of “Propeller” is more interesting than the film itself, which is tragically hampered by a distinct lack of ambition and performances that never quite find the right tone. It’s a gift that Travolta made for himself and his family, something he likely wanted to leave as a part of his legacy. That doesn’t make it a good movie.

The best thing about Emily is that she’s played by Evanna Lynch. Lynch, who played the charmingly abstracted Luna Lovegood in some of the Harry Potter pictures, has grown into a young woman who looks like a rougher-edged Saoirse Ronan.

If mid-level dank atmospherics attending well-replayed semi-dystopian “dark” mechanics are sufficient to hook you into a genre movie, you’re all set. If you demand better, this won’t do.

Michael Pearce’s grim thriller “Echo Valley” is a melodramatic mess redeemed by the performances of the film’s exceptional cast.

That is actually one of the key problems with the film as a whole — there are times when it tries to embrace its silliness and times when it wants to be treated as a serious action film and the clash of tones is simply too jarring.

The biggest problem with “Nobody 2” is that the surprise factor is gone, and nothing has taken its place. The wow of seeing a generally comedic actor like Bob Odenkirk go John Wick in the fun 2021 sleeper hit isn’t there anymore.

The Threesome ends up kind of a mixed bag, cute but a bit disjointed.

An unconvincing sequel to the 1994 original that’s basically the Scandinavian answer to recent trauma-minded American horror legacy-quels like “Halloween Ends” and “Scream VI.”

In spite of the available chemistry and charisma from Hathaway and Ejiofor, Locked Down proves to be a bewildering mess, in part because of choices made in how to tell a story that mixes two-hander drama with a heist.

With a script by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder and Shepard, The Perfection has a gory grindhouse sleaze overlaid with the tony gleam of the upper-crust, a very sick combo.

While the performances are stronger and the narrative is more coherent than you’d see in a “Madea” movie, for example, Perry’s latest still features many of the auteur’s trademarks: dizzying tonal swings, awkward blocking, drab lighting, jarring edits and a mixture of the salacious and the puritanical.

A genre movie that's at war with itself.