Hoai-Tran Bui

Face the Music is just so overwhelmingly nice. It’s a cheesy, dopey, pure comedy about people who care a lot — maybe about trivial things, maybe about the wrong things — but boy do they care. And they just want to share their joy for the things they care about (namely rock ‘n’ roll) to the world. So sit back, don’t think too much, and party on, dudes.

Vengeance manages to balance its self-effacing and sentimental tones in a way that is extremely satisfying and entertaining to watch.

Plus One isn’t a knock-off of one of the greatest rom-coms ever, it’s a deserving successor.

CRSHD has some promising ideas and visually inventive ways of presenting them, but it still feels like a rough draft of a film. The humor lands, and the character dynamics offer a charming backbone for CRSHD, but this coming-of-age comedy could do with some workshopping.

Marvelous and the Black Hole is a satisfying showcase from Tsang, who really draws from her animation background to show these moments of intense emotion from Sammy, but its broad strokes are a little...broad.

It’s a sturdy spy thriller from Zhang, a competent first outing in the genre for the filmmaker. But most of all, Cliff Walkers is safe.

With director Tanya Wexler lending the crime dramedy a zippy, irreverent flair, Buffaloed becomes the vehicle for which Deutch can finally show off her chops.

Free Guy is the equivalent of a pop earworm – something a little tinny and artificial that nevertheless worms its way into your brain, whether you want it or not. Which makes it rather fitting that the big emotional crux of the movie is actually based around a pop song. And that the film’s star is epitome of pop likability: smooth, digestible, inoffensive — yes, even with all the curses that roll off his tongue.

It’s an interesting idea on page, but in John and the Hole, it is all a little too opaque to make sense of Sisto’s muted portrait of adolescence.

It’s not saying anything deep or groundbreaking about the female experience or the nature of revenge. Birds of Prey is reveling in being as gonzo and stylish as it can be. But when the fights are this thrilling and the humor this absurd, whatever’s underneath the surface doesn’t matter all that much.

There's a goofy sincerity to the movie even as it sends up better movies that came before it (complete with corny needle drops), and it retains that old Hollywood screwball spirit that gives it a timeless feeling. It's nothing new, and lord knows it's nothing groundbreaking, but boy, is it fun.

Paired with Danny Elfman's fizzy score, Raimi elevates "Multiverse of Madness" from the bridge-building bit of IP it so transparently is. While he doesn't quite elevate it to the "madness" that the film promises, he does, for a few brief, shining moments, show the kids how those superhero movies could be done.

Is it exceptionally groundbreaking? No. But it's fun, and frothy, and clever enough that it makes for an easygoing hour and a half watch.

Lightyear may not reach the heights of the great sci-fi movies that it pays tribute to, or even the "Toy Story" movies themselves. But it's a visually impressive, escapist riff on the sci-fi epic that, at the very least, might become the favorite movie of some kid, somewhere.

Despite its very flawed ending and baggy structure, Stillwater goes against the tide of our expectations and offers us a disarmingly affecting character study, anchored by an exceptional performance by Damon. Not even his bad beard could distract from that.

If there ever was a role that played perfectly to Pascal’s natural charisma, it’s Maxwell Lord.

Though Munden attempts to overload our senses with rich visuals, The Secret Garden does end up feeling kind of slight, like the film rushed through the SparkNotes version of the story.

Next Exit is a moody and haunting character exercise, centering around the terrific central performances by Katie Parker and Rahul Kohli, but a little underbaked otherwise.

After the empty soullessness of Fate of the Furious and the ribald nonsense of Hobbs and Shaw, F9 feels like Lin is pulling the franchise back on track. Whether that track is properly placed or not, or whether it’s actually a track that takes you off the deep end…well, your mileage may vary.

The saving grace of the film is the performances.

Chon aims for the pulse at the end, but he may not have realized that he didn't have to try so hard — he had already effortlessly plucked at the heartstrings.

When there is no actual conflict, the film's already low stakes start to feel meaningless, and the characters' bumbling hijinks around town start to feel tiresome. Conflict is necessary to inject urgency into a film, and as a result, Hocus Pocus 2 starts to really flag halfway through, once the shine of nostalgia starts to fade and Midler, Parker, and Najimy start to run out of musical numbers to perform.

Don't Make Me Go is at its strongest when Cho and Isaac are onscreen together, reflecting back the kind of tense, but loving, father-daughter dynamic which is so lovingly familiar and relatable to many of us.

Though you can see its twists coming from a mile away, Caine and Plaza's oddball dynamic and Roessler's visually stimulating direction makes "Best Sellers" a movie that's diverting enough to cozy up with.

While competently performed — Liu in particular is exceptional, lending a fraught likability to Darby; Haysbert exudes a natural warmth; and Dickey gives a good frayed performance despite a disappointing characterization — and decently directed, it feels like there's something missing from No Exit.

There’s something here, beneath the glassy-eyed performances and the Instagram aesthetics, about class and privilege and the evils of men — and you could even make a case for False Positive being yet another effective display of gaslighting as horror — but any actual messages are too vague to parse.

With Eternals, Marvel turns a risky gamble into another piece of the puzzle. Its cosmic ambitions, its prevailing humanism amid a nihilistic outlook, and its gestures at maturity — the (real!) sex scene, the depth and warmth that they give to Henry's LGBTQ relationship — are not enough to make Eternals more than just another film to fit neatly in the Marvel Studios mold. But even so, Zhao brings an elegance to the film and the cast bring a vulnerability and care to their characters that leave a lingering impression, even as the last super-punch fades.

It's really a movie about a couple reconnecting with each other and with their kids through the power of the lottery. It's very silly, yes, but the movie at least seems to sincerely believe in this.