The stars were misaligned from the start for this frantic, turgid thriller. That’s no knock on Ms. Foy, who might have surprised us if she’d had a different director working from a different script under a different set of studio imperatives that didn’t involve extracting blood from a very cold stone.

The Shaggy Dog is paint, or more appropriately here, pant by the numbers. It also manages a one-two punch -- it will upset small children and bore their parents. There's just no other way to say this: Disney, that movie of yours is a dog.

The big-horned heroine is played once again by Angelina Jolie in this dull sequel to the not-so-sparkling 2014 original.

Lacks both taste and flavor.

Too labored to be romantic and too derivative to be funny.

As a parody of Hollywood excess and narcissism it is frequently laugh-out-loud; as a wannabe Hallmark Channel holiday movie—a segue that is nothing short of baffling—it is less than amusing, except in the notion that the project got waylaid on its way to Christmas.

The remake has no grace notes, or grace, no nuance, no humanity, no character quirks, no surprises in the dialogue and no humor.

This is an odd and ultimately dispiriting film, despite some intriguing ideas about brute force vs. moral authority, the elaborately staged uprising -- and impressive actors in the cast. That is to say, they've been impressive elsewhere.

It's as if the filmmakers, having committed themselves to the book, fled from its essence, which is wildness.

Alice and John are good company — especially Alice, thanks to Ms. Temple's buoyant humor and lovely poignancy. The problem comes when the couple gets greedy, the gods grow angry and the tone turns dark. It doesn't stay dark, but getting back to the brightness is a painful process.

What happens when a genuinely dear John gets a Dear John? For the answer, just meander--no need for running or walking--to your local multiplex. That's where Dear John, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name, will be meandering on its downward path from sweetly tender to terminally turgid.

The essence of Youth Without Youth, which was shot -- luminously -- in Romania, lies in its solemn speculations about aging, time and consciousness. Mr. Coppola is one of the cinema's peerless masters, and I would have enjoyed nothing more than a chance to celebrate his new film. I'm truly sorry to say, then, that I found it impenetrable.

This time, though, the happy ending plays out in real life, while the screen version falls afoul of a laggardly pace, an earnest tone and a surfeit of domesticity.

I enjoyed the film, as many will, in a split-brain way that goes to the essence of fantasy — half-believing what I wanted to be true, embracing the emotional manipulation whenever possible.

The production can best be described by several f-words. It is frenetic, frazzled and febrile. It is also feeble -- almost touchingly so, if you think of what bottomless insecurity must have prompted so much bombast.

Whatever the charms of the book, they are entirely absent from the dull and listless film.

Dumbfoundingly erratic, for the most part, but smart and funny from time to time.

A gross-out saga that sentient adults should avoid like the plague.

Adam Green's Frozen explores a tiny idea exhaustively, and I mean exhaustively.

The plot borrows as freely from Hitchcock and Henry James as from the Bard of Avon, and doesn't make scrupulous sense, though I'd have to see the film again, which I won't do, to make sure it doesn't cheat.

It ought to be a treat to see such charismatic talents falling in love, but the only overwhelming and unstoppable force in the movie is its love for cutesy and cloying gimmicks. It’s a cinematic crime to waste these two stars: I charge “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” with unconscionably aggravated whimsy in the third degree.

The failure lies not with the film's director, Marc Forster, nor with its impressive star, Gerard Butler, but with Jason Keller's dreadfully earnest script, which charts the hero's spiritual journey, and his Rambo-esque exploits, without offering a scintilla of mature perspective on his state of mind.

It's "The Sixth Sense" as nonsense, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" without the sunshine. Or the mind.

Those robots have read our emotional programming, Arthur says, and know exactly how and why we’ll do what we do. Which is more than one can say for viewers of Mother/Android, who will find the robot rebellion more plausible than the human behavior.

The film is detailed, vivid, enthralling—and necessarily full of pain. The performances are top-notch, led by Ms. Abela, who does her own singing in an amazing re-creation of Winehouse’s muscular soul vocals.

Does not bring a single fresh, inventive idea to the table.

The most surprising thing about the production, which was written and directed by Simon Kinberg, is how grindingly dumb it becomes after a promising start.

All I can say is that A Dog’s Purpose left me cherishing my borderline-venerable Skeezix; longing to see Scamp and Fluff and Sukoshi and Sally, the dear departed dogs of my life; and wishing I could have been reincarnated as a better master than I was.