In relying on narration, Redford's movie is too little show and too much tell.

The one light at the end of this long, slogged-through tunnel is, surprisingly, Willis.

It’s clear that Jo Koy loves his relatives, and wants the world to know it. It’s just that his style would be better served within the more earnest confines of a traditional multi-cam sitcom.

What a bummer that a movie that paints itself as a scintillating, sexually-charged, art-world thriller ends in a swamp of failed intentions.

At the risk of understatement, The Matrix Revolutions sucks.

Though Yeon can still deliver memorable frights, like the car horn that literally does wake the dead, he can’t decide what kind of movie to make. So he does a genre mashup, tops it with a sappy ending, and hopes for the best. The result is decidedly uneven.

Tame is what Magic Mike’s Last Dance is — what it apparently wants to be, what it becomes in exchange for its new, cardboard-simple, ostensible pro-woman worldview. The movie’s pleasures mute themselves beneath its good intentions. It wants to be about what women want. But it feels like it never asked.

The main problem with this treatise on racial politics undercover as an exercise in suspense is that the director, Neil LaBute, didn't write the script.

Take this walk for the appetizing scenery, which includes Reeves and Sanchez-Gijon. The rest deserves squashing.

Life mirroring nature in all its wayward ferocity. Too much? You bet. But Fassbender (Magneto in X-Men) and Vikander (an Oscar winner for The Danish Girl), who fell in love during the making of the film, fully commit to their roles and hold us in their grip. The movie, sad to say, can't keep its head above water.

The one thing this Corporate Animals has going for it — the reason you may wanna plunk down cash to see it regardless — is Demi Moore.

Surprise is lacking. Ditto humor, though Miles Teller (Whiplash), as a thorn in Four's side, gets in a few fun licks by not staying on the film's draggy tempo. Otherwise, Insurgent stubbornly fails to surge.

It looks slick, pricey and starry – Indiana Jones teams up with James Bond for a gunfight with space demons. But even Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig can't save a movie that's all concept, no content.

It doesn't help that Damon and Cruz fail to generate sparks or that the second half of the film, in which John and Lacey face hell in a Mexican prison, feels bluntly edited to fit a two-hour running time.

Instead of a scalding brew of mirth and malice, served black, Donner settles up a tepid latte, decaf.

What the movie damagingly lacks is a personality of its own.

The film is torn between a tough-minded plea for animal rights and edge-free, PG family entertainment. But its advocacy of kindness to man and animal is indisputable.

Whatever the movie’s sporadic charms, it’s simply too small for Celine, who can only be matched by a drama with the sweep and scale of Titanic.

The cast puts its effort into a slightly less underwhelming movie, one a little more willing to engage this gallery of personalities, which, insofar as they’re based on the characters in the novel, are just engaging enough to watch this once and never think about again. Austen works hard. But mediocrity, this movie reminds us, works harder.

Despite a hint that Peter (Jeremy Sumpter) and Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood) might get it on, there's nothing to crow about.

One raucous night, one raunchy party, "American Graffiti filtered through "Dazed and Confused" and the Shermer High films of John Hughes.

What doesn't spark is the love story. Morton still seems soggy from her "Minority Report" role as a drenched pre-cog. Who wants romance in a future where glum is the word?

For all the bells and whistles – an electronic score by M83, a screen-busting Imax presentation and Cruise going full throttle – Oblivion feels arid and antiseptic, untouched by human hands. Bummer.

It's as gorgeous as anything the French filmmaker has made and as empty as a Trump tweet.

No matter Bateman and Reynolds make The Change-Up seem a lot better than it is. Each earns a star in my review. The movie would be literally nothing without them.

No one’s denying that American Samoa’s brief moment of victory — it didn’t make it to Cup playoffs, yet it’s never been in last place again — is a major coup. So why does this feel like such a lost opportunity for all involved?

It's no go. Green and Gothic make for a clumsy fit.

Until the last half-hour, when Lucas actually does establish a emotional connection between the landmark he created in 1977 and the prequel investment portfolio he laid out in 1999, the movie is one spectacularly designed letdown after another.

The sequel, also directed by Harold Ramis, is painfully padded.

The team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala drops the ball with this droopy, snail-paced prigs-in-wigs movie.

For something so reliant on dramatic engagement in addition to spectacle and giggles, Love and Thunder feels oddly unengaging; even the love and death aspects often feel like cold transmissions from distant sources.

Pikachu Detective does not make it easy to get on board. It’s not here to convert — it’s here to preach to the already converted. You the viewer may choose this movie even if you aren’t a Pokéscholar. That doesn’t mean it’s willing to choose you.

Watching John Travolta ease into a role is always a pleasure, but this film version of Nelson DeMille's 1992 best-selling mystery novel is a lurid mess.

Cornball? Maybe. But it helps that O’Connor dexterously avoids the usual lump-in-the-throat tearjerking. And it helps even more that the star radiates a soul-deep belief that it’s the small steps that matter more than a rah-rah victory. He makes us root for Jack — just us The Way Back makes us root for Affleck, no matter how long the road ahead.

What does work is hearing Grace take the stage for a new song, “Love Myself” that shows Ross can hold the screen as if by divine right. Loving her is easy — it’s swallowing the movie’s sudsy, soap-operatics that’s hard.

Before it goes off the rails into strained sermonizing, this sorta-sequel to 2008’s delightful "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" gets in big laughs.

Towne doesn't weave all the elements as deftly as before, and his political observations seem secondhand.

You wouldn’t be wrong if you’re thinking this wish-fulfillment tale of a working-class woman bum-rushing the corporate world is trying to be a "Working Girl" for millennials. And while it can’t deliver the boundary-pushing kick of that seminal 1988 Melanie Griffith-vs.-the glass ceiling smash, the charms this movie does possess — its star being chief among them — will get you over the gaping plot holes and lackluster dialogue.

Only a hair overlong at two hours, this is the kind of disposable airport spy thriller that Hollywood rarely makes anymore, and which generally plays fine, maybe best, on cable over a lazy Saturday afternoon.

It's easy to root for George. The movie deserves the finger.

Reynolds and Jackson make this summer lunacy go down easy with their banter and bullet-dodging skills. They're the only reason that The Hitman’s Bodyguard doesn't completely sink into the generic quicksand from whence it came.

There is nothing new in Robert Greenwald's sobering doc.

Lavishly produced swashbuckler that should have been far more entertaining.

The film falls prey to its own smoke and mirrors. It is less subversive than it aspires to be, and more emotionally real than than the filmmakers seem to realize.

You go in with high expectations about what this collection of talent can do with this bats**t pulp fiction. You leave feeling like you owe Brian De Palma a thousand apologies.

Close gets laughs, as does Bette Midler as a Jewish rebel. But the sting is gone.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is the sequel that many of us have waited for, if not exactly the sequel we wanted. It’s amusing rather than hilarious, gently ribbing rather than gutbusting.

This is the kind of movie that they show on planes -- white noise that lulls you to sleep.

But still: Is it really OK to get off making plus-size jokes just because you tack on a moralizing ending that teaches a lesson about body positivity? Can you have it both ways?

The Stooges were always better in short doses. And 90 minutes of PG nyuk-nyuk-nyuk can seem like an eternity.

To sum up, Definitely, Maybe is crap with compensations.

The script is too primly PG-13 to really go for it. Warm Bodies even suggests that true love can help the right zombie grow a new heart. That's a con job that makes Bodies lukewarm at best.

The actors, especially Grace, fight hard against a schizoid script (the kids are rubes one sec, hipsters the next) and cotton-candy direction from Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde). It's a losing battle.

As a movie, Papa improves every time it shuts up and allows action to define character.

This oddball mix of "The Cotton Club" and "Six Feet Under" is a big, beautiful mess. But it offers the not-uninstructive spectacle of talented people stumbling over large and unwieldy ambitions.

What we have left in Godard Mon Amour, after the laughs dry up, is a thin sketch of a filmmaker who inspired a hero worship in his young bride that dissolved in squabbling, as had Godard's first marriage to another of his leading ladies, actress Anna Karina.

The film may offer a Cliff Notes history lesson and a scrapbook take on a life, but it does make you wish Shirley was still around, talking truth to power right now and offering one more aspirational example for those who might step up and disrupt.

Brazilian director José Padilha (Elite Squad, Bus 174) soldiers on stolidly, but lacks the Dutch Verheoeven's abiding sense of mischief.

Miles below the Woodman's class. It's possible that a more astringent script could have provided fuel for the actors and A-list director Ron Howard.

What good is a wallow in sicko sadism if you take all the fun out of it?

How could a 2009 raunchfest that slapped a grin on my face I couldn't unglue degenerate into a cold dish of sloppy seconds?

Though shot for maximum moodiness by the gifted Peter Deming ("Mulholland Drive"), the movie straps you in for a head trip that promises hallucinatory wonders but delivers the same old Hollywood formula with sugar on top.

Shelton obviously wants to distill something innocent and romantic from a relationship the world saw as sleazy. A noble mission. But he's left out a few essentials — like the facts.

It's simply a retread of the first Ride Along, a 2014 box-office hit, and proof positive that a bigger budget doesn’t buy bigger laughs.

Army of the Dead is neither the best of Snyder nor the worst. In whipping a bit of both extremes into a dependably watchable piece of pop froth that hits the appropriate marks, the movie strives for the expected relevance, offers the right amount of nonsurprise surprises, and distinguishes itself from the given rules of the genre just so that it, more or less, breaks even.

Certainly blunt, and since Anderson and Bach are veterans of the porn trade, there is no skimping on the sex.

It’s not hard to be sympathetic to Let Him Go’s desire to broaden, drift, be all-encompassing; that’s what yarns are good for. It’s what makes the movie an okay hang as is. And it’s also what may make you crave a better movie.

Death on the Nile has its joys and flaws apart from that Armie factor, but it’s almost like trying to assess whether the appetizer course could have been slightly undercooked while an elephant stampedes over the whole dinner table.

There was a time when guys would grab a six-pack and watch this kind of flick at a drive-in. I mean that as a compliment.

On the surface, this may sound like a nice, trashy little diversion. We can confirm the “trashy” part, and you know that any time you give Moore the chance to either weep, become enraged or, in a best case scenario, do both at once, it’s going to reap some sort of dividends.

Stroman should have studied the original Producers that Brooks directed in 1968, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. It answers the question "Where did they go right?"

As a thriller, Firewall is flabby and familiar.

The filmmakers don't trust us to understand what Eddie is feeling about the Olympics without blaring a musical message from Hall and Oates on the soundtrack, "you make my dreams come true."

It’s feels like the New Puritanism (recently repped by the outcry over Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl) is seeping in. But in the barbershop? Say it isn’t so.

Imagine David Mamet rewriting his political satire "Wag the Dog" -- in which a president and his advisers declare war to distract the media from the prez's horn-dog activities -- as a joke-free kidnap drama.

Watching [Hanks] in this career footnote now is a little like seeing an unformed lump of sculptor’s clay and knowing that there’s a famous statue just a few well-placed moves away.

The film looks and feels authentic, but Duchovny has powered his undeniably personal journey with a counterfeit heart.

With Newman, the movie emerges as a lively character piece with flashes of humor and grace.

Would it be asking too much if the hit-and-miss jokes could maybe nudge an inch beyond the obvious?

It's slick girlie stuff, but the cast makes it go down easy.

It’s funny to think of this new chapter, with all its mean twists and its tense character convolution, as a prelude to the story we already know. Orphan is the longer movie, but compared to First Kill, it’s a psychologically slim, unmessy affair in comparison.

What a shame that Kelly's pacing doesn't run as fast as his imagination. Instead of sweeping you along, The Box just sits there like something unclaimed at lost and found. Damaged goods.

To cut Toys a minor break, it is ambitious. It is also a gimmicky, obvious and pious bore, not to mention overproduced and overlong.

With Red, White & Royal Blue seemingly attempting to straddle the line between BookTok virality and on-screen sensuality, the film is content with being merely rewatchable.

Dragon errs by trafficking too much in what made Bruce Lee sell instead of what made him tick.

The estrogen overload damn near did me in.

Part intellectual-property barrel-scraping, part pumped-up star vehicle and part fumbling bid for Sony to cross media-revenue streams, Uncharted isn’t the worst attempt to bring a beloved video game to the screen — just the latest bit of evidence that these things are really a zero-sum game.

For a while, The Dark Half is a compelling study, in chiller guise, of an artist wrestling with his creative demons. But Stark is a real terror only in the shadows. When he emerges, all we see is Hutton — in a showy makeup job — struggling to change his wimp image.

Pitt and Ford try to dig deeper, but the script undercuts them with preachy dialogue that might as well read, "Insert stereotype here."

Wood, whose mostly mute turn is defined by his black suit and glasses, can only stare in stupefaction at Schreiber's jittery mix of broad laughs and sentiment. Audiences will share the feeling.

The pop diva goes down with the bubbles in this hopelessly shallow soap opera.

Suffers from lulls and lapses and one lulu of a casting gaffe, but this keenly observant spoof of the fame game is hardly the work of a burnout.

Guess what? It's almost bearable.

Affleck is modest and engaging, which keeps the movie out of "Gigli" territory. But it's close.

Disney deserves praise for raising the ante on its ambitions in animation. Next time, though, a little less civics lesson and a little more heart.

You wish the movie wasn’t content to be a feature-length meme and truly deserved what Cage is doing with this long, hard look in the fun-house mirror. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is not unbearable by any means. It just should have been so much better.

Strains credulity at every turn.

The Art of Self-Defense sets itself up as the 90-pound weakling destined to live forever in the shadow of "Fight Club." The good news is that writer-director Riley Stearns gets in a few good licks at toxic masculinity before odious comparisons to David Fincher’s masterpiece blunt the film’s comic and dramatic impact.