Matching the screenplay’s lack of nuance, Campbell (Casino Royale, The Protégé) orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together familiar action beats and churning up little that rings true.

Easter Sunday earns points for its cultural bona fides, its loving portrait of the community it celebrates and its almost entirely Filipino and Asian-American casting. And Koy reveals himself to be a likable screen presence deserving of more starring roles. But it falls hopelessly flat in its comedic aspirations, more closely resembling the sort of bland network sitcom to which its main character aspires.

Throwing a woman in front of the camera and a few feminist quips into the script does not make these films any less conventional, or necessarily any more empowering.

Moonage Daydream is short on insight, and ends up feeling more enervating than enlightening.

For those not motivated purely by a desire for cinematic bloodlust accompanied by an abrasive musical score that sounds like electronic fingernails on a blackboard, there’s some fun to be had.

While there’s a liberal sprinkling of humor, the mysteries it conjures are windy and academic, though not the kind of academic that stands up to scrutiny.

Badly in need of more humor and humanity, like that found in his best Hong Kong features, Tsui Hark's long-awaited big-budget debut "Double Team" is doubly problematic. Beyond a few sequences with some of the Hark magic and the formidable presence of NBA superstar Dennis Rodman, the Columbia Pictures release is not exactly an airball, but it bounces around the rim and finally fails to go in. [2 Apr 1997]

As facile as Triangle of Sadness becomes, Östlund at least provides full-circle follow-through when beauty and sex once again become bartering assets and a late gag mocks the global obsession with branded luxury goods. But this is a glib movie, self-indulgent in its extended running time and far too amused with its easy digs at wealth and privilege.

Faced with an ungainly scenario in which vigilante cops go from bad to worse and involving far too many twists and surprise revelations to sustain credibility, the viewer has little interest in the fates of cold-blooded but vaguely idealistic killers in writer-director Jim Kouf's murky, overlong "Gang Related." [6 Oct 1997]

There’s almost always something interesting about even Denis’ flawed films, but this troubled travelogue just feels a little off at every fumbled step.

Overlong and overdramatic, the two-hour-plus biopic does feature some exquisite filmmaking, in scenes where the romanticism of Tchaikovsky’s music is met with flowing camera movements that capture the action in artfully staged tableaux.

In lieu of a throughline, Beauty offers beautiful, indulgent vignettes — aesthetically pleasing and immersive episodes lacking in ideas but full of vibes.

Nyswaner and Grandage here let the lads get nude and sweaty, rolling around in a golden haze — lots of arched backs, hungry hands and eyes dilated in rapturous transport — that should at least set Styles fans’ hearts aflutter, albeit while remaining fairly decorous. But stodgy storytelling and clunky shifts between the drama’s two time periods dim the afterglow.

Fourth of July turns out to be something we would have never expected from its director/co-writer — bland.

Its chief merit is the rare opportunity it provides Saoirse Ronan to showcase her skills with bubbly comedy, making her the standout in a ridiculously overqualified ensemble. But despite the promise of that title, this wheezing romp slows to a limp.

It’s hard to engage with characters and situations that feel so studied, so stuck in a script that rarely allows them any emotional development — especially when the director himself seems so removed from them.

Unfortunately, Captain America: Brave New World proves a lackluster Marvel entry that feels as if its complicated storyline has been painstakingly worked out without a shred of inspiration.

Joel Edgerton’s haunted central performance as former white supremacist Narvel Roth fits the essential Schrader mold of a troubled soul hiding from his demons. But little else rings true in a drama curiously lacking in texture, which misses the mark in lifeless scene after scene.

This far into the pandemic, with most Americans choosing to act as if it no longer exists, there may simply be no audience left for a gimmicky experimental narrative about people failing so completely to connect with those around them.

For all the authentic genre tropes on display, Marlowe never comes to life on its own, lacking the verve or wit to make it feel anything other than a great pop song played by a mediocre cover band.

The only real amusement comes from the casual asides delivered by Sandler and Aniston, the latter also providing perfectly calibrated slow-burn reactions that too often become overshadowed by the overproduced mayhem surrounding them.

Yuzna appears to be searching for jokes in every scene. The high-key lighting and bright sets also seem geared to comedy. But since he lacks a true comic script, he comes up with mostly dead air. [28 Feb 1992]

The film’s genuine sweetness and affection for its characters go a long way toward compensating for its numbing overfamiliarity.

Action scenes are serviceable enough but rarely exciting, pumped up with Snyder’s usual tool kit of speed-ramping and slo-mo. But there’s a grimy aesthetic to the movie that becomes ugly and tiresome (the director took on the DP role himself), and the episodic plotting seldom builds enough steam to stop you thinking about other things.

Faltering storytelling and sloppy visual technique aside, the pas de deux of tenderness and violence, passivity and aggression between Stewart-Jarrett and MacKay keeps you watching, with both actors mostly overcoming the clichés in the way their characters are conceived. But Femme ends up being less subversive than it seems to think it is.

At a running time of over two hours, the experience eventually feels as wearisome as riding the same ride over and over again.

There’s a lot of heart in Rare Objects, a film that tries to render with compassion the jagged aftermath of trauma.

[Yeoh] has such a commanding and darkly amusing screen presence that the pedestrian film can almost, but not quite, be forgiven for letting her down so completely.