Overall, despite a few profound explosions of emotion, the remake is more tonally overbearing than it is dramatically rewarding.

It both ticks genre boxes and throws up some touches that elevate it, such as a car karaoke scene. While not groundbreaking, the audience will root for everyone here, both in front of and behind the camera.

The Campaign is insidiously stupid, a laugh-free water balloon lazily tossed at the institution of politics, and one that makes "Semi-Pro" look like a lost Robert Altman film.

Styles, night and day here compared to his work in that other fall release, wonderfully inhabits a working-class man fearful of public scrutiny but unable to hide his true self.

The pace drags in the home stretch a bit, and the laughs dry up considerably. None of this matters much. George and Julia spark and sparkle, which is what the trailers promise, and it’s what the movie delivers.

The fine cinematography, set design and costumes only serve as a distraction from the sparsely drawn story and uninteresting characters.

At it’s best, Newness is about how nothing’s really all that new.

Murphy and Hill do lift the film often, the former being wryly sarcastic and meanspirited but cool, the latter finding much comedy in being overly vulnerable, earnest, and painfully sincere. But otherwise, this comedy has no safe spaces for anything resembling authentic human behavior, the kind that anchors comedy to feature truths that make laughs all the more lacerating.

The whole thing feels sort of tossed off, like it was made by film students over a couple of weekends.

While My Salinger Year is not always successful in the larger debate it tries to have around how we can define authorship, and how the commercialization of writing infringes upon creativity, the film’s central narrative following Joanna’s conflicting aspirations as a writer largely succeeds.

As I Lay Dying is another Franco lark that is more of an experiment with form than a fully realized movie. One almost gets the sense that Franco is working out ideas with As I Lay Dying, with the goal of creating a cohesive film as a secondary ambition to simply capturing the feel of Faulkner's prose.

Leterrier's film is a reminder that sometimes a good yarn can do enough heavy lifting on its own to provide thrills. Whether or not the illusion pays off will be up to you, but the trick itself may be intriguing enough.

Alien abductions are a truly terrifying idea, and building an alien abduction movie on the template of "Poltergeist" is a great idea. But "Poltergeist" had one thing Dark Skies is sorely in need of: follow-through.

The American Society of Magical Negroes is a gracious work that both shows and critiques the very nature of humility.

You wonder if Hollywood is trying to make a point: sex is joyless, and best experienced by recognizable, and recognizably obnoxious people.

The Greatest Hits is way worse than just a sophomore slump, more accurately, a long-the-works opus that should have just stayed in the vaults.

This one veers further from actual horror into an action picture. “The Purge” tries to unsettle. The Purge: Anarchy wants you to cheer.

This is a nasty, queasy, unforgiving piece of work. It is utterly devoid of hope. It’s as shocking as any slasher, as horrifying as any grizzly bit of wartime realism — yet there’s something so compelling about the director’s broader argument, and it’s rendered with rare visual deftness, with some big swing moments that land terrifically.

The Tribes of Palos Verdes privileges melodrama over nuance, pitting skilled actors against a humdrum script and sketchy roles. It doesn’t offer anything new, and bungles any mildly interesting plot points.

Rich filmmaking, from assured camerawork to tactile set decoration, is the film’s basis. But richer exploration of theme and spiritual belief is its design. Things Heard & Seen isn’t elevated. It’s just mature, wonderfully made, and, whether dead or alive, human.

There’s no denying the lovingly recreated production and costume design, all curved corners and wide lapels, and the era’s sexual politics and self-help movement are slyly incorporated as well... However, the droll humor on hand is more hit-or-miss.

This Wilson is sweet and pleasant and occasionally riotously funny. But it’s still the simplified version of a much more complicated work of art.

The problem is Estes’ script. There are some real clunkers twisting around in the dialogue, and this viewer was way ahead of its big twists (and I never figure out big twists).

Escape Plan deserves some credit for gradually rising from abysmal to almost-mediocre, though it’s needlessly complicated in every step of the way.

If Waddington’s fairy tale harbored any substance to counterbalance its external beauty, it might have established itself as a pleasingly subversive piece of pop art. Yet, despite its commendable goals, Paradise Hills will likely be lost to time.

There’s little egregiously terrible about The Lost Husband, but a lot of the film is less than memorable. The relaxed, casual vibe is often at odds with the amount of sorrow that has seemingly crippled these characters. Yet, it’s the type of film that you already know the ending before the first scene is over.

Hill assembles a strong cast, and they are immensely watchable throughout the film, but it’s short on big laughs, never as compelling as it should be and lacking dramatic consistency.

Van Damme’s an arresting presence in his old age... His performance is a wonder, showcasing a man who has never found his physical equal, and how amuses himself by telling stories that ultimately mock opponents.

All I Wish is inoffensive, mostly painless, and only occasionally grating. It is also, however, derivative, confusing, and largely pointless.

There’s little that’s memorable here and less to latch onto, beyond the foregrounding of an Asian woman in American history and Chau’s performance.

The film’s attempted cathartic payoff is inauthentic and unearned, and it’s a shame considering that Gyllenhaal once again gives a committed turn.

A fascinating look at the juggling act of a man who is succeeding in public, but still trying to find the answers in private.

Sing 2 is like having a mainstream radio station on in the background. It’s enjoyable and not in the least bit challenging. And sometimes that’s enough.

It might be slight, but Loitering With Intent is fast, funny, and incredibly heartfelt. And sometimes that's enough.

The tension really is beautifully ramped up in these early scenes and gets an audience well prepped to watch carnage unfold around people you've truly come to care about. Then, when the thing goes off, it's not with a bang but with something more like a a whimper.

It’s cheap, and crass, and by the conclusion, downright infuriating.

Body is very much an exercise, but by a couple of guys who are already showing a confident handle of coaxing solid performances out of their cast, sustaining a mood, and not reaching beyond their means.

If women's pictures are truly dying (in this personal reviewer's opinion, they are not if you know where to look) it's movies like Love Is In The Air that are its executioner.

Unfortunately, aside from the always reliable Hawke and Okonedo, there isn’t much to praise about this deadpan dark comedy, which is miscalculated on almost every level.

It’s a nice enough, pleasant enough film with a couple solid performances. But when you’re making a movie about a man as unique, profound, and complex as Dylan Thomas, and you have nothing to say about him, you don’t have much of a movie.

A lack of courage on behalf of the filmmakers to take any position renders the film narratively limp.

Gudegast does provide a good amount of grimy atmosphere to his L.A. setting, and the action sequences keep you involved even as the running time starts to get gruelling. But, at 140 minutes, Den of Thieves gets too caught up in its own indulgences, and that’s a crime it can’t escape.

If the performances were as wooden as the plot, “Imaginary Order” would be unwatchable ... Instead, McLendon-Covey’s lead turn and some savvy supporting performances (most notably Kate Alberts as her daughter) keep things compelling for the film’s overstretched 100-minute run time.

The film's lack of terror might be more forgivable had it embraced its more humorous inclinations, but the script’s pedestrian liberals-vs.-conservatives, boors-vs.-yuppies conflicts rarely result in anything laugh-out-loud funny.

Strangely old-fashioned in its construction and requiring a Golden Gate-level feat of engineering to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to unironically enjoy it.

Both breezy and deeply emotional, Brosh McKenna’s directorial debut could be a leader in the rom-com renaissance the movies have so desperately needed.

While it has its moments, a few good laughs, a few impressive thriller sequences, and Evans with his delectably douchey little trash stash, “The Gray Man” is generally an unremarkable swing and miss that wants the best of both worlds, but can’t really thread that needle.

Big Sur rises and fades, shifts and moves, through movements and melodies, singing a beautifully sad song for an era and a man who lost his way.

Were it not for the concrete that is Julia Garner’s take on the lead, “Apartment 7A” could unquestionably spiral into indistinguishable obscurity, but even amidst cliché after cliché, it still manages to fulfill minimum requirements within the pantheon that is Horror 101.

Deeply over-reliant on flashbacks, and ones that don’t particularly transition well, Jane Got A Gun is nearly a holding pattern movie.

There are filmmakers who are able to weave social commentary through the arena of big budget entertainment, without having it come across as lopsided or boring; Allen Hughes, it turns out, is not one of these filmmakers.

Despite its intentions to get close to Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody is as intimate as a sold-out stadium show, with none of the accompanying power.

Handsomely animated and features a story that, while hopelessly familiar, at least seems to be part of a whole. Also, there are pirates. So there's that.

A film desperately in need of an electric charge, Mary Shelley is simply another cinematic corpse on the table.

Stumbles out of the gate with a pacing that suggests a stern history lesson, despite warm performances from the cast and a polished look.

This is not the return to form Leitch needs, and that’s mostly because the well-crafted fight scenes are surrounded by so much other nonsense. The picture wants to be a manic action-comedy freight train, but it has exactly three jokes.

It’s an audacious odyssey that buckles under the weight of all its ornate and flights of quirky fancy. But if you’re a cynical optimist that’s disgusted with the rise of despotism, absolutism, rancid lies, revolting white supremacist beliefs but still wants to believe in humanity, hope, and the goodness of people, it might just strike a major chord.

When Reinhardt’s fingers aren’t dancing across guitar strings, it has all the vitality of an educational film shown by a substitute teacher. It comes alive in those fleeting moments, but they are too infrequent to keep audiences engaged.

The gore was laughable and the script was blood curdling. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

The value of Downhill comes from merging this story with these two distinct comic personas, and seeing what they do with it (and each other). That’s probably not enough of a reason for it to exist. But it’s not nothing, either.

It’s a very watchable — if occasionally frustrating— first effort, but one hopes that the director will carve out more original territory with his second film, regardless of where he settles.

It’s good without being elevated or necessarily great. But it has enough scares to qualify as a decent “dark place” movie without breaking the mold.

The spy genre is a tricky business, because the tempo and flow of the film must adapt to numerous different scenarios and narrative changes. In Lewin’s movie, however, the ever-changing intricacies of Dawidoff’s book are rendered flat, unappealing and messy.

Interesting, funny, yet thin where it matters most, Tunnard’s film is nevertheless a good indication of promising work ahead.

Little is a blast, but it’s a shame that it’s not a better movie.

The film may help "Downton Abbey" fanatics looking to kill a little time in that era but holds little cinematic appeal for the rest of us.

V/H/S/2 is a whole lot of fun.

Riddick, as a character, is best when he's alone, fighting against insurmountable odds, with narratives that serve his singular nastiness.

The engaging opening third of Cooties is enough to make the rest of the 96-minute film a mildly amusing diversion, but as the minutes roll by, you'll wish the brains of the film had remained intact.

Chalk this Team WahlBerg’s latest collaboration as a massive swing and miss, which ranks among the city’s worst cinematic disasters.

With the cinematography and its family-centric approach, it takes what could have been a dry subject and broadens its appeal.

For most of the run-time, Welcome To The Punch is thrillingly cinematic, beautifully made, smarter and funnier than you'd expect, and a phenomenal showcase for Creevy and his team.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House couldn’t be more timely, yet those parallels never quite resonate.

The material’s dualities trap Ford between continents, not to mention genres and tones.

As a visual love-letter to the Yangtze River, Crosscurrent takes your breath away. As a narrative film, it’s all washed up.

Didactic yet generic, The Promise endeavors to educate about a period of recent history that is still unacknowledged by the Turkish government, but curiously manages to be anonymous in form nonetheless.

[Thérèse] is not the nuanced period drama it should be but is rather more like a banal, pseudo-thoughtful and monotonous episode of Masterpiece Theater.

Despicable Me 3 is sadly a discouraging, hollow sequel that’s hard to love.

That this catastrophe is director Wanuri Kahiu’s follow-up after her sublime debut “Rafiki” makes it all the more disappointing. Where that film has rich characterization, this has generalities. Where that film has vibrant cinematography, this has dreadful, bland compositions. Where that film has a detailed sense of place, this film has a disjointed, geographically murky portrait of L.A. and what appears to be a sponsored by SXSW and Whataburger view of Texas.

In doubling down on would-be humor, the already poor, perspiring, flop-sweat CGI mess of Venom actually gets worse and arguably even more incoherent, thanks to the unbearable, overweening quarreling between Brock and Venom and the vaudevillian crazy legs antics and presentation.

It’s weird to want to rein in the sensibilities of any comedian, especially when their proclivities lean towards the farcical and ridiculous; there is a palpable joy that emanates from their collective weirdness. Sadly, little of it translates into a laugh beyond a guffaw and most of it is empty.

The Best of Enemies has good intentions, and some potent things to say, but its novice direction and limited perspective fail it from becoming anything other than this season’s Green Book.

For those who are coming to Codegirl looking for a fiery rebuke and exposé on the gender imbalance rampant in Silicon Valley, they've come to the wrong place.

Low on ideas and high on atmosphere, Dixieland is a promising debut, but it likely won’t find you overwhelmingly writing back home about it.

Prior and Zagorodnii are at their best in casual conversation, either exchanging sheepish glances or knowing pleasantries under the base’s Big Brother-ish nose. But as soon as things get serious or even faintly sentimental, they talk like the guys in the movies.

This film is like some kind of corrupted, infectious, cinematic black hole that obscures and swallows all other sins in and around it. Artistically irredeemable and impossible to recommend on any basis whatsoever, about the only thing Ebony & Ivory succeeds at is matching the artistic value of the eponymous song: a dubious distinction if ever there was one.

The McConaissance finds no purchase here. Mining for something adventurous and coming up empty handed, ultimately the dramatically-challenged Gold digs for something fiery and collects zero treasure along the way.

There’s something to making a prequel just for the hell of it, and giving it to an actor/writer/director whose charisma has worldwide appeal, but Army of Thieves could have had much more fun with the assignment.

Avery can't commit to whether he's making a gritty "Animal Kingdom"-style crime picture, or a light caper film, and the final result is wonky in the extreme, particularly in the conclusion, which feels particularly muddled.

There is a more polemic, thought-provoking work somewhere in 7 Days in Entebbe, held hostage by its commercial appeal.

Despite the shootouts, some epic vistas (frankly, not as much as you’d expect), and a few fleeting moments of genuine tension, it all feels flat.

You get the sense that Rio 2 wasn't thought through as much as it was quickly cobbled together as it went along, with a simple, clearheaded goal in mind: just make it good enough to warrant a "Rio 3."

It's utterly unconvincing and not scary in the slightest.

Labelling Live By Night a disaster is a little uncharitable; the baggy drama is perhaps more painfully mediocre than full-blown folly, but it’s close.

Only time will tell if The Beanie Bubble represents the final dying gasp or merely the end of first-wave product-driven narratives. But, like Beanie Babies themselves, one hopes that this bubble will burst sooner rather than later.

While Lee edges in enough unique elements to argue a second look at the brutal revenge tale, his lean, blackly comic result is transcendent only in fits and starts, stripping away much of its thematic and emotional heft into one of the most frustratingly accomplished disappointments this year.

There are moments when the fabrication behind Claire’s arc breaks to reveal a real person, and the filmmaker’s have Aniston to thank for this, because it’s certainly not the bland dialogue or unremarkable events.

This is a B-movie of the week at best, which should be starring also-ran actors looking for a paycheck, not some of Hollywood’s finest.