Mainly of interest for the latest impressive turn from British national treasure Timothy Spall — snorting and blustering his way through the plum role of Protestant uber-firebrand Ian Paisley — deficiencies in script and direction render the vehicle less than road-worthy.

With a slick, outsider’s perspective on the City of Angels and some interesting possibilities that are set up early on, this Message gets off to a great start. But the screenplay becomes a muddle and then a mess in its second half.

Strong performances and outstanding cinematography aren't enough to rescue an unfocused and episodic screenplay, which will leave many stranded in a purgatorial cinematic-halfway house between bliss and despair.

The event-stuffed screenplay seems frightened of the running time associated with historical romances, though, excising any occasion for reflection or distraction; as a result, the picture moves with a mechanical predictability that would be considerably more annoying with a less watchable cast in front of us.

A film that admirably tries to remain true to the slightly gritty spirit of its source material. Unfortunately, it also occasionally sprays the wall with maudlin touches and misjudged additions to the story.

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.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy certainly makes many valid points, but they tend to be lost amidst the overriding cutesiness.

Not for the squeamish, Ovredal's chilly slab of body horror ultimately proves less than the sum of its forensically fileted parts.

The handsomely downbeat atmospherics overwhelm its themes of love, parenthood, crime and punishment. The narrative doesn't quite coalesce, and except for a few late-in-the-proceedings moments, it doesn't deliver the grim, indelible shivers of the best noir.

Despite all the splendor, there’s little sense of vision.

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.

This is a self-satisfied exercise that's only occasionally as much fun as it thinks it is.

Fin Edquist's generic but pleasant script offers only a couple of groaner puns to those chaperoning kids in the audience ("got a reptile dysfunction, have you?" is an example); but it's brought to solid life by Aussie thesps Toni Collette, Richard Roxburgh, and others.

Hong has a distinctive voice and an interesting track record, but his latest exercise in flimsy whimsy is for indulgent hardcore fans only.

Cassie Jaye's The Red Pill is clumsy and frustrating in many ways. But it demonstrates enough sincerity and openness to challenging ideas — letting representatives of this problematic movement make their case clearly and convincingly — that one wishes it were able to look at multiple sides of this debate at the same time.

Though there’s clearly a compassionate impulse behind Leon F. Butler’s class-conscious screenplay, it rapidly devolves into implausible melodrama.

Dallas Jenkins’ dramedy about a washed-up actor who learns the error of his ways through being exposed to religion doesn’t have an original cinematic bone in its body. But it’s also refreshingly genial and lacking in preachiness for a faith-based film, demonstrating that a lighter touch doesn’t necessary dilute the obvious messaging.

Christopher Smith’s self-consciously stylish genre homage finally feels like a baby film noir, playacting without the requisite bone-deep dread.

Loaded with dark humor, Bates’ script faces considerable challenges developing sympathetic characters.

The subject is a rich one, but the film simply isn’t incisive enough.

It’s all about metaphor and mood, while the storytelling is so lightweight it might not exist. Without it, this drunken boat sailing on poetry can't hold interest for its entire two hour running time.

For those less interested in horticultural matters, however, this Dutch documentary is akin to, well, watching plants grow. The sort of film frequently described as "meditative," it produces a calming but ultimately soporific effect.

Despite its appealing performers and some tasty comic moments, Wilson overestimates our affection for a grating antihero only mildly warmed by Harrelson's ambling charm.

Only the faintest glimmers of genuine, earned emotion pierce through the layers of intense calculation that encumber Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time.

As with many other portrayals of this ugly period, the movie's central figures and their experiences have been cleansed of complexity, embalmed in a sort of hagiographic glaze that makes even the pain look pretty. Harrowing things happen, but it’s the easiest kind of "tough watch”; we know exactly what we’re supposed to feel and when we’re supposed to feel it.

Proves alternately inspiring and depressing even while skirting uncomfortably close to voyeurism.

While one can admire the commitment, technique, concentration and stamina required to keep the pressure cooker at maximum temperature, it still feels like an exercise, one so dramatically monotonous and tonally high-pitched that you want to escape almost as much as the characters do.

Handsomely packaged, the film unfortunately is also too well-behaved and lacking in psychological depth to really set itself apart from countless other WWII dramas.