James Berardinelli

Ironically for something titled The Watchers, this production lacks the basic quality of watchability.

It’s cinematic fast-food but not of the delicious, addictive variety. It’s a little overcooked and has gone cold – still edible but by no means satisfying.

Hit Man is smartly written, with Linklater and Powell deftly melding screwball comedy elements with rom-com beats against a Hitchcockian thriller backdrop. The small twists have big payoffs.

Take away the spectacle aspect and the movie may seem repetitive and underwritten. In a premium movie house, however, the immersion is so complete that viewers may require a short recovery period once it’s all over.

My reaction is that I could learn a lot more about Winehouse by listening to her music than by watching this by-the-numbers sketch of her adult life.

As a follow-up/homage, Chapter 1 isn’t bad but it feels superfluous, adding little substantive to what was previously provided by The Strangers and the second film in the series, 2018’s The Strangers: Prey at Night.

The narrative is all over the place. Character motivation is confusing. And, worst of all, the story simply isn’t interesting.

The battles and a climactic action sequence are well filmed but Kingdom isn’t trying to outdo the other summer films when it comes to edge-of-the-seat viewing. In a strange way, I find that refreshing.

The Fall Guy delivers where it matters – it’s a fun, uplifting excursion into big-screen escapism.

It’s not a complete package but it’s fresher than much of what’s out there today and is difficult to dismiss even if it sometimes feels like a graphic novel married to a video game.

Despite all its flaws, Challengers represents watchable high-end soap opera material. The story is undercooked but the dialogue contains some nice zingers and the actors are wholly invested.

It's easy to nitpick Abigail’s narrative. Parts don’t hold together well, there are significant plot holes, story elements violate just-established rules, and (in true horror movie fashion) characters sometimes make head-scratchingly stupid decisions. But, for those willing to overlook these often-familiar conventions, the movie is gorily diverting.

It’s all in good fun, if a little shallow.

Sasquatch Sunset is sufficiently different that it’s almost worth seeing for that reason alone. Alas, I don’t think it sufficiently rises above the gimmick of its premise to provide a compelling reason to spend 90 minutes in a movie theater.

When focusing on the micro-verse inside a news van and the four passengers taking the trip, Civil War does a good job dissecting the damage done by a desensitization to violence. But it botches the background and features an ending that belongs in another movie (preferably one featuring Gerard Butler).

Monkey Man may be a silly-sounding title but the story it tells is anything but silly.

The performances of Buckley and Colman rescue much of what’s salvageable in the narrative and there’s some interest in how the truth will be revealed but the movie isn’t as funny as it needs to be for the satirical elements to work.

The 94-minute running time is too skinny to do the premise justice and The Greatest Hits feels like a Cliffs Notes version of a longer, better story. Plus, for a movie that relies on music for its emotional core, the soundtrack is lackluster at best.

Even for those who have an orgasmic reaction to kaiju confrontations, far too little of the film is devoted to them and the overreliance on CGI leeches away the immediacy and awe associated with the spectacle. This isn’t as bad as the 1998 Godzilla misfire but it’s perilously close.

In the Land of Saints and Sinners is a clear, unqualified improvement over such recent Neeson-led thrillers like Retribution and Blacklight. And, although one can argue that his once-prodigious talents are wasted in cash-grab projects of this sort, at least the movie provides 90 minutes of entertainment rather than turning into a by-the-numbers slog.

Immaculate is at times unsettling and the ending contains a strong shock element but the movie as a whole feels a little too familiar to engage its audience.

As scattershot and uneven as it is unnecessary, it fails to effectively build on the foundation laid in Afterlife while at the same time relegating the “old timers” into oddly-integrated super-cameo appearances.

There’s still quite a bit to like here, from the strong sense of atmosphere to the layers of a Hitchcockian plot, but this is not a complete movie. And when viewers are laughing at a movie rather than with it, something has gone awry.

One Life feels like something straight out of the 1990s when many low-key, non-U.S. dramas were being embraced by art house devotees and more adventurous multiplex visitors. The movie is neither showy nor ostentatious. It tells a story in a workmanlike fashion that allows viewers to learn a little bit more about the central figure and why his life is deserving of a big-screen treatment.

There’s nothing imaginary about how bad a misfire this movie is even for the Blumhouse base.

Although the movie has a conventional structure, the straightforward chronological approach works for this material, allowing the viewer to come to know Cabrini and become invested in her efforts to develop an orphanage, first in New York’s Five Points slum then in rural West Park.

Dune: Part Two is a spectacle to behold with an underlying arc that makes it more satisfying than a 2 1/2-hour bite of eye candy.

It’s not a terrible movie but it feels like a failed attempt to infuse the Coen Brothers’ wry aesthetic into a B-movie tableau.

For nearly two hours, the movie plods along, offering little beyond hackneyed dialogue that can’t be gleaned from a quick read-through of Marley’s Wikipedia entry.

Sadly, Madame Web fails to rise above its pedigree as a lesser superhero movie. It does nothing to convince viewers that there’s value to be found in a story not featuring a marquee comic book character.

Lisa Frankenstein obviously wants to be different and it at least succeeds in that aim. However, as a story of female empowerment with grand guignol overtones, it has the great misfortune of coming out in too-close proximity to the vastly superior Poor Things.

I didn’t laugh once and the movie’s stylized and satirical tone defused any connection I might have felt for the characters. Perhaps if the proceedings hadn’t dragged on well past the two-hour mark, it wouldn’t have seemed like such a chore to sit through.

Origin offers the best of both worlds: a well-developed story with a three-dimensional lead character who grows over the course of the movie and an intellectually satisfying element folded into the screenplay.

For those interested only in a visual fleshing-out of a Wikipedia entry, Class Action Park does the job. Anyone hoping for more won’t find it in this unremarkable piece of nostalgia-bait.

I.S.S. doesn’t disappoint but neither does it go above or beyond what one might reasonably expect based on the trailer.

Although aspects of All of Us Strangers have a cheesy flavor, the raw honesty of the movie’s best moments propel the narrative through its less credible pitstops.

Remove the musical elements and the 2024 version, directed by newcomers Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., resembles an amateurish imitation of the 2004 original. Add in the mostly-awful songs and it becomes an in-your-face assault on the senses.

In The Beekeeper, as has been the case with pretty much anything Statham has done in the past half-decade, the actor is on hand to collect a paycheck in exchange for bringing a recognizable name to the proceedings.

For those whose only requirements for horror movies are that they avoid the excesses of blood/gore/violence prevalent in R-rated fare and incorporate a few good jump-scares, Night Swim checks the requisite boxes. For those looking for a more complete experience, however, the movie struggles even to achieve the level where it would be considered worthwhile as a streaming option.

The strength of Anatomy of a Fall comes from its willingness to embrace ambiguity and a lack of closure in ways that intrigue (rather than frustrate) the viewer.

The first Aquaman may have been low-brow fun but the second is a chore from start to finish.

It’s an enjoyable enough parfait but far from a theatrical destination.

Offering inspiration in both the truth of its basis and the way in which it is presented, The Boys in the Boat is an antidote to the pervasive cynicism of the modern era.

The 2023 The Color Purple is a handsomely mounted motion picture and there are fleeting moments when it touches magic.

As a well-acted standard-order bio-pic, Ferrari delivers but as something more, it falls short.

This is an American tragedy. Although the participants may be famous, the demons they fight in their intimate moments are familiar and relatable.

Although not as openly crowd-pleasing as Cooper’s A Star Is Born remake, there are enough interesting touches in the film – both in its aesthetic and some of the individual scenes – to demonstrate Cooper’s evolution as a filmmaker.

Gifted with a surprisingly large budget (reportedly ~$70M), Bayona is able to effectively recreate not only the crash but the dangers faced by the survivors while seamlessly incorporating on-location footage with studio-based material. The remarkable accomplishment results in a breathtaking motion picture that enthralls across the length of its 140+ minute running time.

It’s challenging but neither inaccessible nor impossibly dense. Kore-eda invites intellectual engagement but doesn’t leave the viewer unrewarded. This is one of the year’s best movies – the third time in the last decade I have made that statement about one of the director’s productions.

Even though it is rather obviously trading on a familiar and beloved brand, Wonka is nevertheless a fun and imaginative family film – certainly better than one might expect from a production crassly viewed by some as a “cash grab.”

This is one of the most effective depictions of Arendt’s “banality of evil” that I have seen and that’s in large part due to the unconventional tactics employed by Glazer in bringing this story to the screen.

American Fiction is the best kind of satire – one that is full-throated in its message, which it delivers with a cutting edge, while simultaneously taking the time to develop the characters in a meaningful way.

Regardless of whether the future will bring another Miyazaki movie, The Boy and the Heron is a wonderful gift for everyone who expected The Wind Rises to be his swansong. It’s proof that, no matter how hard Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, and others try, there’s only one animator who finds magic in every release.

Poor Things offers an opportunity for cinematic discovery. It’s brave, unconventional, and unique and easily one of the year’s best.

Is Woo using this ultra-violent experience to make an anti-violence statement? Perhaps, but even if that’s the case, it doesn’t work. Whatever the director is trying to do with the movie, it makes it for one big lump of coal in the 2023 cinematic stocking.

Godzilla Minus One isn’t just a good Godzilla movie. It’s an excellent Godzilla movie – arguably among the best ever to grace the screen.

With its offbeat blend of warped humor, dramatic and horror elements, social commentary, and Talking Heads, Dream Scenario may not always be comfortable but it is undeniably provocative.

I’ll be the first to admit that not everything in Saltburn works and, during some of the cringe-inducing instances when it fails, it does so rather spectacularly. Yet Emerald Fennell’s film is just bonkers enough to be wildly entertaining and completely disturbing in equal parts.

Napoleon was without a doubt a complex and controversial character whose shadow loomed large over the first quarter of the 19th century. He deserves a better-focused, more passionate movie than the one Scott has provided.