Tedious and painfully miscalculated, Dirty Grandpa is never as filthy or funny as it thinks it is.

Moretz strikes a convincing empowered-badass pose but has no amount of charismatic fearsomeness can energize the illogical latter portions of The 5th Wave, which are driven by revelations about the aliens that, to put it bluntly, make no sense.

Martyrs is only eighty minutes long, sans credits, yet still it manages to cram four bad horror films into its meager runtime.

A refreshing and relevant cinematic representation, Naz & Maalik is an impressive debut for the filmmaker and actors.

Working at cross-purposes, Colonia tries to have it both ways, wanting to be a shocking true story drama and a riveting piece of moviemaking. But it’s not intelligent enough to accumulate any emotional payoff, and it’s too generic and unsophisticated in its execution to work purely as popcorn entertainment.

This isn’t an overly sentimental story; those expecting the emotional swells of other British fare like “Pride” and “Kinky Boots” should adjust their expectations. The Lady in the Van is a more buttoned-up narrative, but it’s no less engaging thanks to Smith, Jennings, and Bennett’s script.

The entire film seems cloaked with a general vibe of “good enough.” Embarrassingly cheap CGI effects, poor ADR, and slipshod, jarring editing are the technical failures that compound with the creative ones to indicate a movie that’s not just miscalculated, but seemingly committed to putting together, at its best, a deliverable product and nothing more.

Bay's overwrought tendencies simultaneously lead to the film's most compelling sequences of tense, bloody battle even as they forestall the more nuanced storytelling that would be crucial to truly unpacking the attacks. Bay may see the film as a cry of truth; muffled by his own predilections it's only a whisper.

Moonwalkers takes a brilliant idea and runs it to the ground thanks to a confused and illogical screenplay, an atonal execution, and a bizarre addiction to Tarantino-level gleeful ultra-violence awkwardly crammed into what was obviously supposed to be a biting satire.

Tumbledown strikes a delicate, moving tone that hits more high notes than lows.

As pitifully generic as its title, The Forest hews to clichés until its final, dying breath.

It's an absorbing, even thrilling head trip. It is a Heart-of-Darkness voyage of discovery. It is a lament for all the lost plants and peoples of the world.

What’s interesting about Lamb is that it doesn’t stand in judgment of its protagonist; it neither condemns him for what are undeniably bad and illegal choices, nor does it celebrate them either. Though not always successful, this is a complicated film that should cause its audience to continue to think about its characters and the actions they take.

With his second feature, Roeck shows that he’s a talented and patient genre storyteller, even though his film’s rather flat cinematography and low budget doesn’t match his obviously more grandiose vision.

This Point Break doesn’t ever connect with anything, even its own desire to celebrate the extreme.

Fitfully entertaining, and even more rarely actually funny, Daddy's Home, tellingly, only really comes alive in the very last portion of the third act.

In the end there's nothing surprising in Sisters, except for the fact that it isn't anything more than a party movie.

Mascaro’s film is an auspicious, original, and absorbing work that thrills with its look into this little-seen world and the dreamers that inhabit it.

It’s arguably Tarantino’s ugliest and most political film, but not his best by some distance.

For all the film’s politics, Arabian Nights can also be whimsical, swooningly romantic, inspiring, fascinating, or deeply sad.

It’s as successful as it is ambitious.

Crafted with exquisite care in the vein of its subject, though it occasionally feels overly precious (criticism that might be leveled at the restaurant itself by its detractors).

It’s dizzying stuff, and virtually everything that Gomes tries his hand to works: it’s a film that’s moving, sad, exciting, fiery, and funny.

Abrams makes big decisions and takes chances that command respect, especially in the very safe current tentpole film industry, but he doesn’t always quite sell them as he could. Still, as this new chapter props the franchise back up on sturdy legs, the Force seems to be in capable hands with a fresh forward direction.

Without an amusing instinct in its cowboy-hatted head, this painfully protracted, puerile effort meanders about the Old West as if it were making up its nonsense on the fly. The result is a torturous genre joke that marks a new low not only for the star, but for the art of cinematic comedy.

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.

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.

This is ninety minutes of comic actors having a genial go at middle-of-the-road material. It doesn’t have any guts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.