Besides Bentley’s performance, the only thing “We Are Your Friends” has going for it is the occasional directorial flourish, with words on screen or characters addressing the camera or that painterly drug trip. These jolts are few and far between, but they’re most welcome when they arise.

For his part, Castillo makes the best of the clunky dialogue and cliché lines, but the story never lets his acting chops shine through.

Lieberman’s script really meets kids at their level of understanding, and yes, at times the gags were clichéd and perhaps over some kids’ heads (like Cousin It’s license plate “C U Z”), but the humor isn’t forced, managing to get some chuckles out of the grown-ups too.

This new Rebecca has its own sense of style, and it’s not above fully embracing the pulpy delights of du Maurier’s book, but unlike the unnamed second Mrs. de Winter, it can’t quite break free of the inevitable expectations placed upon it.

Sure, it’s creepy as hell and very stylish to boot, but You Should Have Left essentially plays like a scaled-down Blumhouse riff on “The Shining,” only with slightly shorter hallways and considerably less ambition.

This disturbing riff on 'The Country Girl' (the country ghoul?) never seems anything less than earnest and sometimes — all puns intended — a little confessional.

Perhaps it was enough for “Book Club” to merely exist as an act of rebellion against the stubbornly young-skewing studio fare. But this follow-up needed to give us more, something along the lines of a sharper film deserving of the earned legacies of Fonda, Keaton, Bergen and Steenburgen.

There are plenty of silly recurring jokes and a collection of quirky characters, but it all exists to cover up just how empty the film itself is at its core.

What it lacks in intelligence it makes up for with good vibes and great casting.

You can only linger so long with such a parade of oddities making ever stranger choices before your eyes grow weary of gawking at a pageant of hideous beauty, and you start checking the clock.

It’s hard to get lost in Cameron’s images or Joy’s workmanlike direction given how often they’re overwhelmed by her flashy dialogue.

For a film loaded with decapitations and gun-toting ladies in bondage gear, Sin City gets really tedious really quickly.

It’s a spooky, entertaining, but totally goofy entry in “The Conjure-verse.”

While many of the big moments of If I Stay can be easily dismissed, it's the little ones that elevate the film to at least mixed-bag status.

Don’t Breathe 2 may not be the first horror movie sequel to try to transform the monster into an antihero, but it’s hard to think of another one that whiffs it this hard.

Starring a vivacious Dakota Johnson and a game Jamie Dornan, Taylor-Johnson’s erotic romance is a skillful distillation of James’ first book that captures the heady exhilaration of being someone’s fixation.

Rebel in the Rye is the most dispiritingly presentational of biopics, on a tight schedule to hit its marks and compartmentalize its subject’s life.

Unfortunately, though, the leads — both of whom radiate individual charisma — are entirely lacking in chemistry. And it’s not just them. There is little connection between anyone, or even any event, in a project that takes all its assets for granted.

It’s hard to imagine Mark Wahlberg as Parker, even after you just watched him play Parker for two hours.

The Whole Truth stands out within its evergreen genre for the largely unsensational manner in which it’s presented. Hunt follows actual courtroom procedures more closely than most similar movies...which makes the eventual revelations feel earned.

It’s nuts, it’s a mess and it’s pretty damn entertaining if you don’t mind characters pooping the bed and getting stabbed in the neck.

Mortal Kombat II isn’t the best Mortal Kombat movie, but it’s hard to deny that it comes second. At least with the number 2 and all.

Much of what makes Horns so impressive, and such fun to watch, is the film's ability to juggle a variety of genres.

Audiences in the mood to be scared will certainly send their popcorn flying during a few tense moments of The Meg. But they’ll also wish the movie had bothered to find an equivalent to Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis speech in “Jaws.” When the human characters are reduced to chum, it’s hard to care about them getting eaten.

What’s most impressive about Joker: Folie à Deux is the way Phillips willingly undercuts his own billion-dollar blockbuster. He’s looking inward. Arthur is looking inward. Hopefully the audience will too, and question why they care so much about Arthur Fleck in the first place.

Though it’s millennial angst that drives the Andrea/Tara trajectories, Mendelsohn’s portrait of midlife fragility is a strong coloring in Untogether.

For what it’s worth, The Upside is exactly what you think it is: the latest Hollywood effort that aims to show that a black man and a white man with seemingly nothing in common can see past their differences and develop a mutual friendship. It’s just as pat and basic as it looks and sounds.

The film is a clunky and at times ridiculous affair, taking a situation that might reasonably happen and turning it into something melodramatic and ultimately unbelievable.