Unfortunately, despite its ready-made storyline and some likable performances, the curiously inert A Million Miles Away never achieves liftoff, even as its hero does.

Cassandro takes place in an inherently goofy arena — this is over-the-top, stagey fighting, after all — but the filmmakers avoided the temptations of cheap laughs and produced a satisfying dramatic story that will appeal to both fans and non-fans of this outlandish wrestling genre. That’s a rope move worth cheering for.

A Haunting in Venice is no downer. The script by Michael Green (“Logan,” “Blade Runner 2049”), who also wrote the first two Branagh Poirots, is at times ingenious, and he wrote a great part for Fey. As the mystery novelist Ariadne, a stand-in for Christie, she brings nice comic touches to a performance that threatens to steal the movie.

This latest installation in the “Big Fat Greek” franchise is colorful and celebratory, eager to entertain and wears its heart on its sleeve. There’s something to be said for that.

The time spent establishing Jane’s and Corinne’s bond pays off by always keeping their scenes on the heartfelt side of maudlin.

The Nun II has some interesting ideas and some thrilling sequences.

It’s a complicated situation despite how morally straightforward it appears. Scout’s Honor deserves some kind of merit badge for trying to untangle the knotty, awful mess.

It seems Joris-Peyrafitte can’t decide what film he is making, and as a result we’re left with a jumbled mess with a slapped-together resolution that will satisfy no one.

Good looks and brutal action can’t hide the fact that the film traffics in Italian stereotypes with the same impunity as simplistic notions of good and evil.

Director Sammi Cohen takes an attention-deficit disorder approach to storytelling, in which every feeling and plot twist is punctuated by a current pop song, and any hint of emotion or thoughtfulness is interrupted by a needle drop.

The Hill is meant to be inspiring, of course, and to some, it might be, but the vibe is more reassuring in the way that it does not deviate from the standard-issue formula of such movies. It is a cinematic case of confirmation bias, designed to fulfill preexisting values and beliefs.

Fremont is content to let small moments stay small, threading them together for a compelling tapestry of shared humanity.

Nattiv, working from a sharp script from Nicholas Martin, expertly mixes in documentary footage to convey a sense of the times and the war.

Neeson’s last few action flicks may have been just for fans, but Retribution is for everybody.

Despite its outlandish conceits, it is grounded in sisterhood. As bloody as it is, the pain the girls dish out to each other is nothing compared to the trauma they’ve experienced.

This is one of those sneakily good movies where at first nothing much seems to be going on, before the parts start adding up to a satisfying whole. Mutt turns out to be a well-crafted character study of not only a trans man, but also of the most important people in his orbit.

The brilliant comic observation behind Strays is that dogs never quite get the complete picture. They misunderstand much of what they see — they believe rival dogs are in the mirror and that the mailman is the devil — and thus by staying entirely inside the dogs’ point of view, the movie taps a major source of humor.

Landscape With Invisible Hand is a bizarre, off-kilter experience that shows us how we are destroying ourselves, no aliens necessary.

With its picture-perfect Taipei cityscapes, appealing cast and soothing, smoothed-over storyline, Love in Taipei makes for a stress-free comfort watch. Fans of the book may just wish it had been truer to its source material — after all, isn’t teendom supposed to feel a little dramatic?

Happily, Blue Beetle comes closest to cracking the code by grounding its slam-bang sci-fi shenanigans in familia. Based on the third incarnation of a comic book character who’s been in and out of circulation — published by several different companies — since 1939, this movie’s Latin flavor feels fresh, with welcome bits of political bite and funny takes on the genre’s over-familiar conventions.

It’s not easy to make an amusing, accessible diversion that mixes LGBTQ positivity and national politics, but “Red, White & Blue” passes the test with flying colors.

In this film, whenever Harper gets to do nothing but direct, as in the action scenes, Heart of Stone works. It’s in the convolutions of its flat script that the movie falls apart.

Gran Turismo is just the same cars, going around and around and around.

But for now, we have The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which actually was a pretty good idea that just didn’t have enough wind in its sails.

A touching combination of fact and fiction makes The Unknown Country one beautiful road trip.

Marc Turtletaub’s gentle, winning comedy Jules is technically a science-fiction film, but it is actually about loneliness and aging, much like the classic ’80s audience-pleaser “Cocoon,” which this film often resembles.

The film, written by Tomine, remains largely faithful to the book, which was already filled with caustic dialogue primed for a slacker movie. Yet there’s a sense that Tomine’s world has become sanitized in translation.

Aside from its scintillating title character, Bobi Wine: The People’s President is valuable because it stands as a clarion call against authoritarianism.