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.

Unrepentant, uneven and unique, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus proves that Lee can still make a film worthy of the arguments it will most certainly start.

These women wear what they want, love who they want, find fulfillment in their power, and support each other unconditionally. They’re not undermined by a script that highlights their flaws or insecurities, or a camera that reflexively leers at them. They get to just be, with all the freedoms and potential of any other fictional heroes.

Its baseline competence is perfectly watchable. It’s just hard to imagine anyone signing onto this project with the explicitly stated goal of only making it watchable.

There’s no getting around how enjoyable it is to watch Coogan effortlessly play an entitled bastard, whether giving it or getting it. He’s so expert at the darkly witty, cringe-while-laughing insult, it’s like watching a pro athlete in flight; it’s a shame Winterbottom’s ambitions for Greed weren’t greater as a rollicking, truly scary picture of unrepentant gluttony.

Sure, young star Trevor Jackson (“Grown-ish,” “American Crime”) can’t fill O’Neal’s effortlessly dapper, achingly world-weary shoes, and few movie soundtracks can rival Curtis Mayfield’s legendary album for the first “Super Fly.” But this is a remake worthy of its original.

At the very least, it’s not Shakespeare. It’s not even “10 Things I Hate About You.”

Ghost in the Shall is a technical knockout, a here-and-now valentine to what design wizardry Hollywood can pull off in 2017. At the same time, it does so in service of a tired tale full of repurposed visual tricks, storytelling clichés and big-studio concessions.

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.

Central Intelligence doesn’t feel like the birth of a great comic duo — more like a blind date that goes a little better than expected. The chemistry’s not there yet, but let’s give it another shot.

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.

Overall, there’s just nothing about this interpretation of the character that makes him stand out as Count…Dracula versus just another standard vampire, a fact that only becomes more troubling since it’s doubtful most people will equate the Demeter with Stoker’s novel at all.

Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”) takes some considerable risks in her direction to make The Sun Is Also a Star look different from the typical romantic drama. But not all of these creative decisions pay off.

Watching Madame Bovary, you find yourself wishing that Barthes had done something, anything with Flaubert’s novel other than slap it up on the screen as yet another tale of woe from long ago.

The gendered themes at play here do little to boost the quality of Buck and Schlingmann’s storytelling, which is too tangled to follow at times.

This stodgy adaptation creaks with solemnity — not to mention reactionary casting choices — and apart from some nifty frog and locust infestations, even the special effects pale next to a wind-blown Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea.

Though the first act of The Contractor is its lengthiest, the lazy pace does nothing to enrich the lives of the characters who we know are at stake. The action that follows is quick and cramped; sequences that should feel heart-pounding are, instead, dark and erratic.

The Crimes of Grindelwald probably had enough plot to drive a four-hour mini-series, but even so, what we get is often absorbing and grand. The sense that this magical world is actually, well, fantastic is finally back in the series.

80 For Brady is undeniably a shiny piece of NFL propaganda, a film so in love with its own money-making apparatus that it’s hard not to find it at least somewhat evil. But the performances land and are often endearing, with all four women in particularly strong form.

It’s a story ripped from at least a few years of headlines, and a subject about which there has been much debate. It may or may not come as a surprise, then, that a single two-hour film fails to sufficiently capture its complexities, even working from a compelling premise with a gifted cast.

Not every eccentric tweak of hers lands, but it’s a wonderful feeling knowing McKinnon sees potential for humor every time the camera’s on her, even for a reaction shot shoved into an action sequence.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that Every Day doesn’t collapse into the junk pile of its own refrigerator logic. Sucsy keeps the movie balanced nimbly between complex questions and earnest sentiment, and the need to constantly introduce new characters and circumstances keeps Every Day brisk and engaging.

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.

At too many points, the script from Kay Oyegun (adapting the novel by Angie Thomas) is uneven: Some story beats move too fast, while others pass too slowly, and there are narrative holes. Still, even with its flaws, On the Come Up — like 2018’s The Hate U Give — offers Black teen girls a voice in cinema that they have rarely had before. Lathan mines that gold, making her debut shine.

A howlingly inane movie that somehow managed to collect an impressively A-list cast on its way toward becoming a cop movie that’s not just dumb, it’s disastrous.

The lead actors are attractive and charismatic and give nuanced performances. Unfortunately, the dialogue they are given to speak is often trite and too many plot strands are unconvincing.

If the film had simply been the man talking about his cultural influences, that would have been enough, a survey in beauty from a man who knows how to translate that ineffable idea into a shoe that sprouts feathers.

Ultimately, the overstuffed, under-dramatized film fails to fully develop the stakes at hand, but it features more thoughtful world-building than most faith-based films, as well as a bracing honesty about the difficulty of reconciling idealistic credos with a harsh and unforgiving world.