Jenny Nulf

Wish doesn’t evoke swelling feelings of nostalgia, but rather a longing for the pristine storytelling of the studio’s past.

In the end, Saltburn doesn’t have a lot to add to the conversation Fennell keeps wanting to have about the power of white men in this world. It’s a surface-level critique of the upper class and a style-over-substance poke at the out-of-touch aristocrats and the bitter have-nots.

The heart is in the right place for Your Lucky Day, but the execution is a little loose. Brown puts a lot of tenderness in his film, particularly with the film’s central couple, but there’s not enough friction and surprise to create a tight holiday-set thriller.

It all seems as if it was a riot to film, but the finished product is just a few bombastic jokes stitched together to create a mid riff.

The Nun II might be a slight step up from the slog that was The Nun, but that’s a low bar to creep up from.

Golda isn’t a failure of skill, but one of vision. Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin deliver a biopic that feels like a complete misfire. Stale and without any sense of self, Golda unfortunately does nothing for Israel’s only female prime minister.

Similar to Wan’s The Conjuring universe, Insidious has long overstayed its welcome, reaching the point where its spark has quelled and there’s nothing interesting buried within these characters anymore. We have reached the end of the Further.

Szifron and his co-writer Jonathan Wakeham play it too safe, creating an aggressively stale procedural that doesn’t pack the gut punch it wants to deliver.

Fraser often brings a warmth to Charlie that the film desperately needs, but his positivity is only an ember in a fire dying in the pouring rain.

Emotional investment is what makes any film work, and Good Night Oppy’s main issue is that it’s too focused on accurately portraying the history of the project over bringing together the people who poured their lives into making it a success.

Often too slick and too posh for its own good, there’s nothing really enjoyable about The Invitation. It’s technically fine, but fine is not want you want from your lusty vampire genre. There’s no glitz or glamour to set it apart from the pack, and that’s ultimately its demise.

Where Mad Max: Fury Road was lean, Three Thousand Years of Longing feels like a rough draft that should have stayed in a dusty bin somewhere in the middle of a tourist shop.

What begins as a punchy, feminine-biting satire becomes fuzzy after the first act. It’s an admirable effort, but an overstuffed, demanding one as well.

Edgar-Jones’ easygoing allure isn’t enough to bind Where the Crawdads Sing together, though, leaving the film a generic, dull outing.

There are so many interesting components of Umma that never click, wasting a completely original idea on banality.

The Foo Fighters are a rare band that has maintained a roughly decent amount of relevancy decades after rock ruled the music industry. Their self-aware horror-comedy is a sweet ode to their ride, but where Medicine at Midnight brought them a nice wave of good praise, Studio 666 feels like a dud – a horror movie with no good hooks and a rock & roll film that lacks the bombastic energy that’s ever present at the band’s live shows.

Despite Paxton’s high ambitions to serve up be the next great elevated horror movie, there’s not enough meat on its bones to ultimately feel satisfying when the final holy image is served.

Based on the folky country song “Just Like Old Times” by Todd Snider, the film feels like a throwback to the heyday of Austin: eclectic acoustic guitars, dingy pool halls, dive bars with fountains of whiskey, neon signs, and lots and lot of late-night tacos.

Showalter’s film never finds the right tone, leaving its audience with pleasantness in favor of sharp wit.

Chon’s ambitions are astonishing, but his bloated script needed an edit or two. It’s a film written with big moments for big performances in mind, which is too painfully obvious as the film treads on.

The camp in Malignant is fun, but if only the camp was all the film needed to be as monumental as Wan’s previous horror entries.

The casting is the only part of the movie that feels genuine, with Hudson channeling the Dreamgirls emotive performance that earned her an early career Oscar.

Enemies of the State fumbles along like a bad thriller, with shocking turns that land with a dull thud.

Summertime’s boisterous enthusiasm sometimes finds an endearing spark, but it never erupts like the fireworks that scatter across the L.A. skyline at the film’s end. It’s a mess and it’s exhausting, with its heart always on the brink of exploding from its exhilarating optimistic nature.

It’s disappointing to stop rooting for a blockbuster behemoth horror series, but The Conjuring movies’ quality and talon-tight hold has rapidly deflated over time.

Inspiring true story? Perhaps not, but certainly a story that’s genuine enough to earn a few smiles.

Long Weekend had all the tools to make a wistful, escapist romance that explores and overcomes some of the stigmas of mental health, but it flatlines.

As a subversion to rape revenge films, it’s only halfway there.