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.