Clint Worthington

One of Eastwood's most pleasing character studies since Million Dollar Baby.

The Next Level just feels like more of the same, and some of its bigger swings might just even border on the irresponsible. As kids’ fare goes, this series remains weird enough to not totally write it off. But for the next version, they might have to work out some of the bugs.

It may not be quite as entertaining as the last time Weaving ended up in a murderous melee after a wedding ceremony. But there’s a least a few bits and bobs to keep “Borderline” from borderline failing.

While treating entrepreneurism like a classic Greek tragedy isn’t a bad idea in theory, Nguyen’s script is more than a little clunky, and the imagery nakedly self-serving. It’s a film about two people digging a hole so they can make ten more dollars per transaction, no matter how handsomely it’s presented.

Snyder’s momentum starts to lose steam around the 90-minute mark, and there are too many kooky concepts left frustratingly unexplored. But as a showcase for Snyder’s deft command of action and ink-black sense of humor, Army of the Dead is an exciting piece of brain-chewing fun.

It’s a pleasure to report that Happy Death Day‘s unexpected delights were in no way a fluke, and Happy Death Day 2U builds on its off-the-wall concept to even greater effect.

Schwartzman's approach is sluggish and poorly-paced, the film color-corrected to within an inch of its life and unable to balance the delicate tightrope act of comedy and drama that good examples of this kind of movie can attempt.

Liman is no stranger to tense, effective thrillers – his last outing was the criminally undervalued Edge of Tomorrow – and on that level, The Wall surprisingly works.

Murray and Wever are as attuned to their roles as Smith is awkward and miscast in his. But perhaps that’s an appropriate fit for Harron and Turner’s divisive-yet-gripping take on this story: at the end of the day, the Manson women are deeper, more fascinating, and more worthy of exploration than the insecure man that connected them.

It may exhaust you, it may offend you; it may guide you through Hell into something more revelatory. And how you receive the film may depend greatly on how you feel about the man who made it.

As the latest installment in what has become its own subgenre at this point, The Commuter serves as a fine example of the kind of tightly-coiled thriller that Neeson and Collet-Serra can do together in their sleep.

Like the real figures at the center, all the schemes and tricks and traps are just the way these men express their sincere affection for one another. That’s sweet enough, but the way their loved ones also get wrapped up in the game as well makes Tag, as corny as it might sound, a testament to the transformative power of play.

It’s genuinely funny at times, but at two hours, it drags on for far too long, and Chastain suffers from having to hold up too much of the film’s weight on her thickly padded shoulders. It’s a killer performance looking for a movie to support it, and it’s just not here.

French Exit is sure to divide — it’s got great performances and a confidence in its atmosphere that the gods could envy. The struggle, then, is whether you’re prepared for the sheer amount of deliberate aimlessness Jacobs and deWitt are willing to throw at you.

Harris, as always, imbues his characters with a wearied conviction, which goes a long way towards making Stan feel a bit more layered than the feel-good Ned Flanders type the script saddles him with.

The intangibility of Jamojaya‘s storytelling is both a blessing and a curse: it keeps things streamlined, but also prevents us from really being able to dig into just what makes James and Joyo tick. But that’s what’s so intriguing about the picture, even in its flaws.

Despite the bait-and-switch of Chan’s limited presence in the film, The Foreigner is slightly better than it appears on paper. Chan and Brosnan offer believable, intense performances, and Campbell coaxes Chan’s style into an abrasive brutality with moments of occasional invention.

It’s a shame to see a movie this ambitious and well-cast turn out so wobbly, but The Devil All the Time inevitably sinks under the weight of its self-importance.

Old, for its part, is quintessential Shyamalan of The Happening mold, a slick, amped-up B movie that hardly ever gives away that it’s in on the joke.

The direction and editing are slick and workmanlike, letting the performers do the work without overplaying the limited setting in which most of the film takes place.

Whether you like Wendy will depend almost entirely on your continued tolerance for the baby-Malick stirrings of Zeitlin’s style: roving, evocative camerawork; the unpolished roughness of unknown child performers; treacly sentiment pouring from each horn blast of Romer’s score; or France’s storybook narration. At nearly two hours, that’s a lot of syrup to pour down your throat, and the unapologetic mawkishness of it all can rankle after a while, even if you’re attuned to the film’s wavelength.

Aquaman is a pure piece of bright, ridiculous spectacle, hammering its Saturday morning cartoon sensibilities down its audience’s throat with a huge, cheesy grin on its face.

As is, “Bunnylovr” feels like a stone skipped across the surface of a pond; we could go deeper, but instead we choose to skim the surface. It’s a glossy, moody surface, mind, but surface nonetheless.

It’s rough, messy, and overlong, but may well capture the well-intentioned spirit of what it’s trying to do better than the compromised version we got at release. It may even be something I revisit in the future — just maybe not all in one sitting.

I can’t decide whether it’s the relative disposability of the narrative, the unremarkable animation, or the fact that this just feels like another spoonful of content thrown into Netflix’s trough, but “Sirens of the Deep” reads like so many empty calories.

It won’t exactly hold you under its spell, but it might charm just enough for the sparse 90 minutes of attention it requests.

Orphan: First Kill is an almost impossible film to put your finger on, walking that incredible tightrope between chintzy direct-to-video schlock and purposeful, delightful camp. It looks like a BBC production shot for $5, but that leans even harder into its Lifetime-movie-on-crack presentation (and lets you grade its moments of visual grace on a massive curve).

It all gets a bit too loosey-goosey by its repetitive, redundant climax — there just aren’t enough good jokes left to cover for the fact that, yes, we get it, the bear did cocaine.