A terribly uneven narrative that doesn’t especially work as drama or noir and which manages to waste a pretty good cast in the bargain.

Many of the film's backdrops are admittedly breathtaking, yet the foregrounded people never seem to be actually populating them. The character animation is so flat and uninspired that it causes Dilili and her fellow humans to resemble stickers grafted onto postcards, with the subtle use of shadows and reflections doing little to add dimension.

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.

Not only is this take on human relations unoriginal, it's also sophomoric and blatantly untrue.

Ultimately, True Memoirs of an International Assassin isn’t entertaining enough to recommend, but it’s certainly not the torturous experience of recent James vehicles like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” or “Pixels,” and parts of it actually work.

There’s nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it. So it’s too bad that “Four Letters of Love” is nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it.

The Cloverfield Paradox is a bit of a scam job, promising to reconcile entries in a series that have little in common save for a shared genre. It fizzles so badly at the end that you might legitimately wonder if it ever had anything to do with the other two films in the first place, or if it was produced independently of the series and retroactively added.

Entries in this genre like “The Same Storm” and “Together” made us care about the characters who were isolated or stuck with each other because of COVID. “Life Upside Down” never does.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie moves through you so briskly that you’ll get whiplash by the time the film reaches its deeply abrupt ending. But maybe that’s the point—after all, this is not a movie to be scrutinized, but to allow beleaguered elder millennial dads to sit their tots down for a precious two hours (if you count the trailers) and get some much-needed rest. It’s cute, and breezy, and rock-stupid, and will probably make a billion dollars again.

The makers of The Possession of Hannah Grace clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty — and mostly scare-free — horror film ends up being.

Nearly every aspect of this feature from Tyler Spindel, formerly a second unit director for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, is derivative and desperate and, at the same time, bizarrely pleased with itself.

Whatever is keeping Neill Blomkamp so reserved that he delivered a film as dispiritingly rote as Demonic—that’s what needs an exorcism.

Mainstream may be up-to-date on stylistic grounds, but its narrative could use refreshing.

It is a sweet little end of summer sorbet with appealing young performers and a script that refreshes the original without overdoing it.

This is a modestly-scaled and exceptionally crafted independent film that is genuinely invested in its characters.

While Bautista is still as engaging as ever in the woeful action-comedy “Killer’s Game,” not even he can save this dud from quickly devolving into 100 minutes of blood-drenched tedium.

Older audiences are likely to find the film less amusing than risible.

This is a glacially paced movie, filled with sickly picture postcard imagery that seems designed to put you to sleep.

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.

Trigger Warning is a self-serious, brooding film without the wherewithal to know how righteously dumb it could be if it committed to the bit. Or, at least, the expertise to elevate it to the suspenseful level it so desperately aims to reach.

The bad behavior on display, instead of emerging organically from the characters, seems frequently chosen from a menu of sorts.

Anyone who’s dealt with a teenager can relate to the baffling surliness that emerges out of nowhere — but like needless sequels, this, too, shall pass.

With little wit to its name, Sherlock Gnomes becomes far more tedious than playful.

The Unholy is not designed to be deep, but since glimmers of depth are present, the lack of follow-up makes this a disappointing watch.

Maybe the joke’s on us, and all the pre-release hype suggesting that a micro-budget train wreck was barreling our way was merely part of the marketing strategy.

There may be a big, corporate, algorithm-like formula deciding that a quarter-century later it's time for another Space Jam, but it's good to see that the insouciant anarchy of Termite Terrace is still pure, unrepentant id.

Victor Frankenstein is, despite bravura performances from committed young leads Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy, all kinds of obnoxious and pointless.

I am probably indulging in a rather obnoxious form of criticism-as-parlor-game-psychotherapy by positing that each of the three main white male characters in director Denis Henry Hennelly's Goodbye World is meant to represent a facet of the director himself. Unfortunately, such activity is about all the movie is any good for.