Chase Hutchinson

Foe, the beautifully shot yet scattered lo-fi sci-fi mystery thriller starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, is not a good movie. However, it is an interesting one.

As a complete portrait of youth on the cusp of the rest of their lives, it never manages to be authentically sharp enough to transcend the more tiresome narrative trappings it falls into and a grating over reliance on musical cues as punchlines.

A familiar underdog story made engaging by the flashes of patience with which it approaches its material, Sanaa Lathan’s On the Come Up doesn’t reinvent the wheel as much as it tries to roll along with it.

There is a good film in The Harbinger that we catch glimpses of in moments of horror and the conversations we do get to see play out. It just is struggling to break through the uncertain confines of the story it is trapped in.

When creative directors are given the chance to take big swings and actually do so, the result can bring about nightmarish experiences unlike anything out there. The glimpses of this in V/H/S/85 serve as a reminder of the value of the series and the visions it can ultimately provide a home for.

It’s a feel-bad film like no other where you have to squint for even the smallest sliver of hope as we, along with the characters, get put through the wringer with little potential for salvation.

Another Simple Favor is a sequel that never makes a case for its existence. It’s many of the same jokes that serve less as callbacks and more as reminders of how much more fun the first film was.

The texture that gives vibrancy to these types of understated stories just isn’t there, ensuring that what little there is to grasp onto soon slips away as well.

Even as Reinhart does solid work with the shaky material, her character remains adrift in a meandering psychological thriller that offers only a superficial look into her psyche.

This supposed breakout strains to be edgy while remaining painfully inert. It initially makes for a sporadically fun game to play before revealing how little it has on its mind.

Despite how transgressive and inventive Dalí was as an acclaimed artist, Dalíland is content to create a story that plays it all too safe.

Until Dawn is more disappointing than deadly, leaving all the promise of the horror game behind for a jumble of horror-movie re-creations.

From a talented cast in Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon, and Raphaël Quenard to an initial willingness to be ruthless in tearing apart the messy art of moviemaking, it could have been something truly great. nstead, just when you think this movie about making movies is starting to get somewhere interesting, it reveals itself to be only a sporadically funny satire with a surprising lack of teeth.

You can practically see the more complicated layers of the two men through the eyes of the performers alone, but they’re both left staring at a story that almost stubbornly refuses to excavate them.

Even with a more gleeful performance by Kate Hudson, Shell is merely a fine film that’s far too tame to completely pay off.

The problem is The Curse of Bridge Hollow isn’t clever enough to carve out a niche of its own and is defined by the diminishing returns of derivative genre riffs from start to finish.

While Landon has made fun genre outings before with “Happy Death Day,” “Happy Death Day 2U,” and “Freaky,” Drop is, at its best, never more than just down the middle. At its worst, it’s an oddly clunky experience that strands its performers with little to work with.

For all the ways that Darby and the Dead tries to give its abundantly safe story some life, it can’t break free of a narrative hellbent on dragging it to the grave.

All the clear love the film has for the references it is throwing out is never molded into anything memorable of its own.

While the title promises fire, the only riddle remaining is where the adventure it was searching for ended up disappearing to.

The cast is sufficiently fun and the remote location a proper backdrop for the offbeat story to play out. It just never brings all its pieces together, revealing that the greatest paranormal force haunting the entire affair is the ghost of a better film.

It succeeds about half the time, making for a split decision where Sweeney and Christy both emerge as champions while the film itself can’t quite go the distance.

Lopez, while certainly dancing all the right steps, is only ever a composite of a movie star who feels trapped in a surprisingly stiff production. She deserves better than what the film gives her, but there’s never a moment when she gets it.

Despite its title, it’s unable or unwilling to surrender itself to being more than just another celebrity documentary.

An engaging enough dramatization of the true story of a man who became known for spending months hiding out in a Toys “R” Us to escape capture after robbing businesses by coming in through their roofs, Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman” is also a regrettably safe film defined by missed opportunities that ultimately steals any deeper resonances it could find right out from under you.

My Spy: The Eternal City is an underwhelming action-comedy sequel that is best as a covert coming-of-age tale, but more frequently suffers as a grab-bag of tonality that abandons what helped My Spy succeed in the first place.

The Sweet East ends up saying quite a bit, though little leaves any real impression.

For every interview there is with a journalist offering more of this, there is one that just meanders with a notorious influencer that should have probably been cut.