Though it's an often beautiful showcase for the Arabian desert landscape, Desert Warrior is a slow, awkward jumble, trying so hard to be cool and lacking any of the style or charisma to pull it off. The climactic battle has some redeeming qualities, but after waiting 90 minutes to see it and finding it so choppily edited as to be distracting, the prevailing feeling I carried with me after it ended was still disappointment.

With thin character work and a familiar story surrounding it, the movie ultimately proves more disposable than enjoyable.

Some adaptations, it seems, are far less equal than others.

While Lowery's film is ripe for interpretation, and will no doubt be better received by those who enjoy that style of filmmaking, those wanting actual answers will find frustratingly little satisfaction. Mother Mary is, at heart, more about vibes and style than anything else.

Despite having a decent budget and some recognizable actors to work with, writer-director Tommy Wirkola, known for Nazi zombie film Dead Snow and his Santa action film Violent Night, ensured what ended up on screen was a pretty fun B picture. It doesn't have the stylistic touch that can sometimes bring a little something extra to playful genre films, nor does it have a true standout sequence that could give it a chance at a longer cultural life. But it does have just the tone you'd hope it would, especially as it nears its climax, and that's all it really needs to deliver the goods.

Hill is willing to look critically at some of his industry's darkness, but he's also far too inclined to let his lead off the hook, and his film is weaker for it. As dark comedy, Outcome feels underbaked; as drama, it lacks sufficient introspection to have earned its emotional catharsis. Part of that is length: At under 90 minutes, the film is sometimes choppy and out of breath, and more time to flesh out its ideas might have helped it feel more tonally balanced. But no one change could fix a problem that's rooted in the vision for this material.

The movie asks a lot of its audience in terms of suspended disbelief, and while it occasionally handles its cheesier moments by poking fun at itself, there are times when cringe-worthy lines are delivered with absolute sincerity. Particularly early on, in fact, You, Me & Tuscany seems doomed to be yet another trope-y romcom that fails to set itself apart. What ultimately saves the movie is unquestionably its cast. Unsurprisingly, given their respective romance backgrounds, Bailey and Page are everything audiences want in romcom leads.

Not all movies need to be action-packed, and that was never Mermaid's goal, despite what its opening, horror-themed mermaid encounter might have led one to believe. However, for a film that sets out to take viewers into the mind of a broken man clinging to his last shot at change, Mermaid does not pack the emotional punch that is needed to hook the audience all the way through.

Margot knows the dangers of social media – her backstory has shades of cliché, but it's still effective in pushing her down the rabbit hole that her coworkers' superficiality precludes them from exploring. That investigation involves a string of missing persons and a killer obsessed with the dark corners of the internet. The biggest issue with Faces of Death, though, is that it's just not all that dark down there.

In The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, as in the 2023 film, surprise character cameos, nonstop gags and action, and references to 40 years’ worth of games that fly across the screen at 100 mph take precedence over plot, character development, and pacing. However, if you’re ready to turn off your brain for a little under two hours and bask in the impressive animation and countless Easter eggs, there’s a lot of fun to be had in this sugar rush of a sequel.

It sits somewhere at the intersection of Quentin Tarantino and Sam Raimi, though without the former's control of form and the latter's splatstick comedic timing, it can't quite live up to the potential of that mashup. Still, it's plenty of fun. Zazie Beetz is the ideal badass heroine to carry this movie, and there are more than enough moments of stylish violence (and violent style) to get the whole theater cackling.

Sam somewhat shrinks into the periphery of the story to make way for Amanda Peet's Dianne, whose tonal world is welcome, but certainly different. Rather than hold things together, Shear the filmmaker seems to step back, too. The result is a film that only exists in moments: sometimes funny, sometimes interesting, always lacking the cohesion necessary to add up to anything.

Director Vicky Jewson and her stunt team... properly make dance a large part of its central characters' fight sequences, which gives them a very different flavor. However, this only elevates the film so far beyond its fairly underwhelming script.

She Dances seems almost scared of its own premise.

Ultimately, Over Your Dead Body is too messy for its own good. It is unable to settle into any one choice. The repeated motif of flashbacks and plot twists is fun, but not always useful in keeping the ball up.

It's something of a disappointment that the film, as a whole, fails to live up to Byrne's great work in it. But it's certainly not a bad film.

The film boasts a twee quirkiness in style, but in its narrative, that promise never really comes to fruition. It is, in other words, a much more normal affair than what is promised. In spite of many genuine laughs, that just translates into a disappointing experience.

In between nonchalant murders, Beers, Bacon, and Sedgwick aim for grounded heart-to-heart conversations of a kind that don't exactly feel at home in the movie's otherwise topsy-turvy world. But being that this is a real family that has worked together for decades, their chemistry elevates the somewhat lackluster writing to deliver a pleasurable, if tame experience.

If Ready or Not was a chess match, Here I Come is tic-tac-toe.

Thankfully, despite the movie feeling imbalanced in parts, One Another still proves to be a generally charming enough diversion.

Unfortunately, Reminders of Him isn't a very good film, at least in the traditional sense. But, like Regretting You, there's a certain level of lizard brain enjoyment that transcends much of the film's flaws and allows for all the soapy, melodramatic elements to be enjoyed at their own level.

Perhaps it's fitting that a horror film set around a podcast flits in and out of being engaging, since that's more or less the experience of listening to one, but it doesn't exactly make for a cohesive viewing experience.

This Is Not a Test suggests a filmmaker content to operate within the familiar confines of the horror genre rather than push beyond them.

To put it simply: it's just not very stimulating to watch two people who have a hard time talking... have a hard time talking. Stella and Gerry's love may be stuck in the wintry cold, but so is the film, utterly unable to be thawed.

For all of its missteps, calling Dolly an outright bad movie still doesn't quite prove an accurate descriptor for Blackhurst's slasher thriller. It's got a solid cast of performers, occasionally stylish direction, and some shocking brutality, but can never quite find the right rhythm to bring it all together.

Every life is a universe unto itself, and Ricciardi was clearly the kind of unique soul whose spirit enriched everyone around him, but its actually in the margins of this sometimes preening doc that Benna's film really hits its target. When the film rests, it destigmatizes a process that everyone will eventually go through (albeit in a range of ways).

While it has a mix of fresh and familiar concepts, Protector ultimately still feels too routine to stand out from the crowd.

Thankfully, Boon, Graham, and Riseborough do enough to anchor the film and bring it home as it lands on a strangely poignant note both chilling and endearing.