Darren Franich

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Somehow, it actually looks cheaper than "Paranormal Activity." It's less funny, too.

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

The Voyage Home is pure, joyful cinema.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is working too hard to look unconvincingly relaxed.

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.

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?

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.

There's a secret blandness behind the frantic insider gags.

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.

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

Nobody could play well for anyone desperate to visit a recently reopened theater, but this is a rather chilly festival of carnage, too rigid to ever really spark to life. It's wickless.

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.

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

You’d hope that a film like this could put a bold new spin on the superhero story. The reverse is true: Here we are in 2017, and even our nifty low-budget crime movies are building a cinematic universe, and saving the best stuff for the sequel.

Doctor Sleep is a mess. It’s way too long, clashing somber sobriety with loony cheap thrills. The Shining homages turn shameless and cheap. The jumpscares are more funny than scary.

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

There are actors who can pull off dual roles, and now we know Seth Rogen isn’t one of them.

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