Prabhudheva and frequent collaborator Shiraz Ahmed have slapped together a cacophonous pastiche of toilet jokes, high energy brawls and half-hearted love scenes, and their wafer-thin screenplay manages to conjure up a reason to include a heroine who doesn’t speak Hindi.

The preposterousness of Gregg Hurwitz's screenplay isn't enough to throw star Naomi Watts off her game, and the actor's sincere performance may suffice to keep a segment of the family-film demographic on board, barely.

The puzzle of how the various personal and narrative pieces will eventually fit together exerts a smidgen of interest, but the characters are so dour and un-dimensional as to invite no curiosity about them.

The dark humor feels forced and artificial, especially when tied to the utterly ludicrous plot machinations

The film seems more appropriate for a testimonial dinner than theater screens, with virtually no voices heard from outside Larsen's colleagues and acolytes.

However polished the doc's tech and score, it simply doesn't find drama in this familiar template.

Plodding and pedestrian even in the technical magic that is a Zemeckis trademark, this is a case of a director out of his element with a script that fails to generate much heat.

The director finds himself stymied by weak source material — Jean-Luc Lagarce's 1990 play about a young man who returns home to tell his family he's dying — and only intermittently well served by his starry French cast.

Its intriguing premise devolving into familiar genre conventions, 400 Days also suffers from clichéd characters and strained dialogue.

Failing to live up to it anarchic convictions by adding sympathetic aspects to its central character shortly before the conclusion, Uncle Nick, much like the sorts of holiday celebrations it depicts, is ultimately too strained to be enjoyable.

The seemingly autobiographical film from writer/director/star Philipp Karner may have been therapeutic for him, but it is too opaque and slow-moving to compel the attention of many audiences beyond the gay festival circuit.

Reclaiming Kristina as an icon of queer liberation and female empowerment is a worthwhile premise, but sadly the finished film is a stodgy multinational pudding that fails to give this concept wings.

With its measured pacing, focus on family and repurposing of familiar horror conventions, the film represents a rather adult offering that can’t manage any memorable frights until well into the first hour of running time.

Without that sort of compelling figure at its center, Diablo feels far more like a pastiche than the real deal.

Deviating from the original in some key respects, this version of Martyrs doesn't make much of a case for its inspiration, but it may attract those hardcore horror fans averse to reading subtitles.

The long-awaited third installment of J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World sub-franchise is less clogged with distracting detail than its immediate predecessor, but even a more refined plot can’t save the two-hour-plus film from feeling like an endurance test.

As in their previous films (I Love You Phillip Morris; Crazy, Stupid, Love; Focus), directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa enjoy just scattershot success in hitting their seriocomic targets, scoring from time to time with their more coarse and outlandish gambits but rarely inducing one to take what they're watching very seriously.

It's the sort of by-the-numbers, forgettable thriller, starring actors whose marquee days are behind them.

For all its high-caliber talent mix, The Snowman is a largely pedestrian affair, turgid and humorless in tone. The cast share zero screen chemistry, much of the dialogue feels like a clunky first draft and the wearily familiar plot is clogged with clumsy loose ends.

It’s an easy watch, though it certainly could have benefited from a little British warmth and humor (totally absent here.) The English dialogue is also much too elaborate and stilted to be anywhere near believable, further undercutting any remnant of realism.

Those enthralled by the venerable brand will no doubt swoon, but casual viewers will find it little more than a feature-length infomercial.

Johnson and Efron possess impressive muscles, but the performers have never done as much heavy lifting as they do here. And to their credit, they succeed to some degree.

Despite the vivid evocation of its central character's helpless self-destruction, All Mistakes Buried offers little that we haven't seen before.

The Fundamentals of Caring cleaves so closely to the stereotypes of indie filmmaking, it’s as if it were created by some demonic cinematic algorithm.

The Intervention feels bland and without consequence, as it’s not possible to invest in characters about whom we’re offered so little.

It's clear that Weerasethakul is even less concerned with conventional narrative considerations here than he was in the free-rangingly imaginative Uncle Boonmee.

In F9’s would-be showstoppers, the thrills are mostly AWOL or the feats are simply too idiotic to embrace, even guiltily.

This lugubrious indie drama is affecting in parts but never gels into a satisfying whole.

It’s all an overstuffed mess, but that was true of the previous entries as well, and audiences obviously don’t seem to mind.

The director’s approach tamps down the story’s dramatic potential, while the screenplay she wrote with Jim Beggarly repeatedly defuses the emotional power of messy family affairs.

Lacking the stylistic finesse that might have compensated for its schematic narrative deficiencies, Backtrack lives up to its title all too well.

Despite four credited screenwriters, including Evrenol, the mysteriously titled Baskin is thin on story, instead lurching in and out of a woozy dreamscape before arriving at its extended terror and torture set piece.

The film feels at once incredulous and strangely inept, with the director resorting to facile plot twists or heavy-handed pathos whereas a little subtlety and sense would have went a long way

This is a big, bombastic movie that goes through the motions but never finds much joy in the process, despite John Williams’ hard-working score continuously pushing our nostalgia buttons and trying to convince us we’re on a wild ride.

Although based on a true story, this drama directed by Bob Yari about the relationship between a young journalist and the aging Ernest Hemingway never rings true despite the authenticity of its setting.

This is a laborious film that dulls the human drama at its core. Rather than pulling you into the protagonist's gradual acquaintance with his unfamiliar conscience, it shuts you out, leaving you bored and indifferent.

Over-produced and under-thought-out, this unconscionably elaborate attempt at an old-fashioned Gothic thriller looks great but is beyond silly.

The film is surprisingly shoddy stylistically.

While the performers are appealing, 3rd Street Blackout is a too determinedly quirky affair to fully mine the comic potential of its clever premise. Much like its setting, the film could have used more energy.

On the surface, the doc makes some compelling arguments, although most of its power is emotional rather than informational.

David Brent remains an enduring comic grotesque, but this sporadically amusing big-screen resurrection is more cash-in reunion tour than killer comeback album.

The intended metaphors and commentary about the interchangeability and disposability of bodies are entirely clear, although from the evidence it would appear that Refn is perhaps even more entranced by the surface glamour of the world he so voluptuously depicts than he is repelled by it.

It ends up playing like a shoddy blend of V for Vendetta and Mr. Robot but without the budget bandwidth or style of either.

Rollins' villain is a deliciously deranged, compelling character, but the problem is that there's not enough of him in this otherwise routine B-movie clearly shot on the cheap, with low-grade CGI effects making the shootouts and gore mostly laughable.

There are plenty of fisticuffs and shootouts to be found in The Duel, but precious little of interest.

Though it's better than its "dump this thing" theatrical release would suggest, Cell is far from excellent.

It arrives not as a lusty tale in full bloom but as a tastefully arranged still life, in search of an animating spark.

Sluggishly paced and featuring lengthy voice-over narration by Strong in which his character ponders his role in the universe like a graduate philosophy student, the film never achieves liftoff.

The plot leans toward conventional horror violence as it progresses, but Cresciman has Hogan and Crampton remain largely affectless, their blank-slate characters doing little to make us respond to the action.

In between bouts of torrid sex, the men engage in the sort of anguished, confessional conversations that Eugene O'Neill would find over-the-top. None of the characters are particularly interesting, even with the dramatic revelations they've been assigned.

Biggs is appealing in the central role, although for him, conveying mortified embarrassment doesn't exactly qualify as an acting stretch. But he does have good chemistry with Montgomery.

This aggravatingly empty would-be suspense piece puts all its trust in its star to save the day, but even this compulsively watchable performer can’t elevate such a vapid, undeveloped screenplay.

Qasim Basir's indie drama Destined proves both uncommonly ambitious and frustratingly derivative.

All the talented women here are stuck playing types rather than characters, in a strained frolic in which both the verbal humor and the physical gags too often fall flat.

Brandishing impressively packed abs and enough upper body strength to pull herself out of countless jams, Alicia Vikander gamely steps into the kick-ass role twice played by Angelina Jolie, but the derivative story and cardboard supporting characters are straight out of 1930s movie serials.

Though blessed with a spectacular true story and character to work from, director and co-screenwriter Lars Kraume...fails to breathe much life into the stuffy, overly complex enumeration of the historical facts.

It’s a frenetic grab bag of strained shtick, however expertly delivered by ace comic performers.

The film — penned by Michael Ricigliano Jr., a lawyer making his screenwriting debut — never really achieves the necessary dramatic tension despite a surprising climactic plot twist. The dialogue rarely rises above the level of cliché.

Described by Werner Herzog as “a daydream that doesn’t follow the rules of cinema,” Salt and Fire may be rule-breaking, but the result is one of the director’s least appealing adventures.

The movie is all tease and no follow-through, letting its story leak out in dribs and drabs that fail to gather any momentum or meaning, let alone mystery.

The fight scenes are indeed the film’s strongest element, even if at times they seem overly choreographed and slightly cheesy.

McCarthy more often seems to apply a generic style to his substance, rather than actually use a stylistic choice to help suggest or demonstrate something about his story and characters.

Unfortunately, Kampai! For the Love of Sake is more cheerleading than informative, concentrating largely on personality profiles of three figures—two of them Westerners--obsessed with the Japanese rice wine.

A predictable, whimsical exercise that only occasionally produces the sort of bittersweet emotion it seeks to elicit.

A muddled psychological horror film about a young man coping with the death of his father, Jack Goes Home is a puzzle few viewers will care to piece together.

A small, sympathetic story of a teenage girl’s rough coming out is smothered by a pile of far-fetched melodrama, a loathsomely obnoxious male lead character and far too much unsteadicam visual randomness in First Girl I Loved.

His screenplay strikes universal chords, but with his preference for constant commentary over dramatic action, Schwartz doesn’t quite translate those feelings into involving cinema. Mainly he oversells them.

The action sequences and gun battles are staged with enough flair to satisfy genre fans who haven't gotten their fill with the recent Magnificent Seven remake.

Whereas Aferim! was a thrilling epic that uncovered a piece of Romanian history heretofore largely ignored, Hearts hardly develops a pulse, hiding the faces of the protagonists in immobile medium and wide shots while any possible emotions get snowed under by non-contextualized intellectual musings and socio-politico-historical details.

The raw vigor and protest of punk get co-opted by the movie’s coming-of-age story; it’s not the heartfelt sweetness that’s the chief problem, but how run-of-the-mill and derivative the plot is.

Buried beneath all the increasingly tired visual gags and well-worn character conventions is a workable message about following one’s muse, but director Ash Brannon, a Pixar veteran, along with at least eight other writers, seem content simply to lay down the same old licks.

Phantasm: Ravager should please longtime fans while leaving newcomers unimpressed and confused.

Though his stories suggest a pansexual curiosity, Neil himself seems only mildly engaged, and sluggish direction keeps both scenes with the nerd's dream girl and the jailbait-courting man from generating much heat.

Although it contains many fascinating elements, Never Surrender: The Ed Ramsey Story emerges as a hagiographic and frustratingly self-indulgent exercise.

Had Brown (Race You to the Bottom, The Blue Tooth Virgin) found a way to ingrain his ideas in the various relationships rather than spelling them out, the movie might have found a compelling groove.

The film’s central conflicts are almost stereotypically outlined, with the flawed locals arrayed against intrusive outsiders, and Doleac’s characters don’t display much more depth either.

Even those who know Mirza Sahiba may have a hard time reconciling the way this decorous present-tense melodrama is juxtaposed with pompous period flashbacks to that story.

While the three leads are committed and give respectable performances (albeit ones that fail to conjure the artists who inspired the characters), NY84 has little going for it that hasn't been taken directly from much better books and movies.

More succinct writing and tighter editing could have yielded a solid B picture.

The storyline, familiar-feeling as it is, could have made for an effective thriller. But writer/director Whedon (brother of Joss) bogs down the pacing with too many routine flashbacks.

A handsome period piece that plays more like a scant-clues mystery than like the psychological thriller it intends to be, Andy Goddard's A Kind of Murder turns to the work of Patricia Highsmith but finds little of what made Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley such nail-biters.

Despite the iffy script, two of the film’s performances pack a punch.

Just as one should be wary of tobacco-safety data produced with tobacco-industry money, skeptical audiences will have a hard time putting too much stock in a doc so strongly aligned with vape entrepreneurs.

Jack's Apocalypse holds few rewards.

You've Been Trumped Too is a mostly unnecessary sequel that spends much of its brief running time rehashing distressingly familiar news footage about Trump's campaign.

Rajiv Shah’s screenplay fails to flesh out its characters and situations in compelling fashion, leaving the actors struggling to bring depth to the sketchy scenario and Mehta’s uninspired direction.

As lumbering and slow-moving as the vehicle in which most of its action takes place, Nick Gillespie’s horror thriller makes the familiar mistake of confusing obscurity with tension.

The high concept outshines the execution; it’s easy to see how a significantly slimmed-down and sharpened version of the overlong feature might have been a small-time contender.

Unfortunately, despite some fine performances and enjoyable moments, the film never manages to make its quirkiness engaging.

Although visually stylish and imaginative — the short bits of animation on display wouldn’t be out of place in a Tim Burton film — Friend Request gets less interesting the more it goes on.

A drama that struggles to breathe life into its death-themed narrative.

With brilliant comedians like Hahn and new addition Christine Baranski on board, there are line readings that pop and jokes that land.... But A Bad Moms Christmas is louder, busier and more pandering than the original — an exhausting spectacle of skilled performers gamely mugging their way through a cash grab.

Clearly, all this is designed to provoke adverse reactions. But what if instead of outrage and indignation, the response was a numb shrug? Don't get me wrong — The House That Jack Built is definitely something to see. But what's most surprising is that it's just as often inane as unsettling.

The by-the-numbers story never achieves its aimed-for grandeur or intensity, and the striking Turkish locations prove far more interesting than the characters.

A professionally mounted but bluntly misanthropic character-study, the director's second solo outing wallows in the worst of human nature with little reward at the end of a mechanically inexorable downward spiral.

Thompson’s heavy-handed storytelling, along with a nonstop score of pure mush, brings this closer to telenovela territory than to the Louvre.

The overpowering air of familiarity to this rip-off pretending to be homage makes it redundant.

Visually stunning but strained by pretentious poeticism and a simplistic storyline, My Father Die is ultimately as labored as its ungrammatical title.