Although it contains many fascinating elements, Never Surrender: The Ed Ramsey Story emerges as a hagiographic and frustratingly self-indulgent exercise.

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.

The film’s central conflicts are almost stereotypically outlined, with the flawed locals arrayed against intrusive outsiders, and Doleac’s characters don’t display much more depth either.

Even those who know Mirza Sahiba may have a hard time reconciling the way this decorous present-tense melodrama is juxtaposed with pompous period flashbacks to that story.

While the three leads are committed and give respectable performances (albeit ones that fail to conjure the artists who inspired the characters), NY84 has little going for it that hasn't been taken directly from much better books and movies.

More succinct writing and tighter editing could have yielded a solid B picture.

The storyline, familiar-feeling as it is, could have made for an effective thriller. But writer/director Whedon (brother of Joss) bogs down the pacing with too many routine flashbacks.

A handsome period piece that plays more like a scant-clues mystery than like the psychological thriller it intends to be, Andy Goddard's A Kind of Murder turns to the work of Patricia Highsmith but finds little of what made Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley such nail-biters.

Despite the iffy script, two of the film’s performances pack a punch.

Just as one should be wary of tobacco-safety data produced with tobacco-industry money, skeptical audiences will have a hard time putting too much stock in a doc so strongly aligned with vape entrepreneurs.

Jack's Apocalypse holds few rewards.

You've Been Trumped Too is a mostly unnecessary sequel that spends much of its brief running time rehashing distressingly familiar news footage about Trump's campaign.

Rajiv Shah’s screenplay fails to flesh out its characters and situations in compelling fashion, leaving the actors struggling to bring depth to the sketchy scenario and Mehta’s uninspired direction.

As lumbering and slow-moving as the vehicle in which most of its action takes place, Nick Gillespie’s horror thriller makes the familiar mistake of confusing obscurity with tension.

The high concept outshines the execution; it’s easy to see how a significantly slimmed-down and sharpened version of the overlong feature might have been a small-time contender.

Unfortunately, despite some fine performances and enjoyable moments, the film never manages to make its quirkiness engaging.

Although visually stylish and imaginative — the short bits of animation on display wouldn’t be out of place in a Tim Burton film — Friend Request gets less interesting the more it goes on.

A drama that struggles to breathe life into its death-themed narrative.

With brilliant comedians like Hahn and new addition Christine Baranski on board, there are line readings that pop and jokes that land.... But A Bad Moms Christmas is louder, busier and more pandering than the original — an exhausting spectacle of skilled performers gamely mugging their way through a cash grab.

Clearly, all this is designed to provoke adverse reactions. But what if instead of outrage and indignation, the response was a numb shrug? Don't get me wrong — The House That Jack Built is definitely something to see. But what's most surprising is that it's just as often inane as unsettling.

The by-the-numbers story never achieves its aimed-for grandeur or intensity, and the striking Turkish locations prove far more interesting than the characters.

A professionally mounted but bluntly misanthropic character-study, the director's second solo outing wallows in the worst of human nature with little reward at the end of a mechanically inexorable downward spiral.

Thompson’s heavy-handed storytelling, along with a nonstop score of pure mush, brings this closer to telenovela territory than to the Louvre.

The overpowering air of familiarity to this rip-off pretending to be homage makes it redundant.

Visually stunning but strained by pretentious poeticism and a simplistic storyline, My Father Die is ultimately as labored as its ungrammatical title.

If Fraud presented its fabrication, then followed up with whatever bits of unmanipulated footage might explain itself, some moviegoers would find the exercise worthwhile. But nothing in the film itself acknowledges the source or the actual nature of these scenes.

Unfortunately, instead of embracing the weighty moral, religious and political components of the story, Malick has alternately deflected and minimized them.

The writing/directing debut of Minhal Baig enlists experienced actors but has little idea what to do with them, making a hash of its intended meditation on the compromises required by long-term relationships.