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.

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.

Straining for both timeliness and throwback thrills, it’s an alien affair that never delivers the grand payoffs it teases.

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.

A daring saga that boasts far more moments that stumble than soar. It’s a mess that can be admired—but a mess, nonetheless.

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.

[Wheatley’s] chaos and madness is of a blandly cartoonish variety, neither serious enough to scare nor outlandish enough to elicit laughs.

Kurosawa creates such an eerie atmosphere in the first hour of Cloud that watching it crumble into more generic action territory is challenging, and feels like a miscalculation. It doesn’t help that much of the action in the second half isn’t particularly interesting.

Ripped from yesterday’s headlines, it’s as fast, flashy and superficial as the director’s prior efforts, and also as exaggerated.

The legendary star spends the majority of this misfire looking alternately bored and really bored—an emotion that viewers will find all-too-relatable.

Its formal lyricism offset by a script that’s intolerably clunky, it’s an affected portrait of euthanasia and friendship that gets lost in translation.

It’s quite a shortcoming when a documentary avoids so many elements of its own story that it proves less comprehensive and compelling than a Ryan Murphy drama.

It has one thing to say, and it says it over and over again with a dismal lack of nuance.

[Hamm’s] charm—and a reunion with his 30 Rock co-star Tina Fey—can’t salvage a middling caper that’s critically low on comedic or criminal verve.

Omits as much as it reveals, fixating so doggedly on its subject that it fails to dig into the various pertinent questions and dilemmas raised by his tale.

Aside from a couple of vicious set pieces, however, this genre effort’s gimmickry results in derivative cornball melodrama. It would have benefited greatly from speaking louder while carrying a big stick.

An irredeemably obvious and one-note affair that says everything in its first 10 minutes and spends the remainder of its time vainly trying to drum up humor from a wan Weekend at Bernie’s-esque scenario.

Pulling on the heartstrings with tug-of-war-grade might, it’s a carpe diem fable that elicits more exasperated eye rolls than tears or laughs.

Though Immaculate won’t raise any hairs, it should boost Sweeney’s career. She transcends all of the triteness, proving herself to be the megawatt actress with virtuoso potential that she’s already demonstrated herself to be.

For all its commotion, however, the film doesn’t drum up the madcap mania it seeks.

Despite a premise that begets one of the strangest lovemaking scenes in recent memory—a quasi-incestuous gender-bending head-spinner—the film is too frequently the epitome of pretentiousness.

[A] bland stab at genre hybridization, whose sole accomplishment is falling flat at everything it tries.

A familiar stew that’s as scattershot as ever, and engineered to appeal to teens who can’t get enough jokes about sex, race, and movies they’ve already seen.

An ignominious tour-de-force for the esteemed headliner, who gets to indulge in just about every caricatured mannerism and colloquialism in the stale La Cosa Nostra cookbook.

Its most impressive feat, however, is finding a way to somehow be even duller than its predecessors.

Rife with symbolic weight, the action is thematically jumbled, and worse, it takes so long establishing its scenario that it never develops a sense of urgency and madness.

Refusing to provide an accurate and trustworthy snapshot of what both these opposing factions are really about, the film comes across as a superficial exposé afraid of getting dirty.

An odyssey that—weird characterizations notwithstanding—is tiresomely unexceptional.

[Depp] proves that he remains one of cinema’s most magnetic presences—even if his latest project doesn’t do terribly much with him.

Lipovsky and Stein elicit not a single solid performance from their cast, and their tale’s twists are illogical even by the material’s established guidelines.

Provides only some of his story, its up-close-and-personal view masking as much as it reveals.

It’s a satisfying return to the genre from Gluck, a promising feature-length script debut from Wolpert, and an intriguing first outing from Sweeney and Powell. The two stars have the stuff; it just needs some more refining before round two.

Russell Crowe continues to prove that he’s better than the B-grade projects he’s now offered, but his convincing performance isn’t enough to elevate this surprise-free mystery.

With no twists or clues to keep things lively and volatile, one’s mind instinctively begins to ponder how things are being precisely timed, where the other actors are moving to in the background, and the many other behind-the-scenes logistical challenges inherent to such an endeavor.

No amount of narrative wackiness and star power can make [cabbages] or this Sundance Film Festival offering funny.

Nothing—including a game performance by Dev Patel—can prevent it from tumbling down a bottomless hole from which it can’t escape.

A fleetingly recognizable tale of love, desire, obsession, regret, bitterness, and ire that, at every turn, plays as florid, horny, juvenile fanfiction.

A tale whose creative inspiration seems to be Three’s Company—and that’s not a compliment.

Hot Frosty is absolutely absurd and awful, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Silly and slipshod, it’s not the role that will catapult the acclaimed actor back into the types of projects he deserves.

The real issue here is simply a dearth of novelty—an insurmountable shortcoming for a B-movie that should be able to drum up some thrills from its offspring-of-Nosferatu premise.

Affected and artificial to the point of aggravation, it’s an interminably draggy endeavor that gives the lie to its oft-spoken phrase, “Time flies.”

A Frankenstein-ian cine-monster that both reinvents and pays homage with all the clumsiness and unsightliness of its fabled creature.

Were it not for the participation of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, it would be an insufferable groaner rather than merely an inoffensive one.

The film’s dawn of the new millennium references—from AOL dial-up crackles to the “Macarena” dance—are absolutely riotous. But a lack of intriguing characters and failure to follow through on a great concept for a horror story leave Y2K with major software bugs.

An excruciatingly literal affair, not to mention a repetitive one, spinning in circles to dizzying, and ever-diminishing, ends.

The sole thing it instigates is frustration over its lethargic unoriginality.

[Song’s] sophomore effort embraces a lighthearted rom-com template and then plays its material inaptly seriously—making it the cinematic equivalent of a sugary soda gone terribly flat.

The best one can say about it is that it at least doesn’t feature a lovably cartoonish genocidal dictator.

A pedestrian thriller that never generates a modicum of suspense.

Strives for stratospheric emotional heights and yet proves so self-seriously somber and saccharine that it plays like a leaden parody.

Arguably the most derivative offering the tired genre has yet to offer, borrowing elements from so many forebearers that it plays like a conventional pastiche.

Even the least violent passages of this follow-up are a tedious drag, courtesy of a story that asks nothing of its lead Charlize Theron and her underwhelming co-stars except endless, enervating moping.

The Garfield Movie fundamentally misunderstands the charm of Garfield.

Aiming for the stars, it proves a laborious affair that rarely gets off the ground.

Terrifier 3 is a juvenile splatterfest with an ignorable plot, and its performances veer from the competent (LaVera and Thornton) to the inept (most everyone else).

This sixth chapter boasts not a single genuinely unnerving jolt—a consequence of tepid writing as well as the familiarity of Ghostface’s tactics, which have long since become their own genre clichés.

We Strangers constantly tries to hold onto something that was never there in the first place. It’s a movie that’s sort of about community, sort of about racial assimilation, and sort of about the lies we tell ourselves and others to wrestle with life’s mundanity.

In a streaming landscape already saturated with takedowns of Big Pharma and its pill-popping perfidy, it’s a generic version of far more powerful originals.

A work of tremendous look-at-me energy: all prolonged close-ups and studied master shots of actors weeping, screaming, laughing, longing, and freaking out with sweaty, grimy intensity.

Lacks any sense of internal logic and is even lighter on surprising scares, dispensing only clichés that are as moldy as the haunted house in which his characters are confined.

While the star adequately acquits himself, Neil Jordan’s throwback noir is a cover song that knows all the notes but can’t capture its predecessor’s spirit.

Diaz and Foxx still got it, the film constantly screams. The evidence on display, however, suggests otherwise.

A franchise farewell so underwhelming, nary a tear will be shed over its passing.