"Apprentice" lurches from one been-there-done-that sequence to another.

A movie so bland and forgettable it hardly merits a groan from the Frankenstein-like butler called Lurch, The Addams Family strongly suggests that directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon deserve little credit for 2016's Sausage Party, the hit they directed for writers/producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Even the most desperately deprived secret-agent devotee will find little to cheer in this yawn-tastic 007 send-up.

When rehearsals finally give way to full, unconventional production numbers, it's hard to imagine any way Hunky Dory could get much better.

A distinguished and able cast headed by Jeremy Irons; beautiful, mostly black-and-white cinematography; and the enchanting Prague backgrounds make for a diverting feature-length eyeful and earful, but the reconstruction of the Kafkaesque worldview never quite takes. [3 Dec. 1991]

There's a serious miscalculation when the lighthearted hijinks suddenly give way to a climactic scene of brutal violence.

The comedy is obvious and flat while the drama is stale. They did do one thing right, however: They attracted a stellar cast.

Earlier films like Sightseers and Free Fire suggested Ben Wheatley might have the mordant wit to tackle a work forever associated with sardonic genre maestro Alfred Hitchcock. But in place of atmosphere and suspense, he delivers blandly glossy melodrama.

Koepp and his cast successfully convey how afraid the family becomes once it's clear they're being supernaturally prevented from leaving the house. But that's not the most original idea upon which to build a franchise, and it's clear from both third-act exposition and the pic's final scene that the filmmakers want just that.

Taken together though, the script’s rather shaky foundations and Crowe’s bombastic performance effectively derail the narrative in the second half.

Nothing von Trier presents here, whether real or imagined, is fresh or new.

Signed, sealed and delivered, Book Club: The Next Chapter is an unabashed love letter to four great movie stars. As a vehicle for their talents, it’s less of a sure thing.

An overly ambitious, overly complex and overly long opus that bites off more than it can chew.

It's parental wish-fulfillment that isn't at all interested in what being a kid actually feels like.

Honey Don’t! is a better movie than Drive-Away Dolls thanks to an engaging whodunit plot, but it ultimately suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: The film feels like a series of gags with nowhere to go.

Nonetheless, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire tries hard, very hard, to satisfy the series’ fans with plenty of nostalgic throwbacks and mainly succeeds.

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.

In a movie this overloaded with plot, the revelations are like a leaky faucet, just like that purple voiceover. In fact, there’s so much going on, much of it behind the literal curtain of memory, that Joy leaves little room for the characters to establish themselves in the here and now.

Christian Slater and Selma Blair head a solid cast that Harvey Kahn directs with cool efficiency as the tension steadily rises with every passing minute.

What threatened to be yet another routine exercise in raunchiness instead turns out to be a sweet, charming, hilariously funny love story that could emerge as a sleeper hit.

As an exercise in style, it's diverting enough, but these mean streets are so well traveled that it takes someone like Eva Green to make the detour through them worth the trip.

The anomie of entitlement pushed to poisonous extremes is the basis of this provocation, which is as frustrating as it is intriguing.

A low-impact romantic comedy-drama from James L. Brooks in which the central characters are strangely disconnected from one another as well as from the audience.

An engrossing, highly intelligent reimagining of the legend of Arthur.

The literary source is one of only a couple of real draws in what is otherwise a fairly routine present-day crime saga.

Roth has managed the rare feat of actually improving on the original.

Sub-par video camerawork and editing make the film a trying and tedious experience, despite the engaging personality and impressive physicality of its star.

In jettisoning the focus on family of the previous films, it gives us characters whose interactions with each other feel less than detailed, and who are more archetypal than real. But it’s good clean fun nevertheless, and the set pieces expertly supply the tension-and-release satisfactions of the genre.

Stacy Keach provides a bit of relief from all the oppressive earnestness in his brief appearance as Mia’s grandfather, evoking a depth of feeling otherwise missing here.

Where the first film offered genuine scares, this one is suspenseful at best, snicker-worthy at worst, and will beg viewers to recall the time Fonzie got on water skis and tried not to get eaten by a shark.

Initial hints of a "Mean Girls"-meets-"Lord of the Flies" complication don't come to much in this straightforward pic, which will be zeitgeisty enough for some viewers while leaving most wanting something a bit more imaginative.

The movie telegraphs its intentions too early and relies too much on a single actor, Johnny Depp, to achieve its emotional force.

Fast & Furious is the first film since the original to be smart about how far to stretch logic without sacrificing the desired macho swagger and revved-up emotions.

Fresnadillo’s film puts on fewer airs of disruption than other versions of this story, so the narrative comes off as less self-satisfied. Still, it struggles to sustain an inspirational tenor.

A blandly generic family film.

Lightweight but likeably uncynical.

With a loose-limbed naturalness, she conveys naiveté, intellectual curiosity and romantic yearning, and shows the unassuming Ana’s newfound thrill at being seen, however complicated the man holding her in his admiring gaze. She’s open and vulnerable but no fool. Best of all, Johnson and her director embrace Ana’s paradox: She snickers at Christian’s predilections, but they also turn her on.

Given the public's undying curiosity about the literary star who rejected fame, it's surprising he hasn't been the subject of more films. Rebel in the Rye shows how hard it is to satisfyingly pull that enigmatic man out of his hiding place.

Though tech values and supporting performances (especially Knoxville's) are unimpeachable, Suspicion doesn't conjure its setting as persuasively as some of the other drug-centric rural dramas we've seen lately.

Shotgun Wedding amounts to an action romantic comedy in which the action is uninspired, the romance tepid and the comedy flat — such that not even rom-com queen Jennifer Lopez can elevate it above aggressive mediocrity.

Though the concept serves as a soul-stirring showcase for contemporary inspirational performers, the writing and direction (both attributed to Rob Hardy) commit a multitude of sins.

Dennis Quaid's killer smile and Kathleen Turner's lovely legs are two of the up-front assets this winning comedy relies on to work its magic. But Herbert Ross' film also boasts a fine script, overall good casting and tight editing that keeps the gags flowing smoothly. [13 Sept 1993]

An unlikely romantic comedy concerning a young parish priest struggling to discover the true scope of his religious calling, The Good Catholic doesn't so much challenge conventions as reinforce them.

As in most of his roles since The Departed and The Fighter, Wahlberg shows little charisma, particularly when he’s flanked by an actor with the irreverent verve of LaKeith Stanfield, who steals every scene without even breaking a sweat. That’s not to say Wahlberg is the movie’s sole shortcoming. Not by a long shot.

The ensemble cast members play well off one another, particularly Fan as the self-absorbed Bruce Lee wannabe and Lynn in the role of the monumentally ignorant casting director.

Neither tense nor thematically resonant enough to overcome its literally small-scale aspects, Centigrade proves as much an ordeal for its viewers as its characters.

Everyone is clearly hiding something. But more pressing than the mystery of Mike’s silence and his parents’ toxic relationship is the sense of a missed opportunity that permeates the movie, sapping its final twist of the solar-plexus wallop it should have delivered.

Capone is definitely an unconventional take on the twilight of a notorious gangster. Alas, it's not an interesting one, although the borderline self-parodying Method madness of Tom Hardy's performance does kind of demand to be seen.

Da Vinci never rises to the level of a guilty pleasure. Too much guilt. Not enough pleasure.

Dispiritingly generic in both appearance and tone.

The cast's evident delight might be enough for some moviegoers, but with so much talent and so little modulation on offer, audiences subjected to the onslaught could reasonably expect a higher laughs-to-torture ratio.

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.

Put three old friends in a convertible for a cross-country road trip to a loved one's funeral, and what do you get? Very few surprises, in this feel-good fluff that, despite offering nothing novel, could do well with older audiences who rightly feel that too few films are being made with them in mind.

Vaguely pitched somewhere between indie-gritty and predictably conventional, the film struggles to strike a manageable equilibrium, much as its characters attempt to navigate the prospects and pitfalls of a footloose life overseas.

Where the first film was something of a teen horror film, the follow-up, again from writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky, is more of an unintentional comedy.

Although the film's jabs at TV journalism are nothing new, Carrey brings to the material the sense of someone who's too smart for his work yet loves it -- the essence, perhaps, of being a ham.

A challenging, thought-provoking debut that compassionately questions the relevance of celibacy in the Catholic Church.

Boasts an undeniably original premise and clever plot machinations that lift it several notches above the usual slasher film level.

Oddly bereft of scares or tension, the film is mainly notable for its sustained atmosphere of weirdness.

Finally, there is an answer to the old question, "What's more boring than watching golf on television?" As the new docu 95 Miles to Go reveals, watching Ray Romano watching golf on television is much more boring.

Scott's film chronicling the rise of one of the world's fastest-growing sport is best geared to fans, presenting those of us with merely a casual interest with far too much information and repetitive footage of snowboarders in action.

A hyperactive, wishful-thinking special effects fantasy suitable for family outings.

The acting is overly broad, so even the dimmest light bulb in the audience gets the gags.

A rare film dealing with Christian evangelism in a realistic way that neither mocks nor proselytizes, New Jerusalem quietly observes as a man tries to comfort his troubled best friend by bringing him to Jesus.

What Vishal Bhardwaj's Indian comedy brings in star power, it lacks in humor.

Awkwardly condensing more than 20 years into a running-time well under two hours, director/co-writer Cao Hamburger needs a bigger canvas for his well-intentioned but underpowered saga.

A fable-like horror mystery with strong comic and romantic tendencies, Alexandre Aja's Horns draws on source material by cult scribe (and son of Stephen King) Joe Hill to deliver something much more beguiling than the straighter genre fare (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) that made his name.

The filmmakers attempt to inject some life into their dubiously thin narrative by incorporating sequences shot at actual haunted houses that favor more elaborate shock tactics.

A Small Section of the World ably fulfills its mission of delivering its inspirational tale, but still seems mainly suitable for a corporate meeting.

Sometimes, deadpan observation of the mundane isn't Jarmuschian. Sometimes it's just dull.

The uneven drama remains reasonably engrossing thanks to affecting performances from Boyd Holbrook and Elisabeth Moss.

Blandly internationalized, generically derivative, drained of any personality, edited as if by computer and bleached of the slightest hint of emotion other than a holiday card-like sympathy for children and allegedly cute animals, The Meg is a one hundred percent inorganic meal, something made from pre-tasted and then regurgitated ingredients.

Aside from a supporting turn by Hannibal Buress as a king-of-the-geeks character, the film's most diverting ingredients are its aggressively crude character design and its sickly color palette.

There's enough variety in the workplace settings here to keep us interested, but the doc's chronology isn't the smoothest.

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

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.

England steers his talented young cast in the right direction despite some snafus in his story, and the fine acting is what ultimately brings 1:54 to the finish line.

If the film ultimately lacks the narrative focus necessary to make it stick in your waking memory, its shocking images may well haunt your nightmares.

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.

It would have been nice if Cold Brook had added up to something more substantial, but at least it's a film about grown-ups who generally try to behave that way, and these days that feels like a rare thing.

Gaga is a compelling live-wire presence, splitting the difference between affinity and obsession, while endearingly giving Arthur a shot of joy and hope that has him singing “When You’re Smiling” on his way to court. Their musical numbers, both duets and solos, have a vitality that the more often dour film desperately needs.

In some ways, Marcello Mio is the ultimate arthouse nepo baby flick, in which the child of cinema royalty embodies her legendary patriarch in order both to get closer to him and to purge herself of some of the demons that have haunted her own life and career — mainly, the fact that people have a tendency to compare her to her famous parents.

It’s all harmless fun, other than the fact that parents will undoubtedly be forced to shell out money for cat ears for their children. Kraner is a suitably likeable presence and Estefan provides the requisite warmth as the grandmother.

Despite a couple of unconvincingly upbeat tacked-on moments at the end, Project X basically reads as nihilistic, as not believing in or standing for anything. Not even fun.

Though some of the movie's performances flirt with caricature (Siobhan Fallon's loud-mouthed aunt, Demi Moore as a brash and overtly sexual second wife), the movie has a center of gravity just strong enough to contain them.

The film's emotional intelligence gets it past the occasional false note, and the strength of its central performances keeps us engaged even when the characters themselves might not deserve our sympathy.

In short, No. 4 is one big snore.

Featuring murky visuals, an even murkier narrative that lamely sputters to its conclusion, and frequently amateurish performances — the effectively low-key Isabelle is a notable exception — the film never explores its undeniably disturbing issues with enough thematic depth to compensate for its ragged execution.

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

Beerfest is tedious and, at 112 minutes, too long to sustain a sophomoric, one-joke comedy even for the presumed target audience of older male teens and the college-age crowd.

Audiences expecting a good time will instead be rewarded with wildly unsympathetic lead characters and uncomfortably long stretches without a laugh in sight.

What makes the film so much fun is an ingenious plot device embedded in Rashid's sharply observed screenplay.

The unapologetically derivative sci-fi outing doesn’t have the scripting muscle to deliver on its early promise. But the solid cast keeps it reasonably gripping nonetheless.

Laziness permeates the film from the inexplicable escapes to the neglected romance.

The pairing of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in the lead roles pays off big time, with more laugh-out-loud moments than the original and some particularly hilarious work from Hart, who steps up his game after his fun if broad-minded performances in Get Hard and the Ride Along movies.

Derrickson's characters are reduced to ciphers in a theological debate. Long wedges of the film are simply a discussion about the relative merits of science and superstition. Carpenter, as the sick girl, puts in the best performance.

A thoroughly conventional romantic comedy with all the usual trimmings.

Dark Glasses is never all that scary, and some of it is just plain silly, but if you take it at face value it can be enjoyable enough to sit through — more of a reminder of what Argento used to do best than an example in its own right.