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.

If Fraud presented its fabrication, then followed up with whatever bits of unmanipulated footage might explain itself, some moviegoers would find the exercise worthwhile. But nothing in the film itself acknowledges the source or the actual nature of these scenes.

Unfortunately, instead of embracing the weighty moral, religious and political components of the story, Malick has alternately deflected and minimized them.

The writing/directing debut of Minhal Baig enlists experienced actors but has little idea what to do with them, making a hash of its intended meditation on the compromises required by long-term relationships.

Like so many animated movies these days, it buries its ideas in a visual and aural cacophony of frenzied action sequences designed to engage the shortest of attention spans.

The film’s stage origins, and a cameo appearance by Lin-Manuel Miranda, may be of interest to theater buffs, but everyone else will be left wondering what all the fuss was about.

Gael Garcia Bernal’s effortless magnetism is the complicating factor — and the only compelling one — in You’re Killing Me Susana.

Despite the assistance reality continues to give it, making an annual rite of government-sanctioned racial violence seem less far-fetched by the day (or by the tweet), Gerard McMurray's The First Purge still fails to establish a persuasive connection to our own moment in time — its occasional winks to current events serving as limp zingers instead of stinging commentary.

The performances in the 1997 scenes are relatively low-key, relying more on the dramatic development of personal relationships than the shock value of unexpected events. The contemporary storyline offers little of particular interest, however, serving more to contextualize earlier developments.

While its intriguing setup sounds like it could make for a provocative and original thriller, The Dark Below never lives up to its promise, although it earns points for originality.

Had Mader focused on fewer plot strands, he might have found a more effective balance. Whatever metaphysical poetry Displacement could have held is lost amid its over-explained and underwhelming search for the “negation point.”

Much of the film’s effectiveness can be credited to King, who makes Shannon appealing even when acting selfishly. It’s also refreshing to see a teen character portrayed by an actual teenager as opposed to the usual twentysomething.

Shea's intense focus on constructing an overly intricate plot isn't borne out by the film's visual style, which is more workmanlike than inspired.

Frequently wearing only a halter top and skintight yoga pants, Johnston looks as great as she moves. While her dramatic chops leave something to be desired, they’re more than adequate for the rote narrative which only gets in the way of her kicking serious butt.

Director Alex Merkin does reasonably well with an obviously low budget, and the screenplay by Jesse Mittelstadt thankfully doesn't take itself too seriously. That's not to say it's good, mind you, with the film's last line, delivered by Richards, definitely not destined to go down in screen history.

Warrior’s Gate has its own ridiculous internal logic, but lacks the goofy glee that accommodates suspension of disbelief to go with it.

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.

Uneasily combining its determinedly edgy plotline with failed sentimentality, Flower is redeemed only by Zoey Deutch’s magnetic performance, which would be star-making if in the service of a better vehicle.

The main problem is that the directors often struggle to assign meaning to their images that helps advance either the narrative or illuminate the emotional state of their main character.

Hawke delivers a workmanlike performance, but can't redeem the third act's macho baloney; sadly, Rutger Hauer (introduced in the opening and then wasted) doesn't come save him.

Breathe is clearly aiming for the same heart-wrenching emotional heights as James Marsh’s Oscar-winning Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. But this is very much a crude copy, its noble intentions hobbled by a trite script, flat characters and a relentlessly saccharine tone that eventually starts to grate.

Lacking objectivity and the necessary contextual information and commentary that would provide a balanced examination of its subject matter, Hare Krishna! mostly preaches to its robe-wearing choir.

Far too broad to be deep in any respect, the lightweight documentary benefits from access to plenty of top-shelf interviewees but plays like a back-patting muddle.

The execution is weak, and Crowley does himself no favors by repeatedly invoking the memory of more psychologically persuasive films like Five Easy Pieces and Deliverance.

The film wastes several talented performers with its low-key, rambling humor and one-dimensional characters.

Pilgrimage alternates long stretches of tedium with ultra-violent sequences that have the feel of medieval torture porn.

Considering the long amount of time since the last installment, you'd think that more effort would have been put into creatively reviving the franchise. But Jigsaw just seems rote and mechanical, with long stretches of its running time feeling like a police procedural or CSI spinoff.

Temple comes off as more of a half-hearted attempt at exploiting typical J-horror themes than an actual homage to the Japanese genre.

A meandering journey, too tepid to stir up the feelings of yearning and rebellion that it aims to evoke.

Mark Gill's feature debut England Is Mine struggles to evoke the atmosphere of its setting — Manchester, 1976-1982 — and to bring its tantalizingly enigmatic subject into satisfying focus.

Director Simon West aims for a kind of Jason Bourne or Mission: Impossible feel, but he falls short in budget, star power and explosive spectacle.

Self-consciously button-pushing pictures like this one usually leaven their transgressions with at least a bit of winking irony, but no humor is to be found here, from the opening frames (slo-mo shots of pro-life and pro-choice factions shouting at each other) to the last.

While Zabielski and his cowriters never shortchange their stars in terms of screen time, their imaginations fail them when it comes to giving Crews and Method Man interesting things to do and say. In the case of Method Man, though, the rapper/actor's attitude alone carries him past the script's deficiencies.

One of the most unsettling things about Queen is how awkwardly it tackles all this painful, historical material: it’s as though Trueba’s script knows that homage must be paid to it, but it feels shoehorned in.

The film just seems to lack the courage of its convictions. Hartnett doesn’t bring much depth to his troubled character, making it hard for the viewer to care about his fate.

Its run-of-the-mill standoff may appease some hardcore horror buffs, but it offers nothing to the rest of us and will likely be forgotten before the blood on the ground dries.

Diffuse and rambling, the documentary offers plenty of fascinating historical tidbits but lacks the breadth and depth to do justice to its complicated narrative.

Intensely present and real even in this sordid role, Ramazzotti shows she is growing into one of Italy's most versatile actresses, particularly in difficult proletarian roles like the one here. She is literally the best thing in this depressing, often shallow film.

There’s no real voice in the storytelling, nothing distinctive about the imagery, if it’s not a doubling up on the violence and gore, and the result doesn’t remotely resonate in the same way.

The starry chemistry of leads Ansel Elgort and Chloë Grace Moretz injects a modicum of energy into the coming-of-age drama, whose elements of romance, crime and smart-kid angst never coalesce.

Equal parts solemn and sappy, Euphoria marks a well-performed if extremely heavy-handed foray into English-language filmmaking for Swedish director Lisa Langseth.

Gleeson plays the role with the kind of full-bore commitment (every supercilious gesture precise and intelligently thought through) that makes you wish the movie better complemented his efforts.

Trafficked proves reasonably effective for educational purposes, with statistics and information about how to help inevitably projected during the end credits. But as a thriller it’s plodding and predictable, not distinguishing itself from the seemingly endless other movies dealing with the subject that have been released in recent years.

Viewers who push through this silliness will be rewarded with an action climax that, while just about as ludicrous, is at least enjoyable.

Keating fails to effectively transmit his love of pushing the horror genre to new heights, with the result that we feel less gleefully complicit than merely voyeuristic. This is a case in which less would definitely have been more.

What begins as an examination of middle-class-mom exasperation — in which demanding some marital equality makes one not just a figurative "bitch" but a literal one — turns into a more commonplace bad-dad parable in Marianna Palka's off-kilter, largely off-target satire Bitch.

Despite his extensive action movie experience, director Johnny Martin (Vengeance: A Love Story) fails to invest the violence with much suspense. He also doesn't elicit the best work from his performers, with Urban and Snow unable to overcome their characters' stereotypical aspects.

Olin never wavers in her commitment. She's often extraordinary in individual moments.

An amiable misfire that (for better or worse) isn't quite as nutty as it sounds, Seth Henrikson's Pottersville pairs Yuletide cheer with the deviance of the Furry scene and an out-of-control hoax involving an ersatz Bigfoot.

Fortunately, there's Lively, adopting a convincing British accent, who almost, but not quite, manages to infuse the convoluted goings-on with enough gravitas to make them convincing.

The chief saving grace of Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer is its auspicious voice cast including Josh Hutcherson, Samantha Bee, John Cleese and Martin Short, among others.

Maslow and Pepe's attractiveness and charm go a long way toward making the proceedings palatable. While we're never actually invested in the fate of their characters' relationship, they make the 90-minute running time go by fairly painlessly.

The performers' fine acting and vocal efforts (the film is almost entirely sung-through) are not enough to compensate for the vacuousness of the material.

Its running time is a mere 78 minutes, but the pic feels like it takes much longer getting to nowhere particularly interesting.

Only the least critical genre auds are likely to enjoy it much.

This is the sort of exasperating horror film that whips audiences into a frenzy. Not because they're having fun, mind you, but rather because the characters behave so stupidly and self-destructively that yelling profanity-laden advice to the screen becomes a bonding exercise.

Unsane is a dispiritingly pedestrian woman-in-peril shocker to have come from such a maverick filmmaker.

An airy, prettily accoutered but essentially vapid feature debut for writer-director Stephanie De Giusto.

Trafficking in familiar themes, Permission ultimately doesn't have anything very new to say about them.

[Beller's] deep-rooted empathy and compassion is plainly evident in her latest effort, but it's not enough to compensate for the tedium engendered by the meandering debates whose impact ultimately adds up to very little.

At its core is a well-intentioned message about inclusivity and valuing inner beauty, but the film, adapted from the 2012 YA best-seller by David Levithan (albeit with a problematic perspective shift), remains stuck in a stubborn rut somewhere between confusing and snooze-inducing.

It should be a pulse-racing account of knife-edge real-life conflict and valiant heroics, full of needling political questions. Instead it's merely another slack thriller with underdeveloped characters and sputtering dramatic momentum.

The formulaic writing and stilted direction conspire to bring the movie, and these talents, down time and time again.

No doubt everyone can relate to the central idea of wondering about the purpose of the mementos we leave behind or those we discover after a death in the family. But a promising theme does not necessarily make for a satisfying movie.

The movie not only fails to represent the peak of the young Blumhouse shingle's output (Get Out is not their only inventive film), but gets silly in ways that we've seen on screen for decades.

This is one of those films that, if shown overseas, could potentially make people think that the U.S. is going down the tubes even faster than imagined. Everyone in it — adolescents and grown-ups, too — is beyond stupid and content to remain that way.

Slack and unexciting compared to Ryan Coogler's blisteringly good 2015 reconception of a 1970s icon for modern audiences, this follow-up is an undeniable disappointment in nearly every way, from its dreary homefront interludes to a climactic boxing match that feels far-fetched in the extreme.

Director Hallivis keeps the proceedings at a reasonably fast pace, with Adam Taylor's electronic music score helping to quicken the film's pulse rate. But it's not enough to prevent the proceedings from lapsing into incoherence.

Union certainly dedicates herself to all the huffing, running, jumping and emoting, though her efforts never counter Breaking In’s aura of trashiness and disposability.

An attractive cast led by a vibrant, all-in Paula Patton and spiffy visuals courtesy of renowned cinematographer Dante Spinotti make the sleaze and predictable plotting go down a bit easier than they would have otherwise, but there's still no disguising the project's fundamentally lurid underpinnings.

Whatever pathos is generated comes from Reynolds' commitment to all the self-exploitation. His inimitable charm is still there beneath all the corporeal decrepitude on which Rifkin and company shamelessly linger.

The Misguided has its amusing moments but ultimately seems as aimless as the figures at its center.

He (De Palma) has rarely been guilty of dullness, as he is with Domino, a counterterrorism thriller offering just slightly more excitement than the average TV police procedural.

Large-scale filmmaking of this kind to some degree is probably always an adventurer's folly, with an unhinged visionary tilting at windmills in a valiant quest to tame fantasy and reality into companionable travelers that will live forever. But rarely have such brave deeds yielded so meager a reward.

The mishmash of styles smacks of a "let's throw in everything but the kitchen sink" approach that becomes increasingly tiresome the longer it goes on and feels more like a horror anthology than a cohesive story. Nonetheless, there's no denying that the film could well please hardcore genre aficionados for whom more is always better.

Wohl never manages to achieve the proper tonal blend. The result is neither sufficiently funny nor moving, lacking the truly daring humor that might have made the film a bracing dark comedy. It's a shame, considering the estimable ensemble.

Judged as a fiction built on a kernel of fact, Fake Blood hardly distinguishes itself from the glut of mock-docs; it may be a refreshing break for the filmmakers, but viewers might prefer another zombie flick.

This B-movie thriller fails to go beyond its familiar underwater peril tropes, providing as nearly a claustrophobic experience for viewers as its characters.

The film's stars are Toni Collette and Harvey Keitel, but the proceedings are stolen right out from under their noses by supporting players Michael Smiley and particularly Rossy de Palma. The latter, familiar from the many Pedro Almodovar movies in which she's prominently appeared, nearly manages to save the picture.

If the way Davis wraps things up is neither surprising nor remotely satisfying, it does at least hold a lesson for white-collar tyrants who haven't seen 9 to 5 or the dozens of workplace-revenge fantasies that followed it: "The assistant controls everything."

The old debate over nature versus nurture is played for (sporadic) laughs in Birthmarked, a satire that's unable to deliver on a promising hypothesis.

Jacquot has a hard time turning all of this into palpable drama, and Eva slides off the rails during a denouement that goes full on B-movie without much credibility.

In terms of sustaining a narrative using only FaceTime, Skype, Facebook, video downloads and various other web pages and social media platforms, Profile is quite impressive up to a point. In terms of coherent plotting and plausibility, not so much. That means that as the storytelling falls apart, the online framework devolves into a labored tech gimmick, and a visually tiresome one at that.

The premise is smart, the ingredients classy and the overall look stylish. But Niccol’s paranoid anxieties about the totalitarian dangers of cyberspace feel oddly glib and dated, light on thrills or narrative logic.

The protagonists here aren't as insufferable as those in the first Unfriended, but Susco's plot gets harder to buy by the minute; as a first-time director, he doesn't get much out of his cast; and boy, does this Screenlife gimmick grow thin quickly.

A fantastic cast doing fine work can't make this feel-good hokum believable.