It has its harrowing moments, but the psychological thriller Jasmine is an impenetrable mystery for most of its running time, and deliberately so.

Untaxing as drama, thin as entertainment, but modestly enjoyable as a revved-up caper movie, Overdrive is pure escapist fluff with a light French accent. Which still makes it smarter, leaner and cooler than any of the Fast and the Furious films it shamelessly mimics.

Generic and, at its best, straining to be heartfelt.

Played at an unmodulated level of subdued excitement that never quickens the pulse, longtime series producer Simon Kinberg's directorial debut lacks the exclamation point fans have justifiably been hoping for at the end of a road.

Montiel treats his story's happily unsung oddballs with sincere affection. He doesn't hold them up to ridicule, or insist that they snap out of their quirkiness and conform. But he doesn't quite know what to do with them.

Marc Lawrence's story about Santa's daughter, despite its solid cast, aims squarely at not-too-picky kids and mostly ignores parents' desire to be entertained as well.

While certainly lushly mounted, Two Women is at best a piece of dated heritage cinema, and at worst cliche-ridden pomp.

Degan's first film, the effort often suffers from hazy storytelling, but its real difficulty for many viewers will be its protagonist, who isn't the most sympathetic proxy for Americans curious about the plant extract's suitability to treat depression.

A work of deep but unsentimental optimism, Wrestling Jerusalem gives us plenty to wrestle with, but presents it at such a relentless clip, in such self-conscious fashion, that it becomes wearying rather than involving.

Davis and Kaye’s script lacks the black humor and high-wire comic timing that made The Celebration such a breakthrough, and the antics of the three main leads just become a bit sordid, inexplicable and oddly tiresome by the end, even though the performances are admirably committed.

Ultimately, this psychedelic culture-clash comedy-romance takes what was at heart a relatively simple story by Gaiman, which channeled bold sci-fi imagination into relatable adolescent experience, and overcomplicates it beyond repair.

Even if one agrees with Jarecki's progressive political position, making Elvis into a metonym for the nation's spiritual corruption starts to feel too much like a contrived rhetorical sleight of hand.

The Grand Guignol factor climbs throughout the final third, but while climactic battles are violent, they never really thrill.

Perpetually shifting gears between playful sci-fi pastiche, quirky rom-com and apocalyptic thriller, Before We Vanish might have worked better as a single dedicated genre, but it becomes a little scrambled trying to cover several at once.

A sometimes amusing, sometimes draggy and overstuffed affair that always relies on its talent-rich cast to carry the day.

It's difficult to entirely resist the film's heartwarming portrait of decent people who genuinely care for each other and strive to do the right thing.

It is good-natured, lowbrow, backlot, hit-or-miss humor, but with no cumulative effect beyond its succession of hard-worked jokes. More theatrical than cinematic in its conception, this group effort relies on the improvisation of its performers.

Radiance remains mired in underwritten relationships that end up less emotionally engaging than they appear.

There is ample material in Fortunata for a heart-rending tale of blue-collar female empowerment, but Castellitto’s noble intentions get swamped along the way in incontinent floods of histrionic excess, broad caricatures, clumsy allusions to Greek tragedy and psychodrama subplots that feel like half-baked afterthoughts.

Barbosa doesn’t seem very interested in questioning Buchmann’s intentions — the idea of cultural appropriation never comes up, for starters — with the young man depicted as sincere if clearly naive.

The question of decades-old torture is an important one, of course, but hardly makes this a must-see doc when there are so many present-tense stories of police misconduct to investigate.

Tag is neither bad nor good, but rather, despite its out-there story, almost numbingly ordinary: an easy, breezy action-com that’s sometimes amusing but rarely funny, competent rather than inspired.

Despite poignant moments, particularly in the performances of Steve Carell and Laurence Fishburne, the weave of somber introspection, rueful reminiscence, irreverent comedy and sociopolitical commentary feels effortful, placing the movie among the less memorable entries in Linklater's canon.

The extemporized feel to some of the dialogue makes their rapport seem all the more credible and consequently there is something open-hearted and friendly about the performers that keeps the film watchable, for all its faults.

Although concentrating on delivering easily digestible situations and scene progressions, Landon does demonstrate some enticing visual flair that gets rather diminished by the repetitiveness of the plot.

Despite impressive performances by Matthew McConaughey and newcomer Richie Merritt, the film fails to engage or enlighten.

Sadly, the ambitious film never approaches the gravitas that helped the Lord of the Rings films involve us in their mythology.

Sensitive readers should be informed that Kuso is not for you; even those with a strong tolerance for monster-movie gore are far from guaranteed to accept its warm, clumpy bath of repugnant ickiness.

Richard Linklater's 19th feature becomes compelling in its final act, but before that too often appears tonally addled and dramatically dawdling.

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.

While Potter devotees will no doubt be scandalized by the edgier bad-boy ‘tude now possessed by Mr. McGregor’s mischievous cotton-tailed nemesis, the greater offense committed is the awfully flimsy plotting that fails to take full advantage of terrific production values and the work of an engaging cast led by the affably energetic James Corden.

Often lapsing into attempts at broad comedy that don’t quite come off, the tonally wobbly The Conway Curve is most notable for the appealing lead performance by Veronica Wylie.

A road movie short on comedy and drama should at least offer a keen level of observation, but here insight is scarce and emotional resonance is faint.

There are chuckles here and there, but a striking absence of belly laughs; Girls Trip it’s decidedly not.

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.

The intriguingly bonkers premise rests somewhat soundly on matters of climate change, overpopulation and genetic engineering, but its most burning question is “Are seven Noomi Rapaces better than one?” To which the answer is a resounding “Sure, why not?”

Terrifically effective when vividly illustrating the emergency medical procedures necessary to keep a gun victim alive, Shot falls short in terms of narrative. But it will certainly resonate for anyone who’s ever been rushed to a hospital.

The normally charismatic cast doesn’t get much to chew on and thus can’t really lift the film beyond its modest, self-aware station.

That the film works to the extent that it does is largely due to the superb performance by Kilcher, who imbues her starring turn with a radiance and magnetism that makes you fully believe in her character's ability to woo audiences

While Burdge's dogged commitment to the role commands admiration, Gina's obtuse, masochistic behavior keeps us from investing in her as a character spiraling out of control.

It looks better than many of its peers, with only one or two lapses of taste in production design, FX and costumes. (The cutesy CG sidekick of our main hero is the biggest sore thumb.) Diverting but hardly novel enough to win over Stateside viewers outside the circle of hardcore Asian film buffs.

The movie devotes an inexcusably short time to the many years Ronson worked after the Spiders from Mars disbanded — and, Hunter aside, talks to nearly nobody from that time.

Della Valle’s screenplay features the sort of artificial-sounding, hard-boiled dialogue uttered by characters who know they’re in a movie, and it’s woefully thin on storytelling coherence. Still, Akinnuoye-Agbaje looks great, and suitably haunted, walking on deserted beaches clad in a trench coat, and his co-stars prove equally compelling.

While the joke wears thin very quickly, there are a number of amusing sequences, which are combined with some exciting road action to provide a mildly entertaining — and totally mindless — film.

Intending to shed insight on the philosophies that led them to their victories Winning too often feels like an intertwined series of inspirational television newsmagazine segments.

Like flipping through the pages of a pulpy best-seller, watching Loving Pablo has its moments of guilty pleasure but leaves an empty feeling when you reach the end.

Though it is convincingly played and sensually shot, the film has about as much narrative as the characters have parts of their bodies covered on the beach.

Schoenaerts is his usual, intense self, Exarchopoulos has here found her best role since Blue and there’s no denying their chemistry is wild. But their characters become prisoners of the many twists and turns of the narrative instead of rising above it; their personalities aren’t revealed through the story so much as they are constrained by it.

Although chances are good that something called This Is Your Death is not going to be admirably restrained in the subtlety department, there was at least the hope that this grotesque thriller wouldn’t have kept pivoting uneasily between audacious social satire and mawkish moralizing.

It’s all a little zany and overcooked and childish, which is perhaps why the series has been so popular with French tykes and is probably better fitted for 22-minute episodes than feature-length treatment.

Despite Anna Schafer’s gripping performance in the lead role, this deeply personal effort is too narratively sluggish to sustain attention.

Though Muschietti occasionally finds lovely filmic ways to transition from one to the next, the stories don't get to resonate with each other in a meaningful or emotional way — as they might in a series of well crafted hour-long episodes.

The ace cast provides delicious moments, to be sure, but mainly they're playing caricatures in search of a compelling plot.

The odd subject matter should have made for a riveting film, but, like many documentaries, Liberation Day (the title refers to the North Korean holiday celebrating the anniversary of the end of Japanese rule) feels both too short and too long.

Bad Match clearly only aspires to be a thriller with a surprise or two up its sleeve. On that front, it's adequate.

However nuanced and artful, the nightmarish unease is laid on so thick that, in combination with the cryptic narrative, it gradually turns to murk.

First-time screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan have done their homework in organizing the material but haven’t brought an argument to the table that might have zapped the film to life; everything is methodical, it covers most of the bases, but passion and vitality are crucially missing from director John Curran’s treatment.

Even after 90-odd minutes, Mansfield remains something of an enigma. There's the nagging sense that Ebersole and Hughes are tossing myriad darts at a skittish moving target, trying out numerous techniques (including a couple of fifties-style animations) without ever settling into a proper rhythm.

Blame essentially flirts with one set of clichés only to settle down with another. But it has the merit of at least striving for the substantive (the agonies of teenage girlhood) over the merely titillating (transgressive sex).

Eastwood's main achievement here lies in trusting his hunch that the young men could handle playing themselves onscreen, with an acceptable naturalness and without self-consciousness. This they do, without a false note.

The film's title promises a story told with the tidy structure of the blues. (Either that, or it's a bad joke about Clapton's long struggle with alcoholism.) But Life proves weirdly assembled, with counterintuitive emphases.

The three-hour runtime seems justified when Iwai lets his characters fragile, burgeoning relationships develop at a leisurely pace and revel in the little details. At other times the pic is simply self-indulgent, allowing scenes to slip from emotionally naked to embarrassingly overwrought in a flash. Iwai served as his own editor and it shows.

Fitfully amusing and occasionally grating, Amanda & Jack Go Glamping succeeds best when it focuses on its protagonists’ unique shared experiences rather than the overly familiar conflicts of partners in crisis.

The narrative frequently wanders into unfulfilling tangents, several of the characters are barely developed and we never get a sure sense of where the story is supposed to be going.

What keeps it reasonably engaging...is an appealing central performance from Alex Lawther.

This unresolved maritime mystery feels oddly flat and functional, diluting a tragic tale full of unanswered questions into an anodyne middlebrow weepie.

Articulate, charismatic, engaging and clearly brilliant, Ingels seems to have captivated the filmmaker so much that Big Time suffers as a result. Neither scholarly enough to fully satisfy architecture buffs nor distinctive enough as a biographical portrait, it falls somewhere in the bland middle.

In the end, there’s too much good stuff missing and yet not enough to serve as a satisfying meal.

While not exactly a misfire, Rodriguez and Cameron's joint effort lacks the zing and originality of their best individual work.

The film is a cream puff about a mother-daughter relationship, masquerading as a raucous return-to-campus comedy, most of it predictable.

In terms of its overall look, Cinderella the Cat blends blocky, videogame-like 3D/CGI animation and voluptuous, watercolor-like 2D animation. It shouldn't work, yet it does create a coherent universe.

Opening action sequences project a cartoony comic flavor that has promise, but that peters out as the battles grow increasingly cosmic.

In short, it's a long-arc revenge tale fitted out with very elaborate effects, courtesy of Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films, and characters that are moderately decent company but hardly compelling.

While God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness proves less fiery in its preaching than its predecessors, it's also a significantly duller offering. How could it not be, considering that its main plot element involves a courtroom battle over real estate?

First-time directors Bob Fisher and Rob Greenberg start off with a movie so dull it threatens to vanish from the viewer's memory before it's even finished. Things get better midway through, with the directors' screenplay finally playing to the talents of at least one of its stars, Derbez.

McKinnon dives head-first into every imbecilic scene, and Kunis stoically pretends to believe her BFF is sentient. But the movie around them is a wreck, and no amount of cloak-and-dagger will keep that secret for long.

Young moviegoers who haven't yet tired of cookie-cutter dystopias will find a sympathetic protagonist played by Amandla Stenberg; but viewers who've taken this ride enough times to want, for instance, subtext addressing real-world oppression should look elsewhere.

Carlos Lopez Estrada’s debut feature brandishes brash exuberance and stilted storytelling tropes in roughly equal measure, yielding a result that stimulates just as it cheapens itself dramatically.

In the end, sensationalism and simplistic emotions, bolstered by Klaus Badelt's sweeping score, decimate a story that has otherwise been unfolding nicely with gloom and intrigue.

Sluggish and somber, with nary a wink, chuckle or sigh of relief to mitigate the misery, the film is a slog. That's unfortunate, because the writer-directors have a strong visual sense, and, in Wood, a magnetic lead.

Pine is fully committed to Robert's mission, but the film has a hard time making him a compelling character, even with a wife and daughter on hand to make him relatable. And it takes forever for his military campaign to get rolling.

Despite a compelling lead in Andrew Garfield, the tension dissipates rather than mounts as this knotty neo-noir slides into a Lynchian swamp of outre weirdness.

The writer-directors are so intent on upending expectations and startling the audience that the effort shows far too much and, in the weak second half, ends up being terribly self-conscious.

Though the screenplay ... ultimately conforms quite plainly to formula and grows less interesting as it proceeds, there’s a gutsiness to Larson’s headlong leap into material that walks a fine line between risky fantasy and feel-good reassurance.

Juliet, Naked never truly achieves comic lift-off. Instead, it bumps around from one mild laugh, awkward encounter and bewildering decision to another without ever building up an exhilarating head of steam.

Dialogue tends toward the eye-rolling variety and performances feel uneven across the board, with the actors using a menagerie of accents, including some dubious Deep South ones, as they shout above all the pounding rain and thunder.

Majidi is surprisingly comfortable with the Indian setting and with his characters, for whom he exudes empathy. But the screenplay, written by the director with Mehran Kashani, has its ups and downs and longeurs.

As deliciously evil and manipulative as Wai is as Madame Tang, The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful is also egregiously complicated, with so many rival families, ministers and ambitious industrialists crowding the story (often for a single scene) they start to blur into one forgettable lump; there’s a fine line between enigmatic and obfuscating.

It’s an eyebrow-raising true tale, one aided and abetted onscreen by the solid cast and strong sense of commitment. But Heckler is caught somewhere between being a journalistic historian and a dramatist without seeming expert at either. His screenplay connects all the dots of the story with no sense of shaping or modulation.

Though the story itself contains enough to intrigue a skeptic, Bagans' tendency to tart things up with horror-movie techniques makes this a movie to scare true believers, not win new ones over.

Only the luminous presence of Sharon Stone, delivering one of the most charming performances in her career, manages to rescue the otherwise hopelessly awkward proceedings that make you wish that All I Wish had been better.

At various moments throughout the movie, Turner and McDermott suggest something far more complicated and messy than the noir-tinged exercise that unfolds.

Only the talents of its estimable cast, also including Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver, manage to make it worth checking out.

A slow burn often works in creep-outs such as this, but here the pacing is a deficit, despite an especially good performance by Harper (of NBC's The Good Place) as the worker whose partner may be turning against him.

Featuring excellent performances by Forest Whitaker as Tutu and Eric Bana as an imprisoned racist government death-squad assassin seeking clemency, The Forgiven tackles its important political and social issues in an overly talky fashion.

While the film is a much more powerful visual feast than the original Monster Hunt from two years ago, it offers little in terms of expanding the first film's themes or pushing the storyline significantly forward.

Charlotte Rampling gives an emotionally rigorous display of bruising internalization, without an ounce of vanity, in the title role of Hannah. But although the lead performance commands admiration, the overall impact of this unrelentingly dour account of a woman struggling to carry on with her life after her husband's imprisonment is dulled by its distancing approach.

For all its honorable intentions to address sensitive issues that still sting, Kings is an unconvincing tonal patchwork.