Chase Hutchinson

All you’re left with is the echo of what was better before. You watch only able to wish Weaving was given more to work with than this, or, at the very least, greater room for her iconic scream to rattle you once more.

There is a good film in here that could be made more present if the story itself was punched up as much as the enemies are. This is unfortunate as every dynamic moment of deadly destruction is undercut by ones that are ultimately uneventful.

Sting is a horror movie about a killer spider from outer space that somehow falls short of the fun potential of such a premise.

Neither wacky enough to be a winning comedy nor clever enough to be a horror sendup, We Have a Ghost is a film that leaves little to grasp onto as it all just ends up slipping through your fingers.

For all the promise of its main cast and sturdy thriller premise, The Menu is a work that seems destined to slip from your mind.

Though possibly well-intentioned, the execution of The Covenant ensures its narrative and thematic potential is drowned out in the roar of gunfire it becomes far too enamored by.

Rabbit Trap finds some occasionally effective moments of atmospheric dread and sadness, only to leave those moments stranded.

It’s just that while you can’t see any of the strings being used on the effects, you can see the story being manipulated. You may fall in love with Ochi all the same, but you can only wish you’d gone on a richer journey together.

For all the ways it takes flight towards the end, Plane is an action flick that is mostly plain, the greatest sin for any film that should and could have gotten wilder.

In a world that often rewards mediocrity where true artistic greatness is hard to come by, a work like Opus had the potential to be a defining movie of our current moment, but the film’s half-hearted swipes at celebrity culture are never sharp or incisive enough to get under the skin.

It is a film that sets out to sink its teeth into something a bit deeper and more inventive only to merely serve up an experience with little to actually chew on.

If written well and with the same care as its direction, this could have conveyed a sense of more genuine tragedy. Regrettably, for all the ways the performances try to eschew convention for a bit more substance, it is a losing battle from start to finish.

There is a cacophony of sound and color which provides some spark to it all. It just is burdened by unshakably tiresome plotting that is made all the more meaningless when it decides to walk back much of what already felt far too small in its creative and emotional scope.

By the time it all eventually wraps up with some lackluster lessons conveyed via a painfully sappy final scene, you’ll wish the film had taken the chance to go on a journey with Keaton and Paige instead of whatever this all was.

While Snook does all she can to give the experience some heft, Run Rabbit Run is a horror film in search of something greater others have already achieved that it is never able to find.

Pearce does have a good sense of how to direct actors and give the story something closer to genuine tension in how patient he can be in the focused dialogue scenes, though the story itself is too shaky for him to hold it together.

For a film about a supposedly historic and harrowing journey to the moon, it never manages to charter any new territory of its own.

There are moments of terror near the beginning, but it gets far too tangled up in a generic narrative that drowns out any sense of vision. Even with some striking visual moments and excellent sound design, it is all in service of regrettably very little.

A sporadically interesting though ultimately superficial exploration of online connection, video games, and modern alienation, writer-director Flora Lau’s Luz is a film in search of something greater than it is never quite able to grab hold of.

For all the promising threads it pulls on surrounding a variety of faith traditions, The Exorcist: Believer doesn't earn your belief or your fear. Where Friedkin's classic will endure forever, this superficial sequel remains stuck in the past. It may try to speak all the same verses, but it doesn't add new life to any of them.

When it then shifts into being about the case itself with the characters trying to get to the bottom of it all, the humor feels like it is mostly coasting off of the chemistry of Sandler and Aniston. This can hold things together for a while as both bounce off each other effectively, but the film soon is revealed to just be a recycling of jokes the first film already did better.

There is never a sense that Collette is phoning it in, but the entire narrative around her is just too flimsy to hold together for a full feature. In isolation, there are some solid gags and throwaway jokes that connect. The trouble is that they are just increasingly few and far between. It all makes for a film that oddly feels like it is playing it safe, relying on the charisma of its lead and offering little else beyond that.

While there are many promising pieces being assembled, with arresting visuals bolstered by the performances of Mescal and Barrera, any awe to be had in Carmen becomes dashed by its own emptiness.

What could’ve been a fun little sci-fi horror transforms into something that deflates any remaining tension and engagement in one fell swoop.

All through the scattered experience, Page is a shining light. Every move he makes gives the film something greater that it is never able to grasp.

Even with some perfectly fine comedic gags, Power Ballad can never overcome the emptiness of its characters and the equally flat, overlit visuals that make the entire thing look more like a bad TV episode than an actual film.

It is a work that is so caught up in the noise that it drowns out the moments of the profound silence that could have spoken to something more.

In the end, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” remains a classic banger, but Pretty Lethal never finds any remotely memorable rhythms of its own.