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.