Darren Franich

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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).

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

Belko is an appropriately disreputable, gleefully disturbing movie.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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