Alissa Wilkinson

The Cloverfield Paradox has a great cast and an interesting setup, but it feels extremely — almost painfully — derivative of other science fiction films. It’s not nearly as good as its predecessors.

There’s a flat empty nothingness to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, even more than its flat empty predecessor, and that’s a huge bummer.

To be fair, it’s not all unpleasant. The joyride through the Warner Bros. IP universe is not quite as soul-busting as the trailer led me to believe it would be, though I suspect it benefited only in comparison to my expectations.

Lucy in the Sky, distracted by its own flashy filmmaking, can’t center its gaze on one goal long enough to convey any of its interests well.

It is ostensibly a tribute to spy movies of an earlier age, not clever enough to be a spoof and certainly not satire. But a homage shows affection for, understanding of and respect toward the thing it is honoring. Argylle feels pasted together by a robot manipulating some kind of spy Magnetic Poetry.

Wherever it falls on the quality spectrum, the bigger, more concerning story here is that Proud Mary’s journey into the movie marketplace is a good example of how Hollywood still fundamentally doesn’t understand what to do with many movies starring black actors.

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

Bright pulls off the uncommon (and not at all admirable) hat trick of being confusing, boring, and vaguely insulting about the matters it wants to appear smart on. The movie is a case of reading the room very wrongly, then slapping a lot of violence and muddled mythology on top as a means of distraction.

There’s a reasonably OK movie somewhere inside Animal Farm, but it’s drowning in ideological confusion, which wouldn’t be such a big deal — one rarely asks children’s cartoons featuring talking pigs to be wellsprings of thoughtful political theorizing — except that this is “Animal Farm.”

Like all ghastly failures, The Happytime Murders is not “so bad it’s good.” It’s just bad: a boring flop, an unfunny comedy where nothing’s at stake.

Watching The Snowman keeps you so thoroughly occupied with trying to figure out why the movie itself exists that all other questions become irrelevant.

Even though no movie that lends itself to individually tailored special effects should be a royal snoozefest, it’s 2017 and everything is awful, and so, too, is Geostorm, a disaster movie without a disaster and an apocalypse flick lacking the apocalypse.

The Emoji Movie is a waste of time, resources, and a bunch of comedians’ voices, plus a premise that actually had the potential to do some small good in the world. It’s less of a movie and more of an insult.

There’s just a lot here. But with a subject like Field, the mild chaos feels pleasantly appropriate.

Cult documentaries are so popular that I’m a little surprised the film didn’t head more heavily in that direction. But the chorus of voices in the movie makes it clear that consumers should be paying attention. And it’s obvious, too, that the problem is much bigger than Brandy Melville.

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

I expect every viewer of How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer will have some quibble with it, but it’s an accomplishment nonetheless — a model for how to reimagine a standard documentary structure to accommodate a multifaceted subject without smoothing over the rough spots and slapping on a halo.

I think the real story of The World According to Allee Willis isn’t just about Willis: It’s about the community that she formed, the friendships and relationships she maintained, and the way that art, imagination and love can make a life.

[Arlyck’s] doing precisely what great memoirists do: invite us into their stories as a way of making space for us to reflect on our own.

By the end, Holding Back the Tide feels like both an elegy and a prophecy, looking toward both past and future to imagine what kind of possibilities oysters represent.

The combative camaraderie that Pink and Kinzinger demonstrate respects both of them as humans — without softening their stances one bit. I hope to see more films like this one in the years to come.

Food and Country, it turns out, is aptly titled: caring about how we get our food and what we do with it isn’t just about culinary creativity. It’s about caring for our neighbors, our country and the world.

Paint Me a Road Out Of Here is not a biographical film about Ringgold, even though you’ll learn a lot about her biography from it. The film has bigger aspirations, connecting art, prisons, activism and an expansive life.

It’s rare to see a documentary airing out a long-running beef as beautifully, good-naturedly and enjoyably as this one.

It’s a sweet-tempered film that celebrates the animals we love and seems to have a secondary purpose, too: to convince viewers to support and even develop a love for animal rescue.

This is the kind of relatively pedestrian musician documentary that’s intended mostly for fans, who will encounter plenty of nostalgia. It’s a vulnerable glimpse at an artist figuring out what the creative life looks like in a world that keeps changing.

The film skirts gimmicks to go in a more tricky and unsettling direction. It’s an almost soulful portrait of the artist under capitalism, rather than another exposé on robotics and artificial intelligence.

I am not quite sure how to tell you what the film is, other than achingly beautiful.