A satisfying conclusion awaits but, truth be told, it has been a bit of a slog, with soft digressions into social critiques and the meaning of faith grafted onto a setup that, by the third movie in the franchise, shows its seams instantly. Wake up, indeed.

There is perhaps an intriguing movie here somewhere — “Who decides what is God’s will?” is one lingering question —but to find it you have to slice away all the bawdy and ultra-violent excesses that are clearly intended to push buttons, like a 5-year-old testing her parents’ patience. Yawn.

Orion and the Dark is about fear and overcoming it but this movie directed by Sean Charmatz has too much junk clogging up the vision.

A letdown, another comedy that's strange for the sake of being strange. This one's a riff on detective movies. It has nothing to say but does take a long time to say it...the film plays like a bad inside joke. [2 March 1998]

Throughout The King, you can feel Jarecki desperately working, slicing, trying to make connections. What could have been a gentle, personal travelogue is reworked and reworked until it’s often guilty of the last sin of Elvis — excess.

It should surprise no one that a movie marketed with creepy smiling fans at MLB games might not actually have genuine concerns about pain and healing on its mind. But it still makes “Smile” a cynical and shallow piece of work unlikely to put a you-know-what on too many faces.

If Eastwood had extended the sensitivity it shows to Jewell to others, it might have been worth something more. Instead, it becomes just what it preaches against: a hatchet job.

A bewildering 90-minute, narrator-less and wordless experiment that’s as audacious as it is infuriating. It’s not clear if everyone was high making it or we should be while watching it.

Ron’s Gone Wrong thinks it’s being subversive when its really being very corporate. It wastes its voice cast — including Olivia Colman, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis — and it never really connects, ending as awkwardly as a modern-day seventh-grader with a rock collection.

The problem with Men isn’t with the acting. It’s with a script that could be described as attempting at something like arty horror and can’t stick the landing. Often it is tedious, slow to build and pretentious.

The saddest thing about “Transformers One” is the wastefulness of another dull outing in a universe geared toward kids just learning to transform themselves.

Gretel & Hansel is as visually arresting as it is tedious, a 90-minute movie that really should have been a 3-minute music video for Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne. It’s in the horror genre only loosely. It’s more eerie, if that’s a genre. Actually, it’s like dread for 90 minutes. It’s dreadful.

The Bad Guys 2 has clearly lost its moorings.

The force is not strong in “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” a shallow “Man on Wire” for social media influencers about a pair of Russian daredevils who stealthily scale urban heights to attain the precious treasure of a much-liked Instagram post.

You can see why Hold the Dark might have made a compelling book, but the film is one grim and pitiless journey.

Overall, it’s just not so good, so good.

The filmmakers employ all kinds of ways to try to keep viewers interested, like split screens, some farce and a surreal dream sequence, but there’s not enough humor or grit or anything other than actors swanning around in period clothing.

It’s a basic format that’s been trotted out for plenty of reboots before. But aside from its frequent stabs at self-referential comedy, “Scream” proceeds with a dull repetitiveness.

It’s not as funny as it thinks it is and tiresome in its overly familiar redemption arc.

Stunningly stupid! Amazingly bad! Incredibly awful! Just downright terrible! [17 Feb 1993]

All sequels and no originals make us all dull boys.

Maybe [Borgli's] trolling America but “The Drama” is clearly the worst thing he’s ever done.

Somebody, anybody, should drag Odenkirk away from this nobody franchise.

The film is apparently supposed to be a meditation on masculinity, with Eastwood’s one-time rodeo star Mike Milo taming and rebuilding his young rebellious charge into an honorable young man. Instead, it’s a meditation on clumsy and predictable filmmaking.

Writer and director Drew Pearce has made an uneven feature film directorial debut. He flaps around for a consistent tone, stunts some potential story lines and kicks out a bunch of cliches. Then, clearly unable to find a rational way to end his film, he adds two massive doses of nonsensical ultra-violence.

The vaguest hints of real-world intrigue only cast a pale light on the movie’s mostly lackluster comic chops and uninspired action sequences.

The tonal swings, not to mention the gloss that covers the whole enterprise, make “The Gorge” an intriguing but empty genre mash-up and streaming-only exercise.

The director ends on a righteous note but he’s not earned it.

Spinal Tap II is filled with ghosts. It’s like watching a cover band playing the hits but then realizing it’s actually the original band onstage after all.

The film somehow manages its own witchcraft in finding the perfect un-sweet spot — it’s too scary for little kids, not scary enough for older ones, not funny or clever enough for their parents, and too redundant for everyone. Poof! Watch the audience disappear.

It’s not a compelling environmental film or a good drama about racers. Like many of the electric cars on the track that season, it stalls.

The film, set 183 years before the events of “The Hobbit,” is a return to Middle-earth that, despite some very earnest storytelling, never supplies much of an answer as to why, exactly, it exists.

The filmmakers are also clearly trying their hand at satire, but ham-fistedly. Set during the Reagan-era “Just Say No” period, “Cocaine Bear” hopes to remark on the demonization of drugs and it also seems to have something to say about how humans misunderstand the balance of nature. Neither work.

From beginning to end, his new film is packed with shootings, brutality and violence _ like one long video war game...Rarely since "Heaven's Gate" has a major movie been so painfully bad, not only in dialogue. The battle scenes are neither dramatic nor convincing, merely brutal. [21 Aug 1984]

But It Ends With Us doesn’t end quickly enough — more than two hours drag — with tangents and poor editing, like sudden scene cuts that leave viewers looking for clues to where they are.

Disney should have left the original alone.

Actually, Muppets From Space doesn't offer much for adults, either. The normally smart, endearing characters can't save this movie, which begins with a flimsy premise. [12 July 1999]

Deep Water, despite an all-star team behind it, barely makes a splash. Although it is being billed as an erotic thriller, it’s tedious and clunky. Trips to the supermarket are more exciting.

You’ve played Pokémon Go, right? Call this one Pokémon Don’t Go.

This dark, meandering and cliche-ridden bummer starring a trying-hard Jennifer Lawrence tries to reach for a cool and stylish look at contemporary spycraft but often falls victim to cartoon violence and a muddled story. The creators may call it erotic but it’s as erotic as a visit to the dentist.

Director Kyle Marvin fails to build any real tension as he frighteningly shifts from farce to cringe to melancholy, but real footage of the big game is nicely knitted into the second half.

BREATHLESS may attract attention because of the ample display of Richard Gere, but it is a hollow, cynically exploitive film. [23 May 1983]

Hill is a modern-day Peckinpah. But is there really a need for this pointless, graphic violence in the 1980s? Is this escapism, or is it just a distasteful, needless reflection of what has become horrifyingly common in the real world?

Christmas on the Square is pure, studio-lot fantasy and not really trying to be anything else.

Credit goes to the film’s visual effects folk, who made fur alive and gave texture to smoke. But retreading this story with a Cumberbatch, should send Hollywood bigwigs into the booby hatch.

Part of the problem is that the movie takes itself so seriously, making some of the irreverent humor of “Cobra Kai” unattainable.

Malignant at least has originality going for it. It’s also a thanklessly humorless and offensively sadistic film that fails to capture any sort of authentic emotion or make any meaningful statements about trauma.

Slack when it should be terrifying, “Wolf Man” suffers from cheap sentimentality, laughably obvious script reveals, poor continuity and a creature that is less predatory than painful. Pity comes to mind.

They Will Kill You may remind you of the marriage between madcap, social satire and bloody mayhem from “Ready or Not” but it’s a warning of how hard that combo is to get correctly.

Henson does as best she can with this material, attempting Lucille Ball-level physical comedy. But she’s laboring and often overshadowed by the one unpredictable spark in the film — provided by Erykah Badu.

Virtually no one associated with this film should be congratulated in any way, having ruptured any bridges between Hollywood and senior citizens or for the shocking misuse of Diane Keaton’s considerable skills.

Amsterdam reaches for something contemporary to say about race relations, concentration of wealth, veterans and fascism but ends up with a plodding, mannerist noise.

Made in America has a deficit problem - it's a comedy with woefully few good jokes, a leading man and woman with a serious lack of chemistry, and a plot that has as much credibility as a campaign promise. [27 May 1993]

Spenser Confidential is a bit of a mess tonally with a plot that keeps attracting new weird layers, like lint on a sweater. It wants to be funnier than it is. It hopes to be deeper than it is.

This sequel may be focused more on emotion and character — since the whole comet thing happened long ago — but the problem is, none of this is compellingly rendered, and is forgotten when convenient.

Part of the problem of “Chapter 1” is that in addition to overstuffing it with too many characters, the editing is pretty bad. Viewers will struggle with some violent cuts in which Costner has jumped the action forward months within the same chapter without any clues.

Black’s filmmaking is old-school, grounded in ’80s humor, reveling at its over-the-topness and often gleefully thumbing its nose at political correctness. That might be refreshing, but it also can lead to questionable decisions.

At the film’s center is Q but there is a hollowness there. She can rappel down a staircase using a fire hose, endure waterboarding and use a dinner tray as an assault weapon, but there’s little insight in her inner life or emotions and her backstory appears too late.

The tagline for “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is “Some things are meant to stay buried.” That also applies to the misguided “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” which should definitely stay deep underground for eternity.

This is pure lazy storytelling, like thinking that just showing us a clip of Bob Ross painting is somehow uproariously funny.

The first thing director Roland Emmerich should do after his latest movie Midway hits theaters is apologize. Apologize to the visual effects crew, the stuntmen, the carpenters, the costumers and artists. He has squandered their considerable visual skill in retelling the crucial World War II battle at Midway by melding some of the best action sequences in years with the most banal of words.

Ham-fisted and simplistically drawn. [11 July 1995]

There is no thrill, entertainment or insight to be gleaned in watching the myriad ways people can die by their own hand. It’s just awful, and this is not a film that is interested in grappling with the trauma in any interesting or helpful way. Instead it is two hours of unpleasant drudgery.

Though it starts off promisingly enough with Carrey’s character marooned on a “piece of shitake” mushroom planet, it soon becomes evident that this outing is a soulless attempt to up the stakes and cash in.

A new directing and writing team fails to shock or scare with a color-by-numbers plot and a meandering, languid wannabe frightfest.

It’s a pretty grim portrait, but even worse it is often repetitive and boring. There are probably enough powerful segments for half a dozen or so outstanding rock videos but not a full-length feature. [13 Sept 1982]

It's a film that's two hours of maudlin, heavy-handed overwrought silliness. Think of "Prince of Tides" meets "Benny & Joon," with less entertainment value. [5 Oct 1993]

Oyelowo is the one who comes off without a scratch and actually has some quite amusing moments (he has a great, high-pitched scream and solid comedic timing). If only the movie was a better showcase.

A work of fierce interiority has been turned into a hollow exercise in exteriority.

Al Capone’s last year could make for an interesting film, but there is little poetry or transcendence in Capone, and nothing even remotely close to the quietly devastating third act of “The Irishman.”

Few films in memory have squandered so much acting talent in such a cliche-ridden, exploitative and dishonest way.

Honest Thief, co-written and directed by Mark Williams, is a predictable and slack affair, relying on eerie music, dark sets and smoke to create tension. There is no particular set of skills here.

It’s hard to overstate just how garish and frenetic this whole endeavor is. Even with the explosion of colors it still strains to hold interest.

Yes, the cinematography is what stands out here. There are also several compelling performances, though Baldwin’s somewhat halting, somber turn is not among them.

Wandering aimlessly in the well-worn corridors of 1980s puerile frat flicks, Life of the Party wobbles to a predictable end and then sort of finishes without a bang.

Paramount’s limp, animated remake actually triggers new stereotypes in the service of trying to expose racism for a pre-teen audience. The studio seems to have reached for legitimacy by bringing the venerated Brooks along for the bumpy ride, darkening both legacies. What emerged sits uneasily at the corner of tribute, parody, theft and laziness.

Wonder Park has a great premise about a spunky kid engineer and a world she constructs taking flight, but takes a few too many dark loop-de-loops and crashes hard. If you pass this amusement park, skip it.

It is more like half a movie, standing in the shadow of its parent. It is a film made to sell us more lunchboxes.

It might still be passable for cable, but this series has sadly fallen into unwatchable territory.

A hopelessly bland and bizarrely self-serious monster movie.

Overly long, bombastic and poorly focused.

There’s just not enough there — action, comedy, romance, art — to demand (or, rather, earn) your full attention.

The best thing that Holidate has going for it is that Roberts and Bracey do have great chemistry, but they just don’t have a story or a script that can do it justice.

All the pieces here are fine but nothing is distinct from dozens of films before it. You would swear that the movie’s star AI wrote it — and even gave itself first billing, too.

More concrete examples of how mushrooms or dropping acid aided life are sorely needed.

Brightburn was a good idea. Unfortunately the creativity stopped there.

The one bright spot is Cena, who is quite good. Like his character, who goes above and beyond to adeptly play Ricky Stanicky, Cena really and truly commits and brings a kind of unexpected depth and pathos to Rock Hard Rod. He’s flexed his comedy muscles before and should again, soon. Is it enough to save the movie? Not for me.

The wrong version of Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael must have been released, because this sloppy-looking film never should have been allowed into theaters. [11 Oct 1990]

[A] dreary little waste of celluloid. [12 July 1993]

It's a rather insipid rendition of the Alexandre Dumas classic destined to stand in the shadow of earlier movie versions. Oddly enough, this Disney version of the rousing novel leaves a final impression somewhere between lifeless and bland.

Was it attempting a freewheeling jazz form, or is it just messy?

"Scooby Doo” was never the most unpredictable of shows but Scoob! has merely swapped the original’s blueprint for that of a superhero movie. You’ll be left mournfully munching a bag of Scooby Snacks while wondering, “Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you?”

It’s so dated there’s even a mention of Halliburton.

Look, we hate to break it to you, it’s not going to end well for many of this privileged set, as they hunt whoever is hunting them. Coherence is also stabbed a lot because a clear motive for the mass murder is really hard to understand.

The problem with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the same problem faced by all of the installments — balancing the humanity with the metal.

Not only do its two stars have zero chemistry with each other, but the story goes out of its way to over-explain and over-justify the preposterous premise, adding needless complications (like a whole side-plot about his family’s business) and motivations to make everyone more likable and empathetic.

Director Julius Onah does well with the action but fumbles the quieter moments and supervises editing that’s the opposite of crisp, not helped by script writers who ape military language — “Negative, the package is the priority” — and grandiose sentiment — “The country is lost.”

Green wobbles as he tries to land this plane and what had been an intriguing premise to talk about fame and the parasitic industries that live off it turns into a gross-out, run-for-it bloodfest and a plot that unravels. It becomes what it intended to satirize — a pop spectacle.