Derek Smith

In the instances where it’s not going hard, Dicks is a surprisingly flaccid affair.

The film’s unique blend of deadpan and absurdist humor, and its tendency to occasionally push the boundaries of good taste, shows that Emma Seligman is comfortable working on both ends of the comic spectrum.

The film views its main character’s culture, as well as her struggles to suppress her identity in order to fit into her suburban world, with a nonchalance that often scans as negligence.

The film suggests a gene splice of a slasher flick and supernatural horror. But as enticing as that combination may sound, André Øvredal’s rendering of it is as bland and listless as the blues and grays that dominate the film’s color palette.

If your hook is the promise of seeing Jason Statham go mano a mano with prehistoric sea behemoths, then leaning into the ludicrous is the only way to go.

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

What ultimately sinks No Hard Feelings is its inability to convincingly meld its excessively bawdy humor and its Hallmark Channel-level drama of two opposites who help one another to embrace life.

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

It achieves the rarest of feats of any tentpole Hollywood release, animated or not: gleefully matching exhilarating stylistic experimentation with a multi-tiered narrative of equal ambition.

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

The film is a pointlessly complicated house of cards that crumbles due to its own hollowness.

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

With Beau Is Afraid, his third and easily most ambitious feature to date, Ari Aster traces, to more cosmic and absurd ends, how tragedy is birthed by, well, birth itself.

The film brims with authenticity and the electrifying emotional intensity of the best melodramas.

The more that Zach Braff’s script tries to thematically tie its disparate threads together, the more that A Good Person comes to resemble the very same type of neat and tidy self-contained version of reality that it ironically skewers in its prologue.

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.

As Champions tediously veers between the increasingly rote narrative beats of an inspirational sports story and a love story of opposites attract, it further stresses its own archaic qualities with a consciously anachronistic soundtrack that includes Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” EMF’s “Unbelievable,” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya.”

The film comes down to a draw between its flashes of brilliance and its missed opportunities.

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

At its core, 20 Days in Mariupol is a testament to the citizens of Mariupol.

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

There’s enough sardonic humor to keep the proceedings edgy enough, but it’s hard not to wish that the filmmakers would’ve taken a cue from their eponymous villain and really pushed things past the boundaries of good taste.

The film often feels like one of the corpses in its story: cold, lifeless, and without a heart.

Ultimately, it’s the filmmakers’ insistence on both subverting the expectations of the family Christmas film and upholding them that leaves Violent Night feeling like it wants to have its Christmas cookies and eat them too.

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.”

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 film signals that Alejandro G. Iñárritu, perhaps, is unable to push the limits of his own artistic expression.

Because of Chinonye Chukwu’s willingness to let small-scale, ancillary scenes play out unhurried and at length, Till taps into to a deeper well of emotions than most biopics.