Derek Smith

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

Quantumania feels less the start of a new phase of Marvel films than a tired retread of adventures we’ve already been on.

Upgrade is most effective when mining the comical and bizarre love-hate chemistry between Grey and Stem and pairing that singular conflict with batshit-crazy action, but the film’s follow-through is clunky and unfulfilling.

There’s a grating meta-ness to Gareth Edwards’s Jurassic World Rebirth that speaks to the filmmakers’ knowledge that they’re at the mercy of pressures to bring something new to a franchise that’s now on its seventh installment.

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

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."

Keith Behrman’s film comprehends the malleable, often inscrutable nature of desire.

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.

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

Joe Cornish’s film is vigilant in its positivity and hope for the future at nearly every turn.

Paul King again proves himself a masterful engineer of imaginary worlds, and it’s the meticulous attention to detail that makes Wonka so captivating.

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.

The documentary ultimately reveals itself as a paean to female strength and resistance.

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

If the film’s breathless pacing and rapid-fire jokes run out of steam just a tad as SpongeBob’s stay in the underworld extends, Search for SquarePants is still charming, spirited, and ludicrous enough to prove that it’s not quite time to tell this series to walk the plank.

The film spins a soapy yet dramatically inert and often tone-deaf yarn about societal rejection and female empowerment in the wetlands of North Carolina.

The film quickly reveals that the only angle it’s interested in is the one that most sympathizes with Gary Hart.

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

For all of Buck and the Preacher’s serious attempts to function as a revisionist western by centering Blacks in the narrative and examining the critical role they played on the frontier, it’s also a wildly entertaining film.

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.

As the historical specificity embedded in the film’s more expansive opening act is abandoned, the more predictable, archetypal trappings of a revenge narrative begin to take hold.

Christophe Honoré’s film tackles grief in a subtle, intriguingly indirect manner.

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

Everything in I Wanna Hold Your Hand is pushed right up to the breaking point of absurdity. The lunacy of pop-culture infatuation is lent the undying fervor of a fever dream.

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

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