Day Shift doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises, but audiences whose taste runs to horror comedies that are heavy on action and light on plot may enjoy sinking their teeth into this one.

The film’s attempts at comedy and sentimentality are equally unsuccessful, resulting in a movie that feels more like a third-rate “Saved by the Bell” knock-off than a legitimate teen flick.

Perhaps if 21 Bridges just settled on being a mildly entertaining single-night cop thriller, it could have gotten by on its well-shot action scenes and A-list cast. But once it introduces concepts it’s unable to fulfill, it becomes a massive disappointment.

It’s better than nothing to mark the cheesy holiday, but the lack of effort shows.

While not enough to sell Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Bardem’s mission to out-cartoon his animated scene partner (admittedly not difficult) still feels like a blow struck for old-school flesh-and-blood eccentricity in the age of blah digital cutes. May that battle continue.

Presented with a moral universe where annihilation is all, it’s difficult to invest in the film as anything more significant than a breathless series of punishing vignettes.

The film is bookended by quiet scenes between a man and a woman, by beautifully understated performances by Bloom and Balfe. Understatement in a boxing movie? If you look past the savagery of the middle hour, that could be the craziest thing about this new take on an old genre.

The romantic part of Johnson’s rom-com barely reaches a low simmer, but the comedy part burns a little brighter.

Clerks III is serious to a minor fault and breezy to a minor fault. It’s got all the same laid-back, chill vibes cinema that Smith is well-known for, and the same immature approach to genuine maturity that he’s also known for, with a new sense of emotional severity that makes it harder to laugh than it probably should be.

It’s a bold and stylish work that slips in and out of fantasy and isn’t afraid to use music and sound design as a weapon, but it can also get relentlessly dreary and oppressive, albeit by design.

It’s remarkable how far McConnell’s film can coast on little more than novelty power, star power, and Doritos, but there’s no denying that “Studio 666” hits a wall after about an hour, and spends the next 50 minutes stumbling around in a daze.

So it’s not an instant classic like The Invisible Man. I think we can all live with that. It’s still a scary and interesting movie about a wolf man, anchored by a haunting performance from Abbott, who understood the assignment and went for extra credit.

For a movie that should provide the comfort of the romance genre, People We Meet on Vacation usually tops out at being blandly pleasant.

Paw Patrol: The Movie” is both entertaining and educational, and that’s always a major accomplishment for a family film.

The third and final film in the Maze Runner series, subtitled “The Death Cure,” gets it half right as an action movie. The stunts, the explosions and the chases are all exciting and elaborately mounted; there’s just not much of a movie to go with them.

Think of Last Christmas as director Paul Feig’s Christmas album; it won’t be the first comedy anyone thinks about in his accomplished filmography, but viewers might find themselves reaching for it come December all the same.

Crowe’s beauty-seeking, but exoticizing camera is slightly outmatched by his performance, which anchors the film with regret tinged with hope. But what continues to haunt after the credits finish rolling are the film’s explorations of the trauma of life after war: The brutally quick political shifts, the lingering shame of committing vicious and dishonorable acts, and the bitter knowledge that there’s no such thing as lasting peace.

It’s a magic act without the storytelling, so every moment is the prestige, and none of it feels prestigious. It’s goofy and shallow and delightful and in a couple days I’ll forget I ever saw it.

It’s silly and makes little sense, but it’s such a fun time at the movies.

At the cost of trying to deliver vibes, it may lose some of the thematic weight that usually accompanies these kill-the-rich stories, but what it lacks in depth it more than makes up for with a thrilling sense of carnage. It’s a raucous joyride unlike any other.

The film’s failure to modulate its tone, its intensity and its messaging makes it a dreary, one-note production.

While it’s an undeniably powerful film, it also seemingly feels the need to tread carefully.

Brothers takes a tediously familiar comedy story structure and hangs some genuinely interesting characters and performances on it. It’s like a Frankenstein monster made out of Raising Arizona and Dumb and Dumber To.

“Rebirth” proves that both Edwards and Koepp are excellent craftsmen, as it’s a delightfully thrilling summer movie adventure. It’s rather slight, and doesn’t provide any sort of bold new direction for the franchise, but as far as cinematic cheeseburgers go, it’s a tasty one.

Zobel’s film grapples directly with the political spectrum and uses everything we love and hate about each other as fodder for humor and horror.

The Equalizer 2 makes more-or-less the same impact as “The Equalizer.” It’s a reasonably satisfying mid-budget action thriller, with slick style and an intriguing hero, who only uses violence when necessary, and as a means of redemption for himself and his community.

There are too few real humans in Life After Beth, resulting in a lack of both brains and heart.

There’s nothing wrong with Disney’s live-action remake of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' that couldn’t be fixed by making it 26 minutes shorter, 88 years ago and in hand-drawn animation.

There are exactly enough thrills to fill a 90-minute movie, including the closing credits. No more and no less. So thank god 'Elevation' is short or it probably would have stunk.

It’s cheap and it’s silly and it has a laughable premise that some people will mistake for terribleness. But it’s also winking and whimsical. It knows what it’s doing and it’s doing it on purpose. Somehow it actually kind of works.

In the Ferrell canon, “Eurovision Song Contest” is a workmanlike, “Blades of Glory”-level effort, never as funny as you want it to be no matter how hard it tries or how silly its actors look.

The clichéd story wouldn’t even be an issue if the movie were enjoyable. But little works as humor or suspense or sentiment once the job is on.

James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) keeps his film permanently trapped in a liminal space between childhood and adolescence, where magic is real but intangible and largely metaphoric.

Nourizadeh and Landis are clearly going for a Tarantino level of blood-soaked dark humor, and while their cast is game, the film’s bursts of violence grow tiresome as its plot gets more and more ludicrous and hard to swallow.

Disney may be in the process of updating Jungle Cruise, the ride, but Jungle Cruise, the movie, isn’t trying to reinvent much of anything.

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

What keeps Cobweb moving is the duo that is Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr and, if anything, it’s frustrating that the movie doesn’t utilize them more.

So much of Boundaries coasts on hackneyed complications and characters’ self-defeating actions that one wonders why we should believe anything anybody says.

Jason Statham knows how to Jason Statham, and as usual, he Jason Stathams Jason Stathamly.

On the whole After the Wedding is a touching journey through a world where even those with the best intentions leave some wreckage behind, and where forward motion only comes with hard looks into the past.

The 1990s framing device keeps pulling us out of the 1950s love story, sapping its power.

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.

For implausibility, perversity, cluelessness, and sheer silliness, it’s hard to imagine another movie this year that will top Last Words.

There are certainly any number of inroads to creating a contemporary comedy about interracial relationships, but You People winds up playing as merely outdated and mediocre, with Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus caught in the cobwebs.

Even with its faults, though, “Magical Negroes” is sure to spark meaningful and needed conversations around race among the audiences reflected in the film. At the very least, Libii shows that he is witty and adept enough as a director to continue working in his craft.

Putting a dog in crisis might seem like an easy way to create a great story, but in a family film, featuring a helpless canine in constant peril plays as emotionally manipulative and, frankly, slightly traumatizing. A Dog’s Way Home is a joyless jaunt that offers an adorable canine star and not much else.

Ultimately, “Anarchy” is too cartoonish in its politics to gain the allegorical resonance it clearly strives for — and worse yet, it's just no fun.

Once more, the filmmaker’s level of formal control is exemplary and precise, and his lead actress game for whatever comes her way. Only one can’t shake the feeling that all of it runs against the film’s ostensible message, that is another case of Monroe’s agency taken from her.

The film's look and feel are far more purposeful and propulsive than the story and script, but even so, Space Station 76 has more than a few laughs inside its brazen bizarreness.

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.

Brought to life on screen, Wilson is a fractured, heartsick, funny adventure in mundane misery.

Despite its trappings, Relive is a family drama with a slight supernatural twist, and had Estes explored that, perhaps the film would feel more whole. Instead, Relive winds up being a thriller without any actual thrills.

Blending dreamlike locations found in the real world with a dollop of visual effects, Waddington reaches the desired effect of a universe where technology and fantasy interact. Her cocktail of ideas yields a magical sci-fi thriller with an empowering edge, which, though imperfect due to its ambitions, puts women in charge of their own destinies.

Demolition strikes a tricky balance; it’s a comedy of manners that never judges its hero’s bizarre behavior. Had it stuck to its emotional guns, it would stand much taller, but even its ultimate flaws can’t erode its sturdy foundation.

As a movie, this new installment feels closer to a lazily assembled playlist featuring all of the Top 40 songs that hit airwaves in the years since the original was released.

A film with all the right things to say about how government, the media, and corporations ignore the emerging disaster of climate change, but couched within a satire so lumbering that it’s enough to turn a tree hugger into a pro-fracker.

At its best, Out of Blue captures a slightly intoxicated “eureka” sensation, as the whole detective genre transforms elegantly into a philosophical awakening, and as the greatest threat comes not from a murderer but from our protagonist’s sense of self (or lack thereof). At its worst, which is most of the time, it’s a conventional detective story that resorts to lengthy scientific-namedropping when it probably should be getting on with it instead.

What Men Want” obviously doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and its biggest laughs are in the trailers, but it is a fun romp that manages to also confront a real-world issue.

Ultimately, Den of Thieves falls short of its goal, but it gets points for aiming high; there are worse things than trying to be the next Michael Mann when few others would dare try, especially if they lack the enthusiasm oozing out of every frame of your imitation.

Though not exactly a punishment, director Michael Dougherty’s tongue-in-cheek monster movie is hardly a celebration, either, despite initial promise that we’d be getting a niftier-than-usual package of subversive comedy and chills to shake up the usual holiday-movie sameness.

Each gun- or fist-fight features a few cool individual images, but these standalone elements never exceed the Russos’ blurry presentation. That’s especially deadly in an action movie that’s constantly trying to give viewers the impression of speed and scope.

Jane Got a Gun takes long pauses in the action to chronicle through flashbacks how this love triangle comes to defend a single home. The film’s greatest surprise is that these unabashedly emotional flashbacks work.

As an inducement to dig into the Queen back catalog, Bohemian Rhapsody is an unqualified success. But when it tries to be a genuine biopic of a groundbreaking band and its singular lead singer, it’s more like a little silhouette-o of a man.

This void of a movie has plenty of the right pieces to work with at hand, but continually arranges them in the most blunt, least interesting manner possible. It’s a film that bolds, underlines and then shouts at you what it’s about, though never authentically earns your emotional investment.

The film undercuts its admiration of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by judging, harshly, her life choices and reducing her timeless masterpiece to simplistic metaphor for a lousy marriage. Mary Shelley deserves better than Mary Shelley.

Mack & Rita is silly, but it’s a strong, necessary kind of silly, a warm and embracing kind of silly. Keaton has rarely been so bubbling and bright, reminding us that regardless of age, being true to yourself is all that really counts in a person. The love will come no matter what.

All Bullet Train had to be was high-gloss, all-star, late-summer nonsense, but instead it gives high-gloss, all-star, late-summer nonsense a bad name.

Even at just over 90 minutes, it quickly runs out of steam and can only coast along.

Daniela Forever is afraid to ever dream big, leaving nothing more than a banal nightmare.

Russell’s brand of Sturges-inspired madcappery has always been a high-wire act of energy and tone, but Amsterdam doesn’t even feel like an “I Heart Huckabees” or “Joy” misfire. It’s sloppy and disconnected, crammed with thinly drawn characters play-acting ‘30s screwball as Russell’s unmoored camera and jarring editing force the issue instead of capturing something genuine which, even with a game cast, clearly wasn’t there to begin with.

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.

Words and Pictures never accrues enough emotional resources to bear out the darker, heavier moments, which turns its big dramatic moves into clunky embarrassments.

Berg’s life is a natural for the movies, but it’s difficult to imagine how the film we got out of it turned out so dramatically inert.

Little is a funny, surprisingly heartfelt film, embedded in traditional themes and amplified by the talented Martin, who reminds us that she and other youth like her aren’t just adorable — they’ve got boss mentalities that cannot and should not be ignored.

Spirit Untamed has vivid moments of beauty, but loses its gallop with a facetious storyline about identity as it keeps trying to define itself as an “empowering” film for little girls, missing the mark on both fronts.

Hardcore horror audiences won’t find much that’s frightening in Insidious: The Last Key — there’s not even that wonderfully unsettling shriek of violins under the title this time — but as a delivery system for more great work from Lin Shaye, it more than accomplishes its mission.

It’s a whole lot of pretty good and not a lot of amazing, but hey, remember how Tyriq Withers also starred in Him? No one can say they got the title wrong.

How to Make a Killing has the acuity to know that even if you are willing to play such a rigged game in ruthless fashion, you’ll still lose. The film’s magic trick is taking this bleak idea and knowing how to find the fun in such brutal sport.

There’s simply no time for the impact of anything that happens to get its reflective due, because the movie is too busy reverting to the up-and-down status of Michael’s and Ana’s increasingly inconsequential relationship while lining up its next large-scale set piece.

Even parents who found the earlier outings reasonably tolerable may find themselves making excuses to linger longer at the concession stand.

The Chaperone is case of a not-so-good movie made by people who are unquestionably talented.

For the most part, Godmothered is a mixed-bag of clever comedy and banal kid-movie clichés, but director Sharon Maguire (“Bridget Jones’ Baby”) and writers Kari Granlund (2019’s “Lady and the Tramp”) and Melissa Stack (“The Other Woman”) craft an ending that’s so emotionally and intellectually satisfying that it’s easy to forgive the film’s less magical attributes.

For the first time, the story supports and adds to the action rather than distract from it; it’s almost as though Anderson was holding back in the earlier films because he wanted to save the best for last.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a bold and brisk superhero story, unlike any other mainstream Hollywood film in the genre. It crams a heck of a lot of movie into an hour and a half, but it doesn’t feel like it needed to be longer. It just feels like we need more movies like it.

The Best of Enemies tries to remind us that simple solutions might exist if we could open our minds, but it undercuts itself by shortchanging its black female lead and ending on a very maudlin note that lacks punch.

Silicon Valley is built on various inequalities, and, frustratingly, CodeGirl isn’t interested enough in delving into those issues — or the girls determined to overcome them.

Unfortunately, the second half of Firebird is far less involving than the first.

It’s a movie that both understands the basic desire to strike it rich and our deep understanding that one person’s wealth often comes at the expense of another person’s well-being. This isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s admirable for its ability to keep more than one thought in its head at a time.

Army of Thieves, a by-the-numbers heist movie and prequel to Zack Snyder’s gloomy zombie caper “Army of the Dead,” traces over that previous movie without ever improving or even just replicating its lighter elements, especially its chases and safecracking shenanigans.

The ultimate success of 7 Days in Entebbe varies from scene to scene, and even more from actor to actor.

Quirky, tender and hopeful, “The Tomorrow Man” doesn’t necessarily depict a romance or relationship that everyone will immediately relate to, but Jones’ kindness and generosity as a storyteller encourages his audience to treat these characters empathetically.

These Greenland films may not always have a coherent point, but when they focus on the nuts and bolts of survival and the toll that surviving takes on these characters, they’re efficient, effectively crafted genre pictures.

The Eggers Brothers have a canny way of balancing those wildly different tones. We’re frightened for each character, even when we point and giggle at them. It’s a twisted film.

The period detail is rich and worth watching, and there’s a deep bench of strong character actors to give the movie occasional jolts of life. Overall, however, the usually charismatic Affleck never manages to bring gangster Joe Coughlin to life.

A thoughtful and frequently moving drama that insightfully illuminates what it’s like to live with illness and agony at least as well as last year’s other Best Actress vehicles like “Wild,” “Still Alice,” and “Two Days, One Night” do.

Although The Instigators can at times feel like a Coen Brothers movie without the polish, there’s enough charm and energy flowing through Doug Liman’s picture to keep the film humming.

In terms of anything that has to do with characterization, Chuck Hogan‘s script is punishingly rote. But as bombastic, shoot-‘em-up spectacle, 13 Hours is a visceral, well-paced and often beautiful action-thriller.

The Judge is tailor-made for Downey's gift for delivering a quippy, arrogant put-down like he's doing his target a favor. Hank's anti-heroism is a refreshing splash of lemon juice with an occasional spritz of sour vinegar. But much of director David Dobkin‘s cynically cloying legal and family drama goes down like a lump of aspartame.