Alissa Wilkinson

It’s as much a movie about the hazy struggles of early motherhood as it is about survival in a destroyed world — and it’s best when it leans into the former, with characters’ discussing why anyone has a baby at all.

Elemental isn’t a full failure. It’s an original story, for one, and coming from Disney, that’s no small thing. The best thing about Elemental — and, since movies are a primarily visual medium, it’s a very good thing indeed — is that it looks incredible.

After the Hunt seems wildly desperate to be seen as provocative about things like cancel culture and the “feminist generation gap.” But my overriding sense was that some earlier, better version of the script exists, and all the political stuff was stapled on later to make it feel more “relevant.”

Murder Mystery does feel like a very specific sort of direct-to-Netflix offering, designed to ape other movies you’ve already seen and enjoyed without straying too far from the formula or doing anything particularly innovative. But it does so cleverly enough to make watching it a pleasure.

Ballad of a Small Player contains a great story, but it’s bogged down by its trappings. Perhaps it just got a little too greedy.

Damsel is evidence that studios still don’t realize that a “strong female lead” is not enough to make a movie good. More is required: a strong set of supporting characters, a strong plot, a strong sense of what makes a movie interesting to an audience.

Johnson’s performance is the magnetic center of the film, and unless you’re a huge fan of watching this kind of fighting, it’s also the whole reason to watch the movie.

The film gets better whenever Stiller recedes into the background, but the movie’s insistence on Michael’s redemption story as the main narrative thread hurts it. It’s impossible to care too much about this pompous, uptight, strangely boring guy. Especially because we know how his story will end.

There’s substance here, and talent in spades, but it needed a little more time to gestate.

In the hands of Deadpool director Tim Miller, Dark Fate by and large pulls off recapturing the goofy fun of the original, though with a twist. It evokes the earliest Terminator films, but Dark Fate doesn’t want to just rewrite Terminator’s future — it wants to reevaluate its past, too.

Isle of Dogs, though carefully crafted, doesn’t have much to say — and that’s what’s frustrating about the movie. Anderson has always been one of the most stylistically distinctive American directors, but at times it’s felt as if his fussiness was a way to wallpaper over a lack of new narrative ideas. Isle of Dogs doesn’t suggest an evolution.

It’s literally incredible. I hope I never see it again.

Joker is a well-made movie, with a killer performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who seems born to play the role. But there’s nothing “bonkers” about it. It has nothing to say about the Joker himself or what he represents, or even about the world in which his brand of evil exists. Go ahead and crack open the movie. It’s hollow to the core.

I’ll be pondering I Love You, Daddy more; for now, though, I’m not convinced it’s thoughtful, and suspect it’s nothing more than clever and funny provocation for provocation’s sake.

Alien: Covenant would probably be a better movie if it had calmed down and narrowed its scope. And yet you have to respect Scott’s ambition, even if you don’t like his movie.

Streamlined a little, it would have made for a rich text. But as it is, it’s too much to wade through.

By the middle of the film, the narrative also begins to stutter, set piece after set piece, caper after caper, loping toward the inevitable moment of collision and resolution, without always maintaining the narrative tension to keep things interesting. Since we know where this is going, these bits need to be really funny, not just broadly perfunctory jokes about how generations don’t understand each other.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is not a good movie nor a terribly enjoyable one, if you’re paying attention to it. But as background noise, it’s diverting and intermittently amusing.

The best stretches involve Kong lumbering through the landscape, Godzilla stomping around crushing things, and of course the inevitable final confrontation, which has a few surprises up its proverbial sleeves.

James has a great capacity to pull fragility and strength together, and her performance is the movie’s backbone. The movie itself is both shakier and shallower.

It’s passably spooky, sure. But all interesting prequels have something in common: They shed new light on their predecessors that expands, illuminates or complicates them in some way. Apartment 7A feels like a predictable retread.

Battle of the Sexes, for all its failings, is still enjoyable to watch. Stone in particular is terrific, and Faris and Dayton make the smart choice to shoot the film with the kind of texture and camerawork that evokes movies from 1973. But as a sports movie, it’s unsatisfying — though that’s not exactly its fault.

For me, the bludgeoning tends to blunt the entertainment value.

It’s a tonally strange movie from the get-go, masquerading as a typical holiday flick about long-lost friends getting together at the holidays but ending with mass extinction. Yay!

For its faults as a movie, the story is still compelling as a bit of history, and more so in the midst of a presidential administration that at times seems to be taking all the wrong lessons from Nixon.

There’s quite a bit to chew on in this story, matters the film points to but doesn’t really examine.

With In the Blink of an Eye, Stanton is juggling quite a bit, including many landscapes to create and a lot of imagination for exploration. While the visuals are not exactly eye-popping, the movie is plenty serviceable.

It felt a bit like the life was draining away from the movie the longer it went on — as if this was more of an imitation of a good movie than an actually good movie. (The technical name for this among critics is a “nothingburger.”)