For all its avenues of inquiry, however, it never quite gels into more than a collection of tantalizing but unfounded theories.

A stately affair that’s never particularly intellectually incisive or revealing, and its stolid execution fails to transcend the material’s inherent staginess.

Set to Tom Holkenborg’s bombastic score, Gregorian chanting, and endless pew-pew-pews, Rebel Moon—Part Two: The Scargiver roars and rampages, yet its drama can’t match its aesthetic pomposity.

Hits many of the right feel-good notes. Unfortunately, it also strikes a lot of discordant ones, neutering most of its attempts at rousing inspiration.

The cautionary tale is a familiar one. But it’s told with enough flashy verve and humor, along with a gossipy bombshell audio recording, to play as a breezy non-fiction look back at a phenom that had its 15 minutes—or, at least, enough time to get through an evening’s worth of quiz questions—in the smartphone spotlight.

It builds to revelations that speak emphatically to social shallowness, pressures and prejudices—even if, in the end, its bombshells resonate as less surprising than inevitable.

Rehashing clichés with formal polish but little novelty, this oater is a dour affair made all the grimmer by the fact that there isn’t a second of its 139 minutes that isn’t colored, in some way, by the on-set shooting that made it notable, and notorious, in the first place.

Never coherently articulates (or draws connections between) its various concerns, proving a handsomely horrific vampire bloodbath that, ahem, bites off more than it can chew.

The underwhelming result is similar to its signature beasts: a handsome clone that serves no purpose except to line its creators’ pockets.

The Devil on Trial still allows David and others to argue that demonic possession did take place, but given the evidence on display, many will likely find that up for considerable debate.

A cautionary tale about…making “a pact with the devil.” However, Milli Vanilli doesn’t have much to reveal that isn’t by now well-known pop lore.

Overwhelms via length and monotony, employing a challenging form that’s both its greatest strength and, ultimately, its most frustrating weakness.

A rehash that—in the interest of staving off franchise death for a little while longer—could stand to learn a few new tricks.

An aggressively fine intergalactic adventure whose earnest optimism and sweetness flirts—faithfully and dully—with hokiness.

A narratively and emotionally disjointed journey, its fine lead performances, moving details, and racial commentary never cohering into an affecting spectacular.

Such tension ultimately unravels during a latter half that rushes through too many underwhelming revelations, but that’s not enough to completely offset the film’s beguiling air of despondency.

It won’t revolutionize the genre, and in fact would have benefited from considerable additional polish, but it’s just cute enough to warrant two hours of Netflix subscribers’ time.

A beat-‘em-up whose competent fight sequences are ultimately overshadowed by its unintentional humor.

A pleasant and well-acted curio, and little more.

When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees.

Goes heavy on convincing musical performances to make up for the fact that it has nothing astute to say about its subject—in large part because it doesn’t seem to really know him.

Too much of Realm of Satan comes off as unreasonably poe-faced, which not only neuters the proceedings’ sense of giddy transgression but feels at odds with these characters’ comical bizarreness.

Little more than a creaky lark that fails to generate consistent laughs, even if it proves that John Cena is a charming goof-off who’s game for anything.

Boasts the idiosyncratic anxiety, depression, and angst of its author’s work and the bouncy tone and matching visual style of every other recent cinematic kid’s fable—two flavors that, it turns out, don’t really go well together.

Has its heart in the right place but little else, starting out competently and then slowly falling apart with each clumsy step along its "Game of Thrones"-lite path.

Despite winning the Best Actress (for its female ensemble) and Jury Prize awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s a bold gamble that doesn’t quite pay off.

A surface-level portrait about a scientific advancement that could change the world for the better or the worse, and a man who knows how to wield it but can’t necessarily be trusted to do so.

Though stirringly headlined by Kate Winslet, it’s a by-the-books affair in almost every respect.

While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t quite capture the irresistible magic of the original, it’s full of stylistic wonder and fun characters.

Despite attractive aesthetics, its fights grow wearisome, especially as the material crosses the two-hour mark and, in the process, zooms past multiple potential endings.

No matter a committed performance (two, actually) from Robert Pattinson, it’s an original that plays like a rehash—and an underwhelmingly unfunny one at that.

You can cut-and-paste all your adolescent obsessions into a giant collage (and recruit Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn to participate in the madness), but that doesn’t mean it’ll amount to more than a messy, insubstantial grab bag of your favorite things.

A rather obvious and pedestrian lesson, if one that’s embellished with a few memorably macabre sights.

Telegraphs its bombshells from the outset and dutifully shuffles toward a conclusion that tethers this saga to Donner’s The Omen.

Rental Family, directed by Hikari, displays an almost admirable amount of restraint in its tear jerking, opting for quieter moments of grace rather than overdone emotion. In fact, it’s so restrained that Fraser’s Phillip Vandarpleog is not much of a character at all, and you leave itching for more of his inner life.

Blame for this sports drama’s shallow leadenness can’t be similarly pinned on the supernatural; instead, its shortcomings are attributable to a one-dimensional script and resultant performances that are far less nuanced than its headliners’ ripped bodies.

By minimizing its predecessor’s goofiness in favor of vacuous character drama, winds up only sporadically kicking into gale-force gear.

Follows the same basic pattern as the work of her dad M. Night Shyamalan—namely, it starts strong and then slowly falls apart under the weight of its obligations to clarify its baffling scenario.

By weighing everything so heavily, and obviously, in one direction, it eventually comes off as a thinly disguised sermon about ugly oppression and noble suffering and defiance.

The Animal Kingdom is what an X-Men movie would look like if it doubled-down on its tolerance-for-outsiders metaphor and did away with any exciting superpowered spectacle.

May have things to say, but doesn’t have a clue how to say them.

A mediocre remix that, for all its familiar elements, fails to improve upon a single aspect of its trailblazing predecessor.

To say that it’s a fourth-generation knock-off of myriad similar YA sagas that have come before it would be an understatement.

As an authorized project primarily designed to celebrate rather than investigate, that hatred goes largely unexamined in this non-fiction affair.

As sumptuous and vapid as a commercial for Dior or Chanel’s latest fragrance.

A typical provincial British tale about everyday Englishmen and women banding together to accomplish a controversial task against long odds, it’s akin to a warm glass of milk.

A work that proves hopelessly at odds with itself all the way to a conclusion that fizzles at the moment it should explode.

It takes its time—quite frankly, too long—to deliver the gruesome goods/

What’s missing, however, is a payoff worthy of his set-up, resulting in a diverting thriller that drags its way to an underwhelming finale.

As a showcase for the inimitable Dafoe it has its minor freaky-deaky pleasures. Ultimately, though, it goes nowhere—literally and figuratively.

There’s nothing very unsettling about its eventual horrors, in large part because the film is too infatuated with its sleek style to get its hands dirty.

Just as there’s no reference to the many falsehoods Diana has apparently told about her past, there’s zero overt mention of the controversy surrounding her signature triumph—thereby proving that the film cares more about rah-rah uplift than thorny inquiry or messy reality.

It all resembles a lot of cosplaying, although its central failing is foregrounding cacophonous mayhem and middling melodrama over the drollness that defined the first two Ghostbusters movies.

A hot-blooded crime story whose affectations outweigh its subversions.

Part Die Hard, part wish-fulfillment saga for a post-2024 present that didn’t come to pass, it’s a fantasy of feminist and U.S. might that’s chockablock with implausibilities.

It's content to be childishly silly rather than legitimately weird, veering between gags concerning age-old products and Jan. 6 with a mildness that keeps things pleasantly pedestrian.

Its formal showmanship unconvincing and off-putting, the film is a case study in the hazards of prizing style over substance.

There’s not much to latch onto here except the faint flickers of the better film this one, with more care and attention to detail, might have been.

Unlike its unique and fantastical title creature, it’s a commonplace monster mash which serves up only frenzied commotion and tired social commentary.

Undone by storytelling that, however well-intentioned, coats its real-life tale in a corny Hollywood sheen.

While its humor often sticks, its mayhem fails to land.

Love Machina’s scattershot structure does its subjects no favors, with the film taking a variety of meandering detours until its overarching purpose grows hazy.

In trying to have it both ways, it succeeds in neither, in the process stranding its charming leading man in a saga that needed to be either goofier or more gruesome.

Without greater context, though, Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case comes across as slight, and that notion is reinforced by a finale that draws no meaningful lessons from its tragic saga.

The epitome of a knock-off B-movie—and one that’s only mildly entertaining when it shows its cards and goes full-on gonzo.

It isn’t a debacle, but it also won’t have genre aficionados howling for more.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare would seem to be an almost ideal project for Ritchie—which is why its lethargy comes as such a dispiriting surprise.

An uninspired cover song in desperate need of its forerunner’s fire and flair.

So expansive and incomplete that it resembles a modern television series awkwardly edited into feature form.

Exhibits a superficial interest in ribald revelry and yet, in most respects, neuters its wilder impulses.

Only receiving a multiplex release because Warner Bros had to do so in order to maintain the franchise’s theatrical rights, it’s inconsequential and hackneyed to the point of being forgettable.

This rote affair would deserve the designation “for fans only,” if not for the sneaking suspicion that even they won’t be wowed by this return trip to Panem.

So rote that even an A.I. wouldn’t dare try to pass it off as original.

It’s as big a swing as any in Besson’s career, and consequently, when it wholly and embarrassingly misses, the blow back is borderline overpowering.

A sluggish and monotonous country-ified neo-noir that fails to innovate and, worse, to utilize its magnetic leading lady and her capable co-stars.

A shallow and slender tale of lousy dreams, worse decisions, and painful regrets, all of it predicated on a lead turn that’s too one-note to wow.

Stylized to the hilt but empty inside, it faithfully echoes the harried shallowness of its protagonist, whose desperate search for one big score to reverse his fortunes is all surface, no substance—the cinematic equivalent of a knock-off Rolex.

A Compassionate Spy takes a far more rose-tinted, one-note view of Hall—a tack that requires skirting past major conflicting particulars and eschewing the very uncertainty that Hall himself exhibits in numerous archival interviews.

It’s consistently engaging, but also not much more revealing than a quick perusal of Jennifer’s Wikipedia page, and the fact that its real-life saga may not be over only amplifies the impression that it’s less than the full story.

Affords Julia Roberts with her best part in years as a professor whose role in a burgeoning scandal threatens to expose her deep, dark (related) secrets. She’s not enough, however, to make this wannabe-conversation starter coherent, much less insightful.

Devolves into such a morass of shrill chaos and affected symbolism that it’s difficult to feel anything other than exasperation with its central maternal crisis.

Burdened by a hazy and mannered style that drains it of urgency and feeling, it’s a self-conscious curio that’s less dreamy than dreary.

The Mean Girls movie-musical barely differentiates itself from its predecessor.

Considering Rogen’s participation as both a writer and actor, it’s surprising that Mutant Mayhem plays it so safe, not merely in terms of plot but with regards to its comedy.

Megalopolis is the kind of thing that has to be seen to be believed. Many will find it uproarious, others may locate some profundity, most will have to shake their heads. Whatever it is, it’s a lot.

Largely faithful but unwilling to pick a funny or nasty lane, it’s the most impersonal film of its writer/director’s career, and a revolutionary thriller that too often falls back on establishment conventions.

The amusing thrills intermittently appear, but the novelty is gone.

Yanking unashamedly at the heartstrings, however, it’s a manipulative and uneven tune that strains to elicit the sniffles it so hungrily seeks.

Though Monkey Man is exasperating, Patel’s work shows heart, love, and promise—something that can’t be said about many other action films.

Those with a hankering for willfully pretentious absurdity may find this festival entry right up their alley.

A would-be franchise re-starter that resembles a Saturday morning cartoon come to overstuffed, helter-skelter life.

Although handsomely mounted and occasionally chilling, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a one-note tweet.

A sci-fi story that spirals about in circles on its way to a predictable and underwhelming twist and an even less satisfying conclusion.

Despite looking great, it comes off as a humdrum knockoff of yesterday’s fashion.

This movie is nice to gawk at, though the character models of Disney films are starting to get a little too interchangeable, a little too… well, on model. But as a piece of storytelling, Wish is as flimsy as a star decal stuck to a wall.

A socially conscious romantic comedy, and if those two modes don’t sound compatible, [writer/director] Libii does nothing to alter that impression.

There’s no mystery to Speak No Evil, and even less disquieting creepiness; instead, it’s a bludgeoning beast, epitomized by McAvoy’s Paddy.

The main takeaway from this dreary dud, however, is that winning an Academy Award is no guarantee of continued big-screen success.