Lacking the charming eccentricity of a "Turbo Kid" or the compelling mood of many retro-horror successes, the picture has little to recommend it as a theatrical experience.

None of the performers are able to bring life to their schematic characters, although Nelson appears to be having fun as a modern-day pirate. You do get the feeling, however, that he would have much preferred to play the role with a patch on his eye and a parrot on his shoulder.

While one of the first rules of writing is to write what you know, Sabet's romantic comedy demonstrates that not everything that actually happens to you can be mined for comedic gold. The picture starts out promisingly enough, but eventually sinks under the weight of its implausibilities.

Ladyworld proves as much of an endurance test for viewers as the central characters.

Unfortunately, Every Time I Die doesn't quite have the cinematic polish to live up to its considerable aspirations, resulting in a frustratingly opaque viewing experience.

Unfortunately, although Becoming Nobody will prove a must-see for Ram Dass' ardent fans, and they are certainly legion, the film proves frustratingly unpolished and unfocused, providing precious little biographical information or narrative context. It ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, a labor of love that would have benefited from a little more objectivity.

Lacking the personalities and attitude that have led some other unassuming productions to commercial success, the film has little to boast about beyond some fine dance sequences — none of them more transporting than what can be found easily on small screens.

Green has made exactly the kind of witless, worthless sequel that bled the franchise dry in the 1980s and ’90s.

Neither Gan's screenplay nor his direction of the cast quite sells this scenario, but once he introduces some accidental violence, the picture can ride the familiar logic of crime-gone-wrong storytelling.

As things stand, personal perspective brings something to this rudimentary documentary, but not nearly enough to help it compete with more polished portraits of big-top razzle-dazzle.

Though not quite as devoid of personality as those names and its boilerplate dialogue, the film nevertheless plays like a flowchart in search of a pulse, a drama whose "Traffic"-like ambitions aren't matched by narrative inspiration.

Striving to be an inspirational story about personal and professional redemption, the film mainly comes across as a self-aggrandizing promotional project that the famously arrogant pop star would have once sneered at.

Playing With Fire strikes strictly predictably beats. Key and Leguizamo, comic talents who are wildly overqualified for this sort of thing, work hard, very hard, to infuse the tired material with laughs. But they're mostly hamstrung by their one-note characters

The emotional and logistical struggles of our heroine, played with sweaty determination by Anne Hathaway, are the film's clearest through-line; but after the intimate clarity of her debut, Pariah, and the wrenching Delta drama Mudbound, this is a pedigreed misfire.

Miss Taylor needs something stronger than this to display her talents, and so does Burton.

Generic and too self-indulgent, if energetic and occasionally funny, the film’s greatest attribute is by far co-star Crispin Glover, who steals the show as a deranged French-speaking assassin named Luc Chaltier.

The blurring of the lines between fiction and fact still mostly feels like a crutch or an affectation. It's as if Cordero and Croda are trying to goose the drama rather than unearth it, never entirely trusting that Felipe's life is interesting enough as is.

Although stylishly made and featuring a compelling lead performance by Trevor Long (Netflix's Ozark), Seeds never takes root.

The documentary plays like a home movie that snowballed, causing its maker to overestimate her subject's relevance to the outside world. Though parts of it will certainly resonate within the deaf community (assuming it is made available with closed captioning), the film has little of the philosophical appeal of other documentaries on this topic, and sometimes seems willfully solipsistic.

It's a story cut from familiar cloth that's absorbing enough but never quite escapes its whiff of cliché.

The ingredients for an engagingly ridiculous action pic are here, but the pacing's all wrong.

The film's relentless artiness ultimately proves more off-putting than involving, distancing us from what should be a harrowing tale.

This Vietnam War-themed drama is one of the dullest films made about that oft-dramatized conflict.

Collisions all but screams "Issue Movie," and is extremely unlikely to reach anyone but the already convinced.

Weakest of the performers is Chris O'Donnell as D'Artagnan. He's certainly young enough to portray Dumas' "Don Quixote of 18," but most traces of D'Artagnan's hot-blooded, big-hearted Gascony traits have been blunted in favor of mere eager stubbornness. [12 Nov 1993]

Painstakingly formulaic and uninspired (it could have been called The Mighty Guts), the lumbering comedy will unlikely make much of a dent at the boxoffice. [17 Feb 1995]

For all its aggressive energy, The Current War is an uninvolving bore, making it unlikely to measure up as the kind of Oscar-baity prestige entry The Weinstein Co. obviously had in mind.

Playing Kane, a flamboyant crime boss who lives up to his name by using a walking stick, Flanery chews the scenery with gusto, as if auditioning for the next Quentin Tarantino movie. He's the most enjoyable element in what otherwise proves a flimsy vehicle for its producer/star Natalie Burn.