For all its technical impressiveness, Lucky Strike never gathers the narrative momentum and suspense to which it aspires.

Sure, lead jackass Johnny Knoxville is an appealing performer (and a decent actor, as he’s proven numerous times). And some of the rest of his motley crew display a healthy awareness of the utter stupidity of what they’re doing. But while there are occasionally funny moments, these movies are emblematic of the dumbing down of America.

Alcock’s scrappy characterization, tempering Kara’s jaded toughness and chaotic messiness with an increasingly strong sense of justice, would seem an ideal fit to continue in a similar vein. But Supergirl only intermittently comes to life when it revisits her painful past.

Aesthetic flourishes abound, which make it an entertaining viewing experience, but one does wish that the narrative was a touch more complex. Lelio embeds some compelling meta-textual moments — ones that mostly address that fact that he’s a man tackling this subject — but the actual story of Julia can feel secondary to the melodic pageantry.

It’s all very atmospheric, including the frequent bloodlettings that Sister Brigid applies to Robin’s arm (the camera lingers lovingly on every spilled drop). But the dour, humorless proceedings never achieve the profundity they’re aiming for, and the revisionist take on Robin doesn’t prove very interesting or revelatory.

An overly mannered affect undermines the rawness of the emotions, keeping them from landing with the impact they ought.

While not every grown-up romance needs to be sexually explicit, this stiff restraint sits at odds with a script that often seems to be reaching for Apatovian raunch.

Masters of the Universe touches all the fan-serving bases, with a fun cameo by a certain star of a previous film incarnation and enough post-credit sequences to guarantee several sequels. But it all comes off as terribly forced, as if everyone involved was already trying to figure out exactly how much they’ll earn signing autographs at future Comic-Cons.

If the film captures something of the concept’s intriguing unease — with 20-year-old director Kane Parsons drawing from his own Backrooms-set short films, created when he was just a teenager — its underbaked storytelling made me wonder if some spooky ideas might be better left as whispers in the dark.

This is the sort of generic “things that go bump in the night” chiller that seems more suited for late-night cable than theatrical release, especially in an era when superior efforts have lifted the horror genre to a higher level.

At times, the movie veers almost into spoof territory, but it never commits to the bit enough to be anything more than a mismatched genre hybrid, despite its atmospheric visuals and strong design elements.

Barnard has always coaxed layered, thoughtful performances from her cast and knows this kind of battered but unbowed community like the back of her hand. But the drama here feels too diagrammatic, foretelling a tragic fate from the first scene onward as everyone parties down like their lives depend on it.

A pileup of movie-ish improbabilities in the climactic act notwithsanding, the new film is a taut nail-biter with a strong cast.

Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It’s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G’d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is.

Based on a well-regarded novel by Brenda Navarro, it’s a wafty character study so stripped down and elliptical that it lacks the connective tissue to hook us into its story or provide emotional access to its characters.

The film moves swiftly enough, with the gags coming at such a consistent pace, that inevitably some of them land. And the performers certainly know how to sell the material, with Cohen amusingly leaning into his character’s humiliations, Pike appealingly reveling in her character’s dominance, and the top-notch supporting cast going through their paces like the pros they are.

This not-quite-a-feature is basically harmless, a wallow in nostalgia so innocuous that it’s hard to begrudge its aviation-crazed creator with connections sufficient to indulge his whim.

It’s a handsomely mounted film, full of precise period detail, but is otherwise undistinguished from many solemn, exacting biopics that have come before it.

More chronicle than drama, it sticks faithfully by the side of its lovable mess of a heroine, whom Exarchopoulos plays with her usual no-bullshit funkiness, this time with too many glasses of wine down the hatch. She brings a dose of humor and a few grace notes to a movie in search of a tighter story, even if it deserves credit for its honesty.

Even if its elements don’t always gel, The Beloved offers another prime showcase for Sorogoyen’s art of unease, as well as for Bardem’s talent for playing men who can fly off the handle at any moment.

The Japanese director has no shortage of ideas — chief among them the potential for advanced robotics to bring closure to the bereaved. But too few of those ideas yield satisfying conclusions, resulting in a drama that becomes treacly and insubstantial, reaching for a profundity that remains elusive.

The problem is that all the various strands — the parallel tales — dilute our access to the characters, limiting their dimensions.

If nothing else, Guy Ritchie’s latest effort proves that a movie can be ridiculously convoluted and simple-minded at the same time.

Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.

Balagov is indisputably a filmmaker with his own distinctive vision, ideally matched with Evgueni and Sacha Galperine’s glowering score and with Fray’s nimble shooting style, which often takes its cue to get in close from the knotted bodies on the wrestling mats. Story-wise, however, Butterfly Jam is too diffuse to measure up to the brutally transfixing Beanpole.

The actors are all likeable enough, especially the gamine Demoustier, but they are stuck with limp material that’s more twee than captivating.

Nobu is a straightforward and admiring portrait of its subject.

The film has its rewards, mostly of the unsophisticated kind, since the fight sequences come fast and furious and the cheesy dialogue has enough groan-worthy one-liners to inspire a thousand drinking games.

That exciting crash sequence — from initial turbulence through to catastrophic Pacific Ocean landing — is where high-stakes action specialist Harlin is most firmly in his sweet spot.

David Frankel’s sequel hits familiar beats that fans will eat up and deftly reconfigures the core trio of women into new adversarial positions, even if it ultimately lapses into cozy sentimentality. The movie is best when it sticks to fluffy, fun nostalgia rather than shooting for substance.

While it’s not without entertainment value, Motor City feels like it wants to be Don Siegel meets Michael Mann meets Walter Hill with a dash of John Woo, but ends up an ersatz version of all their work.

Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who have written much funnier scripts for the Zombieland and Deadpool films, are here working in uninspired mode. Balls Up loses comic steam the more it goes on, and although Wahlberg and Hauser have demonstrated solid comedic chops in the past, their laid-back underplaying fails to provide much juice.

It’s an aggressive glossing-over of a career that is worthy of both reverence and introspection/interrogation/investigation. Entertaining, funny and light on its feet to a fault, Lorne offers only the first.

As bloody, dumb shark thrillers go, it stays afloat, gaining some credibility from the natural disaster element.

It’s reasonably effective, with Ferreira appealing in the lead role and Montgomery very creepy as the copycat killer who would have benefited from a more wholesome media diet.

Immortal Man certainly is a lot of misery business, but the misery is done in high style.

Relentlessly fast-paced and filled with hyperkinetic visuals, the sequel hits the sweet spot in terms of what its target audience wants, even if adult non-aficionados will find little of interest other than the starry vocal cast.

The documentary is an ungainly blend of ultra-earnest hagiography and trashy true-crime sensationalism, without being completely satisfying as either.

The Drama is a handsomely made, sharply performed letdown. It is yet another example of a far too common occurrence: a kicky logline premise having no real structure behind it.

Family Movie is a project that seems to exist entirely because the Bacon-Sedgwick clan just thought it’d be fun to collaborate on something, and that’s being released for the rest of us entirely because the Bacon-Sedgwicks are the Bacon-Sedgwicks. For some fans, maybe that’ll be enough. I think I preferred the actual home movies of the actual Kevin, Kyra, Sosie and Travis that play over the ending.

The impression Pretty Lethal leaves behind is one of unfulfilled potential, an exciting premise executed as a fitfully fun but mostly forgettable distraction.

Originally teased with the droll but less marketable title Colin You Anus, Wheatley’s sporadically amusing semi-farce has a lively rhythm and some fine performances, but the baggy screenplay never delivers the emotional grace notes and knockout revelations it promises.

While it’s a little low on scares, Hokum is pacey and involving enough to keep genre fiends watching once it hits streaming, just for production designer Til Frohlich’s creepy hotel set alone, a place that looks untouched by the passing years. But the writer-director smudges the lines separating an ancient evil from a sordid but disappointingly non-supernatural crime.

If its exploration of these ideas is ultimately too incomplete to feel fully satisfying, its performances are strong enough to draw attention throughout.

If the concept has a way of grabbing one’s attention, however, the execution proves too uneven to leave a lasting impression. Though Good Boy gets by for a while on the strength of its performances and the sheer oddness of its plot, the flimsiness of its characters drains the film of energy long before its 110 minutes are up.

Despite all the insider’s access, though, in the end the behind-the-scenes episodes offer the illusion of intimacy, rather than anything really illuminating.

It helps that the characters are all sympathetic and appealingly played, with Monroe terrific as the beleaguered Kenna, desperate to meet her daughter, and the charismatic Withers making the most of his character’s agonizing over his torn loyalties.

Ritchson, whose massive bulk qualifies as a special effect itself, displays his usual charisma, but the one-note nature of the proceedings doesn’t give him the opportunity to do much more than look physically or emotionally anguished.

The very capable ensemble, all of whom have done impressive work elsewhere, mostly gets smothered by the over-conceptualized, over-intellectualized approach to the material.

For Worse isn’t all bad; bits of it are intriguing and the rest is too anodyne to get worked up about. But it’s hard to shake the disappointment that this is just an okay movie, when it seems like it should’ve been a good one.

I wish I could say I found Hot Milk affecting, but it’s continually dragged down by inertia, by a writer-director whose approach is too intellectual to give space to emotion.

Ultimately How to Make a Killing doesn’t have the courage of its convictions, or even its killings, giving it a blandness that’s surprising coming from the writer-director of the much sharper Emily the Criminal, a similarly themed, darkly tinged thriller in which its star Aubrey Plaza displayed a fearlessness that is sorely lacking here.

By remaining purposely vague, whether about locations or the real-world stakes at hand, this modern-day political parable doesn’t hit you in the gut the way it’s meant to.

Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it’s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film’s story.

There’s no shortage of stylish craft here and much to enjoy in the performances, but ultimately, Rosebush Pruning is too glib to work, leaving only an acrid aftertaste.

This overly meta farce beats its mildly silly jokes so steadily into the ground that it’s not so much a case of diminishing returns as humor abuse.

Ultimately, Crime 101 feels too contrived and artificial to be convincing. But there’s plenty to appreciate along the way, especially the extensive cinematic craftsmanship that’s gone into it.

Rather than recalling any specific existing property, Cold Storage just feels generically familiar, like under-seasoned comfort food.

The storytelling goes haywire, to the point where you’re unsure what the Australian writer-director wants to say, though her game lead, Midori Francis, keeps you watching.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die doesn’t quite deliver on the sardonic promise of its catchy title, but its appealing cast and Verbinski’s flair for kinetic action set pieces make it a reasonably entertaining entry in the canon of gonzo sci-fi comedies fueled by existential dread about the dystopian techno-dominant reality we’re already trapped in.

Cheese and kitsch, with smatterings of blood and decapitated heads, are all on the menu in Dracula, which is a watchable if totally ludicrous version of the Stoker story. At best, the movie is another showcase for the always-interesting-to-watch Caleb Landry Jones.

Perhaps if the film was more polished, and had some added depth, it might feel more substantial. As is, Hanging by a Wire is a gripping story not told thoroughly enough.

Though The Musical may lack a feeling of modernity, it could make up for that elsewhere: with tart humor, with unexpected plot developments, with compelling performances. But, alas, Bonilla and her actors can’t do much to leaven the leaden script they’ve been handed.

Although The Weight is low on excitement, it ends on an affecting note that makes you wish the sluggish movie had been given more lucid storytelling, as well as more dramatic and emotional power.

No one enjoys beating up on a film in which the writer has invested so much of himself and his pain. But Cayton-Holland and Duplass have somehow made an authentic tragedy feel phony and unaffecting.

Overall, there is so little texture to these character arcs that the actors are mostly just working in service of a blandly uplifting message. It’s as if they’ve all been commissioned by a well-funded science museum to lend their bodies and voices to the cause of slickly comestible up-with-people infotainment.

Chasing Summer often plays as the most peculiar Hallmark movie ever made. I want that to be a good thing, but it unfortunately is not.

The Gallerist is not without its occasional charms. There’s a chuckle to be had here and there, bits of zinging dialogue that actually find the right notes. Enough so that one roots for the movie despite its many missteps. The problem, ultimately, is that Yan chose a poor subject for her film, an environment that is an incredibly hard target to nail.

I appreciate that Manners and Battye are trying to add some extra flair to what is otherwise a fairly conventional growing-pains narrative, but too often Extra Geography seems located outside any map of the real world.

The movie is a one-joke premise, cute and colorful but unsatisfyingly fleshed out.

As answers to the film’s big questions begin arriving in slapdash fashion, one loses patience for Tuason’s evasive, cluttered storytelling.

The customary warmth and gentleness of Kogonada’s approach and the corresponding delicacy of the three actors makes you keep wishing Zi would build more substance, more lingering poignancy instead of wafting along on its cloud of melancholy with characters that lack dimension. But it only acquires life intermittently.

This is designed to be a heartwarming comedy and debuting feature director Paxton is more assured with the outcome than he is about getting there.

You maybe have to be fully on board with the Charli xcx circus to really appreciate what a movie about it is trying to do. For the more casual viewer, The Moment is entertaining enough, for a while.

Taking place in real time, Mercy mercifully moves along fairly briskly. But after it’s over you’ll definitely feel the need for a digital detox.

Davidson’s essential likability shines through, thanks in part to Aramayo’s endearing, guileless performance and in part to writer-director Kirk Jones’ machine-tooled script, clearly fact-checked and vetted by the film’s exec producer, the actual John Davidson himself.

If You See Something is a flawed film that nevertheless reminds us of the selective cruelty that leaves so many struggling to survive.

The New Yorker at 100 is a commercial for The New Yorker and it isn’t masquerading as anything else. But at that point, it should at least be a commercial for the magazine that befits the voice, aesthetic and ethos of the magazine in a meaningful way.

Where Finding Susan Powter works best is as a near-vérité glimpse into the life of somebody who seemingly had everything, seemingly lost everything and is now living in a limbo that would be sad except that the doc treats it as matter-of-fact, rather than tragic — a distinction I certainly appreciated.

With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

Zenovich does a better job of acknowledging contradictions in complicated human behavior than reckoning with what those contradictions mean. Her documentaries are particularly flimsy when it comes to linking difficult men with bigger institutional failures. Still, there are worthwhile conversations that I’m Chevy Chase might allow viewers to have.

Even Fiennes, who delivers a typically expert, understated performance, doesn’t manage to make us fully invested in the stagey proceedings.

The film leans into action-comedy, and for a while, coasts by on the pre-sold likability of its cast.

Yes, the movie offers gargantuan-scale spectacle, imposing technological wizardry and virtually nonstop action involving over-qualified and mostly unrecognizable actors in motion-capture suits. But it’s easily the most repetitious entry in the big-screen series, with a been-there, bought-the-T-shirt fatigue that’s hard to ignore.

As an appreciation of birds and our connection to them, it’s engrossing and endearing — a fresher take, certainly, than yet another weepie about dog or cat owners. But as an exploration of grief, it’s hindered by a 128-minute run time that spreads its emotional potency too thin.

Anyone nostalgic for the director’s more memorable work might get a kick out of seeing him reunite with past collaborators Kavner and Albert Brooks. But almost everyone here is trying way too hard, with the exception of Mackey, who’s appealing and natural even when stuck in a phony world full of phony characters.

The casting proves an inevitable distraction for Frontier Crucible, a competently executed but unmemorable oater.

[Gibson's] charisma keeps the formulaic movie afloat, while director Collins displays a flair for action scenes.

A forgettable blend of unearned saccharinity and unacknowledged sourness, the Michael Showalter-directed dramedy capably proves that Mom is the true angel of the season but falls well short of proving that Christmas is worth all her fussing in the first place.

It’s all dumb beyond belief, of course, but the film (efficiently directed by Simon Cellan Jones) is so fast-paced that you settle into its now well-honed formula as if it were a recliner equipped with an eggnog dispenser.

Amazingly, very little of this is played for laughs, except of the unintentional variety.

Being Eddie isn’t a great piece of documentary filmmaking, nor does its DNA include an iota of journalism. What it is, though, is consummately polished and affectionate, taking an actor who rarely seemed vulnerable or especially comfortable in the spotlight at the peak of his stardom and making him seem, for 103 minutes, thoroughly at ease.

Wright seems almost constrained by a film that ends up neither as compelling nor as deep nor as wildly entertaining as it seems to believe.

While Now You See Me: Now You Don’t proves undeniably entertaining, it’s more than a little exhausting as well.

Selena y Los Dinos remains a slick doc most likely to appeal to her fans.

The problem in this beautifully shot but rather murky affair, which attempts to combine recent history, ethnic struggles and magical realism into one troubled family story, is that we never quite grasp all the stakes at hand, nor do we know what to actually believe.

By the time questions are answered, not just regarding Polly but also the way in which her history intersects with Caitlin’s, the glacial pacing and lack of suspense have dulled the thriller’s hook.

Fluk doesn’t have a firm enough handle on the material to make that story interesting. And the uneven division of the Keith and Vera plotlines makes Köln 75 a movie without a narrative center.