David Sims

Deep Water is still a robust, well-acted thriller that lands most of its major twists gracefully; for that, all lesser sins can be forgiven.

No doubt most Hollywood executives are as baffled as I am that Detective Pikachu made it to the big screen. But even more baffling, and heartening, is how well it all works.

On some of those fronts, the film wildly misfires, but for a wide studio release headlined by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Red Sparrow is an admirably bold effort.

Berlinger’s latest film attempts to reckon with the legacy of a brutal murderer who cynically cultivated his public image to make himself seem more alluring, but the story fails to dig in to the horrifying implications of how Bundy was able to succeed.

Perhaps his curious gambit of casting real-life figures would never have gelled, but Stone, Skarlatos, and Sadler are not unsympathetic, just untrained in front of the camera. With more time and effort The 15:17 to Paris might have worked; as it is, it’s little more than a failed experiment.

This is a film that exists primarily to answer questions nobody would have ever thought to ask about a series of books that already told a very complete story.

Bayona, the Spanish director who first emerged with his terrific horror film The Orphanage, does his best to inject some more intimate action into a series that usually operates on an epic scale, but he’s working with too absurd a plot for his craft to really matter.

The cast is stacked, but the story is messy, and the pathos driving Bernadette’s disappearance (which, again, is easily solved) is underwritten.

The current implications of A Hidden Life feel most pressing here: Malick is asking the audience (and himself) if they would capitulate in the face of tyranny or make Jägerstätter’s sacrifice. It’s a decision Malick memorializes beautifully, in a film that is his most affecting effort in almost a decade.

For all its energy and vulgarity, The Gentlemen is a slog, a tedious and unnecessarily unpleasant tour of ground that Ritchie’s already covered.

For all the time Serkis has had to tinker with it, the film feels painfully incomplete, from its frequently told story to its weak visuals.

We’re in silly–rom-com territory, and you simply have to accept every ludicrous development with calm rationality. Marry Me is a revived artifact from a time when Hollywood regularly churned out syrupy nonsense about people kissing under the most unlikely of circumstances. The presence of Lopez, once a reigning queen of the genre, only helps underline what a throwback Marry Me is.

As the final act succumbed to dull, apocalyptic formula, I saw an entire sub-genre slip away with it: The Death Cure is a grim, half-hearted farewell to this wave of young-adult dystopias.

Where the film succeeds, it’s because Feig and Thompson have remembered to mix in a little sour with the sweet.

Howard’s film is nothing more than a sensational snapshot, one that feels even less authentic than many of the think pieces that followed the release of Vance’s book in 2016. To Hollywood, J. D. is just another cookie-cutter hero, one who’s defeated the haziest of villains—adversity itself.

The action is also visually clean and easy to follow, and the film takes its time to showcase the ancient CGI-generated beasts in their environment. But my praise ends there: This is otherwise a plodding, disenchanting experience that adds some more roaring dinosaurs in exchange for any memorable characters or narrative stakes. It has little reason to exist, beyond cashing in at the summer box office.

This is a comedy that knows how to make fun and have fun.

The satire of Don’t Look Up is anguished and clear to the point of feeling bludgeoning.

The Gray Man is a completely anonymous viewing experience, a series of set pieces and pithy jokes that’s devoid of personality.

In short, Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t just prone to music-biopic clichés—it’s practically a monument to them, a greatest-hits collection of every narrative shortcut one can possibly take in summarizing a legendary act’s rise to fame.

All in all, the weaknesses and strengths of this remake boil down to the unavoidable fact that Force Majeure, a film I’ve seen multiple times and consider one of the best of its decade, isn’t a work that can be improved upon.

Venom may not have realized it was a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic, but Let There Be Carnage is striving to maintain that status from minute one.

Horizon might not be “watchable” in the most traditional sense of the word, but it’s audacious enough that I’ll be heading back for more in August, in anticipation of what might happen when all of these tales hopefully, eventually, collide.

The Predator is a confused, sloppy mess of a film, overstuffed with zingy one-liners and lacking in coherence.

It’s another superficial, techno-futuristic tale that emphasizes its glossy look over its heady concept.

If not for the unusual setting and Stewart’s unique star presence, Underwater might feel completely anonymous. Fortunately, all that H2O suffices to give this goofy trifle a memorable sense of atmosphere.

Vikander, who can balance flinty charm with sympathetic humanism, helped keep me invested, but Tomb Raider could best be described as a solid step forward, away from past wrongs. I’ll take competence over silliness, but the Lara Croft brand still has a long way to go before her movies are truly memorable.

This is a biopic so fearful that audiences won’t get the connections it’s drawing that it depicts a CGI dragon stalking the battlefields of the Somme. The result doesn’t rise above the insight of a Wikipedia page.