Unless you are a L.S. Lowry fan of the highest order, the only reason to sit through Mrs. Lowry & Son is to watch actors as strong as Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave going toe-to-toe for 90 minutes.

Particularly at a time when women’s rights are in jeopardy here in the United States and around the world, “Dirty Angels” represents a blown opportunity to say something meaningful amid the mayhem.

This movie is anything but brave. It is the most feckless, spineless blockbuster of the last decade.

The half-ingenious, half-ludicrous third act makes observations about class and legacy worth thinking about. It calls to mind Jeff Nichols's "Shotgun Stories."

Since John Wells is a director of some conscience and screenwriter Steven Knight is in fact capable of first-rate work, Burnt packs some minor surprises and attractive details along its way.

While it may seem unfair to compare an adaptation to its excellent source, the creators here lay down that gauntlet right from the beginning, and then fail to meet their own standard.

The spectacularly dumb, and weirdly entertaining bad-taste thriller Bad Samaritan is the kind of movie that many will assume can only be enjoyed ironically, or just with some sort of emotional detachment.

Everyone’s so handsome and there are SO many cozy sweaters and clunky boots to enjoy on those rainy days. But these characters are barely more than a collection of quirks, and the thing that’s keeping them from being together forever has got to be the most ridiculous of all contrivances.

The depictions of degradation and sadism are arguably accurate, yes. But they’re executed in a context that’s almost entirely free of meaningfully specific historical detail, to the extent that one comes to suspect this movie of commodifying human suffering.

On the whole, his (Griffin) indecisive The Wolf Hour tick-tocks its way to an underwhelming finale. And when it gets there, the most shocking realization you’ll have is how forgettable an affair it all has been.

The best things about Parker are the two lead actors. Although working with material that is lackluster even by his standards, Statham manages to demonstrate a commanding screen presence that cannot be dismissed. Opposite him, Lopez delivers one of her more convincing performances.

Papi Chulo is a buddy comedy, but only by its ramshackle design — it’s a forced friendship, and it’s not cute, let alone funny.

It’s a story about how people hide their true selves behind costumes like the perfect wife or even the forced whimsy of Tulip Season. Its tragic misstep is how much it refuses to actually look under those surfaces.

What drew this cast to this film? One that boils its characters down to cardboard copies of real people whose only aim in life is traditional heterosexual, Christian, nuclear family units without any defying characteristics beyond their roles within those units.

Bills itself as the first-ever Asian-American romantic comedy. But it's so chock full of the usual clichés and conventions of the genre, it could have been any movie over the past 20 years that you've seen and then promptly forgotten that starred Julia Roberts. Or Kate Hudson. Or Jennifer Aniston. Or Renee Zellweger.

Such a hit-and-miss mess that it makes the wild-and-crazy-to-the-point-of-sometimes-flailing tenor of “Anchorman” and other such Ferrell vehicles feel like finely-tuned Logitech vehicles.

It's as messy as a teen’s bedroom and packed with all manner of distracting clutter that needlessly burdens a plot.

American Hero is an obnoxious rock star moment, with images of Americana that have apparently been lost in translation by an outsider British director.

Even for how negatively I responded to the bafflingly inept Marauders, I choose to believe that Miller and his overly talented cast didn’t just do it for a paycheck. Even with that in mind, it’s hard to forgive.

All this sounds eminently promising. But it would need a wordsmith as witty and wise as Emma Thompson, who won an Oscar for adapting the big-screen version of 1995's "Sense and Sensibility," to pull it off and do Austen herself justice.

Speaking strictly for myself, Vin Diesel, here coming back to play Xander Cage, the James Bond of skateboarding character he originated in 2002’s “XXX” is the least exciting component of this 3D slam-bang fest.

The Great Wall has significant problems — namely with Damon and sidekick Pedro Pascal's lack of bromantic chemistry — but chief among its rewards is its ability to marry its Eastern and Western sensibilities.

Thankfully, the entertaining chemistry between the two young leads in Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (Andrew Jacobs and Jorge Diaz), almost saves it.

It wears its heart on its sleeve, unpretentious and sincere as a homemade valentine.

At a certain point, however, I began to treat The Song as a kind of guilty pleasure, a not particularly good movie that nonetheless entertains in spite of itself.

Coming across as little more than a filmed adaptation of the first two-thirds of Neil Bogart’s Wikipedia page, Spinning Gold is a mess that even those with a keen interest in the subject will find both ponderous and uninformative.

A pretty uneven film, lurching from comedy to violence to sentiment, but it's best when it sticks in the realm of flat-out farce.

Ostensibly a commentary on celebrity culture and the fawning journalists around it, “Opus” is one of those movies that throws talking points at the wall without having an actual point of view on any of them.