The Goldfinch, the novel, was a testament to the power of The Goldfinch, the painting – but The Goldfinch, the movie, can’t be more than a footnote to the mysteries and the grace of the works that inspired it.

There is a big difference between a campy film that doesn’t take itself too seriously and one that is just wall-to-wall miscalculated execution. For clarity, “The Trench” is firmly in the second camp.

Anyone who’s sat through enough of those Christian films and watched them with a critical eye (and not for the mere indoctrination) can easily tell that the basic craftsmanship of Father Stu is on a different level. That doesn’t necessarily make this an admirable production, but at least it’s a proficient one.

Some parts of Marwen just seem empty, and while the filmmakers and Carell earn praise for tackling trauma through animation, the film ultimately has no real impact.

If nothing else, The Last Word demonstrates that Shirley MacLaine still has the comic chops and screen presence that have made her a Hollywood legend.

For every moment where it seems like it’s getting somewhere more thoughtful, it will dance away into something else, lacking focus even as it remains faithful to the rather short source material.

For all its embarrassment of riches, “Deliver” never manages to transcend its bloody, screechy, pulpy origins. That makes the film both a horror tale and a tragedy.

You’ll come away from this film remembering some of the better moments, and a few of the quieter interactions between the characters, but they’ll be mostly overpowered by the stench of everything else.

Despite doing very little to reinvent the wheel (even with an NFT subplot), this new crowd pleaser is so fast and fun that it’s sure to give family movie nights a jolt of excitement everywhere…even if the finished product feels a bit generic for tried and true heist film diehards.

Lots of little lessons are interspersed throughout Smurfs: The Lost Village, but the film itself is an example that even the big, powerful, well-paid grown-ups who run movie studios can learn a thing or two.

Domino offers a sloppy screenplay with underdeveloped characters and a half-written plot, pumped full of racist, fear-mongering, one-dimensional villainy. Only the most diehard De Palma fans will find anything to intrigue them, and they’re going to have to sift through a lot of boring junk to find it.

From “Vanilla Sky” onward, unfortunately, Crowe seems to have been stricken with some form of tone-deafness that curdles quirky into shrill.

Out of the Shadows stumbles from one set piece to the next, rarely offering viewers much reason to care in between, and its halfhearted attempts at moving toward the “dark and gritty” end of the comic-book spectrum never land.

Wilson’s comic routines here set her apart from the others in the cast, and they more than amply hint that she should be set loose in her own vehicles far, far away from the other girls and all their “Glee”-like karaoke.

Delivering boredom when it promises mayhem, Wild Card is a bad bet that doesn’t pay off for either the film’s makers or its audience.

This version seems to have been made not to honor Alcott’s little women but instead to please the parents who want blandly wholesome family entertainment for their own. One can only imagine what Jo herself would have to say on the subject.

Who cares if the story is occasionally impenetrable or if some gags land with a thud when the thrills and the eye candy keep coming at such a breathless pace? Jupiter Ascending doesn’t break the new ground that the Wachowskis have managed in the past...but the film never slacks in its efforts to wow us.

The 355 is the kind of star-packed, glossy adventure that wants to be the launching pad for a franchise; instead, it’s going to be one of the films most mentioned in future discussions regarding January as a studio dumping-ground for misbegotten movies.

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.

Beneath Us never lets the exploitation cinema elements get in the way of the serious conversation about actual, real-life exploitation. That makes it frightening, and that makes it bold.

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 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.

The parkour is breathtaking and the plot twists are off-the-charts ridiculous.

Leatherface is second only to Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake in horror’s pantheon of terrible origin stories.

For about the first hour of its running time, Dracula Untold is far too restrained and tasteful, and it certainly suffers from its tediously noble hero; it's well made but fatally lacking in thrills or excitement.

Yes, My Little Pony: The Movie, like its television predecessor, is all dressed up in bubbles and cupcakes and rainbows. But it’s so jam-packed with rousing girl power, it passes the Bechdel Test with (literally) flying colors.

There are a couple of impressive set pieces in Jigsaw, but the traps seem fairly rudimentary, and it’s up to the camera work to provide the needed jolts.

If writer-director-star Tyler Perry makes good on his threat to make A Madea Family Funeral the final film featuring his larger-than-life comedic heroine, then Madea will going out with a whimper and not with a bang, even by Perry standards.

Why Him? is the kind of movie that makes trendy sophistication and homespun values look equally unattractive; the only remaining alternative is anarchy, an ingredient that’s sadly lacking in this bland, formulaic comedy.

Although this wasteful effort from the “Bad Moms” team is uninspired in almost every regard, it does advance cinema in a single way: writers-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have figured out how to modernize one of the most traditional and apparently still essential Hollywood tropes: the Crazy Bitch.

Given that this is the auteur’s 20th theatrical feature film, there’s no longer any excuse for the pacing issues, the scenes that don’t end and the general flaccidness of his direction.

While The Barber may be a first-time directorial effort, it’s tense and taut enough to make an impression thanks in no small part to the steadying, strong presence of Glenn.

The awkward transitions and clichéd merrymaking that define Lisa’s story will likewise be either more feature than bug for genre fans or just one more thing that makes Azuelos and Fierro’s narrative seem lazy and confused.

You may want to leave the theater, go directly to a bookstore and buy the source material. That’s good! But you may want to leave before the movie’s over. That’s bad.

Maybe it was the massive reshoots — directorial credit is shared by Lasse Hallstrom, who shot the first go-round, and Joe Johnston — or perhaps the script by first-timer Ashleigh Powell was always muddled and convoluted, but the results are singularly dispiriting.

Family Business offers an array of half-baked conflicts, all crying out to be noticed, while the creators are apparently unsure of which requires the most urgent attention.

A few odd touches and one impressively, cathartically violent sequence don’t compensate for the film’s resistance to its own ideas.

The early scenes are at times surprisingly awkward – and while things get better when Chickie gets to Vietnam and Russell Crowe shows up to (briefly) ground the movie with his quiet gravity, “Beer Run” still lurches from silliness to preachiness in a way that’s rarely satisfying.

All that effort and innovation and ambition amounts, in Zemeckis’ film, to little more than a mawkish intergenerational drama. Here genuinely seems to believe that the history of the world peaked with the possibility of mom and dad getting a divorce.

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.

There is a scene in 'The Exorcist' where the soul of Regan MacNeil writes 'Help me' in her own flesh, begging someone to save her from an exploitative entity. I suspect if you look closely enough at Green’s film you can see the soul of 'The Exorcist' crying out the same way.

The Darkest Minds is smart. It has a lot to convey to its young audience, and the strong cast does everything in their power to illustrate those themes and to bring their characters to earnest, believable life. But it’s not quite thrilling enough to sneak its mission statements under anyone’s noses, so it plays a bit more like a manifesto than a sci-fi thriller.

Doubling as both a colorful recycling bin for tropes and ideas from a variety of preexisting children animated features and a casting session for “The Voice”‘s next batch of hosts, Kelly Asbury’s plush-inspired film UglyDolls is underscored by a well-intentioned message of self-acceptance, even if the delivery vehicle is unremarkable.

It's clear from the start that Dowdle isn't taking any of this seriously. The same cannot be said for the game and luckless cast of young actors, who are so whiny and hysterical right from the start of their plunge into the tombs that they win hearty unintentional laughs throughout.

Maybe if you hate movies, LaBute’s attempt to bore us to death with classic noir material is a nifty prank. For anyone else, you’re better off revisiting Garfield and Turner, or Stanwyck and MacMurray, or Hurt and Turner — or even “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.”

It’s one thing to bring a gravelly gravitas to characters like this, but Penn suffers and glowers so much that it weighs down the material. If he plans to strap on the Kevlar in future, he might consider lightening up a little and saving the intensity for more serious movies.

The cast can’t cure all the movie’s problems, from its abrupt ending to a random acid-test scene, but it’s not without its curious appeal as a star-studded failed “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” experiment.

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.

What’s particularly disappointing about this effort is the amount of talent wasted.

[McCarthy] and her husband Falcone (who also directed) have created a character comedy that's missing both comedy and character.

Ella McCay' is a film about American politics in the same way that Pixar’s 'Cars' is a movie about cars. As in yes, these are definitely films about politics and cars. But no, politics and cars don't work like that.

The fifth entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, is the most divertingly enjoyable since the first. A professionally crafted brew of action, slapstick and supernatural mumbo-jumbo, it’s less likely to spur timepiece glances than did the last few bloated installments.

It’s messy at times and melodramatic at others, and its treatment of mental health issues is not the most nuanced, but those feel like quibbles given the joy you can find in its best moments.

Who knows what Pelé: Birth of a Legend could have been had it tapped more into that mysterious life force and the true messiness in harnessing it and making it glorious. Instead we get what the man himself was canny enough to ignore: a familiar game plan tediously followed.

It’s just feature-length publicity, and it plays like damage control.

The Intruder rings incredibly hollow.

The Mulleavys have what it takes to continue in film if they decide to pursue this path, with a firm, confident hold on light, texture, color, mood, sound, and physical space. So if Woodshock is, ultimately, unsatisfying, it’s not because they haven’t put in the time to immerse you in their obsessions.

Unconscionably overlong while offensively appealing to the lowest common denominator of filmgoers, this film would appear to lack a single reason to exist.

It’s a drama rather than a comedy, so call it a rom-dram – and if that phrase seems slightly dismissive, it’s appropriate for a movie that plays up the sentimentality and never escapes the feeling that it’s a light look at a heavy subject.

My Oxford Year is shiny and affable, and if that was the assignment it’d get an 'A' for effort . . . actually that’s going too far, let’s make it a respectable 'B.' But that’s not the assignment.

Zoran Popovic’s uninspired cinematography, paired with barely credible production design, give “Path to Redemption” the aesthetic feel of a low-budget reenactment segment in a basic cable history show. The performances operate at about the same level; no one gets to shine beyond over-acting during a few emotionally charged scenes.

The comic drama Krystal, marking William H. Macy’s third time out as a feature director, is so baffling that it must be appreciated at least for its ability to defy all logic.

A movie with more potential directions than its globe-trotting-assassin heroine has wigs, “Ava” offers moments that suggest it might have succeeded as an action thriller, a dysfunctional family drama, or a character study. Since it commits fully to none of these, the results are the sort of bland bang-bang-pow that keep Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis afloat in between movies that critics actually like, or even see.

Zemeckis and co-writer Chris Weitz do make some attempt to dust off the concept, but the modernized moments further undermine their efforts. When they add empathy, the story loses its soul. And when they jam in easy updates, it just highlights how out of touch the rest of the script feels.

Given how much of the new material on Monroe is audio-based, one is left wondering why a project like this wouldn’t work better as a podcast. There is little that’s visually compelling about Cooper’s work, the type of investigation perhaps best listened to in the background of another activity.

You learn about as much from the movie as you do from the trailer, and the trailer is free to watch and saves you a lot of time.

Peter Berg’s Mile 22 is an angry, hyperviolent downer of an action flick that is the August blowout-sale of its ilk: loud and desperate.

Piven’s Ari is so over-the-top in his narcissism and megalomania that he’s fun to watch, but the other lead characters are the kind of bros who should be having drinks thrown in their faces on a regular basis.

The stunts and CGI and attendant action scenes are all simply fine; there’s nothing here with the stark simple power of “The Terminator” or the strong-but-strange brilliant inventions of “Terminator 2.” Instead, it’s all less-than-spectacular “spectacle” and plot convolutions twisting around themselves at the whim of the summer’s least interesting killer artificial intelligence.

Unfortunately, the Gemini Man that Ang Lee has finally made has such risible dialogue, such perfunctory characterization, and such rudimentary international-espionage plotting that viewers will soon stop asking why it took so long to go into production, and start asking why it went into production at all.

At best, The Green Inferno is a reliable shock and disgust-delivery system. At worst — and it certainly veers toward the worst — it’s a racially reprehensible work that exploits one of the world’s most powerless peoples. And no number of movie-geek references to “Cannibal Holocaust” is going to change that.

A feeling of sparseness permeates Tim Story’s new action-comedy The Pickup. You see it in the small cast, the desolate settings, and the meager production values. If this movie were a western, then these elements might play to the film’s favor. But as an action-comedy starring Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson, and Keke Palmer, it all reeks of overbearing cheapness to where we’re left to wonder why anyone would bother.

Even flashy, grumpy Jones can’t act like a defibrillator powerful enough to crank this generic movie into competition for Statham’s better solo outings.

It lacks ambition or depth, but it’s delicious and filling, proving (as if anyone still needed proof) that Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth are two of the most likable movie stars in the galaxy.

The dramatized movie we’ve gotten, All Eyez On Me, is a hagiographic dud that unfolds like a depth-free magazine listicle.

A listless thriller that can’t find its footing, Abandoned does occasionally rouse itself enough to suggest a better movie that never comes to pass.

So what if it could be a little shorter? The length of the journey makes RZA’s destination more meaningful.

Given its double burden of being both a toy adaptation and a bloodless kiddie horror show, Ouija winds up being more fun that you might think, even if it's the sort of film you can't really take seriously for a second.

Between the script and the superior editing by Elliot Greenberg (“Chronicle”), there’s an enormous amount of tension and thrills to be found here; unfortunately, they’re all in the service of a movie that’s reprehensible to the core.

This is the sort of film where the plot and even the action become so uninteresting that you start asking plausibility questions.

Anyway, it’s also weird to find a mediocre straight-to-DVD action movie inside of a major movie theater, instead of in the bargain bin at a Big Lots in 2010.

There’s no shortage of imaginative sci-fi details or of talented actors on-hand, but the film boils down to characters we barely get to know chasing each other and yelling. That it hardly matters who’s being chased or what, exactly, is being yelled — mostly “Stop her!” and “AAAUUUGGGHHH!” — is just part of the trouble here.

It’s impossible to watch Bad Santa 2 without getting the sense that people who knew how to do their jobs were studio-noted out of their minds and forced to run a futile obstacle course hampered by budget restrictions, shortened shooting schedules, and general carelessness.

There are moments of fun to be found in Think Like a Man Too... It's just a pity that the movie does better by members of the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority than those of the Screen Actors Guild.

For thousands of years it’s been believed that laughter is the best medicine. Unfortunately, it appears that the laughs in the new Netflix comedy 'Kinda Pregnant' have been recalled.

The whole affair feels, quite simply, icky in a way that superior projects like “Zodiac” and “Memories of Murder” never do; to his movie’s detriment, Akin seems more interested in merely depicting what happened than taking a stab at why.

There are no small parts in a Michael Showalter movie. Every actor is a star when they’re on camera.

The truest test for unrepentant treacle like this is to imagine how invested one would be if Lewis weren’t headlining his first movie in 20 years.... The answer is, barely invested at all, considering how simplified and pandering is Noah’s approach to issues of grief, aging, and family dynamics.

Douglas and Keaton conjure just enough empathy and optimism and cozy charm between them to make us believe that anything can happen at twilight.

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.

Even as all the comedy to be found within this setup had already run dry a full movie ago, The Family Plan 2 keeps going back to the well in the desperate hope that there are still a few drops left.

Third Person is an intricately constructed but unaffecting bore. Kinder people might call it an “interesting failure,” but to earn that label it would need to be interesting.

Reitman clearly wanted to create a mosaic of sharp-edged shards held together by the mortar of art; with Men, Women and Children, what he's delivered is a group of broken bits mired in the morass of pretension.

This Ben-Hur may not be an epic fail, but its steady stream of shortcomings are certainly a cautionary journey for anybody with the hubris to try and rebuild the monuments of movies past.

Mawkish, bland and banal, this dreary love story — and it’s no “Love Story” — seems to think it can throw together dying girl and handsome prince, and that’s all there is to it.

The other generous read, although it’s damning with faint praise, is to call this the best “Jurassic” movie since the original in 1993, but that doesn’t mean this one’s not, much like its predecessors, a hot mess. It’s just a hot mess with some effectively scary bits, a cool car chase and Laura Dern.

Does Tulip Fever feel like a precious bulb poorly nurtured? Primarily it comes across as something laboriously over-handled, and any flower so treated is bound to lose its luster. After waiting so long, the strongest fragrance on display is one of sweat and mediocrity.