Derek Smith

This unfocused, awkwardly paced film never quite gets off the ground and, as a result, will do little to change perceptions of the Korean War as the “forgotten war.”

Song Sung Blue is content to pendulum-swing from triumph to tragedy and back again with all the self-control of a drunk driver.

In the gradual development and expansion of the Wickaverse, the filmmakers seem to have lost the thread of what makes the first and, at times, second film in the series work so well.

Pearl is ultimately an empty exercise in style masquerading as a character study, and for as fantastic as Mia Goth is, her performance mostly succeeds at making Ti West’s homages just a little bit easier to stomach.

The film takes aim at myriad targets and bluntly satirizing them in disparate styles that never mesh into a cohesive whole.

Aside from further vilifying the Nazis, the film's ideological endgame remains a bit too slippery.

Whenever its main characters are pulled apart, the movie magic, in every sense of the phrase, dissipates, leaving us with a bland, derivative action-comedy that’s never quite as funny or thrilling as it thinks it is.

The film seems far more interested in celebrating a short-lived era of artistic invention than interrogating it.

The film feels like sitting through extended acting exercises where everyone is giving it 110% every take.

The film is almost sadistically driven to turn a woman’s trip down memory lane into fodder for cringe humor.

The film is admirably frank in its depiction of lingering trauma but too often struggles to capture its more ineffable qualities.

Through this endless string of undercooked subplots, Avi Nesher’s film continually trips over itself.

The film's performances and narrative flounder to strike the right balance between comedy and drama.

The film is a perfectly entertaining retelling of an offbeat tale, but it’s also superficial and borderline exploitative.

The film is loaded with inconsequential detours and questionable and inconsistent character psychology as it stumbles awkwardly to its foregone conclusion.

A Simple Favor haphazardly vacillates between suburban satire, goofy comedy, and dark, twisted psychological thriller. Which is to say that the film doesn't evince the seamlessness of presentation of its clearest antecedent: David Fincher's "Gone Girl."

The original Brian and Charles short focused entirely on its titular characters, and it’s clear that was for the best.

Humor for the sake of humor is a worthwhile pursuit, but Missing’s final act is more unintentionally funny than intentionally funny.

Throughout, the too-brief depictions of Luciano Pavarotti’s flaws are conspicuously shrouded in a veil of hagiography.

All of the time spent on Thomas Munro’s various campaigns for reconciliation and harmony between two Māori tribes hampers the film, which would have been better served had it expounded on the grander conflicts that it only superficially acknowledges.

For all of its slavish devotion to Mary Poppins, the sequel doesn't even seem to recognize its greatest attribute: its star.

The film celebrates individuality even as it suggests that everyone needs their own A.I. tech to validate everything they like and think.

While Strange World’s examination of generational tension is tender and inspiring, as well as nicely tied to its theme of the necessity of adapting to changing times, the film’s sci-fi elements and environmental message are more half-baked in their execution.

The Bad Guys is a heist film that steals all of its moves.

The film's biggest problem is its inability to lend its clichés and tropes any dramatic thrust or satirical bite.

Like so many shoot-‘em-up video games that repeatedly break for cutscenes, the film too often diffuses its tense energy by whipping up context.

Not Okay doesn’t make any points that, now over a decade into the ubiquity of social media, aren’t painfully obvious.

The film is overstuffed with characters and subplots that ultimately have little to do with Ip Man and his legacy.

The film frequently falls back on the stately demeanor of countless other historical biopics and period pieces. Read our review.

The film reeks of the extremely idealistic notions of young love that plague many a YA adaptation.

Suncoast spends much of its runtime trafficking in tiresome coming-of-age tropes, until the resulting crowd-pleaser has snuffed out much of what’s so singular about its central story.

With Ocean's 8, Gary Ross serves up a mildly engaging riff on the heist film, but he rarely strays from the established formula of Steven Soderbergh's original Ocean's trilogy.

The Lost City is proof that star power and chemistry can only take a film with a mediocre script so far.

As effective as director Josie Rourke is at exposing the emotional and physical toll of reigning as queen when exploring Mary and Elizabeth's relationship, her portrait of an endless string of betrayals ends up as simply faceless and impersonal.

Stillwater gives itself over to drastic plot twists that derail what was already a film over-stuffed with narrative incident and ideas.

The film is elevated by funny, cleverly staged sequences, but it too often hammers the notion that fame destroys authenticity.

As the film becomes increasingly reliant on predictable narrative tropes, it evolves into the very thing it set out to parody.

Ridley Scott’s tale of greed and revenge practically begs for melodramatic excess.

John Crowley’s film blunts the force of the naturalistic performances by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as it shifts around the timeline of the story with little rhyme, reason, or rhythm.

Once the film shifts into a broader comedic register, it no longer capitalizes on Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae’s gift for gab.

On the Basis of Sex is too often busy revering Ruth Bader Ginsburg for her confidence and brilliance to bother with presenting her as a living, breathing human being.

Behind the violence and gore, Nobody 2 only offers the skeleton of a narrative.

As The Accountant 2 drags out to over two hours, and its two storylines remain tonally at war with one another, it becomes increasingly clear that, two films in, this series still hasn’t figured out exactly what it wants to be.

So many grandiose tactics portend a grander revelation than the film’s otherwise low-key three-hander delivers.

The charitable representation of Bryan Cranston’s character greatly diminishes the emotional resonance of the film’s dramatic turns in the final act.

The only past that Dial of Destiny is interested in plundering is the glory of its predecessors.

In the end, the film is all too ready to transform into just another shiny pop object indistinguishable from so many others before it.

The film muddies its sense of moral righteousness by suggesting that violence and vengeance can only be defeated by more of the same.

To Ritchie’s credit, he keeps his film moving along at a consistently brisk clip, but that breeziness is also the cause of its weightlessness, rendering its vision of historical events as outright cartoonish, down to the often clownish portrayals of Nazis and the flawless execution of nearly every element of March-Phillips’s plans.

Ultimately, The Boogeyman is like so many other modern horror films that prioritize mood above all else.

Wendy veers awkwardly and aimlessly between tragedy and jubilance, never accruing any lasting emotional impact.

The film seems almost content to have you forget about everything that inspired it in the first place.

Initially offbeat, Bitch awkwardly pivots toward a more inspirational story of regret and reconciliation.

After a while, the film’s parade of contrivances subsumes the acutely observed friendship at its core.

Will Gluck’s rom-com doesn’t bother to create a compelling world around its charming leads.

The film Despite its weird flourishes, the film succumbs to the tropes and emotional contrivances of the family melodrama at its core.

The film’s manic blend of gore and relentlessly cheeky comedy eventually leads to diminished returns.

The film is an easily digestible replica of the truth, bathed in honeyed cinematography and sentimentalized adulation.

Despite Ari Gold’s knack for visual flourishes that capture a sense of place seemingly outside of time, The Song of Sway Lake plays like several disparate melodies overlapping one another.

It’s far too scattershot, bouncing from one topic to the next with the carelessness of someone flipping through a book and reading from a random page.

Although Last Rampage's overarching narrative travels a well-tread road, it strikes a number of potent grace notes along the way.

Like Vice before it, the film too often uses satire as a tool of castigation rather than as a means of truly attacking the status quo.

Den of Thieves displays a reverence for the taut and moody tension-building tactics of Michael Mann's Heat, but without a single compelling character or backstory to speak of, it's unable to bring even a modicum of emotional resonance to action.

Its most amusing moments are in the interplay between the central characters as they adjust to an abruptly shifting reality.

The film is content to peddle the naïve notion that love is the panacea for all that ails you.

Greenland 2 plays out as a much more generic thriller than its predecessor.

By the end, it becomes what it initially parodies: a dime-a-dozen slasher film with a silly-looking doll as the villain.

Ultimately, Kidnap is an efficient vehicle for the delivery of some lean action that's frequently weakened by a scarcely whip-smart script.

The film is all surface, and its depiction of trauma becomes increasingly exploitative and hollow as it moves along.

Distractingly indebted to No Country for Old Men, the film’s wild tonal swings mostly leave it feeling impossibly disjointed.

As the film spirals outward from its central relationship to delve into other characters’ hidden pasts, the story becomes too unwieldy and fragmented for the audience to develop a comprehensive understanding of Callum Turner's Thomas or his personal evolution.

The film is subsumed by the unshakable sense that Jared Leto is intended to make Martin Zandvliet's take on the yakuza underworld more palatable for American audiences.