Jesse Hassenger

It’s the kind of movie that could be charitably described as “educational”, though probably not as much as the magazine article that serves as its source material. At least we know Perry is true to history in one major way: today, as was the case back then, these women deserve better.

So, cross comedy off the list. As fantasy, The Christmas Chronicles Part II has moments that work as a live-action Rankin-Bass special, albeit one that’s designed to inexplicably maximize the number of times the actors have to say “Belsnickel.”

There’s something liberating about a comedy where all four central characters f--k up with such youthful bravado.

Though its title and general tone lament the stifling atmosphere of the years between childhood and full-fledged teenhood, the movie misses the animal hostility and physical awkwardness of genuine tweens.

It’s poised to become one of the biggest rom-coms of 1998. But barring the invention of time travel, The Rewrite remains tethered to the realities of film releasing in 2015, which means it will get most of its play as a VOD simulation of earlier hits.

This is a well-crafted, exciting movie, sometimes more impressive for maintaining those qualities in the face of an utterly unsurprising story.

As a babysitter, the movie’s not much different than a brief marathon of episodes. As a family bonding experience, it may qualify for adults as a mild form of psychological torture, presenting storylines that feel ready to wrap up at the 15-minute mark and then must continue on for another hour.

The runty little brother of "The Hunger Games" has gotten surprisingly proficient in that area of well-produced sci-fi junk where a lot of the dialogue consists of variations on, “Go, go, go!”

Despite the franchise being nearly old enough for a legacy sequel, there’s a light musicality to its various feats of showmanship that makes it feel like a scrappy upstart. So does the perpetual feeling that it might disappear in a puff of smoke.

Not enough happens in Song One for the movie to really qualify as unpredictable, but it deserves credit for a steadfast avoidance of melodrama in a story that practically begs for it.

It seems questionable whether this was really intended as a movie in the first place.

After so many smirky bloodfests, They Will Kill You scarcely needs believable human relationships to earn some goodwill. All it really needs is Beetz convincingly going through hell.

In its mad hurry, the movie denies itself its own genre pleasures—chiefly, the ways assembling a ragtag robotics team and an equally ragtag robot might add a little bit of Mission: Impossible or MacGyver dynamics into a sports-style narrative.

The quirkiest thing about it is how much of that time it spends accidentally calling attention to its own overwritten, under-thought weaknesses.

A Good Person winds up with the ambition of a novel, but little of the richness.

In its fusion of Edwards’ craft with characters who aren’t thunderously stupid or unlikable, this is the best Jurassic movie in ages – in part because it works so comfortably as an ooh/ahh/run/scream monster movie.

The movie’s mock-jaundiced attitude toward social media is itself satirical, and there’s a germ of a funny idea about how principled liberals can get entangled in pointless social media battles and infighting. But it’s eclipsed by an unavoidably moneyed perspective that presumes privileged people are inherently liberal, rather than attacking the hypocrisy of rich liberals in particular.

Snow White is really one of the better Disney remakes.

That’s always been a part of Ferrell’s work — his understanding of American mediocrity, and his delight in poking at its oblivious limitations. Eurovision both softens and expands his worldview, allowing him to indulge some small-town-dreamer pathos without getting into hokey Americana. If he’s playing the hits, he’s starting to interpret them with style.

Meet Cute has more on its mind than so many mid-2000s rom-coms, and sure looks a hell of a lot better, so it’s all the more crushing when so much of it turns out to be just as gratingly plastic.

Absent cleverness, Collet-Serra offers some comfort for weary eyes, like the flashes of silent black-and-white footage of the stars shot with Lily’s newfangled movie camera. At the risk of sounding like a critic from a way-old demographic, Jungle Cruise works best when it leans in this more old-fashioned direction.

Time Lapse provokes thought, but mostly in spite of itself.

It’s supposed to be evocative, but in many scenes the characters just look dim and overly backlit, to the point of obscuring the actors’ expressiveness. There might be another metaphor in there somewhere.

Ultimately, though, the character animation and sprightly vocal performances can’t quite wriggle out of whatever formulas and secondhand story wreckage Ruby Gillman grabs to assemble its stop-and-go plotting.