David Sims

In reality, Skinamarink is just a 100-minute symphony of the vibes being very, very off, a crescendo of creeping dread that eventually overwhelms the viewer.

Challengers is a great example of how a director can temper his preoccupations just a little in order to reach beyond the art-house crowd.

In its quietest scenes, Mid90s feels a little more authentic, and Hill may well turn out to have a growing talent for directing. But he needs to match his subtler insights to a script that feels less derivative.

Affleck communicates all of the movie’s emotional breakthroughs via little choices—an angry swipe at an empty beer can when he’s being pressed on his drinking, or slowly curling into a ball when he admits the extent of his problem. It’s the kind of subtlety I’ve never seen Affleck demonstrate as a performer. The fact that he brings his real-life battles to the movie may be uncomfortable for some viewers, but the actor insists he approached the role carefully.

Puzzle is often too prosaic for its own good.

While Wright remains exceptionally gifted at mashing up genres to create moments of real cinematic lightning, by and large, Last Night in Soho is all flash, no impact.

The film feels half-formed, sometimes trying to be raucously confrontational, other times excessively sedate.

So much of The Front Runner feels like stenography, giving audiences the basics and then letting Hart or Bradlee monologue to the camera about how the norms of yesteryear are slipping away, perhaps forever.

In Caught Stealing, Aronofsky drops the viewer into an older New York as another artistic exercise, but renders it as a playground for bloody and one-dimensional silliness. His skill as a cinematic storyteller is on display—I just missed the narrative depth and danger that used to come with the elegant shots.

Men would likely drown in its own weirdness were it not for its dynamic leads.

This is a project that’s loaded with big ideas and worthy morals for its younger viewers, even if it has a little trouble streamlining them all into an easily digestible plot.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind could’ve been a conventional narrative of despair and redemption; in Ejiofor’s hands, it builds realism and context into both sides of that story and manages to be a winning adaptation as a result.

If you can see the film in IMAX, or in one of those 4DX theaters that jostles your seat around and sprays water in your face, I recommend it. Chung has a nice grasp of his supporting characters, and he takes pains to dwell on the aftermath of every horrible storm, but in Twisters, the action is the juice, and the bigger and louder your viewing experience, the better.

Eisenberg, Nivola, and a hilariously brusque Imogen Poots (as Sensei’s only female student) are more than up to the task of finding the comedy in scenes of nasty violence or brooding anxiety. Stearns, however, is less interested in balancing those tones than he is in exploiting their uneasy tension.

Though the film seeks to avoid many of the genre’s cliches, it nonetheless ends up slipping into some well-worn and dull dynamics of noble Indians teaching important lessons to their American occupiers.

Pearson’s epiphany, and his subsequent battles with the church, were confusing for both parties, and Marston seeks to underscore that with nuance. Unfortunately, he ends up losing grasp of the compelling drama lying at the heart of that conflict.

As an effort to breathe new life into a particularly moribund title—there have been four prior takes on these characters, all of them bad—First Steps is essentially successful. What it somehow can’t manage to do is have much of a good time in the process.

It would have been easy to inflate Last Breath’s action stakes to make them fun and absurd, but Parkinson’s nonfiction instincts as a filmmaker won’t really allow for that. I’m thankful for the meticulous realism that follows instead.

The result is a convoluted, sporadically sensical, occasionally trippy film that can’t quite find a purpose amid all the manic world-building.

MaXXXine has a bitchin’ soundtrack; lots of sultry, De Palma–inspired long shots; and a very engaging and salty performance from Goth at its center. It’s fun, but it’s unavoidably a bit of a style exercise, albeit a very good one.

The 21st entry in Marvel’s galactic film empire, and the first focused on a female superhero (played by Brie Larson), is a perfectly fun time at the movies that deftly lays out the stakes of its new character for many future appearances. But more often than not, it feels a little routine.

Above all else, it lodges itself into one’s brain and seems primed to reward repeat viewings. The biggest compliment I can give Guadagnino is that he’s made a Suspiria that appears destined for the long-lasting cult status already enjoyed by the original.

The real fun in Ready or Not comes from the ways it subverts its time-tested story, balancing wry commentary and straightforward horror in its portrait of fumbling arrogance and curdled privilege.

Luhrmann’s approach works for one reason: Elvis should be a mess. Presley’s adult life was chaotic, and it unfolded almost entirely in public, from his spectacular successes to his ignominious decline. Watching it play out on film ought to feel a little disorienting.

How Scott is able to pump out these grandiose set pieces with such practiced ease (and a little CGI embellishment) is beyond me; he remains one of Hollywood’s finest craftsmen of action sequences, and I’ll miss him when he’s gone.

All of Downsizing’s story elements are so audacious that I was rooting for Payne to make some narrative sense of them. But in two hours and 15 minutes, the only insight the movie offers is that stagnation is part of existence, and that while we probably can’t stop the world from ending with unbelievable scientific breakthroughs, all that matters is that humans are there for each other.

Guardians 3 is a cheerful goodbye to many of the studio’s best heroes, who somehow managed to get through an entire series without being ruined by the larger superhero universe they inhabit. For Marvel, that’s both a win and a problem.

I enjoyed plenty of its nearly three-hour run time, suffered through other parts, and was practically praying for the credits by the end. Most of all, I salute Lanthimos for getting back to his freaky roots, only this time on American soil.

Rather than dig into the mind-boggling, byzantine inner workings of the OASIS, Spielberg spends time with the flashier stuff. He is, even in this later, moodier phase of his career, still an entertainer first and foremost.

Fiala and Franz can’t find a compelling purpose for the uncanny yarn they’ve spun. When all its ominous frights flame out in narrative chaos, The Lodge becomes a bore, more invested in the ghoulishness of its final reveal than in examining its unpleasant moral implications.

The Creator is a high-level craft achievement that is undeniably cool on a big screen.

There are moments in Hold the Dark, none of them directly related to the plot, that are just as unsettling and searing as the best moments of Blue Ruin and Green Room. Still, the film never coheres outside of those flashes, ultimately delivering a disappointing, confusing, but undeniably fascinating experience.

By making Nyad a narrative film, the movie succumbs to a lot of boring biopic-storytelling shorthand; Nyad sometimes states her goals and fears aloud in the middle of conversation. Much of the thuddingly expositional dialogue cannot escape the sense that it sprouted from an expanded Wikipedia page.

Knock at the Cabin avoids this problem partly through its deft casting, with Bautista serving as the most pivotal player. So much of the movie revolves around Leonard’s surreal monologues; the actor keeps a firm grasp on Leonard’s belief in his every word.

Unsane is a great worst-nightmare movie from Soderbergh, a tense piece of low-budget auteurship that plops the viewer into an absurd scenario and then ratchets up the tension for the next 90 minutes.

Someone Great is fizzy, frivolous, and probably easily forgotten, but for a weekend-friendly jolt of entertainment, rom-com fans could do far worse.

That The Rip is such a bland venue for its charismatic stars’ reunion is a terrible shame.

The film shares some of the unsettling horror of Aster’s first two films, Hereditary and Midsommar, but I’d call Beau Is Afraid a more straightforward comedy—as long as the idea of Looney Tunes crossed with Portnoy’s Complaint sounds funny to you.

Wachowski’s gamble is that viewers will enjoy a film that’s heavy on philosophizing and introspection as long as it retains the emotional, romantic hook that powered the first movie. Reeves and Moss sell their reunion as Neo and Trinity persuasively, glowing with the overwhelming chemistry and affection that Wachowski needed to push the film beyond cynicism.

It has plenty of breezy fun probing the dilemmas of modern media, without abandoning the glitz that made the original so enduring.

The joy of the romantic comedy lies less in its mise en scène, and more in its witty repartee and character chemistry, which Set It Up is loaded with. The will-they-won’t-they tension is enough for the movie to power through the silliest moments.

Van Groeningen isn’t too curious about what got Nic into drugs, nor how he finally pulled out of the spiral. Beautiful Boy largely exists in between those two stories and ends up feeling like a limited, grueling experience.

The film is just different enough to stick out amid the studio’s backwards-looking slate, and Burton, for the first time in years, shows he hasn’t lost his love for the idiosyncratic.

To quote another of the Bard’s royal characters, it ends up feeling like a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Another kill is coming, and because we’re in this peculiar, mischievous film, it’ll be a playful one. But the outcome will always be the same: Someone who was once there is now gone. In the face of that chilling, prosaic nightmare, all Perkins can do is laugh.

Yes, visual-effects technology is up to the task of re-creating a cartoon on a larger scale and dotted with real actors, and yes, these redos tend to turn a profit for their makers. These shouldn’t be the only reasons for art to exist.

For Avatar fans, I have great news: The latest installment of James Cameron’s magical-alien adventure saga is here, and you’re going to love it. . . The bad news for anyone not already on board: This film has no interest in you.

Babylon is the kind of grandiose folly that at least gives the viewer a big old mess to chew on.

The creative journey, and the magical bond between artist and subject, are what ignite Gilliam’s passion here. Unfortunately, the themes of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote are more compelling than the set pieces themselves.

It’s a straightforward piece of genre silliness, an 89-minute thrill fest crammed with the requisite jump scares and creepy religious imagery. But it’s also part of a larger body of evidence that Sweeney, unlike the guileless characters she often portrays, is carefully constructing her career in ways that suit her skill set.

The most crucial aspect of the role-playing game is community—the fact that it’s played with friends and relies on teamwork. The writer-director Dan Scanlon’s clear grasp of that makes for a warm, gentle film that doesn’t try to merely dazzle the audience with wild fantasy visuals.

In the end, Velvet Buzzsaw is a pretty soulless piece of art about the soullessness of art; but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a little fun proving its point.

The film picks and chooses what to carry over from its forebears in a way that’s both fascinating to watch and—as is typical with DC Comics movies—gives the sense of a plane being built in midair. But fortunately for Birds of Prey, that manic energy suits Harley Quinn just fine.

What surprised me about Multiverse of Madness was how much fun Raimi was allowed to have in the middle of it, turning every action sequence into something quite inventive and even delivering some cheeky scares throughout. This many years into the Marvel experiment, I’m heartened to see space for a real genre auteur amid all the multiversal machinations.

Though this latest project might feel like a trifle (it’s only 69 minutes long and was filmed at Cannes to take advantage of a press appearance Huppert was doing there), it’s also a clear statement of artistic intent.

A number of the observations about the strictures of gangland life that The Many Saints of Newark bumps up against are compelling, but the film is a victim of its own compression, telling a season’s worth of stories in two hours.

This movie is little more than a vibrant-looking tableau, a two-dimensional take on an intricate piece of history. It’s a tale that’s been told better before, and Willimon’s modern updates are less enlightened than they initially seem.

As a jolting piece of entertainment, Scream absolutely succeeds. It can’t reach the terrifying heights of Craven’s original, but none of the sequels could; each one always leaned a little more on meta-humor as the series went along.

While all of the film’s visual excitement is handled with Pixar’s usual polish, the intrigue is only surface-level.

Had the film not taken an introspective turn, I still would have appreciated its skill with generating easy laughs. Happily, Good Boys has a little more to recommend it than gross gags.

Motherless Brooklyn has all the markers of a good Oscar-season movie: a talented cast, worthy source material, a script loaded with complex social issues. Even so, it doesn’t add up to much.

Stillwater is a mainstream work that contradicts preconceived notions, and is all the more fascinating for it.

Christopher Robin is the kind of uncanny experiment that only gets to happen in children’s films once every few years.

It’s a refreshingly silly and airy adventure focused on the emotions of one character, Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), and a charming end to a tiring year of cinema.

I have to applaud Goddard’s ambition, even when it overreaches. Yes, Bad Times at the El Royale is bloated and might’ve functioned better as a punchy bit of neo-noir. But it’s rare for a genre film to feel so sweeping and inventive.

It’s fun, in a depraved way, to see him trotted out for one more ride, but Jigsaw won’t be around to play games with us forever. Enjoy it while it lasts.

The Aeronauts is as thin as the high-altitude air surrounding its heroes, a visually splendid thrill ride that somehow manages to feel entirely without dramatic stakes. But if it’s balloons you’re after, then this is the film to see.

This is a film with genuinely compelling leads, each of whom could support a solo movie, and yet they all seem on autopilot here, dispensing swift kicks and crude bon mots with bored efficiency.

Despite the over-the-top performances and plot twists he juggles, Scott drives his ultimate message home—that wealth is tempting yet poisonous.

Here We Go Again is a viewing experience best described as a long nap on the beach while staying at a chain resort. It’s extremely pleasant, if a little lacking in imagination, and every so often, a waiter comes by to refill your drink.

The film may be too much of a bloody slog for some; others will be on board for every gruesome minute like I was.

Over its 151-minute running time, Doctor Sleep floats between the bleak and mournful themes of King’s writing and the chilling, inimitable dread of Kubrick’s filmmaking. But it never quite figures out how to bring the two styles together.

The film doesn’t linger on its provocation, however; instead it sits with the moment’s ramifications in ways both darkly funny and sneakily challenging. Whether it tickles or offends, The Drama seems intent on generating a strong reaction from everyone who sees it.

Ballerina ultimately succeeds as a piece of junky fun, however, because it attempts to expand the Wick canon rather than deepen its titular protagonist.

As Joker gets grimmer and descends further into bloody violence, it becomes little more than a horror show, bludgeoning its viewers out of any chance at insight.

The film is a diverting watch, anchored with enough of Weitz’s intriguing personal touches to keep it from feeling like a glorified History Channel special.

The length of It Chapter Two is matched by the scale of Pennywise’s big scares, assisted by the slickest visual effects money can buy, but it means the story never manages to pick up any speed. This is a lumbering brute of a film, a creaky rollercoaster that inches a little too slowly toward every drop.

It’s Rich’s understanding of the connection between Herschel and Ben, not their time-dilated differences, that won me over.

This movie is as much a eulogy for a country that Eastwood sees as slowly crumbling as it is for the life Earl chose to lead.

One element is consistent throughout Roman J. Israel, Esq.—the enigmatic lead, played with typical dedication and forcefulness by Denzel Washington. But even though he’s fully committed to the role, this movie is anything but, aimlessly weaving between story ideas like a distracted driver.

Jojo Rabbit’s script isn’t emotionally complex enough to address the cruel realism of its world, and as the bleakness continues, the jokes fall flatter and flatter.

Mother Mary takes a story that could be ripped from the gossip pages and transmutes it into a spooky campfire tale. It’s the furthest thing from the kind of mainstream-pop fame Mary seems to represent, but that dissonance is what makes Lowery’s storytelling so unique.

Cry Macho is almost like a Western paced at half speed, told with the deliberateness demanded by a 91-year-old movie star. That just helps underline its eulogistic narrative, one in which Mike is already a man out of time, and the more energetic Rafael tries to encourage him to enjoy the last act of his life rather than shuffle through it.

Though Ford invests his performance with as much longing and nuance as he can, underlining Indiana’s increasing disconnection from the modern world, the movie is too busy to really plumb those themes, instead zipping along to the next action sequence lest anyone get bored.

The best I can say about For Good is that its two stars, Cynthia Erivo (as the green-skinned witch Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (her sickeningly sweet friend Glinda), are strong-enough performers to make the most bizarre turns feel functional. But even they can’t keep the film from collapsing under the lightest scrutiny.

Although Elemental has moments of imaginative joy—watching a living cloud talk to an aquatic being, for one—the viewer is mostly subjected to a very mundane, clichéd domestic dramedy, not the kind of tale that can truly transport younger audiences.

The jokes could be dirtier, the plot looser, the basketball action more gleefully ludicrous. Instead, everything feels very competent but safe.

It’s one thing to make fun of the repetitiveness of a second movie, but this one manages to do that while actually expanding its storytelling horizons.

Love and Thunder offers the usual lightning-streaked action and tossed-off gags, but this time, there’s not enough heft behind the flashiness.

The script has a wry sense of humor but is almost never laugh-out-loud funny, and the gory substance of the plot regularly overwhelms the delicate notes of parody.

While the film tries to be a shocking window into another world, it plays more like an agog piece of tourism.

The film sometimes dazzles in its ridiculousness, but there are simply too many appendages sewn on for it to make any coherent sense.

It’s almost charming watching the film find various ways to use the limited confines of a suburban commuter train in service of a nervy action thriller.

As a studio comedy, Tag is just about diverting enough to avoid total disaster, but it lacks the self-awareness and depth that might’ve turned it into a genre classic.

Feige’s mainstream instincts are easy to detect here. The prior Deadpool films were scuzzy and cobbled together, even as the budget grew; the cameos from other Marvel characters felt half-hearted and perfunctory, inclusions for Deadpool to roll his eyes at, not for fans to cheer over. Deadpool & Wolverine, on the other hand, has that bland MCU sheen that makes all of its movies look expensive but nonthreatening, happily accepting of mediocrity rather than attempting something artsy or daring.

Luce spends too much time presenting a puzzle for viewers to solve and, in doing so, neglects the human drama underneath.

Running only 84 minutes long and stuffed with chaotic plot twists, Drive-Away Dolls is a perfect winter trifle.

The sweet, coarse sincerity that once made these films sing is gone, replaced with jokes and stunts that feel patched together from earlier, better franchises.

The most shocking thing about the film is its unabashed cheerfulness. For all Korine’s trademark provocation, The Beach Bum somehow manages to be an upbeat, triumphant tale of creativity and free-spiritedness.

Fennell has streamlined the book’s narrative, yes, but not its white-hot melodramatic core—and she understands it well enough to create a worthy swoon-fest for the ages.

The central conceit of Old has so much juice, and Shyamalan gets to explore so many fun—if sadistic—avenues over the course of one very long day. It’s his most ambitious work in years, wrapped in the delightful, tawdry packaging of a pulpy thriller.

This is a film that could have been triumphantly weird, or soaringly corny; it tries to split the difference and ends up merely forgettable.

If you’re buying a ticket hoping for a honed piece of cinema, you may be disappointed. Ambulance is instead a strong entry in Bay’s maximalist canon, his best assault on the senses since his underrated 2013 comic thriller, Pain & Gain.

This film is not a grandiose tale of love transcending all, but it does find all kinds of sweet, specific ways to portray a lasting partnership.

The effort it must have taken to create this movie is apparent in every frame, but that doesn’t mean it’s watchable.

Aquaman works because it isn’t laughing at itself—it’s both joyously whimsical and confident in its own seaworthiness.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture feels like a quick tour of a man’s greatest hits that relies on his accomplishments, rather than any storytelling artistry, to impress the audience. Yes, Kenney was part of a turning point in American satire, but that alone doesn’t make for an interesting film.

All of these actors deliver the kind of subtle work that’s rarely seen in major Hollywood movies. Still, while Sachs is one of the most exciting voices in American indie cinema, his European sojourn is sometimes a little too sleepy for its own good—beautiful in the moment, but too gentle to leave a lasting impression.

What makes the first half of Spiderhead so compelling is that it’s injected with the unexpected; a shame, then, that the inventiveness drips out as the film’s running time winds down.

As it is, Greta is more of a Terminator movie, with everyone doing their best to get out of Huppert’s way for 98 enjoyable minutes—though that’s still worth a recommendation in my book.

This project does not skimp on its main attraction, but it does seem unsure of what to put around it, throwing a variety of hapless characters in the mix and arming them mostly with indifferent comedy in the face of some truly gnarly violence.

Even the most mundane moments in The Little Things aren’t enough to stifle Washington’s star power. Almost nothing is.

Dark Fate will likely feel like a blessing for Terminator diehards, a reboot that taps into what made the original films special and smooths out a timeline that’s grown more convoluted with every sequel. For newer fans, Hamilton’s and Schwarzenegger’s performances should be enough to keep things absorbing without the lure of nostalgia.

The Dead Don’t Die is the first horror film I’ve seen that seemed as likely to lull me to sleep as to give me nightmares.

Book Club is an airy dinner conversation set before a spectacular, disposable backdrop, a sure-fire bet to be the breeziest two hours you spend in the theater this summer.

True to its origins, Alita is a living cartoon of a film, which only makes its ridiculousness easier to absorb.

The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting epitaph for the thrills and limits of repetition; may it be the last episode of a saga that should’ve ended long ago.

It’s a garish, special-effects-laden extravaganza that still manages to feel tossed-off and half-hearted. The film is entirely devoted to the property it’s adapting, but its mimicry underlines just how pale an imitation it is.

In Life Itself, everyone’s fate is in the hands of Fogelman, and he wields that power with terrible cruelty.

The acting is good, while the story fails to really hang together. The same is true for a lot of Clooney projects—perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s attentive to the subtleties of an actor’s performance, but the scripts he’s chosen of late have been short on narrative propulsion.

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.

Anytime Quantumania allows itself to get a little silly, it’s in much better shape.

Wilde’s film aims to be a feminist parable about how this idealized vision of the past is actually a curdled vision of coupledom. Abstractly, that’s a robust concept; in execution, the movie’s absurdity overpowers its message.

If the rest of Sonic the Hedgehog were pitched at Carrey’s energy level, it could at least be distracting. But for such a short movie (it runs 99 minutes with extensive credits), and especially for one about a super-speedy fellow, it never builds momentum.

The inclusion of other CGI characters actually helps balance out Sonic’s manic energy a little bit; watching them bounce off of one another is somehow easier than watching human actors try their best to interact with imaginary creatures that couldn’t show up to set.

The intellectual property has become intimidating, too profitable to warrant risk-taking—so instead, audiences are served an appetizing confection. But kids do love candy, and I’m sure that around the world, they’ll have just one command for their ticket-buying parents: “Let’s-a go!”

The result is a functional if unspectacular film that makes no outsize effort to speak to cultural conversations around the movie.

The Watchers is carefully paced, character-focused, and quite sincerely emotional, interested less in the manner of the scares and more in how they’re affecting the ensemble gathered in the woods.

The Devil and Father Amorth at times seems like it’s trying to set the record straight on exorcisms. Amorth is presented in the kindliest of lights, and the ritual seems to involve little more than intense prayer. But again and again, Friedkin can’t help but come off as an old showman dusting off his bag of tricks.

A depressingly routine affair that fails to replicate the joys of its source material.

Justice League feels like a pilot episode—it’s half-formed, overstuffed, and narratively a chore—but at least its gotten all those annoying introductions out of the way. And it only took five movies to get there.

Although Momoa does his best to inject some brash personality, it collides with Black’s more authentic brand of chaos; if either of them is on-screen at any time, rest assured that most of the dialogue is getting yelled. The visuals are similarly obnoxious.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is derivative but not unwatchable—until the horrible last act.

Rampage is a big, noisy nothing—an action extravaganza that fails at being funny just as hard as it fails at being serious.

It seems some cheap frights were slipped into a narrative otherwise aiming for deeper emotional distress. That’s where everything gets a bit convoluted, and less enjoyable.

Once Pacific Rim Uprising reveals the means by which the kaiju might return, I was briefly delighted; there’s one strange twist that’s perfectly executed. But quickly enough it was time for 30 minutes of competent, clanging CGI action, and my brain turned right off again.

It’s undeniably the worst film Waititi has ever produced, a hash of lazy jokes and “random” humor centered on one of the most uncomfortable lead performances I’ve ever seen in a comedy.

It loads up on visceral scares and disturbing imagery in service of a shallow film that feels like a gory theme-park ride showcasing the horrors of slavery.

Rest assured, in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Lisbeth Salander saves the day, and she looks cool doing it. But this is a story so slick that she’d be rolling her eyes if she watched it.

This is a movie chock-full of heady imagery that it can’t get a handle on, and so the allegories at work don’t quite connect.

The script, by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, conveys little beyond the fact that Stephen and Rachael are both sad, nice to each other, and very attractive.

Neeson himself has done admirable work making mid-budget throwbacks with a little extra grit and gravitas. But it might be time for him to retire that very particular set of skills.

The overqualified cast do their best to inject some passion into the proceedings—Fassbender, in particular, is incapable of phoning it in—but the momentum drained out of these X-Men movies long ago. Dark Phoenix should serve as a fittingly perfunctory farewell.

It’s filled with colorful characters, innovative creature design, and some of the most spectacular sets in Laika’s history.

It’s a film that sometimes plays more as a rambling TED Talk than as a straightforward thriller. But, in this case, I admired Shyamalan’s overreach, even as the auteur laid meta-textual twist atop twist in the movie’s giddily loopy ending.

If you’re looking for a throwback to simpler, sillier times (with a dash of self-awareness about the state of toxic masculinity in 2019), it should just about satisfy.

While Locked Down is an undoubtedly fascinating pop-culture curio, it’s also sloppy and cringe-inducing, and feels like it was made in a hurry.

Any subversive edges have been sanded off this script, which is credited to five people. It doesn’t explore the racial underpinnings of Wilson’s budding relationship with the government, despite its mistreatment of the prior Black Captain America, nor does it reckon with the president’s desire to use him as a patriotic prop.

Persuasion at times seems embarrassed by its source material, or at least overeager to spruce it up for audiences that might not be able to handle a gentler pace. The result is harried and forgettable—the complete opposite of Austen’s quietest, noblest heroine.

Had Suburbicon committed to its primary crime-caper plot, it might have been just another forgettable, uninspired film. But its attempt to haphazardly take on a weightier tale makes Suburbicon a much rarer, and more mesmerizing, kind of catastrophe.

Johnson once excelled at playing anti-heroes you could root for and boo cheerfully all in one breath, but now he’s just another silent grump who’s never allowed to lose a fight.

Everything in Cinderella, admirable as its message may be, is soulless—and that robs it of any joy.

For all its cheesiness, the film is still entertaining—my entire row at the theater had fun cackling at clunky dialogue and absurd lunar lore. If you’re looking for a nice, empty-brained evening at the movies, Moonfall is the ticket to buy right now.

The film suffers from both an excessive faithfulness to its source and a general failure to translate that material into anything close to a gripping onscreen narrative.

The Exorcist: Believer brushes up against an interesting notion—this time, the Catholic Church refuses to approve an official exorcism, citing concerns over the safety of the procedure. But the end result is not much different; it’s still a bunch of adults standing in a room yelling prayers and exhortations at possessed girls.

It’s that stealthy sense of guilt that turns Ella McCay into a rich, if often bewildering, document for me. Yes, it’s the kind of movie Hollywood doesn’t make much of anymore, but honestly, even back in the day, the industry rarely ever pushed out something this delightfully weird.

Almost everything imaginable has gone wrong on the journey from stage to screen, and the result is a film that isn’t even “so bad it’s good,” like some other recent musical movies; mostly, it’s just painful to watch.

Zemeckis certainly remains good at running a production that uses expensive-looking CGI. The actual narrative behind those visuals, however, seems to have vanished.

Lee is innovating and looking backwards at the same time, and the viewing experience is as bewildering as that sounds.

This sequel-slash-spinoff comes across as a lifeless piece of content, bearing a brand name and a glossy look but little else to remember it by.

Making dinosaurs finally feel dull was a rather revealing storytelling choice for Trevorrow—viewers aren’t bored of seeing them on-screen, but he sure seems to be.

It’s one of those projects that initially seems hokey beyond repair but quickly evolves into something genuinely unique. Serenity may not make it onto many critics’ top-10 lists come the end of 2019. But it’s certain to be one of the more unforgettable viewing experiences of the year.

Red Notice is a glossy but empty product that indicates the extent of the genre’s current crisis.

Not only is it not very good as a standalone story, but it’s also been bizarrely shoehorned in to J.J. Abrams’s nebulous Cloverfield franchise (which now consists of three films made in the last 10 years) with next to no narrative justification.

So what if this movie essentially forgets to have a coherent plot or any real stakes; look at all of the exciting crossovers!

Mute is a slog, and a depressing one; as Netflix sci-fi goes, it’s not as abjectly inept as The Cloverfield Paradox, but it’s perhaps even more disappointing given the talented filmmaker involved.

Venom is, at its heart, a will-they-won’t-they story—a grisly meet-cute between a down-on-his-luck reporter and a grumpy, gloppy little extra-terrestrial with a really big appetite. That’s good, because the movie is barely competent as an action flick.

It’s all perfectly agreeable nonsense.

The Kitchen is an unsalvageable mess.

Morbius is little more than an irritant, a grumpy, one-note CGI beastie who spends most of his movie pondering whether he should go full supervillain.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is full of elaborate, digitally created saw wounds far more shocking and anatomically bizarre than anything that could be achieved through makeup. These impressive-looking kills, however, have no heft; the CGI blood spurts are too artificial.

Whether you think the imagery is beautiful or nightmarish, this is a film that demands to be looked at. If nothing else, I can confirm it’s the most Jellicle experience I’ve had all year.

In trying to set itself apart, this film ends up perfectly laying out the case against its own existence.

It’s transfixing at times, if only because it’s such a disaster.