Alan Ng

There are many flaws in Animal Farm, but its message is what I’m recommending the film for. Look, it will make great dinner conversation with your toddlers.

If you’re going in hoping for something the whole family can genuinely connect with on a deeper level, you’ll be disappointed. It’s a kids’ movie, plain and simple, and there’d be no way I’d see this if I didn’t have kids.

In the end, the film and its storytelling is meh.

Let’s be real: the only reason to see a Jason Statham movie is for all that juicy action. Fist fights, knife fights, gunplay, machine-gun mayhem, explosions… all in this game of cat-and-mouse.

Greenland 2: Migration is all mind-numbing action with nothing to say. If you’re a fan of Gerard Butler or Morena Baccarin, you will probably have fun with this one. Otherwise, it’s a skip.

The film has good action set pieces, but without a story that has something to say or connects with audiences beyond the surface, it’s just another standard sci-fi action film.

With this cast, the film should have been a knockout. Instead, it feels bogged down, heavy, and way too concerned with making statements instead of just being entertaining.

The biggest downfall of Relay is the ending.

Ultimately, Hurry Up Tomorrow is an example of style over substance. Its visuals try to shock and awe while leaving its narrative a confusing mess.

The film’s repetitive themes and lack of emotional payoff leave it feeling more like a beautifully acted therapy session than a fully satisfying story.

While Bong Joon Ho delivers his signature visual flair and Robert Pattinson fully commits to the existential dread of his endlessly disposable character, the film struggles to keep its high-concept ideas fresh past the first act.

Companion takes a stab (literally) at sci-fi horror with an interesting idea, but making a robot the emotional center of the film is a misfire.

Detective Chinatown 1900 tries to be a high-energy action comedy but gets tangled in a web of subplots, leaving little room for the buddy-cop fun it teases.

It features likable characters, and though it may not offend or make you laugh, it ultimately leaves you smiling. However, you can’t help but feel a sense of loss regarding the potential the film and its story had to be truly great.

While the setup is intriguing, the film quickly loses steam, becoming a muddled chase interspersed with concert footage.

A Quiet Place: Day One failed to capture what we loved about the original films and instead decided to focus too much of its time on a rollercoaster ride of an alien invasion. Fun is fun, but without proper character development, Day One is more fast food than a hardy meal.

The standout star here is Cailey Fleming as Bea.

Great villains and silly heroes make a move that ultimately falls flat.

It’s a photo-realistic computer-animated movie. The animation of Kong, Godzilla, and the other Kongs is mediocre at best. The backgrounds should look photo-realistic, but they don’t. I’d rather watch dudes in suits duke it out over a cardboard city than watch this cartoon mess again.

Saltburn just goes too far, and its startling images shocked me out of the story altogether.

In the end, The Marvel is a superhero movie clearly made and produced by people who have never read a Marvel comic book but read Archie instead. It feels like it was made for teen girls and not for actual comic book fans.

It just feels like a movie that was made because Cena and Brie agreed to star in it.

I give Killers of the Flower Moon a mild recommendation. It’s too long and predictable. The saving grace is its performance across the board.

There’s just no nuance here. Good is good. Evil is evil.

I’d recommend Retribution if the weather is too hot and you want to spend a few hours in air conditioning. Otherwise, it’s a pass.

Blue Beetle is worth seeing, but it has many missed opportunities.

The only thing wrong with Transformers: Rise of the Beast is that it’s bland and boring.

Could this version of The Little Mermaid stand alone if the original didn’t exist? Possibly. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s songs and story structure remain intact and are its only salvation. But, again, why watch the live-action remake when the original is so much better and suited more for kids?