James Berardinelli

Overall, I found the film to be somewhat disappointing – another instance of a streaming service pouring big screen dollars into a project of only middling quality.

A mixture of documentary and thriller, this is a compelling two-hour production.

This is a painfully bad movie that thinks it’s trying to be Jackie Chan-meets-John Wick and flies so far wide of the target that it might have been shot by a blind man.

Love Me isn’t bad in the sense that it is poorly assembled or incompetently shot. On a craft and technical level, it’s above average. But the narrative is incoherent and the philosophical meanderings lack depth and intelligence.

It’s definitely not a pure thought-piece: there is a body count and quite a bit of blood (although this is by no means a gore-fest). But it seeks to do more with familiar tropes than merely create an unimaginative story around them.

At best, Gibson’s direction could be considered pedestrian. He fails to generate much tension prior to the climax and the characters never do enough to engage the viewer. The protagonists are bland and the villain lacks charisma.

The obligatory jump-scares aren’t the best and the movie is at times frustratingly underlit, but those things don’t keep the suspense at bay. In the end, however, Wolf Man is a story of sacrifice and love.

Although a heist film with a high testosterone quotient might not be everyone’s favorite wintertime treat, it’s an effective antidote for all the highfalutin Oscar wannabes out there.

It features a great performance by Domingo but, in some ways the less showy contributions of the former real-life inmates represent the best Sing Sing has to offer. The movie is touching and uplifting in often unexpected ways.

Young is very good in her part, making Eva a strong, flawed character whose depth helps to counterbalance the shallowness of everyone else. On the whole, however, The Damned wasn’t able to achieve what I was hoping from it and, rather than being an overlooked gem, it’s instead simply “overlooked.”

For all its sparkling visuals, Mufasa is redundant. And that makes watching it (at least as an adult) deflating.

It doesn’t break any molds but expertly crafts familiar material into an end product that will likely appeal to a wide audience.

Gracey’s bracing style, which invites some interesting observations (such as whether sex scenes featuring Williams-as-a-chimp should be considered bestiality), gives the movie an edge that it never loses even after we have gotten used to the substitution.

Anderson’s performance is the selling point but one can rightly question whether it’s enough to bolster the malnourished narrative.

A Complete Unknown isn’t shallow but the screenplay makes no attempt to psychoanalyze its subject. If there’s something to be learned, it’s how uncomfortable it could be to enter this man’s orbit. His music is iconic and speaks to many but, from the first scene to the last, he remains A Complete Unknown.

With its striking images, pervasive atmosphere, and incessant sense of dread, Nosferatu leaves an impression that proves hard to shake.

It rewards patience not only in the way it crafts its central character but develops the era in which it transpires.

Babygirl is perhaps not as gloriously, guiltily entertaining as some of the films Reijn used as models but it offers its own pleasures.

Instead of being truly awful, it’s simply mediocre, although one could argue that’s the last word a comic book movie wants to have applied to it.

Nickel Boys has a lot to recommend it, but there’s a sense that the experience could have been more devastating had the filmmakers simply let it play out rather than using it as an opportunity for directorial flourishes and experimentation.

Although visually more impressive than even Bakshi’s blend of traditional animation and rotoscoping, The War of the Rohirrim suffers from some stylistic hiccups and the straightforward storyline limits the “epic-ness” of the production. Still, as a stand-alone adventure story, this is an engaging episode and a solid addition to a still-limited cinematic universe.

With September 5, Fehlbaum has crafted one of 2024’s most unlikely thrillers. It’s also one of the best movies to reach screens in a year when genuine tension has been too often absent from films in which it should have been a key ingredient.

Although there are a few amusing instances when the film goes over-the-top with gore, those don’t save what’s ultimately a bad zombie apocalypse film with the undead replaced by robots.

The end result, however, whether pruned during the scripting stage or in the editing room, is a taut and compelling piece of cinema whose release in the wake of the 2024 election may have some viewers pondering Winston Churchill’s 1948 warning: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

At its best, Nightbitch offers a deeply honest, emotionally unsettling portrait of the darker side of parenting. Unfortunately, those moments are counterbalanced by a metaphorical story element that devolves into an exercise in campiness so tonally at variance with the core story as to create a dissonance many viewers won’t be able to overcome.

Rather than taking any sort of bold step forward, Moana 2 is more of the same. Although that can be seen as a positive, it feels a little disappointing that this is the best Disney was able to craft after an eight-year wait.

Although Gladiator II is an engaging diversion, it never feels like the epic one expects nor does it truly escape the shadow cast by the earlier chapter.

The movie drags at times, evidence that the too-generous 160-minute running time adversely affects pacing without resulting in a better-defined, deeper storyline.