David Fear

No one would consider Oh, Hi! a failure. But you’ll be tempted to say byyyyyeeeeee more than once before this couple’s final bow.

There’s undoubtedly better adventures on the way for the Four in future endeavors, and this should truly be viewed as a first step to making them a major deal in the MCU. But to say their introduction is fantastic would be pushing it.

It’s the sensation that you’re watching something that’s sloppy, overthought, undercooked and can’t decide whether it wants to honor the original (it fails), add to both the in-house lore and the longstanding genre tropes of the slasher canon (it does not), or some combo of both (two missed opportunities for the price of one).

It’s faint praise, even in the post-MCU era of the genre, to say that Superman is a solid superhero film; the caveat is hiding in plain sight. What Gunn has pulled off is something more complicated, more interesting, and far tougher: He’s given us a Superman movie that actually feels like a living, breathing comic book.

Deadwyler is what makes 40 Acres feel like there’s something special happening here. The script has brains. Her Hailey has heart and soul. She gives us the postapocalyptic hero we deserve.

It’s a new chapter in a saga, yet like its characters who’ve been practicing the art of war since Sun Tzu coined the term, the sequel somehow feels ancient and a little creaky.

So why the hell does this feel so generic, so by-the-numbers, so instantly forgettable? The whole thing resembles the blockbuster version of a readymade, assembled from various, recognizable spare parts and elevated only by virtue of its name.

Sorry, Baby is a movie with a trauma at its center, but it’s not a trauma drama. It’s about living with such things and still going on with your life. And the manner in which Victor presents this narrative, with such verve and confidence and tenderness and pitch-black humor, defies easy description. It’s simply an amazing display of someone knowing how to get their voice and vision across.

The overbaked, underwhelming, narratively restless movie itself is 0.0 percent watchable.

It’s Pixar’s E.T., played out in reverse.

Kelson ushers in a more meditative tone for this entry, which reveals that it is, among other things, a coming-of-age story. Yet this swerve into more emotional territory doesn’t dampen the tension or the terror that Boyle remains an expert at conjuring up; if anything, it acts as a countermelody to the genre aspects.

On the surface, this may sound like a nice, trashy little diversion. We can confirm the “trashy” part, and you know that any time you give Moore the chance to either weep, become enraged or, in a best case scenario, do both at once, it’s going to reap some sort of dividends.

Come for the most impressive, lustrous car that a gajillion-dollar budget can buy. The reason to stay, however, is the driver.

This may be the first film in which mutual attraction is commodified by cold, hard business talk.

Debate all you want about whether this movie actually teaches you how to train a dragon. What this movie is actually trying to accomplish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is how to train their audiences to keep buying the same thing over, and over, and over again.

Hiddleston’s soft shoe gives you a glimpse of how the ordinary can become extraordinary. The movie surrounding it, however, seems determined to make the extraordinary seem as bumper-sticker simple and banal as humanly possible.

At its best, this tale of a young female assassin seeking vengeance and wreaking havoc is one more chance to see expertly choreographed mayhem. At its worst, it plays like a Wick-ipedia sub-entry ambitiously pumped up to main-event status. Let’s just say the balance tilts toward the latter more than you’d like.

Imagine a feature-length episode of Succession that treated the final season’s villain, GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson, as its main character and then multiplied him by four, and you’d have something like Mountainhead, Jesse Armstrong‘s caustic, corrosive satire of Silicon Valley mega-royalty run amuck.

The filmmakers want to jolt folks, for sure. But they also want to bring you to a place where the emotional after effects of that juddering linger long after the jump scares have faded away.

Hardcore fans may get their kicks from seeing Macchio and Chan together. Everyone else will just feel like tempted to sweep the legs of everyone trying to cash in on a recently revived franchise and wring it dry.

You leave impressed that Anderson can still manage to do what his does best without succumbing to self-parody here. The blueprint may be familiar. But it’s still a pretty foolproof plan.

The impression is that you’ve just seen a great New York movie, with a great star turn at the core of it, and yet still feels like something’s missing. It’s ultimately an excuse to watch Washington go HAM.

If there is personal expression abound in Stewart’s debut, there’s also precious little ego. Nor are the tics that too often prick or sink the work of actors feeling out what it’s like to call the shots.

The overall lack of subtlety suits the age Aster is taking to task, though it also makes everything feel slightly wobbly on its feet. The viewpoint is both-sides misanthropy. Jonathan Swift has some notes.

Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning feels like a conclusion to 30 years worth of proving that yes, you still can conjure up a certain vintage strain of Hollywood magic. It also feels like the end of an era.

On paper, the endeavor sounds like the equivalent of a B-sides and rarities compilation. On screen, it plays like a sucker-punch masterpiece.

The whole of Friendship isn’t as attractive as the sum of its disparate parts, and you wonder if a more concise, focused version of this look at the self-consciousness of dudes trying desperately to bond wouldn’t have hit better.

There’s a true-crime aura that hangs over every scene like a shroud — an unshakable sense that you’re not watching a Western so much as a ghost story.