Captain Fantastic treats the situation (and Ben) so uncritically and so sympathetically that there is a total disconnect between what is actually onscreen and what Ross thinks is onscreen.

Means to make fun of romantic comedies the way "Airplane!" goofed on disaster movies and the "Naked Gun" films spoofed detective flicks. The result is actually more in line with Gus Van Sant’s ambitious but ill-advised shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho."

Despite a premise rife with potential dark humor, there’s too little edge in Let’s Be Cops. Director/co-writer Luke Greenfield chose wacky over witty and the result is a film with no sense of danger, no reason to care and not enough laughs to make the sitcomish handling of a strong premise forgivable.

Misguided effort to once more stage the fateful stormy summer night at Lord Byron’s Lake Geneva villa in 1816 that would give birth to a tale that continues to spark our imaginations today.

In the end, the biggest problem with Slumberland is its utter innocuousness. Because it is bright, noisy, and things are constantly happening, little kids might like it as a momentary distraction—but it certainly won’t inspire them to check out McCay’s original work for themselves.

Luce is the worst kind of provocateur; it tosses out all manner of outrageous ideas and then, like those pathetic dudes on Twitter, it yells out “DEBATE ME!” As soon as you accept the challenge, the film folds like cheap origami. And this film has a lot to toss at you.

Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly is a dour, depressing drama, a movie that gets so lost in its lethargic structure that it feels like a chore.

8-Bit Christmas may have a more grounded approach to gamer culture than you'd expect, but it’s constantly beat by its own limited imagination.

Paradise Hills wants so badly to be a sci-fi movie with a message for right now — perhaps to tap into the feminist anger out there now or to cash in on the interest in women filmmakers — but it feels like a rushed draft. There are a few good ideas, a few good twists at the end but not enough to make up for the rookie mistakes that undercut its potential.

These characters possessed far more soul in the prior film: they walked through every scene with centuries of baggage and loss; they spoke of times gone by with wonder and awe; they cared for one another. None of that is present here.

There are simply too many moments here in which the characters, who we are supposed to care about in some form, are conveniently dumb.

When it leans hard into the inherent absurdity of its wacky, mismatched buddy antics, “Venom: The Last Dance” can be a total blast. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Whatever difference Zada's relatively minimalist approach to scenes might make, it does not outweigh the overarching feeling that the movie falls into a predictable, repetitive routine.

You might find yourself forcing a laugh during one weak sequence to pretend this is all supposed to be fun.

There are few surprises here after the narrative’s turn to survival horror as the film plods to its inevitable conclusion, and even that final shot feels unearned.

Its goal is to be a feel-good film, and it sort of accomplishes that. But from the predictable plot structure and series of overt zingers to the eye-rolling litany of on-the-nose needle drops, The People We Hate at the Wedding is awkwardly executed.

Pair Fathers and Daughters with a bottle of wine and a friend on a rainy night, and it will work just fine.

And So It Goes does what it needs to do for its target audience in thoroughly sufficient, mediocre ways.

The bad news is that, as movies go, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising barely qualifies as one.

The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but I Wanna Dance with Somebody lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

Terrible and insane, and will surely end up being one of the worst films of 2019. But it’s also such a wildly ambitious roller coaster ride that it must be experienced, preferably with friends, to laugh together at its cheesy dialogue, over-the-top performances and multiple, major plot twists.

Upon taking in the gorgeousness — and it is really something; the production design of this movie, by Luca Tranchino, is exceptional (as is Daniel Aranyó’s cinematography, which shines when he’s shooting in the natural world) —Lillie observes, “It’s like being inside God’s thoughts.”

The problem is that writer-director Adrián García Bogliano can't decide what kind of horror movie he wants it to be.

Too shallow to project real charisma, the film is instead questionably sincere from start to finish, as if it's trying to head off questions about why the filmmakers wanted to tell this particular story, especially from the grossly underrepresented but often-manipulated perspective of a person with disabilities.

Neither erotic nor thrilling, but rather reliant on cheap nudity and multiple mistaken-identity switcheroos in hopes of keeping us on edge.

The filmmakers were able to pay his fee, and so Hopkins shows up for another rubbishy, misbegotten project and shames the whole enterprise with his open and volatile face, his incisive voice, his mere ultra-soulful presence.

With a movie like this, it’s hard to tell where the good idea ran out, as it seems to have been lost many drafts ago. 2:22 really just wants to be seen as clever, which often renders something not very clever at all.

When does a bad, cheap horror movie becomes something more offensively horrible? When it pegs its generic nonsense on real-life tragedy and becomes exploitation. Ben Ketai’s Beneath, not to be confused with the Larry Fessenden film of the same name from last year, is the kind of mediocrity one finds on The Movie Channel on a Saturday night and pretty easily dismisses.