Darren Franich

Yet even compared to the glacial Marvel-Netflix Dramas, Zack Snyder's Justice League is a chore. At the end of the rainbow, viewers are left with the promise that the actual cool things will happen next time. This cut is no worse than the theatrical edition, but it sure is longer. "So begins the end," Steppenwolf declares. When he says that, there is one hour left.

At least Dark Fate is frequently bad in a funny way, without the dutiful dullness of the last couple sequels.

A Wrinkle in Time hits that unfortunate un-sweet spot common to big-budget science-fiction/fantasy, where the spectacle feels more summarized than experienced.

This manga adaptation is a tired science-fiction odyssey, with bland digital effects piled onto a sappy non-story that feels like a two-hour elevator pitch for a 70-film franchise.

We need a new franchise designation for this stumbling, bloodless conglomeration of What Once Was. Rise of the Skywalker isn’t an ending, a sequel, a reboot, or a remix. It’s a zombie.

Annabelle Comes Home is only a little scary, and too religiously dedicated to its own ongoing cash-printing megafranchise for big laughs. But the best moments in this low-key domestic horror film have a tossed-off quality, like the whole production cycle was a fun weekend for everybody.

This new Charlie’s Angels gets very crush-y between silly excess and striving ambition, but even the sugar is flammable.

Hillbilly Elegy is two movies, one laughably bad and one boringly bad.

The Hunt stuffs a satire grenade down America’s pants, hoping the shrapnel spreads from sea to shining sea. The explosion is messy, but it sure is an explosion, with a brisk hour-and-half runtime full of violent twists and cackling turns.

Like many DreamWorks movies, The Boss Baby‘s most imaginative moments are the random asides.

Full credit to director Michael Dougherty (Trick ‘r Treat) because this is great-looking movie, filled with freaky creature designs and a just-right mixture of practical effects and CGI.

In Salt and Fire, a bad movie but an intriguing vacation slideshow, Michael Shannon and Veronica Ferres play “characters” (unconvincing, undimensional) and speak “dialogue” (expository, flat).

Here’s what you didn’t expect: That The Brothers Grimsby, an upstairs-downstairs spy comedy, would be Cohen’s best work in a decade.

Belko is an appropriately disreputable, gleefully disturbing movie.

It feels too long, and it’s only 90 minutes. Jigsaw’s lifecoach-gone-mad ruminations have never sounded less threatening: He is become mansplainer, destroyer of drama. But there are lasers. I liked the lasers.

It all works in theory. But the execution’s off.

The rare quiet moments in Nutcracker suggest Foy might be a real movie star. Let’s give her a real movie and find out.

International is better than Men in Black II and worse than Men in Black III, and they’re all bad, so erase this sentence from your memory.

Here’s a film that turns Michael Fassbender into a puppet, and oh, those strings hold him down.

Bad dialogue, lame plot, fine. The bigger issue: How could a film with Elba and McConaughey have so little swagger?