Despite slick production values, this look at the intersection of two potentially fascinating subcultures — journalists and stoners — yields only half-baked results.

Everybody wants a happy ending. But that doesn’t mean that we should always get the one we want. It’s fine, if also cliche, to be reminded that good will triumph over evil. But it would make for a deeper and more powerful lesson — one that, after nine movies, might leave a lasting dent in the heart — if the hero actually had to give up something, or someone, that didn’t feel like a tiniest bit of a cop-out.

Elvis & Nixon makes for a diverting, often absurdly funny double portrait of two men engulfed by changes they can’t fathom, much less accept.

A great performance does not necessarily make for great tragedy, and Christine remains mired in the minutiae of its portrait of a doomed, bitter young woman.

The Hollars drives inexorably to a conclusion that feels as manipulatively mawkish as it is impossibly tidy, typical of a genre that too often tries to have it both ways. It turns out that happy families are all alike, even when they’re a little bit sad.

Equity isn’t perfect — far from it — but it’s an intriguing attempt at rebalancing a system that’s been dreadfully out of whack for far too long.

The movie manages to be simultaneously superficial and heartbreaking. That’s no easy feat — nor is it a laudable one.

If F9’s repetitive stunts-and-speeches structure begins to pall, this is a movie that knows its lane and stays in it, however recklessly.

Next to Momoa, the novelty of Fast X lies mostly in its cameos, which only a spoilsport would describe in more detail; suffice it to say that most work, and the most newsworthy come in the film’s final scenes, including the closing credits. Not surprisingly, Fast X brings new meaning to the term “cliffhanger.” There’s definitely more to come. There always is.

Dickerson's point in this passable but rather routine picture is that no one is exempt from the spidery grip of frustrations brought on by poverty and a life of depressed opportunities; that, given these circumstances, anyone can pick up a gun as the only answer to his problems.

A startlingly inappropriate tragedy in the final act drives home the film’s pacifist message, while virtually ensuring that the youngest and most sensitive viewers will be left in a puddle of tears.

As far-fetched as it sounds, such torque-y plotting works, catching the audience off guard, even if the quasi-feminist payoff is less satisfying than it should be, thanks mostly to the film’s puerile fascination with girl-on-girl action.

In his effort to inject fresh blood into this gory franchise, which has already seen four sequels (including two “Alien” crossovers), the filmmaker can’t seem to summon up that old Black magic.

Nina filters the singer’s voice — and her life — through tinny-sounding speakers and an out-of-focus lens.

There’s nothing wrong with tackling romantic miscommunication, but Birbiglia’s script leaves little room for surprise or depth. Paradoxically, Don’t Think Twice feels both dramatically thin and overstuffed.

Jensen positions Men & Chicken as a fablelike ode to humanism and tolerance, but his obsession with brutish sexuality and mean, slapstick humor makes that claim feel unearned and glib.

If the movie isn’t always gripping, it’s nevertheless a worthwhile examination of the intricacies of undercover life.

There’s something admirable about the fact that Being Charlie exists at all. It’s a testament to Nick Reiner’s survival. That doesn’t mean it’s a great movie.

Its arresting visual design aside, Cafe Society is upper-middle-late-period Allen, a modestly diverting ditty that will never go down as one of his greats. (But, as most can agree, Allen at his most middling is still better than many hacks at their best.)

Manhattan Night gets by on the strength of its visuals and a few vivid central performances, but by the time we find out whodunit, it doesn’t really matter.

Pelé: Birth of a Legend is too earnest and single-minded to be hagiographic, and the final moments are moving in spite of their predictable trajectories.

American Pastoral may tell the heartbreaking story of Swede Levov, but a firm grasp of who he is and what he means remains maddeningly elusive.

If Beatty was not trying to make a movie about Hughes, he utterly failed, because the love story of Frank and Marla is more like a framing device — a gateway drug to get the audience into the theater so that Beatty can chew some scenery. Even so, he chews it quite well.

Unlike his action-movie rival Johnson, Statham does not have the charisma to carry this film. He gets the job done all right, but makes it feel more like work than play.

In order for the trick of the film to work, however, one must hold Morgan to a standard that the movie is unlikely to live up to.

It’s too bad, then, that the comedy spends so much more time mimicking the familiar than trusting in its own fresh perspective.

Ewing and Grady insert vignettes featuring a young actor playing Lear as a 9-year-old, wandering an empty theater and trying on his analog’s signature white hat. The conceit might have sounded artful on paper, but it doesn’t work on film.

Ultimately, Atomic Blonde is, like its heroine, something of a machine. Lit by glowing neon, fueled by the rhythm of ’80s power pop and fashioned from stiletto heels, cigarettes, guns and sunglasses, it looks and sounds good, but it isn’t much of a conversationalist.