Jesse Hassenger

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.

While it’s more technically elaborate treatment than the characters have ever received, it’s also gentler and more eye-pleasing than any of Blue Sky’s other features. It‘s also a neat extension of Schulz’s style—though, granted, no one needs to see Pig-Pen’s permanent cloud of filth rendered more vividly.

Smile 2 ultimately seems struck dumb by its own possibilities, and gets stuck franchising hopelessness.

Even the movie’s best moments – and much of Blink Twice is entertaining through those moments – have the uncomfortable feeling of satire designed from a moneyed remove.

It’s hard to hear what All Is By My Side is saying about anything, given how many scenes feature vaguely druggy overlapping dialogue, part of a fussy sound design that’s paired with intentionally choppy editing.

Honor Society never gets a handle on its comedic bona fides, but its faux-irreverent tone does allow for a satisfying con-style turn as Honor struggles to keep her new maybe-fake friends under her control.

Most of the movie’s star power has been harnessed without much obvious reason, right down to the movie’s seeming origins as a delivery system for the Elton John catalog.

The Phenom is merely well-acted and well-made, rather than heart-stopping. There are worse fates for a sports movie, to be sure.

By the end, the movie feels less like a canny reflection of true-crime fascination than a weak imitation of it — screen life, reduced to mere pixels.

Rogen and Goldberg start with spoofery and work their way into something bolder and stranger; it’s as if playing in the Pixar sandbox, or a reasonable approximation thereof, can’t help but inspire creativity.

The third release from Studio Ponoc, a Japanese animation studio formed by former Studio Ghibli staffers, The Imaginary is a little twinklier and more straightforward than its Ghibli cousins, with some dreamscapes that look suspiciously Lisa Frank-y. But it has more legitimate imagination than the sweaty whimsy of IF.

Director Declan Lowney does an admirable job making a confined film look cinematic without overblowing it into action-comedy mode.

Ultimately, Creed II feels a little muffled by its workmanlike touches, especially when it gets in the ring. Just as Rocky was too low-key and charming to spawn a fully worthy successor for several decades, Creed so elevates its franchise roots that even a pretty good sequel can’t land with the same impact. Then again, a 2018 movie called Creed II expanding on Rocky IV to become one of the better Rocky movies may be another minor miracle on its own.

Hancock is not the ideal fit for the queasy mix of fascination, sympathy, and discomfort that Siegel brought to movies like The Wrestler and Big Fan. The Founder is drier than either of those movies, which means it’s less funny but also has even less potential for sentiment.

Thematic muddles would matter less if Bumblebee delivered more as an action movie, but despite some neat car-chase complications, this series remains stubbornly averse to shaping its action barrages into satisfying set pieces.

When Megan Leavey touches upon the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder in both humans and animals, it looks capable of bringing something novel to the human-and-dog formula. Most of the time, it’s a rote biography of someone a dog really liked.

This is a lot of plot for a movie that endeavors primarily to entertain children, though the excess is more likely to give adults a headache.

In taking care to depict as much disappointment and frustration as heedless creative joy, the movie shunts some of Dandelion’s breakthroughs off-screen. It ends with a triumph that almost seems unaware of the degree to which Dandelion’s story hasn’t quite figured itself out.

It’s a star vehicle for Tatum and Dunst that can’t put all of its faith in the healing power of charisma and chemistry.

Even as it endeavors to ultimately subvert a few Archie Comics tropes and deepen a few of its initial teen-movie stereotypes, The Archies feels reluctant to instigate lasting change in its characters, like a TV series preparing for a long run. Here’s the thing, though: I’d happily spend another two and a half hours with The Archies, so long as it kept the music going.

What Hill hasn’t yet mastered, despite considerable skill as a first-time filmmaker, is how to impose a narrative more quietly, especially in finding the right ending. He also doesn’t seem to fully trust his sense of humor.

This breezy approach has its limits; Marshall isn’t so different from a well-made TV movie. But it plays well on the big screen anyway, and there’s some relevance in the way it depicts competing forms of bigotry—racism alongside anti-Semitism and expectations about female sexuality.

The idea that movies can easily lose 10 or 15 minutes of running time to curry favor with impatient audiences is often patently absurd, yet nearly every single scene in Scare Me feels some degree of overlong.

It’s like a TV pilot poorly dressed up as a character study.

Most of the movie is colorfully antic; another fearsome villain is a dead fish voiced by Ricky Gervais (too easy), and at one point a bunch of buildings come to life and rampage like meta-kaiju. There is, however, surprisingly psychological depth afforded to Petey’s clone, Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins).

The movie falls short of delivering a memorable experience of its own. Outside of confirming its stars’ presence, A United Kingdom is more valuable as history than filmmaking.

Ultimately, Wood doesn’t have much time to treat the romance between Leah and Blue with any more depth than the characters. It’s a shame. Her final shot would have real power in a richer, more perceptive film.

Dora And The Lost City Of Gold, like that Nancy Drew movie, isn’t really for teenagers, any more than High School Musical is; it’s for tweenage-and-younger kids who look toward the high-school horizon with a combination of aspirational awe and chilling fear.