Roth’s messy storytelling is so anxious to get to the next blast of rote action — amped up by Steve Jablonsky’s hard-working synth and orchestral score and lots of shoddy CGI — that the characters have scant opportunity to form real bonds.

Without understanding more of Lily’s broader community or getting a stronger sense of how she navigates the relationship with Ryle, the film can feel too light and wispy to support the weight of its themes.

The film is a concert movie for Shyamalan’s daughter, the musician Saleka, wrapped in a middling thriller kept afloat by a compelling performance from Josh Hartnett.

When the performers are on stage, Swan Song becomes electric.

The first rule of a good werewolf flick, or any horror flick for that matter, is to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, whereas Farrell mostly keeps us guessing.

Walker and her editors have created an absorbing narrative, so the film never feels as cobbled together as it actually is.

However stilted War Game may feel cinematically, it registers with full force as a realistic depiction of a nightmarish scenario that could easily occur just a few months from now.

Bradley Rust Gray’s blood is a beautifully observed film that never arrives at its desired emotional destination.

While largely predictable in its approach, Ejiofor’s film still evokes a genuine emotional response thanks to strong performances from its cast, especially lead Jay Will.

Although Coup! has a small cast and unfolds mostly in a secluded mansion during the 1918 influenza pandemic, it packs a lot of flavor, suspense and droll comedy into its slim 97-minute running time, making it fun enough to deserve an exclamation point in its title.

It’s not terrible but it’s far from great, instead landing in that dispiriting morass best identified as “passable entertainment,” designed to make critics grasp for new ways to say “Meh.”

The film yearns to capture the stages of this emotional exhumation, but a clunky screenplay makes for a less affecting watch.

The movie star Taylor is the one who most often comes through in the film, but that is engaging enough.

It’s hard not to wish that in the future, Harold will stick to the cartoon world where he belongs.

Even when Mountains’ narrative, which often feels more like a series of beautifully conjured vignettes, doesn’t hit its full potential, the way Sorelle thinks of gentrification rewards our close attention.

Like the investigation itself, the meaning of Only the River Flows gradually finds its focus as the story progresses, leaving the viewer staring into the same abyss the detective does — an abyss that, as in any respectable film noir, stares back at him.

The Fabulous Four aims past the formula trappings and, though its misses might be evident, it also hits the bull’s-eye.

I found this movie messy and overstuffed, but I laughed almost as often as I cringed from its obnoxiousness and can’t dispute that a vast audience will delight in every moment. Even if they spend much of the running time sticking blades through each other’s handily regenerating flesh, Reynolds and Jackman make sweet love and appear to be having a great time doing it.

The artisanal spirit and abundant creativity of the enterprise is undeniable, immersing us in a vivid world crafted from clay, wire, paper and paint, without a single frame of CG imagery.

The romance at the movie’s core doesn’t deliver the intended emotional impact, but there’s a tender, potent resonance to other aspects of the story.

McCarthy’s approach to his original script is marked by an admirable economy of both narrative and style. Withholding plot details, limiting the cast to a bare minimum and confining the action to just a few claustrophobic locations combine to amplify an escalating sense of unease.

If the film teeters unsteadily between sci-fi and psychology, it nonetheless confirms Clapin’s visual talents, which are backed by a dreamy score from Dan Levy, who also scored I Lost My Body. In its best moments, Meanwhile on Earth takes us beyond our desolate everyday lives to a place we can indeed dream of — and also witness on screen.

The movie occasionally veers toward cliché, but its delicacy and restraint keep it dramatically compelling and its emotions are never unearned, right through to its lovely open-ended conclusion.

The story of a young singer-songwriter who’s stuck in a nowhere loop until she takes an impulsive leap, the feature is sometimes clunky but often quietly transporting.

The Convert is uneven and doesn’t fully live up to its thematic ambitions. But it’s handsomely made and thankfully avoids falling victim to white savior syndrome.

The Count of Monte Cristo is the kind of movie where, after 180 minutes and many, many more plot points, you walk out of the theater without having felt the time pass. That’s a good thing if you’re looking for a fairly entertaining, swords-and-puffy-shirts revenge tale — and Dumas’ novel is probably the mother of all revenge tales.

The fight scenes are extremely well choreographed, filmed and edited, but they’re so relentless in their non-stop pacing that the viewing experience becomes numbing.

Ultimately, for all its wildly entertaining elements, Kalki 2898 AD feels like too much of a good thing, resembling the sort of lavish buffet meal that leaves you feeling overstuffed and exhausted. But fans of this particular style of cinema are not likely to mind.