All the well-crafted effort has unfortunately been expended on a tired and overly familiar story that never registers as anything more than a compendium of horror-film clichés.

For the most part, footage of rehearsals and competition is lackluster.

Few mainstream romantic comedies are so brazen or as unconvincing in their third acts. As if the movie were embarrassed about the tidy way it wraps things up, it trots Haddish out for a silly coda that reminds us how little we saw of her during the film's final hour.

Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel emerges as a messy hybrid that has some interesting and amusing moments but ultimately feels as inauthentic as the team it chronicles.

Writer-director Boaz Yakin, who has directed everything from veteran movie stars to canine thesps in his career, has a harder time with child actors, eliciting performances that are uneven enough to attract attention to the script's weaker aspects.

No doubt the film has noble intentions, but its absurdly over-the-top, practically fetishistic approach undermines its very aims.

The main problem is that the storyline becomes so convoluted that it doesn't live up to the intriguing setup. Most of the film's second half is consumed by plodding exposition that is not exactly handled in imaginative fashion.

Colin Minihan's What Keeps You Alive sets itself up promisingly enough before succumbing to a progression of implausibilities and excesses that test even this genre's lenient standards.

The screenplay co-written by Clark and Thomas Moffett attempts to derive much humor from Atticus' relentless debauchery, but it all feels pro forma and repetitive.

Though peppy and bright enough that it might amuse some kids should it show up on a screen in front of them somewhere, it offers no reason for their adult guardians to actually take them someplace to watch it.

So understated in both its dramatic and comedic aspects that it fails to make any real impression whatsoever, Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks demonstrates little reason for being.

This navel-gazing epic is maddeningly distancing at almost every turn, lacking the spiritual and existential breadth of even Reygadas’ most impenetrable work. Running a prolix three hours, it feels like being trapped in somebody else’s crisis unfolding in real time.

Wes Tooke offers stiff dialogue and sometimes oddly structured action, leaving much dramatic potential unexploited. Yes, Emmerich stages plenty of aerial battles in which fighter pilots plunge through hailstorms of sizzling projectiles. But those hoping to get a thrill would be better served by revisiting his Earth-vs-aliens war flick Independence Day.

In what does have to be perversely honored as some kind of special accomplishment for Moss as a performer, Becky sustains such an abusive, mad, pathetic and immature display for well over an hour that you just want to bolt. What edification can possibly be gotten from such a grotesque form of exhibitionism?

This making-of-a-star drama is old-fashioned and corny, and not in a good way.

River Runs Red is neither substantive nor thrilling enough to prove satisfying.

Scene by scene you wish 55 Steps made you angrier than it does. Yet August's docile filmmaking acts as an emotional soporific, removing even the potential camp pleasures of Bonham Carter's histrionics.

Lacking the flash of big-budget blockbusters or the originality of a uniquely imagined world, First Light is left trying to make the best of overly familiar sci-fi themes.

A ho-hum horror flick.

This unflinching yet compassionate depiction of marginalized misfits boasts a few pleasingly poetic flourishes, but it suffers from some common first-time director flaws, notably a listless narrative, thinly developed characters and a relentlessly somber mood.

The character deserves better, and so does the audience.

Gareth Dunnet Alcocer's script has a tidy, programmed feel that results in a feel-good version of a grim and sordid modern yarn.

Rampant is a little all over the map, with its biggest flaw securely rooted in its inability to maintain consistency in its mythology — an unforgivable genre crime.

A cookie-cutter thriller that takes its time getting to the (sorta) good stuff, it's for die-hards only.

DriverX, which has the style but not the substance of a strong '70s indie drama, stalls out quickly and goes nowhere interesting.

Director Anne Fletcher has made better rom-coms, like The Proposal, but they had better scripts. Written by producer Kristin Hahn, Dumplin’ clings timidly to its YA roots, which are firmly on the unsophisticated side of the spectrum.

Veering heavily into sexual territory, the film is more a gothic melodrama than a horror film. It certainly feels like a waste of not only Cage's talent (although the actor has a climactic, literally fiery scene that will forever change the way you think about the pop song "Leader of the Pack"), but also Potente, whose potential has been sadly underrealized in American films.

As talented as Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton are individually, they don’t have much chemistry.

The cast, though, is full of extraordinary actors, who do what they can to redeem a lame script and style.

Most problematically, the film is simply atrocious on a technical level, featuring subpar cinematography (a generous term, in this case) and muddy sound that wouldn't pass muster on anything larger than a cellphone screen. If you 're going to put all of those magnificent bodies on display, we should at least be able to see them clearly.

While its quirky storytelling style draws viewers in, many will tire of the subplots long before it reaches the two-hour mark.

While some thriller addicts may embrace the resulting misanthropic action, others may find their minds wandering — to the many real-life cases of fraternity hazing, gang-rape and run-of-the-mill antisocial behavior that inspire deeper feelings of dread than this unconvincing outing.

Simmering and subdued, this '90s-set teen drama with supernatural elements features an intriguing premise but doesn't quite seem to know what to do with it. Such restraint is admirable in a genre not known for it, but it results in the film feeling more tepid than it should have been.

Well intentioned in the extreme, Sgt. Will Gardner is more effective as PSA than drama.

There's plenty of material here for a reasonably engrossing drama. Somehow, screenwriters Craig R. Welch and Greg Gerani fail to come up with anything remotely interesting.

Writer David Hare and director Ralph Fiennes have a good feel for the artistic world the story inhabits and professional dancer Oleg Ivenko does a more than creditable job in personifying one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artistic figures, but the narrative bounces all over the place trying to cover too much ground when concentrating on the core drama would have far better served the desired end.

I feel confident that even if I were to be magically transformed into the target demographic, I would still find After to be a cliched, mediocre affair. Come back, "Twilight," all is forgiven.

Even in this fictional context, the line between portraying and exploiting abused innocence gets uncomfortably, offensively blurred.

The problem is that despite his considerable skills, Sputore is so caught up with the cool technology he loses his grip on both the suspense and the primal human emotions that should be driving this physically imposing but numbingly cold dystopian vehicle.

Stem to stern, this 88-minute slasher runs like the clockwork bit of machinery it is, and that baseline competence effectively leeches it of personality.

Neither a no-nonsense delight like "She Loves You" nor the White Album-style head trip its premise might suggest, it's more of a "Yellow Submarine" sort of film: crowd-pleasing and sometimes enjoyable, but pretty damned dumb when you stop to think about it.

Less a sequel than a remake featuring a younger actor going through the same narrative paces as Murphy in the original, Coming 2 America includes so many nods to its predecessor that it feels like a feature-length Easter Egg in search of a movie.

Juanita wants to be so many things: road movie, rom-com, a middle-aged woman’s coming-of-age tale, a verite window into Native American life in the West, a chef’s kitchen drama. But a script that needed a couple more drafts holds the film and its talented ensemble cast back.

A few flashes of amused chemistry between the two actors represent all the human interest in this unimaginative sci-fi actioner, but that doesn't mean the pic's relentless focus on giant-monster battles won't please the director's fans.

It quickly spins its shaky premise off into an unconvincing study of emotional need and an even harder-to-believe revenge thriller.

Sadly for a story so fraught with desire and violence, Elisa & Marcela is painfully lacking in frisson and danger. Despite competent performances from her two young stars, Coixet fails to inject the girls’ relationship with complexity, tension and conflict. In the end, they are ciphers in a message-driven movie, which is made worse by contrived one-liners and gestures.

There's no mistaking the earnest anger which motivates her assault on the sexist "dark ages" values still to be found in many Macedonian provincial areas, but expressing it in such clunky terms does no service to the cause.

Promising but inert genre pic.

If Shaft were indeed a hard-hitting, fast-paced, action-packed detective thriller, as it was meant to be, then it would be an acceptable entertainment. But it isn't.

Despite the film's choppy and tonally dissonant storytelling ... Hawke’s performance quite literally carries the movie.

A near-miss that should find some appreciative viewers, it feels like a stage play in need of a little polishing, whose talented cast likes it enough to commit fully.

Even if the sophomoric Porno doesn't make the grade, it represents a promising start for the talented filmmaker.

There is nothing radical or especially distinctive about the style of this mildly entertaining documentary.

Lucy in the Sky is the odd film that starts cosmically big and gradually becomes narrower and more conventional as it goes along, to diminishing returns.

Unfortunately, while Long Lost has its moments, it ultimately fails to capitalize on its intriguing premise.

Any viewers actually interested in the topic would be well advised to search elsewhere for information.

Given its focus, viewers might forgive Mia for its clumsy direction of actors, its contrived plot or its on-the-nose dialogue. But training impressionable kids to identify with a girl who sneaks into lions' cages is a cinematic flaw that could have heartbreaking real-world consequences.

The story gets a bit more involving as it goes, though some elements that might've been memorable (a musical number from a dog played by Janelle Monáe, for instance) fall flat.

Though completely implausible and hardly revelatory, the screenplay's identification with multiple points of view will be comforting enough to arthouse liberals that they might not object.

Like Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy or Granik's Leave No Trace, this low-key drama focuses on a regional American woman trying to sustain herself through rough economic and emotional times. It's derivative of both films, but, for a little while at least, not disagreeably so.

Lying and Stealing might have been more effective if its two leads had more charisma, but James is mostly bland and Ratajkowski never quite convinces as a woman of mystery. This is the sort of lighthearted exercise that requires genuine star power to overcome its triviality, and the lack of it here seriously diminishes its impact.

Awkward execution and technical imperfections prevent the film from having its desired emotional impact.

There's a shakiness in how Hormann utilizes the fact that Aynur's murder is a foregone conclusion. It's as if the director is delaying gut-wrenching emotion as opposed to letting it emerge organically from the stylistic severity.

A former MMA star, Carano clearly has the impressive physicality and charisma to compete with the male stars in this arena. But she's going to need far better vehicles than this humdrum effort.

The latest indie effort from writer-director Jérôme Cohen-Olivar (The Midnight Orchestra, Kandisha) modestly succeeds in its modest genre goals, particularly benefiting from its exotic locations. But don't look for anything particularly original in The 16th Episode (originally titled Little Horror Movie), which mainly traffics in overly familiar tropes.

The picture fares better at finding occasional moments of warmth than at convincing us of its characters' reality.

A bit more discipline would have helped this one, which struggles to hold viewer interest across two full hours but would likely register more strongly with 15-20 minutes removed.

The ever-righteous profile maintained by Boseman’s detective gets to be a bit limiting after a while; if anything was going to have multiple dimensions in this film, it should have been him, but the script is instead built around the goal of providing maximum movement and hoped-for tension. It’s got the former but only sporadically achieves the latter.

Clearly Diaz wanted to make a sotto-voce exploration of a difficult and heavy topic — instead of a histrionic melodrama — but in trying to rein in the emotions, he seems to have practically scrubbed them out completely. The screenplay, also by Diaz, is so predictable that most of the characters simply seem to be going through the motions, with audiences remaining at an arm’s length even during the supposedly cathartic final moments.

The film is notable more for its unusual conceit than as a serious exploration of grief and familial relationships.

It’s the entertaining scenery-chewing by the top-flight cast that carries the picture; each of the main actors far better than the material they’re working with.

DeNucci has a good sense for period detail, costuming and accessorizing the cast with a color palette ranging from earthy yellow through fashionable beige to muddy brown. Stylistically though, the film doesn’t have much in common with its most distinctive progenitors, missing an opportunity to recreate an authentic 70s aesthetic.

A capable cast abets the director, but the film's slow pace and half-hearted perspective shifts don't generate the gravitas that's clearly intended.

The story's final, intended aha moment falls woefully flat, but capping this flawed valentine to artistic independence is a closing-credits nod to Easy Rider, especially poignant so soon after Peter Fonda's death.

It sounds like the plot of a classic '50s film noir, but the movie squanders its potential with a lackluster approach that sacrifices thrills for uninvolving character study.

The filmmakers’ reliance on romantic situations throughout the midsection may have some older teens and adults rolling their eyes, but the final scenes over-deliver with a literal flood of action that enables Hinako to definitively prove herself and discover her true calling.

The movie, which will inevitably spur comparisons to such similar efforts as "Argo," works well enough on its own terms, with Mychael Danna's synthesizer-heavy score providing a suitably retro vibe.

Likely to inspire heated arguments about the ethics of nonfiction film, the diverting but not really satisfying pic makes weak lemonade from lemons that might have yielded something tastier.

Dipping less rewardingly from the same well in Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi pushes the wisecracking to tiresome extremes, snuffing out any excitement, mythic grandeur or sense of danger that the God of Thunder’s latest round of rote challenges might hope to generate. Chris Hemsworth continues to give great musclebound himbo, but the stakes never acquire much urgency in a movie too busy being jokey and juvenile to tell a gripping story.

Ode to Joy fails to live up to its title by attempting to wring comic mileage from a medical condition that sufferers probably don't find very funny.

A work of self-conscious experimentalism that's too stilted and distancing to invite involvement, it gets some mileage out of the pulsating rhythms of reggaetón street dance but otherwise is so fragmented it lacks forward motion.

Ku shows a decent grasp of plot mechanics, but never manages to adequately develop the characters or effectively modulate the film’s pacing, even in the brief action scenes, which prove too tame by typical Cage standards.

Lacking the charming eccentricity of a "Turbo Kid" or the compelling mood of many retro-horror successes, the picture has little to recommend it as a theatrical experience.

None of the performers are able to bring life to their schematic characters, although Nelson appears to be having fun as a modern-day pirate. You do get the feeling, however, that he would have much preferred to play the role with a patch on his eye and a parrot on his shoulder.

While one of the first rules of writing is to write what you know, Sabet's romantic comedy demonstrates that not everything that actually happens to you can be mined for comedic gold. The picture starts out promisingly enough, but eventually sinks under the weight of its implausibilities.

Ladyworld proves as much of an endurance test for viewers as the central characters.

Unfortunately, Every Time I Die doesn't quite have the cinematic polish to live up to its considerable aspirations, resulting in a frustratingly opaque viewing experience.

Unfortunately, although Becoming Nobody will prove a must-see for Ram Dass' ardent fans, and they are certainly legion, the film proves frustratingly unpolished and unfocused, providing precious little biographical information or narrative context. It ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, a labor of love that would have benefited from a little more objectivity.

Lacking the personalities and attitude that have led some other unassuming productions to commercial success, the film has little to boast about beyond some fine dance sequences — none of them more transporting than what can be found easily on small screens.

Green has made exactly the kind of witless, worthless sequel that bled the franchise dry in the 1980s and ’90s.

Neither Gan's screenplay nor his direction of the cast quite sells this scenario, but once he introduces some accidental violence, the picture can ride the familiar logic of crime-gone-wrong storytelling.

As things stand, personal perspective brings something to this rudimentary documentary, but not nearly enough to help it compete with more polished portraits of big-top razzle-dazzle.

Though not quite as devoid of personality as those names and its boilerplate dialogue, the film nevertheless plays like a flowchart in search of a pulse, a drama whose "Traffic"-like ambitions aren't matched by narrative inspiration.

Striving to be an inspirational story about personal and professional redemption, the film mainly comes across as a self-aggrandizing promotional project that the famously arrogant pop star would have once sneered at.

Playing With Fire strikes strictly predictably beats. Key and Leguizamo, comic talents who are wildly overqualified for this sort of thing, work hard, very hard, to infuse the tired material with laughs. But they're mostly hamstrung by their one-note characters

The emotional and logistical struggles of our heroine, played with sweaty determination by Anne Hathaway, are the film's clearest through-line; but after the intimate clarity of her debut, Pariah, and the wrenching Delta drama Mudbound, this is a pedigreed misfire.

Miss Taylor needs something stronger than this to display her talents, and so does Burton.

Generic and too self-indulgent, if energetic and occasionally funny, the film’s greatest attribute is by far co-star Crispin Glover, who steals the show as a deranged French-speaking assassin named Luc Chaltier.