Brian Tallerico

The Amateur skims the surface of what has worked in spy thrillers of the past, never finding its own rhythm, identity, or personality.

Cognetti’s skill with found footage does him no favors here, as this flick is laden with awful dialogue, worse performances, dumb plotting, and a truly inane ending. Set your horror GPS to a different location.

It could be funnier. It could be a lot smarter. It could look better. But it also could have been significantly worse, working as much as it does because it knows that you don’t need to be great if you’re this Goofy.

A video game movie that encourages creation instead of just uplifting capitalism? That’s a small victory in 2025.

Locked starts promisingly, and then almost refuses to really go anywhere, trapped by its own concept and unwillingness to do anything thematically richer than “wealthy people be crazy.”

It’s an undeniably haunting piece of work, a story that’s out of place and time in a world that’s like our own but not quite. Rod Serling would have dug it.

A sort of “It” meets “Scream” energy courses through Eli Craig’s film, one that’s clever and thrilling enough in bloody spurts, even if it never quite reaches its true potential.

It can be so refreshing to see an efficient thrill ride of a movie, a flick that knows what it wants to do and doesn’t waste time doing it. Christopher Landon’s Drop is one of those films, a thriller that unfolds in two locations with few characters, all in pursuit of providing as much entertainment as possible to ticket buyers.

It’s a story about how people hide their true selves behind costumes like the perfect wife or even the forced whimsy of Tulip Season. Its tragic misstep is how much it refuses to actually look under those surfaces.

Yes, great musicals have been built on “the power of love” before. But pulling that off requires something this movie never has: a heartbeat.

Writer/director Alex Scharfman’s script is clever, but this truly feels like the kind of project that collapses with the wrong people in it. Every member of this film’s ensemble understood the assignment, elevating this unique creature feature from just another disposable “Jurassic Park” riff into something memorable through their comic timing and group chemistry.

The truth is that pacing often trumps realism, and The Accountant 2 just doesn’t build enough momentum.

Lively is once again fantastic, imbuing this character with a degree of captivating uncertainty that throws off the balance of the film when she’s not on-screen, and the costumes are gorgeous, rising to the level of the stunning scenery. And, once again, the plotting and pacing have a habit of sagging when the film needs to build.

It’s a throwback to goofy action movies that don’t get made at this budget level that often anymore, a time when major studios would release an original flick about massive sandworms in the desert or J. Lo and Ice Cube fighting a giant snake. To that end, despite a clunky set-up, “The Gorge” delivers on its potential.

The always-engaging Renate Reinsve delivers yet again (as does talented co-star Ellen Dorrit Petersen). However, “Armand” is a frustrating, over-long movie that starts with an intriguing premise and then starts fighting it almost immediately.

There’s no cheating in The Monkey. It’s coming for you. And it’s gonna be messy.

Ostensibly a commentary on celebrity culture and the fawning journalists around it, “Opus” is one of those movies that throws talking points at the wall without having an actual point of view on any of them.

Parts of it aren’t perfect, but that’s also kind of its charm in that it feels like a family film made by flesh-and-blood people in an era when computers are doing so much of the work. Even when “The Legend of Ochi” stumbles, it does so in a way that’s almost sweet.

It has so little to inspire conversation that I joked at the end that it was a cautionary tale about the mental and physical toll of being an unemployed writer. There’s something primal in all of us. Just not in this movie.

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is more about planning a job than it is the job itself. It is downright obsessive in its detail about camera cycles, false identities, and elaborate planning.

Built on a foundation of comedy that comes from the silent era, “Vengeance Most Fowl” is just beautifully structured, a perfect rhythm of plotting and humor that works for all ages.

The Brutalist is a work that incorporates well-known world history into two of the definitive forms of expression of the 20th century in architecture and filmmaking, becoming a commentary on both capitalism and art.

It’s a bit too long and a lot too silly, but most people won’t care. And in a year with almost no even-modestly-good holiday offerings (sorry to the two “Red One” fans), this might be the best Christmas movie of the year.

Like its subject has done so many times in his six-decade career, this one exceeds expectations.

Based on the true story of a Danish serial killer named Dagmar Overbye, "The Girl with the Needle" becomes almost numbing in its brutality. Still, it's a well-made drama with a resonance that echoes a hundred years after the crimes it documents.

It looks gorgeous, which may be enough for some viewers, but it's a remarkably thin piece of storytelling, an adventure tale with very little actual adventure, and a musical with very few memorable songs.

By and large, "Dear Santa" feels as if someone took a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book and added some truly weird Satanic mythology.

Can a film be too much and not enough at the same time? This is the conundrum of Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II," a movie bursting with just enough spectacle to keep it from being boring but, when you try to get anything out of it thematically, slips through your fingers like the sand in a warrior's hands.