Jake Coyle

I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who just wants to see her and these actors together again. But the movie, well stocked in Prada, could have used a bit more of Streep’s unflappable devil.

If How to Make a Killing carried this tone — Powell’s signature glibness, with an edge — the movie might have worked better. Instead, Becket is a curiously uninteresting protagonist whose descent into serial killing happens wanly.

The real heist of Crime 101 is an old one: If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

As a B-movie with a couple of A-listers, “The Rip” will probably go down as a minor and flawed genre exercise. But even in their lesser efforts, the sincerity of Damon and Affleck’s buddy routine remains winning.

Hosoda grafted “Beauty and the Beast” into “Belle,” to sometimes awkward, sometimes illuminating effect. But in “Scarlet,” he struggles to bridge “Hamlet” to today. It’s a big swing, the kind filmmakers as talented as Hosoda should be taking, but it doesn’t pay off.

All the momentum that “Wicked: For Good” does gather is owed significantly to its stars. To a large degree, these movies have been the Erivo-and-Grande show, a grand spectacle of female friendship that rises above all the petty biases and misjudgments to forge a vision of harmony in opposites. It’s a compelling vision, and Chu, as he did in the triumphant “Defying Gravity” culmination of part one, knows how to stick the landing.

Edgar Wright’s new big-screen adaptation is fittingly but awkwardly timed. Arriving in the year of King’s imagined dystopia, its near-future has little in it that isn’t already plausible today, making this “Running Man” — while fleet of foot in action — feel a step, or two, behind.

It would be easy to hail The Naked Gun as something better than it is, since it simply existing is cause for celebration. But like most reboots, particularly comedy ones, the best thing about the new “Naked Gun” is that it might send you back to the original.

This is an unusually soulful coming-of-age movie considering the number of spinal cords that get ripped right of bodies.

Presumably one of the reasons to bring actors into remakes of animated classics would be to add a warm-blooded pulse to these characters. Zegler manages that, but everyone else in “Snow White” — mortal or CGI — is as stiff as could be.

Only a few times does the banter between Moana and Maui really remind you of the fun that characterized the original.

Bird may go down as a rare miss for Arnold but you can still see the keenness of her eye and the nimbleness of her camera, with her regular cinematographer Robbie Ryan. And that’s true never so much as when the camera is on Adams, a talent, whose melancholy eyes say more than all the theatrics around her.

I kept rooting for the surprisingly lifeless “The Last Dance” to pull way back on its save-the-world plot (and its CGI) and lean more into its most potent effect: Hardy’s split-personality double act.

It’s not surprising that “Folie à Deux” originated in concept as a stage show. It’s stuck in place, with only Phoenix’s dazzling contortions to marvel at.

Mostly, Jackpot! is an action-comedy vehicle that pairs Awkwafina and John Cena for a romp through a few clever economic inequality gags and a lot of cartoonish mayhem.

Six films in and with more on the way, too much of a good thing is becoming more of a pressing question in “Despicable Me 4,” a silly and breezy installment from Illumination Entertainment that passes by with about as much to remember it as a Saturday morning cartoon.

It’s a empty chamber for movie spectacle and nothing else, where the only option is to pile elements on top of each other until you have, you know, a giant evil ape swinging a vertebrae like a lasso while riding a kaiju controlled by a crystal.

Though “One Love” drifts into increasingly conventional biopic scenes, its spirit remains fairly true to Marley — enough, at least, that you overlook some of its faults.

It’s an intriguing premise that “I.S.S.” can’t translate into a coherent thriller.

It can be divertingly bonkers, but ends up a rather grim and slipshod “John Wick” ripoff.

The elements never quite cohere in “Freud’s Last Session.” The rhythm of conversation feels choppy and lacks the probing give and take that can electrify a two-hander.

The Exorcist: Believer never manages anything like the deep terror of the original, and the film’s climactic scenes pass by with a lifeless predictability. Been there, exhumed that.

In mixing up the Beanie Baby timeline to play out each storyline simultaneously, The Beanie Bubble needlessly complicates itself. But it also makes a compelling reflection of history repeating itself.

Like its predecessor, Murder Mystery 2 is built on old-fashioned star power and the interplay between Sandler and Aniston. They’re good company to be in, and sometimes that’s enough.

As much as Neeson might seem to have the special set of skills required to play Marlowe, his detective feels hollow and maybe a little too tired.

Plane is as broadly sketched as its title. Puerto Rico doubles here for Philippines, and most of the story elements, too, feel like they’re stand-ins for basic plot conventions.

There’s a stale emptiness to Living that doesn’t entirely dissipate in even its most moving scenes.

The best reason to see “Pinocchio” is, unsurprisingly, Hanks, who brings a soulful melancholy to Geppetto.

Honk for Jesus in the end doesn’t aim for anything like the madcap parody of, say, HBO’s riotous “The Righteous Gemstones,” but it may have been more successful if it took the approach of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and kept its camera glued to the first lady of the church.

A dead-end wrong turn in the usually boundless Pixar universe. Buzz, himself, is a bit of a bore, too.

Pearce, sweaty and grungy, steadies Memory; it’s his film as much as Neeson’s.

The Secrets of Dumbledore, lacking in much magic, is a bit of a bore.

It’s a goof, and there’s something to be said for watching Grohl and the gang having so much fun.

The buddy movie balance of “Uncharted” never clicks. Wahlberg, who was once attached to play Holland’s part, plays Sully like Nathan’s roguish, less tech-savvy elder. But they lack the needed chemistry and the script, by Rafe Lee Judkins, Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, doesn’t give them enough comic material to do much with.

As it is, this “Death on the Nile,” for too long an affected and strained entertainment lacking any sense of place, floats well downstream from more bracingly constructed whodunits.

With handsome period craft, “Munich — Edge of War” makes for a watchable, engrossing historical thriller with fictional characters situated like spies around political leaders at a profoundly tense, and ultimately woefully misjudged, moment in time.

If any narrative thread holds the movie together, it’s each character dealing with their own version of anxiety, fear and stage fright as performers. While a laudable message for a kids movie, it’s drowned out by the movie’s commercialized blare.

For much of the film, it’s difficult not to imagine the Saturday Night Live sketch that’s probably already being written. More than the age difference, though, Platt’s performance is a constant reminder of Broadway artificiality in a movie striving for something real.

It’s a manic movie in a familiarly corporate kind of way that provides kids with a computer-generated candy rush. The movie’s own business imperatives occasionally show through like a leaky diaper.

Arteta (The Good Girl, Cedar Rapids) has an underrated ability at crafting comic, humanistic movies out of commercial concepts. But Yes Day slides too often into contrived, loudly scored montages of “fun” that don’t transfer to those of us watching. And while Garner and Ramirez are both very fine actors, neither of them is funny.

As cinematography, Malcolm & Marie (shot by Marcell Rév) is great. As cinema, not so much.

This Hillbilly Elegy has stripped away the most sermonizing, debatable parts of the book, but it’s also denuded it of any deeper purpose, leaving us with a cosplay shell of A-list actors chewing rural scenery.

The craft and thick Gothic atmosphere of The Devil all the Time is impressive. The movie has such fine-wrought texture that it holds you in its cold grasp. But it’s also somewhat oppressive.

While its ideas are often intriguing, the movie feels like high-concept scaffolding that only thinly conceals it hollowness. It’s a Tesla without electricity.

Tigertail comes off more as an idea of an arthouse movie than one propelled by its own volition.

Bloodshot is just smart enough to be more than trash, and just trashy enough to be less than smart. It will do fine if you’re looking for a lesser simulation of a good movie.

There is little here, amid the high-tech photorealistic animations, that would satisfy London’s concept of “wild.”

Hunnam’s presence, alone, keeps the movie grounded. But the movie time and time again exalts the gallantry of its gentlemen heroes at the expense of those unlike them. It gives this glass of Gritchie’s English Lore a bitter taste.

For a movie predicated on satisfying fans, The Rise of Skywalker is a distinctly unsatisfying conclusion to what had been an imperfect but mostly good few films.

Last Christmas is about as buoyant as leftover eggnog. Clarke’s natural charm comes through — she looks ecstatic to be out of Westeros and playing a less upright character — but such a fleabag-screwup role feels better suited to a more comedic performer.

It’s starting to seem like every franchise film, when in search of a story, throws a battle against the wall and hopes something sticks. Not only has this gotten tiresome, but it also sacrifices what we came here for in the first place: Jolie and Pfeiffer glowering at each other.

It’s a movie best seen less as a historical epic and more as a metaphor for a rising young movie star coming up in a culture he aims to subvert.

A calculatedly combustible concoction, designed, like its chaos-creating character, to cause a stir. To provoke and distort. I wish it was as radical as it thinks it is.

Abominable is sweet and simple enough, but its emotionality always feels thin and, like much of the film, paint by numbers.

Jon Favreau’s The Lion King, so abundant with realistic simulations of the natural world, is curiously lifeless.

The movie’s premise is one long Uber ad, but it’s a clever enough buddy comedy setup, and both Nanjiani and Bautista are good comic performers. So what’s missing here?

The plotting is clunky and haphazard. But when together, Thompson, Hemsworth and Nanjiani turn Men In Black: International into something funny and silly: a pleasant enough lark in formal wear.

Someone Great has not exactly rewritten the rom-com rule book. Where it distinguishes itself is in the fresh faces of it cast (the rom-com is not known as the most diverse of genres) and in focusing on the hard realities of breakup rather than the fairytale of falling in love.

It’s not plot deviations from King’s novel that hamper Pet Sematary. It’s that, from early on, Kölsch and Widmyer, rely less on the detailed accumulation of atmosphere that King built his tale on, than jump cuts and music cues to build suspense. It puts Pet Sematary on a more familiar genre track.

To both the movie’s benefit and detriment, the seas here are choppier than in the predictably (and sometimes boringly) smooth sailing of a Marvel movie. But the bright spots (Momoa, that octopus) can be difficult to really relish amid the oceans of exposition and a typically pulverizing, overelaborate screenplay.

The greatest tension in Larsson’s “Millennium” series is how Salander so bristles with unease in the world, even while she expertly manipulates everything in it. No such conflict is found in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a commonplace thriller for an uncommon heroine.

A pair of other recent films — “Minding the Gap,” ″Skate Kitchen” — better explored the camaraderie and freedom of skater culture. But there are glimpses here of a more radiant, lyrical film.

The only time Bohemian Rhapsody works is when it finally retreats from not just the standard biopic narrative but from storytelling altogether.

Goddard’s film looks terrific and has all of the — as Hamm’s character would say with exaggerated Southern flare — “accoutrements” of an intoxicating slow-burn thriller, but none of the payoff.

The film’s off-kilter schizophrenia gives it a madcap appeal. While Fleischer seems to have a darker, moodier film in mind, Hardy has the good sense to steer Venom in a more over-the-top direction, even if the movie around him can’t catch up.

Like countless studio comedies of the past few years, Night School is a straightforward concept that relies too much on the charisma of its performers to carry a weak script.

For the big tonal swings in A Simple Favor to work, the characters needed to be more plausibly grounded. Lively and Kendrick’s early scenes ping-pong nicely with odd-couple chemistry, but “A Simple Favor” loses the thread, and never shakes the feeling of a rushed Gillian Flynn knockoff.

The Meg is best when it acknowledges its derivativeness, just one more silly shark movie in an ocean full of them.

Jackson comfortably carries the film with a smooth panache, but his Priest — like the movie — doesn’t make much of an impression. Yet Superfly is also a generally entertaining movie, with good things in it.

American Animals would be a legitimate cautionary tale if it wasn’t invalidated by its own existence.

Productions of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull almost always tip too far into farce or wade too deeply into tragedy, unable to sustain the play’s elusive balancing act. Michael Mayer’s lush and lively big-screen adaption is unfortunately no exception.

While Super Troopers 2...may be just enough to satiate any remaining die-hards, it’s not likely to convert many new moviegoers to their syrup-swilling, “meow”-ing ways.

The dog is, as ever, irresistibly winning.

It’s not the quality of the acting that limits Eastwood’s film. It’s a threadbare script that fails to find much of a story to tell behind the headlines.

Ball’s command of the camera and his ability to hurtle his character through science-fiction realms has visibly grown through the three movies. For too long The Death Cure stays in one place; it’s best when on the move. And now, it’s probably time for Ball to move on, too.