The characters are bland, the dialogue is atrocious, the action is mediocre, and even the heist is a boring bust.

Wholesome in the most “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” brand of mythical Americanism, 12 Mighty Orphans is engineered to rouse emotions with uncritical pride, never reaching the less immaculate corners of the historical period it employs as canvas.

As all movies about this stage of life must, among obvious jokes about aches, pains, and Viagra—apparently it is okay to sexually objectify someone if you're old—Queen Bees touches gently and sympathetically on the inescapable challenges of aging, loss of loved ones, loss of independence, cancer, strokes, and dementia.

Rather than crafting a high-concept science-fiction marvel, Fuqua’s Infinite relies on shoddy VFX and ropey world-building for the worst film of his career.

Awake has just enough scares and strangeness, plus a sense of dread and paranoia, to make its horror creepy and enjoyable. It’s not a flawless thriller, but enough different elements click into place, like Rodriguez and Greenblatt’s performances.

Whatever the Lutherans thought they were paying for, they accidentally unleashed our most deeply cynical artist at the height of his ferocity toward the country's decaying morality, and wound up funding one of the most upsetting films of the '70s.

Jubilant, unapologetically massive, and bursting with a cozy, melancholic sense of communal belonging, In The Heights is the biggest-screen-you-can-find Hollywood event that we the movie lovers have been craving since the early days of the pandemic, when the health crisis cut off one of our most cherished public lifelines.

It's to the credit of Anthony, who wrote and edited as well as directed, and his cinematographer Corey Hughes, that you come away thinking about parts of the film that felt like cut-able digressions and undergraduate musings when you were watching them.

What could have been a powerful, timely, and potentially funny meditation on the grieving process is instead a work that's about as thin and flavorless as a gum wrapper.

It’s full of pure, unadulterated love for “The Greatest,” so much so that the viewer can’t help but get enveloped in its adoration.

The movie's dialogue is clunky and the acting is uneven, which keeps the tone more preachy than dramatic.

There are a lot of fragmentary ideas in The Real Thing, but they’re not cohesive or worthwhile as they’re loosely formed into one grey 232-minute lump.

Petzold keeps his mystery afloat (sorry) thanks to his impeccable craft even if this is a tale that sometimes feels like it needed a more magical and less direct approach.

It’s a film filled with half-hearted ideas and thin characters, all in the service of a story that wallows in its trauma in a manner that gives it little purpose.

And it mostly doesn’t quite work, because Fred, as written by MacBride and played by Dylan O’Brien, just isn’t a compelling character.

Caveat is a masterpiece of understatement for a title, and a witty opener to Damian Mc Carthy’s directorial debut, an impressive and often terrifying film, taking place almost solely in one location, with two people trapped in a moldy dimly-lit house.

It’s a harmless animated adventure that will provide a bland diversion to young viewers.

Carnaval is like Girls Trip by way of Brazil, but the acting and many of the comedy’s punchlines are fairly over-exaggerated. The four leads are just a step above stock characters.

One almost wishes Chaves and Johnson-McGoldrick had not tried to reinvent the wheel, and instead just stuck with the franchise’s sophisticated simplicity and tried-and-true paranormal formula. Without a focal haunted house, this one just doesn’t feel like a film that belongs in “The Conjuring” universe.

Despite the fact that you’ve heard these songs countless times in a variety of settings, these inspired incarnations will make you feel like you’re experiencing them for the first time, just as Moby Doc as a whole breathes thrilling new life into a safe and conventional genre.

The film, unfortunately, is poorly acted and offers Hallmark Channel-level craftsmanship.

While Plan B is not a perfect teen movie, it's one with a defiantly good heart and a vibrant, colorful atmosphere crafted by a talented director. On those grounds alone, this is a ride worth hopping on.

The timing of Oslo is less than ideal, current events being what they are. The framing, too, is blinkered and naïve.

The action in Funhouse is consistently cheap and generally silly. That’s sort of the movie’s point, but it’s also sort of hard to care when everything else is so tacky.

If you’re not too conversant with the regions or works under consideration, the viewer has a choice of laboring to connect the dots unassisted, or just kicking back and letting the people and their recollections and philosophical reflections wash over you, like the sea of the movie’s title.

The main goal of Port Authority is the simple but unfortunately necessary message that “hey, trans people are people, too!” It’s too bad this film isn’t really about them.

The movie's characters are less compelling, however, and the film never deeply engages the issues of consent, culpability, and justice it asks us to consider.

The problem isn't that this concept has been reworked to death, but that Quintana and co-writer Chris Dowling (the scribe behind Christian dramas such as Run the Race and Priceless) fail to mold it into a winning catch.