Tom of Finland is a film about a man who was famous for very dirty drawings, but it is unfortunately restricted by a dehydrated kind of good taste from ever being very dirty or very sexy.

Una keeps drifting away into flashy and superfluous details.

It would be one thing if the film was fully committed to its nastiness — a type of comedy we don’t see much of these days at all — but “The Estate” is too often hampered by its own self-awareness.

Nothing about the interactions between Daniel and his former pen pal in the second half of the movie are even remotely believable, and so the rosy climax of Private Desert enters the dangerous realm of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, revealing that the makers of this film are as recklessly naïve and morally questionable as their protagonists.

The bulk of these stories just aren’t very engaging — or even good.

What’s most disingenuous about Trial by Fire is that it knowingly simplifies the institutionalized and ingrained biases that foster the very matter it’s trying to address.

The film eventually provides some memorable gore but the ultimate conclusion is unconvincing and perfunctory.

Other than to show that a woman called Mary who wasn’t a prostitute was involved in the final weeks of the Jesus story, I have no idea what the filmmakers wanted for this project. I’m pretty sure they didn’t achieve it.

The early sections of Sidney are much stronger than what comes later, because it is Poitier himself telling the tale in interview footage and setting the expansive, very dramatic tone. He knew how to tell a story so that each nuance would make itself felt.

The action’s accent on Russian rogues, lethal ladies and Rivera-set car chases makes The Transporter Refueled feel less like a film and more like the world’s most violent Vanity Fair fashion spread, all poses and pouts instead of the two-fisted, rough life of the originals.

Timely but dreary and dramatically inept.

“The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” unlike the stellar predecessors of the series, feels curiously starved for real insights into the opposing shades of the human soul.

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.

Though it ticks all the boxes, there is a lack of surprise and originality.

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.

X-Men: Apocalypse provides a hint at what might one day take down the ubiquitous superhero genre: utter dullness. For all its bangs, the movie is ultimately a whimper.

Tucked away in The Independent is a smaller family drama in which Elisha deals with her parents and the illness of her father. These scenes are far better than anything else in the film because Turner-Smith gets to play something realistic rather than over-the-top and plot-driven.

It’s kind of a mess, a crazy balancing act that flails as often as it connects.

A bewilderingly facile and preposterously plotted misfire that offers few pleasures as either a star-driven thriller or a big-screen indictment of the forces that devastated global bank accounts.

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.

Though there are flashes of more chaotic comedy that get the pulse racing here and there, for the most part Chasing Summer is a surprisingly safe genre riff.

What makes this film go astray are the problems that plague so many screen biographies: too much narration, too much telling and not enough showing, and presenting an artist's accomplishments in lieu of exploring his perspective.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women celebrates the bravery and creativity of Diana Prince’s mastermind and his muses, but with a tepidness toward the complications of their lives. The result is a gauzy, sexy ode to unconventionality that feels distinctly and disappointingly conventional.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Scarlet Bond mostly lacks the animating unpredictability and sugar-rush energy of its source material.

Where “In A World…” felt intimate and focused, delightfully dysfunctional but relentlessly hopeful, “I Do” is noisy and meandering.

Performances aside, Glass is a pretty mixed bag of exposition-filled dull moments and pedantic dialogue.

Shyamalan has had some difficulties as a director of late, and it’s understandable to hope that by placing him back in the realm of lower budgets and more manageable expectations he could impress us yet again; that turns out not to be the case this time.

The only way ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ could be more hypocritical, and taken less seriously, is if the characters also yelled “Hypocrisy sucks!” while sitting on Whoopee cushions.