Darren Franich

A vibrantly madcap dark comedy.

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.

For anyone who loves stop-motion animation, the first 40 minutes of this bleak adventure will scratch your trippy itch and then some.

The film loses steam when the plot drifts the women apart, but Clark's fearsome performance anchors the surreal final act. Her body is a stage for Saint Maud's demonic dance.

You'll not find a more bodacious bonanza of sheer WTFery than the last twenty minutes, which crosscut realities and timelines while doing truly disgusting things with pimento cheese.

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.

What’s lacking in this entertaining pulp quest, I think, is some essential surprise.

A Hidden Life’s cinematographer is Jörg Widmer, Malick’s longtime camera operator. His work is handsome and a tad too dutiful. There are so many gorgeous shots of Franz scything through farmland, and I kept wishing someone had scythed a half-hour off the running time.

Bird’s made the weirdest Pixar movie ever, revolutionary and retro, an anti-authoritarian ode to good parenting.

Belko is an appropriately disreputable, gleefully disturbing movie.

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.

Have tissues ready, and thank Vivo for teaching the little ones a valuable lesson: Do not go into a swamp alone, or you will meet a tree-size python who sounds just like Michael Rooker.

Where Saroo goes and what he finds there left me in tears, but you feel that a complicated true story has been airbrushed into a postmodern legend.

Far From Home succeeds with an unusual, troubling virtue: The best parts are the most fake.

The characters come to life when they fight, and seem half-dead when they talk.

Five Foot Two is a strange work, slippery, out of focus.

Toy Story 4 doesn’t hit the emotional highs of the previous films. There are good jokes that work and heist setpieces that don’t. The ending is moving, though now you distrust any finality with this saga. It does feel a bit cheap, somehow.

Captain Marvel only figures itself out toward the end, when a couple twists I won’t spoil sharpen the spanning saga into a motley-crew errand of mercy.

Violent and sexy, balanced between hope and despair, definably too-much and unapologetically mythic. The road is bumpy, but what a trip.

Jim & Andy is fascinating, but it lands on a weird message: Thank goodness Andy Kaufman existed so Jim Carrey could play him in a movie.

Day of the Soldado is our generation’s Rambo: First Blood, Part 2, a half-mad sequel transforming a traumatized political parable into a fantasy of all-American murder gods.

F9 sure sounds like a lot of fun. Why is it only a little fun?

Fairy tales edge toward strangeness, and the sanded edges of Yesterday ultimately feel more like a flashy commercial — one of those recent music documentaries commissioned by the people on screen, propaganda with feels. The music’s good, duh, and it’ll be just as good when your local high school performs Yesterday. Which lucky kid gets to play Ed Sheeran?

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

For a film that invites so much self-aware chortling over franchise in-jokery, you feel Spider-Verse has missed something essential from its own screen history.

Army of the Dead grills its cheese to a crisp, but Bautista adds some healthy flavor. His headshots never miss your heart.

Thai martial-arts maestro Tony Jaa’s newest film overloads on terrible F/X that rob the film of the actor’s usual brute-force balleticism.

Deep Water isn't really thrilling or erotic, but it accomplishes a kind of diagonal camp sincerity, plummeting its glamorous characters into ever-tawdrier situations. I wouldn't marry it, but I wouldn't kill it. Remind me, what's the third option?