It becomes a lot of movies at once. Some fly, some don’t, but the sum effect is that it winds up spinning its wheels, its hyperkinetic delights (all I’ll say is: magnets) awash in too many strands of background drama.

The too-blunt comedy defangs the film. As does the irritating voiceover from the Rolling Stone reporter, played Scoot McNary, which breaks a cardinal rule of filmmaking: show, don't tell.

Oddly, the published screenplay – while far from McCarthy's top-drawer – reads better than it plays. What's onscreen recalls a line from No Country: "It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?"

Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (Sunshine) overplays his hand and traps Bening in a role that's all emoting, no emotion.

Hemsworth and Thompson, who has the makings of a major star, do the heavy lifting. And, miraculously, they keep it light, breezy and watchable. Memorable? That’s asking too much.

(It) feels like a pale facsimile of Jarmusch. There are a few lovely, random laughs and a resonant political subtext, but the tone is off.

There's no denying the ambition in A Hologram for the King, but a struggle does not add up to a satisfying movie — or even a reasonable facsimile of the beauty and terror Eggers evokes on the page.

Assassination Nation thinks its a f*ck-you punchline. It’s actually the film’s most honest admission — its one true self-own.

Robert De Niro – wait for it – in the role of a mobster. Now there's an original idea.

With the exception of a battle scene with apes on all fours charging the humans, the film is monumentally silly.

Bad Teacher keeps running away from its combustibly nasty premise. Damn shame.

Nolte brings a raspy authority to the role, and director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) surrounds him with colorful characters.

It can't decide whether it wants to be magnificently toxic or merely mediocre. Mileage may vary on where the movie eventually lands, but either way, this is a "romp" that's keen on going nowhere ... and sloooowly.

A long sit in the shallows, the equivalent of five half-hour episodes strung together.

Short review of three little words: Way. Too. Long.

Clooney and company work it too hard this time. You can tell they're huffing and puffing to stay afloat. But all I hear is: glug glug glug.

The script by Linda Woolverton stays surface faithful to the characters created by Lewis Carroll, but the film has lost its soul.

You spend a good deal of Keeper forming theories about what’s going on, keenly sifting through clues in the hopes of possible answers. Once everything is revealed, however, you wish you’d gone back that previous ignorance that now seems like a state of bliss. To say that Tatiana Maslany is a saving grace here is obvious, given that she’s rescued a few projects from utter disaster.

The Zeitlins have dreamed since childhood of bringing their version of "Peter Pan" to the screen. Their collective imaginative powers are indisputable. But what started as a visually gripping, fiercely funny, and emotionally centered take on Wendy’s mission statement (“The more you grow up, the less things you get to do that you wanna”) ends in a chaotic clutter that deserves, well, the hook.

The only way to react is by bringing a barf bag or a strong sense of gallows humor.

Not a great movie, but courtesy of director Robert Lorenz, a lean, plausibly entertaining one with all the fixin’s and none of the extra flab of deep, incisive meaning. It’s a buddy movie, a cartel chase, a sentimental redemption story. It’s a comfort watch.

What a handsome empty shell of a movie Allied is.

Escapism with a human touch -- it feels lived-in.

It's tough to imagine a guy who won't squirm through this tale of 1950s housewife Evelyn Ryan.

Reiner gets lucky with his two stars. Wilson has charm to spare, and Hudson brings humor and sexiness to playing Emma and four au pair girls from different countries. But even they can't float a balloon with lead in it.

Aquaman is a mess of clashing tones and shameless silliness, but a relief after all the franchise’s recent superhero gloom. Any budget-busting epic that finds time to show us an octopus playing bongos gets a pass in our book.

This is a pulpy B movie that is dying to be a prestige project, and there’s a big part of you that wishes everyone had just leaned into the teensploitation aspects more.

What the movie’s effortful attempts at symbolism and meaning do most effectively are undercut what’s smart about the questions it raises — and DaCosta’s fine hand at creeping us out. The movie wants to be more than it is. The result is that it winds up amounting to less than it could have been.