With a predictable trajectory and cringeworthy metaphors, The Starling is so slushily sentimental it makes the typical tearjerker look like a noir. Despite the lived-in performances from its three high-profile stars, this attempt at heartfelt drama is hopelessly by-the-numbers.

The best that can be said about When I’m a Moth is that it is not lurid, although it does seem pointless.

Featuring many of the same grandiose elements as those predecessors, Moonfall looks and sounds like a would-be cinematic blockbuster but comes up painfully short in its ham-fisted execution.

A case study in how storytelling contrivances can sabotage a courageously vulnerable performance, the movie addresses American parents’ deepest fears but is just one or two steps away from inviting ritualized communal mockery, à la The Room, at midnight screenings.

As Finley, Hopkins displays his usual magnetism, even taking the opportunity to play one of his own musical compositions on piano.

There’s plenty of imagination on display in The Blazing World, but it’s buried amidst the narrative and stylistic self-indulgence that assumes we’ll be interested in going on this very strange and ultimately enervating journey.

As directed by Bill Condon (Sister, Sister) it could be redubbed "Farewell to the Fresh," having been watered down into a standard, run-of-the-mill slasher film, the only remaining hook being the one that its one-handed heavy uses to impale his victims. [17 Mar 1995]

At a lean, mean 90 minutes or so, Ambulance might have been a guilty pleasure. Instead, it’s the sort of cinematic thrill ride so overstuffed that you can’t wait for it to be over.

Writer-director de Souza, with the help of five editors and 12 assistant editors, is unable to tell a coherent story or put together a decent fight sequence. There are likewise far too many characters to keep track of, undercutting what instant allegiances one forms for those heroes or villains that make a strong impression. [27 Dec 1994]

Imagine the rise of the machines prophesy made popular by the Terminator franchise, but done as a freaky sitcom that’s part Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, part French sex farce, and you’ll get an idea of the bizarro concoction that is Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film, Big Bug.

The result is neither funny nor thrilling, just exhausting.

Lead actors Cole and Latimore are competent enough, but they don’t come close to approximating the original film’s stars’ charisma or likability, with the result that their characters’ ill-advised activities leave a sour taste. This is one party you can’t wait to be over.

Young audiences may well be enchanted, but I’m sad to report I found the whole confection sickly sweet and hopelessly twee.

The Cow is depressingly slack and indecisive, neither leaning hard enough into its B-movie preposterousness nor taking the time to build any real, sustained suspense.

Viewers who’ve never seen a Dobrik video and have only cursory (if any) knowledge of the allegations that briefly interrupted his career will come away feeling they understand the buoyant, boyish 25 year-old’s appeal — but they may be frustrated by the film’s less-than-probing look at behavior that should have caused him much more trouble than he endured.

This utterly toothless, glorified Hallmark movie for Paramount+ proves the director is only as good as his material.

What this twisty espionage thriller ... doesn’t have enough of is character depth or storytelling coherence.

The contestants just lack dimension. And Lawrence’s journeyman handling of the more character-driven drama provides sputtering momentum at best.

Farrelly’s loftier impulses work against the material. The result is a meandering, disjointed production that struggles throughout to find a satisfying tone.

A sluggish exercise in formalism ... [Monica] feels like a movie perpetually struggling to connect.

But the film is so baggy, so preoccupied with its own ambitions — re-establishing its support of women’s desires, addressing a new generation, etc. — that it deflates into flaccid fluff.

As written by John Milius and Larry Gross and directed by Walter Hill, "Geronimo: An American Legend" makes interesting characters dull as dirt, makes a great story confusing (while taking predictable liberties with the truth) and, worst of all, trivializes the subject matter it tries to splendidly mount. [06 Dec 1993]

Despite participation from many bigwigs within the Biden team, Year One fails completely as any sort of chronological overview, which is how the documentary presents itself. And the argument that it seems to actually be making is far too complicated to be made by people still embroiled in the middle of it all with no space for introspection.

She Came to Me is a movie whose strained eccentricity gets positively goopy, conveying so little genuine feeling that the stakes for any of the characters never feel terribly high.

Directed with pedestrian competence by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, The Miracle Club is about secrets that are all too obvious, and forgiveness you can see coming from the start.

Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother?

Freelance fails to deliver on every front. Worse, it barely seems to try.

It’s full of flashy technique and ostentatious stylistic flourishes but has almost nothing of note to say about the supposed burdens of privilege.