There are few surprises or misdirects or red herrings involved with this all-too-solvable mystery, let alone subtext or commentary. With Marlowe, a very talented cast of actors and a legendary filmmaker have assembled to make a Philip Marlowe movie you can fold laundry to.

Ultimately, Daniels has made a touching and forceful film about three generations attempting to overcome familial and societal trauma. It’s only the Devil who underdelivers.

Anyone who sees this new movie without having watched the original will certainly enjoy the lead performances, but they’ll be getting the frozen-watered-down version of the story.

You can only linger so long with such a parade of oddities making ever stranger choices before your eyes grow weary of gawking at a pageant of hideous beauty, and you start checking the clock.

Stewart’s whole career is based on the idea that political commentary and humor go together. Yes, they do – but as Irresistible shows, they do it better when they’re in the moment.

The balance between the humanistic and academic is way off.

While the film’s vertiginous set pieces are appropriately heart-clenching, it’s not nearly as successful at little details like plot and character.

The broadness of Phoenix’s work allows the rest of the ensemble — particularly Conroy, Zazie Beetz as a single-mom neighbor, and MVP character actors like Bill Camp, Shea Whigham and Brian Tyree Henry — to dial it down and give effectively human-size performances.

This feels less like a movie and more like one of those reunion specials where the cast of a beloved old TV show returns to play their characters again, recreating their pratfalls and repeating their catchphrases.

As a spawner of merchandise, Cars 3 fires on all pistons but, as a movie, it’s a harmless but never stimulating 109 minutes.

It’s neither successfully terrifying, nor shockingly grotesque, or even campy enough for one to revel in over-the-top derangement. And while it’s not entirely without its silly pleasures, indifference is the foremost sentiment it elicits.

As a mainstream slasher remake, Black Christmas is bound to be judged a letdown. But Takal’s aims are more subversive. And thanks to her, there’s now a bonkers deconstruction of a mainstream slasher remake hiding in plain sight.

Griffin juggles her many characters well, and she’s very smart about weaponizing the coziness of Christmas movies to make uncomfortable points. Silent Night may wind up being a successful calling card for her (as a director if not as a screenwriter), but for all the beautiful wrapping, it’s mostly an empty box.

As cinema, it’s an avalanche of feel-good clichés, but as an audience-pleasing machine, it relentlessly pursues its goal and will probably win over viewers who surrender to it.

It feels like Dunham hasn’t progressed much after all this time.

Neither the action scenes nor the musical numbers stand out though, and none of the characters or their performers transcend their expected roles.

It’s possible, maybe even likely, that Paul Thomas Anderson has stuffed so much into one movie that a lot of people will find something to take away from it. All I see is the lack of focus.

That you may learn a good deal about an unusually driven man, but never quite feel emotionally connected to him, means Ross has hit a workmanlike middle, crafting a handsome textbook more than a blood-pumping portrait.

The most frightening part of Umma is not the ghostly apparition of Amanda’s mother, but Amanda herself. Under Shim’s direction, Oh’s Amanda is haunted and taut, an unpredictable force of nature.

There’s so much to like in this movie, but its best qualities are ultimately subsumed in formula. And not the nutritious kind.

The Phantom of the Open tries so hard to be a winking commentary on British heartwarmers about lovable outsiders. And its efforts are, as often as not, entertaining. But after a while, it becomes clear that what it wants more than anything is to be embraced as a crowd-pleasing comedy itself.

Even with such an underwritten character, Noblezada finds grace notes and moments of specificity to Rose; it’s got to be a challenge for a stage star to portray a performer with nervousness about crowds, but she conveys the character’s stage fright (and the degrees to which she eventually overcomes it) in a way that feels honest.

Sadly, I’d rather watch any of Smith’s fake movies than The 4:30 Movie, because at least they seem enjoyably weird.

It’s a letdown for a movie that has its heart in the right place to resort to so many clichés.

The film’s director and co-writer, Ol Parker, is so committed to light, feel-good escapism that he leaves out all of the requisite tension and twists — and, for that matter, the requisite jokes.

Without a commitment to its tone, How To Please A Woman might help its titular woman, but it leaves its audience quite dissatisfied.

When I say The Garfield Movie is the best Garfield movie, it’s going to sound like faint praise. Because it is. But faint praise is still praise.

Cinderella has far less substance than [Cannon’s] other features, ultimately making this a one-time, forgettable watch.

The filmmakers’ connection to the material is always palpable and undeniably affecting.

Appropriate to its teenage milieu, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s breakthrough film isn’t unlike spending a couple of hours with an exceptionally witty high-schooler: It’s entertaining as hell, but you can’t help rolling your eyes a little at its self-satisfied pseudo-profundities.

Bamford seems remarkably at home in her unsettled state, to such a degree that her self-awareness feels downright aspirational.

The boxing drama Bleed for This has a powerful story and a strong lead performance in its corner, but falls short of knockout status. Hampered by clichéd writing and stereotypical portrayals, this extraordinary true-life account feels run-of-the-mill.

A little more deviating from the playbook would make Hellion stand out more amidst an ever-growing pack of similar films.

Malmberg’s documentary is quick to gloss over rough patches in both Mickey and Disney’s shared histories.

This new Rebecca has its own sense of style, and it’s not above fully embracing the pulpy delights of du Maurier’s book, but unlike the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, it can’t quite break free of the inevitable expectations placed upon it.

It’s a grand, old-school saga full of sacrifice and betrayal and loss, and just when the audience is gearing up for a powerfully tragic resolution of the kind that Thomas Hardy might have written, the movie veers off into Nicholas Sparks territory instead.

Shooting the Mafia is, if nothing else, a decent introduction to Battaglia’s work, even if the rest of Loginotto’s primer doesn’t tell us much about who Battaglia is, or how to appreciate what she does.

The cast seems game, and perhaps they realize it’s on them to elevate the material, so the scenes between Reynolds and Jackson have some genuine snap to them, even though the dialogue and characterization are barely memorable.

Odd as it is to watch both DeLoreans treated as afterthoughts, Driven is a joyride more interested in the journey than in any significant destination.

If Jennifer Westcott’s animated kids’ movie Elliot the Littlest Reindeer was a Christmas gift, it’d be the toothbrush at the bottom of your stocking. It’s well-intentioned, and you might get some use out of it, but let’s just pray it’s not the highlight of your holiday season.

It’s a film that positively reeks of good intentions, but it’s so timid and tentative — the words “trans” and “transgender” are never uttered aloud — that it feels as hopelessly retro as casting a cisgender actress in the lead.

Co-stars and co-writers Daveed Diggs (“Wonder”) and Rafael Casal have a lot to say, much of it funny and/or provocative, but neither they nor first-time feature director Carlos López Estrada can figure out a way to shape all this material into a cohesive film.

If this latest one was aiming to mix it up by giving equal weight to the masks of comedy and tragedy, it’s an effort that falls short.

While the provocative title promises a film that will reveal new information about the infamous Koch brothers, there's little on display here that regular viewers of “The Rachel Maddow Show” won't have already heard.

Ultimately, Murder on the Orient Express isn’t necessarily awful; it’s just inert, a prestige pic that’s too busy looking handsome and respectable to evoke any real intrigue or emotional involvement.

Although some of its components spark with cleverness, it lacks overall narrative sophistication as a work of storytelling art, even if considering the vintage-cinema tone it seeks to replicate.

From a rain-soaked carnival midway to a glossy, Art Deco therapist’s office, everything in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley looks gorgeous. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot going on under the art direction.

The patients, experts, and tireless doctors and activists who director Tracy Droz Tragos (“Rich Hill,” “Abortion: Stories Women Tell”) interviews are dedicated and admirable, but this documentary’s humanity comes at the expense of basic facts.

It may freak you out a little bit, and that may be enough for some people, but it only briefly grabs hold of something significant. Then it lets go.

If this is just one bullet point in your Valentine’s Day to-do list, an excuse to hold hands or neck in a darkened theater, or maybe as a litmus test for your date’s artistic tastes, it’s a harmless, mostly generic action rom-com.

Why Magic Mike’s Last Dance chooses to teach viewers about love, consent, and having it all, then, is a mystery. The Galentine’s Day crowd will probably be too drunk to notice.

The screenplay captures the grizzled-cop-movie tone and draws some memorable characters, but the storyline is rote, the mystery is frustratingly predictable, and the imaginative deaths are less imaginative than ever. Spiral sacrifices entertainment value for respectability and in the process doesn’t quite achieve either.

Silent River feels intensely personal, but also impossibly closed off. But is that so bad? Ultimately, for all its awkwardness and attentiveness, its grab-bag of tones and problematic pacing, there’s a lot about “Silent River” that gives one faith in off-the-beaten-path cinema, from how much Lee cares about what his images and sounds convey, to how little he cares whether your narrative questions are satisfactorily answered.

Despite the impossible stakes of their situation, the crew’s acts of backstabbing and self-sabotage feel curiously lifeless, bogged down by a completely unnecessary instance of on-the-job romance that comically comes out of nowhere. Though, in fairness, the ensemble gives it their all with committed performances.

While The Wedding Ringer isn’t the total waste of time that its painful trailer (and January release date) threatens, it’s also a movie whose occasional good ideas are ultimately drowned out by sloppy, contrived screenwriting.

The Main Event is an easy enough ride for kids who are stuck at home and like to see people bash each other. Will parents want to stick it out, too? That’s a tougher question for a movie about magic that doesn’t really have too much magic of its own.

Jurassic World never works all that hard to wow us, either with groundbreaking effects or with a story that remotely holds our attention.

A sword-and-sorcery epic that can’t swing the 'epic' part.

The Look of Silence feels more like an extended DVD extra to his genre-defying previous film than a stand-alone documentary.

Cold Copy is a tense journalism drama that ultimately can’t be saved by a group of strong leads who are running lengths with the material they’ve been given. Helberg’s directorial eye proves to be something to watch, but the story she tells falls flat in the wake of uninspired character motivations that ultimately don’t make much sense in light of the stakes at hand.

The story isn’t so hot. At least the leads are. That’s not enough to make Lonely Planet a good film, but it might be enough to get through all 94 minutes without clicking on something else instead. Maybe

It’s a slow, sluggish and whimsy-deficient movie that seems designed to entertain neither children nor adults, and the film’s script opens a Pandora’s Box of a plot twist.

While The Interview never slacks in its mission to tell jokes, it's such a messy and meandering movie that it never quite lands as a satire of politics or the media or anything else.

As a film, the biggest issue with A Million Little Pieces isn’t whether any of this happened; it’s that, even if it did, none of it stands out from the many similar movies that came before it.

A few sharp moments can’t compensate for a film that feels half-developed, and only half-heartedly told. Like its protagonist, Bad Samaritan isn’t quite as bad as it could have been, but it’s not good either.

A potpourri of general genre genericness, never making enough noise to rattle, or even produce an echo.

The movie’s points about immigration are made early; much of the rest amounts to good things eventually happening to talented and hard-working people. That might be a story, but it’s not much of a drama.

It takes a farcical premise and tries to find something meaningful to say about it. It doesn’t succeed, but the effort is worth analyzing.

Summer Camp is not a particularly good movie but it’s the kind of movie that makes a film critic wonder what 'good' really is, anyway."

There’s nothing really to recommend The Union except the fact that it exists and you can watch it. It’s a harmless waste of time because it’s a serious waste of a good idea.

It just never goes far enough with its ridiculousness to reach pure entertainment, and it certainly can’t be taken seriously enough to justify its melodrama.

If Ozon’s Peter von Kant has its minor pleasures, they come from the performers.

Ron’s Gone Wrong offers partially realized messaging about social media while populating the story with elementary sight gags, too many overused “fish out of water” tropes, and attractive merchandise options.

There’s not much to Victoria & Abdul, but as a delivery system for Judi Dench, it serves its purpose. Otherwise, it’s just Buckingham Palace fetishism cranked up to peak mumsy.

When Table 19 tries to be a goofy humiliation comedy, it’s barely engaging. (The pratfalls are numerous and laugh-free.) But when it settles down into something like an indie ensemble about disappointment and the comfort of strangers, Blitz finds a more effortless tone.

Director Laura Gabbert pairs her wide-ranging, blithely fawning approach to Gold with a vision of Los Angeles as blinkered as it is tempting.

The polished assuredness under which Refn operates is considerable, and even appealing, and yet there’s always one element in any given scene — a music cue, a banal sound choice, a shot held until it screams “look at me” — that breaks the mood.

While writer-director Andrew Renzi’s feature narrative debut is problematic whenever Gere isn’t onscreen (and even sometimes when he is), the veteran star exudes a damaged magnetism reminiscent of the character studies that thrilled discerning moviegoers in the ’70s.

Top Five is that movie precisely so good and yet still so flawed that you can watch greatness slip out of its ambitious but awkward reach right in front of your eyes.

This sophomore effort from the filmmaker behind the gripping horror offering “The Eyes of My Mother” is as much an interesting subversion of how sex workers have been depicted in film as it is an off-putting erotic drama that falls apart at the seams.

For much of the film, Nolan (who co-wrote with his brother Jonathan) seems to be unafraid to allow this big-budget extravaganza to tell a story that's about pain and loss and melancholy and sacrifice. Until it's not that anymore, and Interstellar becomes thuddingly prosaic.

Come As You Are is best when it’s not trying so hard to be the next great sex comedy and actually focuses on building the relationships among the male friends and their own existential crises, which gives the film so much pathos as it explores their vulnerabilities and frustrations.

This is very much a vehicle for Parker, and it plays into some of her strengths and many of her weaknesses.

The whole film becomes as mechanical as the oversized drills in play at the rescue site.

The film isn’t a total wash. Seydoux finds ways to move and emote through her Noh mask, and Dumont finds interesting avenues to explore, tracking the uneasy dance between compassion and commodification when dealing with hot-button stories. Only it’s all too much, too long, too repetitive, too one-note, too contemptuous of the very idea of cinematic pleasure to really land.

It’s a mismatched buddy comedy which tries — and sometimes succeeds — to tell an emotional story about processing failure and shame, but it doesn’t have anything terribly interesting to say about it.

The film is a slickly-executed piece, an enjoyable but almost unbearably twisty puzzle box of narrative fun, but once everything slots together the box is unfortunately empty.

That miscalculated manner that often transposes Dreamin’ Wild into an overtly psychological zone works against the rest of the film’s gentle demeanor.

Although the film takes place in a dystopian near future, the story rarely reveals any meaningful information about how society functions after an environmental collapse, or indeed portrays hardly any scene as though it could take place only within the confines of Mondocane.

Danluck (“North of South, West of East”) gets us halfway there, with a solid cast and crew, an apt depiction of emotional exhaustion, and a heroine we want to root for in a strange setting we’re ready to embrace. But she floats too ineffectually between dream and nightmare, never settling on one or committing to the other.

This picture feels fated to be remembered as the “giant fluffy puppy soccer movie,” and both the giant fluffy puppies and Cotta provide enough laughs to make it worthwhile.

Crowe’s acting is fine, but he hasn’t done himself any favors with his by-the-book direction or paltry script.

Hardy’s virtuosity saves the picture’s artificiality at nearly every turn.

There are plenty of truths to be found in Last Flag Flying, and a great deal of sincerity as well. But regrettably, there is not much in the way of understatement.

If Emma Thompson can’t make The Children Act...into something interesting and meaningful, then no one can. And she can’t.

If all you want is another Beverly Hills Cop, here it is. If you want a great new Beverly Hills Cop, keep waiting.

A smiling Cameron Diaz and a weeping Leslie Mann bring a lot to any movie, but they aren't enough to overcome the mix-and-match mania of these proceedings. Girls just wanna have fun, but they'd also like a coherent night at the movies.

Allen is too self-aware and cold a creative personality to create a genuine tragedy in Wonder Wheel. Instead, he makes a gesture towards a tragic situation.