Writer-executive producer John Hughes conjurs up a romance between Candy’s teenage son (Chris Young) and a local girl (Lucy Deakins), but that proves the film’s biggest letdown. Last third of the film is a real mess, as filmmakers try to whip up a crisis that will unite the family, with the redheaded twins getting lost in a mineshaft during a wild rainstorm. Despite all this, the Aykroyd-Candy pairing is charmed. Stephanie Faracy is excellent as Candy’s sweet, happy wife, and Bening is also savvy in her role.

Until its grossly miscalculated bummer of an ending, Turner & Hooch is a routine but amiable cop-and-dog comedy enlivened by the charm of Tom Hanks and his homely-as-sin canine partner.

At first glance (or at least for the first 40 minutes) Shocker seems a potential winner, an almost unbearably suspenseful, stylish and blood-drenched ride courtesy of writer-director Wes Craven’s flair for action and sick humour. As it continues, however, the camp aspects simply give way to the ridiculous while failing to establish any rules to govern the mayhem. The result is plenty of unintentional laughs.

Levine, who wrote the script, knows how to stage an energized intellectual battle, but adapting “The Blue Angel” to a 21st-century setting turns out to be a distinctly musty and unrewarding idea.

The Fly II is an expectedly gory and gooey but mostly plodding sequel to the 1986 hit that was a remake of the 1958 sci-fier that itself spawned two sequels.

Hong Kong action-director Dante Lam’s Operation Red Sea is war propaganda that comes off as antiwar, a patriotic film so carried away by its own visceral, pulverizing violence that patriotism almost becomes an afterthought.

What Tex will probably best be remembered for is breaking new ground at Disney Studios in representing some of the real problems confronting today’s young people. The teenagers are put in the milieu of drugs, alcohol, sex and violence. Family life is not necessarily rosy and well-scrubbed. Where the picture ironically goes awry is in trying to tackle all of these problems in the space of 103 minutes.

Spinning Man, like a film noir turned into a video game, winds up crafting a rickety atmosphere of deception out of the question of guilt or innocence. The result keeps you guessing, but it forgets to keep you caring.

Uncle Drew may be tired, but it shows that one’s fundamental love for the game never gets old.

Employing just about every trick from the Hammer Horror playbook without wasting time trying to make any sense, it provides a serviceable 96 minutes of standard-issue jump scares and supernatural hokum.

With Monkey, the film”s most potent protagonist, sidelined for much of the film, the action feels truncated.

Kings is a tangle of conflicting moods and emotions.

There’s really nothing special about this entertaining if mindless shoot-’em-up other than an ample supply of amusing juvenile put-downs and elaborate action sequences.

Countering the CG bombast and apocalyptic doom and gloom of the modern blockbuster with a soft-spoken message of faith and love, Paul, Apostle of Christ struggles to find a compelling entry point to a critical period in the early Christian church.

Eva begins as hot buttered nonsense of the least resistible variety before, echoing the writer’s block that propels its daft narrative, it runs drily out of ideas.

For all her attempts at documentary-style verisimilitude, filmmaker Ashley McKenzie doesn’t really cover much new ground with Werewolf.

Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki has essentially padded a television half-hour into a sluggish theatrical feature.

In Peter Hyams’ hands [working from a novel by Arthur C. Clarke], the HAL mystery is the most satisfying substance of the film and handled the best. Unfortunately, it lies amid a hodge-podge of bits and pieces.

The doc is all talk and little action, with most of the first hour of this 75-minute pic focused on DiMaggio chatting about the good old days, as well as his stand-up plans and what tonal approach he should take — the nuances of crafting a set — rather than genuinely working toward those goals.

Professionalism of director Peter Yates, the large array of production and technical talents and, particularly, the mainly British actors keep things from becoming genuinely dull or laughable.

This reinvention’s contrastingly elegant yet dislocated revenge-slash-love story is no slam dunk. But neither is it an unwatchable dud.

In a sense, each new take on Chekhov sheds insight on the timelessness of the material, and yet, this one does more to reveal missed opportunities for the next team to explore.

The first live-action adaptation of the phenomenally popular Japanese manga created by female author Hiromu Arakawa proves to be a mixed bag of eye-catching visuals and uneven storytelling — rushed and choppy at times, and draggy and repetitive at others.

Will there be young people who love this movie as much as their parents loved Coolidge’s “Valley Girl”? Sure, that’s bound to happen, but no one will be talking about this movie in 37 years. And with no new music — just second-rate covers of classic songs — it may well be forgotten in fewer than 37 days, lost to the void of VOD.

Key male part of quiet outsider whom Hyser brings to life is essayed by another film newcomer, Clayton Rohner, but Rohner looks too old to be a high school kid.

Chabot’s film is not “The Garden,” but The Gardener and as a portrait of the man behind Quatre Vents, unlike the gorgeous flora, it never blossoms.

Undemanding yet never quite effortless, agreeable yet never quite engrossing, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society has fewer stumbling points than its loopy title, but that title sticks for longer than the rest of it.

It’s a movie that’s resourcefully accomplished on comparatively slim means, and less choosy fantasy action fans will find things to enjoy in its foamy cocktail of vampires, kickboxing and neo-noir.