Derek Smith

Martin Campbell’s film never shakes off its familiarity, and as such seems destined to, well, be lost to public memory.

The film is a Hollywood-approved show of Old Testament judgment that sees all people as sinners and thus deserving of all the punishment they receive.

Rarely have Michael Bay’s frenzied stylistic tics been so effectively intertwined with the substance of one of his films.

Peter Sollett’s coming-of-age comedy betrays rather than upholds the values of the very kids it wants to revere.

The film works magic by embracing excess, finding a kind of harmony and possibility within it, and reminding us of the beauty and lunacy of the human experience along the way.

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

Ultimately, the film tries so hard to do so much that it doesn’t end up doing any of it particularly well.

The film poignantly draws a straight line from the economic anxieties of the past straight to the present.

The Desperate Hour’s broad, vague rendering of its characters is part and parcel of its troubling approach to its material.

Instead of elaborating its plot, Blacklight offers up repetitious, dialogue-driven scenes that deliver only the shallowest of exposition, advancing the story at a sluggish pace.

Rather than thoughtfully reflect on post-collegiate ennui and disillusionment, the film settles for erecting a monument to its main character’s awesomeness.

Throughout You Won’t Be Alone, writer-director Goran Stolevski rejects the slickness that defines so-called elevated horror.

Watcher gives a feminist twist to a throwback genre, but never does its topicality dilute its gripping suspense.

This period drama manages the difficult task of speaking to our current moment without being didactic or preachy.

The film is too narrow-minded to explore the notion that a saint-like man may want to satisfy his normal carnal desires.

For all of the film’s visually striking action and musical set pieces, it’s the generosity of spirit with which it approaches the modern teenage experience that’s its most impressive attribute.

The film is so caught up in its own idea of national exceptionalism that its tagline might as well be Make England Great Again.

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.

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

Encanto doesn’t steer away from the inevitable happy ending one expects from most animated films geared toward children, but it subverts expectations by bringing humanity to even its most flawed characters.

Rarely has a film used its foreknowledge of a happy ending as a reason to remain so uncritical and incurious of its central subject.

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

As far as improvements go, Michael Myers’s revitalized brutality is arguably the only successful one that Halloween Kills makes.

Birds of Paradise lacks the nuance and finesse needed for its story to really take flight.

The film persuasively sheds light on the grievances of the Palestinian people that have long fallen on deaf ears.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye mostly plays out as a showcase for Jessica Chastain to bring as much emotional sturm und drang to the woman as she lurches between various states of turmoil.

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

The film upends the clichés that practically define the ghost story in surprising and intriguing ways.

The film’s gore is just as likely to invoke fear as to serve as a killer punchline to one of Rodo Sayagues’s set pieces.

There’s so much discernible IP baked into Shawn Levy’s film to make its calls for artistic ingenuity feel hypocritical at best.

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

Arie and Chuko Esiri’s film is understated in its attunement to the challenges of trying to escape a stagnant existence.

The fundamental ineptness of Gunpowder Milkshake appears to be a consequence of the exponentially swelling glut of streaming options.

As it strives for a grander metaphor of life in America, The Forever Purge resorts to sweeping generalizations that make the prior films in the series feel like pinnacles of subtlety.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard improves on its 2017 predecessor only insofar as it runs 20 minutes shorter.

Eytan Fox’s film is a low-key observance of two men finding the beauty in each other’s mysteries and contradictions.

The reality of Nazi Germany and its looming atrocities feels as if it exists only beyond the edges of the film’s frame.

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison’s wonderful rapport helps to keep the film grounded in the recognizably real.

While the film certainly lays out the dangers of technology run amok, it also sees its power to connect people.

Maria Sødahl’s considers the extreme emotions provoked by a medical emergency with an impressive force of clarity.

Art, commerce, and immigration are inextricably bound in Kaouther Ben Hania’s playful and gently moving, if uneven, film.

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

The film’s arguments against endless war end up seeming more than a bit disingenuous, especially given how much time it spends glorifying the actions and morality of those who help buoy ongoing American occupation of foreign nations.

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

The film weaves together the stories of five mostly nonverbal autistic teens to present a rich tapestry of the autistic experience.

Robert Rodriguez’s film, like The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D, fundamentally lacks a sense of wonder.

There are enough left turns here to allow us to shake the impression that we’ve been to this rodeo before.

The documentary may be the defining portrait of the dawning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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

The documentary dives down the rabbit hole to chillingly, comprehensively expose how algorithms can perpetuate bias in often unforeseen and unjust ways.

Throughout, Remi Weekes forcefully, resonantly ties the film’s terror to the inner turmoil of his characters.

Darius Marder’s film captures, with urgency and tenderness, just how enticing the residue of the past can be.

Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested’s prismatic look at a devastating new chapter in the War on Drugs lacks for cohesiveness.

The film is ultimately too tidy to embrace anything truly startling or unexpected, either stylistically or narratively.

Chaitanya Tamhane gives full dimension to the rich, complex, and sometimes contradictory nature of the relationship between disciple and guru.

That the democratization of the internet has opened a doorway for fascist ideologies to openly quash democratic ones is an irony that isn’t lost on the film.

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

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

The film is an unwieldy array of muddled ideas that never gel together into a cohesive whole.

A taut genre exercise that delivers enough surprises and cleverly timed bits of humor for its sometimes familiar, uneven narrative beats to play an original tune.

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

The film is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a world where emotions are accessed and revealed primarily through digital intermediaries.

Peter Segal’s film is pulled in so many different directions that it comes to feel slack.

Some of the film’s narrative threads are frustratingly unresolved, while others are wrapped up in arbitrary fashion.

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

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

The film’s devotion to the belief that kindness can be a balm for almost any hurt is deeply moving.

The film gives palpable expression to the sense of hopelessness felt by those who fall under the control of cults.

The film vibrantly articulates all that’s lost when people are held under the draconian decree of warlords.

The film speaks lyrically to a peoples’ determination to find a meaningful way to live in a rapidly changing modern world.

The film is suitably direct, clear-eyed, and exhaustive in documenting the massive impacts that gerrymandering has, particularly on communities of color.

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

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

It’s within the murky realm of self-doubt and spiritual anxiety that it’s at its most audacious and compelling.

The film is at its best when it’s focused on the euphoria and tribulations of its central couple's love affair.

Beginning with the reversed names in its title, the film announces itself as a distinctly feminine spin on the Grimm fairy tale.

The film largely evades any perspectives that might question the institutions that put our soldiers in harm’s way.

Dolittle’s inability to completely develop any of its characters reduces the film to all pomp and no circumstance.

Its inconsistent, half-baked characterizations would be more forgivable were they at least in the service of some inspired comedy.

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

The filmmakers’ overly simplistic depiction of good and evil is mitigated to some degree by the presence of Landon (Caleb Eberhardt).

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

If there’s an ethos that Justin Dec’s film believes in, it’s only that “death sucks.”

The film is imbued with an airless blend of buoyant comedy and soap-operatic backstage drama that recalls Shakespeare in Love.

Until the finale, the film tirelessly hammers home the importance of being true to yourself, yet its ultimate resolution, one of relatively uneasy compromise, confuses even that simple point.

Almost every element of the film has been seemingly engineered to be the ne plus ultra of slapdash ineptitude.

The film is at its best when its focus remains on Ivins’s fierce commitment to her ideals and willingness to speak her mind.

Milko Lazarov seems driven to record the inner workings of a singular slice of Inuit culture before it goes the way of the reindeer.

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

The film more or less keeps things efficiently moving, wringing white-knuckle tension less through jump scares than from the darkness of a seemingly infinite void.

The film’s improvisational feel helps to ground a fable-esque narrative in a discernible reality.

Jay Maisel’s former home suggests a bastion of creativity in a neighborhood whose rough edges have been completely sanded down.

The film captures a man haunted by his past mistakes and nearly certain that he doesn’t have the time left to begin making up for them.

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

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

Tom Harper’s film empathetically probes the growing pains of self-improvement.

The film sends the curious message that that any time an abusive parent spends with a child is time well spent.

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