The appeal of such stories is obvious. Breakthrough, though, is less a story than it is a sermon, aimed directly at the choir and nobody else.

I don’t think I've witnessed a film this year that managed to so completely and utterly collapse into crass garbage in its last few minutes while abusing what little good will it has.

Vampire stories can be so rote that it’s noticeable when the rules are even slightly changed, and that's when Boys from County Hell shows a little spark. But this is more the clear case of a horror movie that forgets to have fun.

Back and forth The Oak Room goes, without ever building the tension it ostensibly seeks. Instead, it meanders from tale to tale, and the writing isn’t sharp or specific enough to sustain this kind of complex framework.

There are moments of tenderness and honest human emotion buried in the frustrating A Long Way Down but one has to work far too hard and give far too much credit to the over-qualified cast to grab at them.

By the time you’re meant to learn just what the tie is between John and Louis, you’ve stopped caring. But, thanks to the excellent if a little on the obviously-pictorial-side cinematography by Robert Barocci, you’ve seen some lovely vistas on the way to indifference.

Had this been the work of a young novice filmmaker, I would say it showed some promise. But as it happens, Mr. Martin is approaching his mid-fifties. He should look for better writers, to begin with.

The circumstances of “Couples Weekend” are simply too convenient. Its simplicity hinders absorption, shielding viewers from taking in its vulnerability or lessons to heart. And with its similar struggle to elicit its intended laughs, Kirkpatrick’s film is a flat rendering of its jagged proposal.

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.

Although Pet Sematary is a largely dreadful film, it is slightly better and never as offensively bad as the first version.

It’s more rote than revelatory, and the possibility of a sequel in the final shot plays more like a threat than a promise.

As tedious as much of this sounds, an odd thing happened around “Allegiant’s” midway point. The fairly packed audience started vocally reacting “Rocky Horror”-style to some of the more overtly melodramatic turns with “oohs," “ahhs” and even laughter.

A couple of pedal-to-the-floor melodramatic twists suggest that “Founders Days” might’ve been a bolder or just meaner genre movie, but its toothless satire, like its timid horror drama, sadly doesn’t cut it.

Vita & Virginia wastes the talents of four people — its two subjects and the two women that play them. It is a deeply frustrating movie, a film that not only can’t find the right tone from scene to scene but feels disjointed in individual moments too.

Southern wields the tropes in a stylistically over-determined way–jump-scares and all–which cheapens the delicate and poetic narrative.

The film adds up to a lot of bad ideas and very few good ones, wandering around Roth's footsteps in search of purpose.

This is not a terribly plot-driven movie; indeed, at two hours and twenty minutes it’s rather a ramble.

Still: the cold half (ie: the important half) of Lords of Chaos is so ugly and mean-spirited that I couldn't really enjoy the other parts of the film that work, not even Rory Culkin's fantastic lead performance, or the on-screen chemistry that he shares with supporting actress Sky Ferreira (as photographer/love interest Ann-Marit).

The supposedly original script from writer Zach Dean offers very little that’s innovative or inspired.

Generic dialogue and lack of character depth kills the sometimes promising “Sunrise,” which works best when it has a grit that reminds one of the best vampire flicks of all time, “Near Dark,” but that doesn't happen nearly enough.

Ross always preached that there were no mistakes, just happy accidents. A mess like Paint—all broad strokes and no point—proves that he wasn’t always right.

It’s not hard to think that there could be an interesting remake of “Going Places” or an interesting spin-off “The Big Lebowski” to be made — it’s just that this film doesn't work as either.

The movie is fairly faithful to the book, and yet so much is lost in the transfer.

Looking as if it was often shot in complete darkness or something like it, Agent Game is murky nonsense that aspires to get by on what it considers to be a trenchant cynicism about geopolitical chess.

Everything about Free Birds feels perfunctory, from its generic title and holiday setting to its starry voice cast and undistinguished use of 3-D.

Eventually, the lack of werewolf-related carnage is the least concerning thing about My Animal.

Quirky to an extreme with not much to say about the millennial resistance to maturity and grown-up responsibilities, Larson’s film feels like a perplexing stylistic disagreement between its creative parts.

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.