Lead actor Johnny Simmons fits his role perfectly, his baby face giving him the suitable appearance of an overgrown adolescent. But the smutty, tired material with which he has to work is surprisingly devoid of laughs.

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.

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.

Ordinary World becomes raggedly enjoyable thanks to the unexpected charms of its leading man.

Flirting with sitcommy high jinks, Clark instead gives us a bittersweet cocktail of soul-weary defeat and unassuming vigor.

Personal footage interacts intriguingly with reportage here, sometimes making it more than the greatest-hits montage it initially seems.

The comedian's delivery, high-energy throughout, helps him put over material that is funny but hardly justifies the record-setting receipts of Hart's 2016 tour.

All the more frustrating because of its conceptual freshness and Ben Affleck's sly turn in the title role, this sleek action thriller ends up delivering standard shoot-'em-up goods after initially suggesting it might provide something rather different.

As the melee comes to feel like it may never end, the film executes a masterful narrative shift that will produce instant lumps in many viewers' throats.

Although some of the film’s many twists are not that surprising, they’re satisfyingly delivered, and with a strong supporting cast ...plus striking dream imagery, this adds up to arguably the best in the franchise so far.

If you could take the Shrek, Happy Feet and Smurfs movies, toss them in a blender and hit the pulse button a few times, the result would be a pretty reasonable approximation of Trolls, an admittedly vibrant-looking but awfully recognizable animated musical comedy concoction.

The sheer likability of these lived-in characters is a powerful magnet, thanks to insightful writing and a note-perfect ensemble anchored by a never-better Annette Bening.

Delivers an easily digestible and amusing portrait of youthful hijinks that should well please its target audience.

Danger doesn't quite translate into sustained drama here, in part because the reliance on voiceover distances us from the action.

Starting out with a bracing, off-kilter wryness, Ove moves steadily, and disappointingly, toward the crowd-pleasing center.

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

The Last Film Festival is stuck in a loop of painfully silly humor, with stars Dennis Hopper and Jacqueline Bisset offering glimmers of the satire that might have been.

Judging by the number of Nagels listed in the film's credits, ClownTown would seem to be some sort of family project. A trip to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion would have been a better choice.

Derivative to such a degree that it seems almost a parody of its genre that has lost significant box-office steam, Maximum Ride is so ineptly executed that it might as well feature its own Mystery Science Theater 3000 soundtrack.

Both unassuming and surprisingly affecting in its DIY authenticity.

Thor, who partnered with screenwriter Ashlin Halfnight on their debut feature Diving Normal, crafts Astraea as an eerily resonant piece of speculative fiction sustained by a consistently elegiac tone and realistic performances, rather than grandiose narrative devices or intrusive special effects.

Bilal is a grand-scale, fast-paced animated adaptation that is both empowering and inspiring in its call for social justice and equality.

The film’s main problem is that it can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up not having enough time to develop anything in any depth.

Mother is a crisp, sardonic, darkly funny mystery thriller with a claustrophobic feel that occasionally betrays its roots as an Irish radio drama.

The mother of all allegorical monsters takes on new meaning in a talky, vaguely nationalistic reboot that slips on like a comfortable sweater, even if it’s a sweater with some holes in it.

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 sarcasm of superstar director Feng Xiaogang reduces Chinese bureaucracy, the legal system and government inefficiency to ashes in I Am Not Madame Bovary, but risks doing the same for audiences in a caustic, overlong satire whose coy visual effects overpower the story and characters.

An assured doc debut that knows how to stand out in a crowded field, Craig Atkinson's Do Not Resist avoids the handwringing format of other (very welcome) examinations of 21st-century American policing, offering instead something like a despairing tone poem.