Johnny Oleksinski

No phrase terrifies me more than “for the fans,” because in the movies that tends to mean “awful and incomprehensible.” And so it does for “Mortal Kombat II,” an onscreen bucket of slop that people will give a pass to because losers cheer whenever a character, such as they are, is impaled or sliced in half.

The Devil Wears Prada 2, the sequel to the 2006 comedy that’s not at all about Anna Wintour, is a good time, even if the high-pressure world of Vogue, er, Runway magazine is no longer the epitome of New York luxury and glamour it was back in the aughts.

The Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” had plenty of issues, but the electricity of the re-creation of the Live Aid concert was not one of them. While “Michael” shares the same producer as the Freddie Mercury flick — and a nearly identical performance from Mike Myers as a jokey music exec — it boasts none of the nostalgic thrills.

Do these stylistic and narrative departures constitute a smart shake-up of the old mummy formula, as Cronin’s movie promises to do? Eh, not really. The director mostly reshapes what a mummy actually is to suit his lackluster whims.

There is nothing to like or admire in this groaner galaxy. The movie has the unconfident, powder-sugar tone of a Disney direct-to-video release, like “The Lion King 1½,” paired with the overeager advertising of an internet pop-up.

The Drama, for all its heat, is not perfect. I wasn’t won over by its climactic series of calamities that fall in rapid succession like dominoes at the end. However, most movies are completely forgotten by the time the credits roll. This one, like it or not, lingers for days. It’ll likely wind up one of the most controversial movies of the year.

During a moment in which movies tend to be either cynically corporate or bleaker than a black hole, “Project Hail Mary” dares to be about that once-great driver of drama: friendship.

Leave her at the altar! She is “The Bride!,” one of the absolute worst movies I have had the displeasure of watching in this job.

Director Daniel Chong’s original movie is terribly funny, and often in an unfamiliar, warped way for the cerebral and mushy studio.

Noooo! Anything but another slapdash horror film with a lazy plot that hinges on artificial intelligence!

Updates are fine for some stories. Not this one, though. Moving the action to a contemporary urban setting is akin to fitting a fairy with cement boots.

This is a sexy, funny, ravishing and dark revision that keeps Heathcliff’s frightening obsessiveness, emotional toxicity and sadism intact while ably contorting the tale into a decadent, modern, yet still distinctly gothic, romance.

Only an actress as caution-to-the-wind as Colman could connect so profoundly with a patio chair. Skarsgard’s sensitivity also helps.

Wladyka keeps the film lively with a sparkler aesthetic and a flair for musical storytelling.

Familiar though it is, the skillfully made movie finds vigor in the been-there-done-that.

Issues millions of people face everyday are addressed cleverly and poignantly, and never without a hint of humor. Wilde isn’t really interested in sentimentality, either, and her movie hits harder for it.

Carousel is one of those tundra, dimly lit living-room movies that snobs defend as closer to “real life.”

In short: Too Many Cooks plus too many minutes.

If you like Charli xcx’s songs and find her to be a unique and uncompromising presence in the often airbrushed world of pop, you’ll appreciate moments of “The Moment.” But that’s it. This is not a fully formed movie. At best, it’s a moderately intriguing pitch.

It’s got something for everybody — toplessness, threesomes, dildos, ball gags, S&M and, of course, art-world satire.

Fiennes is magnificent, and a scene involving him and Iron Maiden’s song “Number of the Beast” will go down as one of the most buzzed-about sequences of 2026. Were it written for a grisly horror movie, Alex Garland’s climax would fit snuggly into a Shakespearean comedy.

The inferior second part, short but not nearly short enough, proves just how ill-prepared its creators were for the original’s success.

This movie’s got as many cliches as Madison’s got cheese curds. But script aside, Jackman and Hudson onstage are effervescent and, speaking as someone who’s never mounted a motorcycle, the songs rock.

Whenever there’s a lull here, a big laugh soon comes along with the force of a boa constrictor that conceals the flaws.

Truly every line of this gussied-up pile of trash is worthy of a yelled-out crowd response. It’s one schlocky horror picture show.

No. 3, with a reported price tag of more than $400 million, is the most visually glorious of the trio, adding fresh and imaginative beings and environments that further flesh out one of the all-time great fantasy locales.

In the pantheon of James L. Brooks films, “Ella McCay” is far from as good as it gets.

It’s cinematic Mountain Dew. You’ll be wired for the entire 2½ hours.

What’s best and most consistent about “2” is how flippin’ funny it is.

It’s Olsen’s emotional frailty that helps pump up a bad movie into a mediocre one.

Rental Family is a heartwarming jewel of a movie that is a dazzling showcase of Japan’s urban and natural beauty, instead of the usual depiction of hordes of tourists surrounded by skyscrapers and lit by LEDs.

Darker and grimmer Act 2, though, by a hair, makes a meatier movie because characters aren’t as silly — the first flick was practically a pageant — and they are actually propelling toward a satisfying conclusion.

Where is Wright’s mastery of tone and zany-but-unnerving quick-cut style? It’s been replaced by a cacophony of assembly-line sci-fi noise in a blah “Blade Runner” that, depending on the scene, is either stupidly serious or seriously stupid.

Dynamite actually — sometimes cheesily — is a lot like 1990s and aughts disaster flicks, except there is not much suspense as to whether or not the nuclear bomb will land, even though Bigelow casually tries to create some.

As for Broadway buffs and lovers of old New York, the witty, hilarious and haunting movie starring a totally transformed Ethan Hawke as musical-theater lyricist Lorenz Hart will have them utterly bewitched.

Really, “Small Player” is a great movie until it abruptly isn’t.

Bugonia buzzes by, if sometimes nauseastingly, and is a huge improvement from Lanthimos’ episodic drivel last year.

Forty-three years later, “Tron: Ares” is groundbreaking for being the first “Tron” film with a discernible plot.

Ronan has a flair for visuals, no doubt about it. And I liked looking at them. The trouble is his slideshow of impressive landscapes and environments evokes nothing deeper and, actually, is a roadblock to character development and story momentum. Scenic detours.

Panahi is keenly aware of his limitations — both governmental and budgetary — and has crafted a taut, intimate and blood-pumping story around them. Talk about great art being born out of impossible circumstances.

For the most part, however, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is in conversation with where Springsteen’s mind and passions rest today, as evidenced by his memoir “Born to Run” and his introspective Broadway show — revisiting the mansion on the hill and returning to his father’s house.

Clooney draws you in, but upon arrival there’s an emptiness.

Centering around a stoic woman who elbowed her way to the top of her field in a world of men in tweed suits, only for it all to be put at risk, the plot has heavy shades of 2022’s “Tar,” which is a much better movie.

In the pantheon of films about magical cars, this one is not big, bold or beautiful.

With this visionary director — one of Hollywood’s best — it’s one winner after another.

What they’ve chopped up is a cacophony of half-baked characters and rushed ideas that leave you puzzled and unsatisfied. A better title would be “The Chore.”

For those who do not have a room in the house devoted to Elvis memorabilia, or care a lick about the guy, “EPiC” is still an energizing experience. To my mind, there’s nothing better than observing the greatest artists of all time do what they do best — unvarnished.

Nostalgia is a prime factor, yes, but the story is legitimately engrossing this time, however recycled it may be, rather than a lazy stack of trumpeted entrances and exits and half-witty asides that marred the 2019 and 2022 films.

It’s the darkest, scariest and undoubtedly finest acted of the entire detective series.

It’s Buckley who’s giving one of those rare turns that simply beggars belief. She swings back and forth from cast iron to porcelain. The actress is thunderous, playful, grounded and ethereal. She breaks your heart — not only when the worst befalls Agnes, but whenever she cracks a smile.

Del Toro has whipped up a monster that’s enjoyable enough to stare at, all right. And you’ve gotta admire his handiwork. What’s missing are what the Creature hungers for most of all — life and love.

Making mixed martial arts — described in the film as “the bloodiest and the goriest sport you’ve ever seen” — tame and lackluster is a challenge. But director Benny Safdie is up to the task.

What keeps “The Lost Bus” from going full PlayStation — or full Brosnan — is a pulsing performance from McConaughey as a flawed dad desperately trying to reach his ill son (played by McConaughey’s own offspring, Levi Alves McConaughey) while saving the sons and daughters of others.

The film is an often ugly character study of a hard life that only got worse the more famous Martin got.

In the end, what “Caught Stealing” has stolen is time and talent.

Colman and Cumberbatch’s appealing energy is always a pleasure — and clearly the draw here — but I didn’t enjoy spending my night with the sourpusses it’s wasted on.

It’s a violently annoying and annoyingly violent ensemble piece speckled with “look how wacky we are!” characters that are impossible to put up with; a copycat Coen Brothers yarn with the depth of a tortilla.

The experience is akin to being blindfolded and thrown into a trunk — except fun!

Lohan and Curtis are the main attractions, since “Freakier” functions mostly as a nostalgia trip for 30-something ticket-buyers who can now legally enjoy a margarita. But while massaging millennials, the movie also has a good time slinging mud at Gen Z.

Someway, somehow, it’s the funniest movie to hit theaters in a long time.

Without question, the follow-up isn’t as hilarious as the original. Who honestly expected it to be? And a good 20 minutes could have been trimmed. But “2” is warm and comfortable, features another untethered performance from Sandler that only he can give, and is less lazy than I feared.

“First Steps” marks a slight improvement from the preceding trilogy of terror. But Marvel still can’t nail what should be one of its premiere attractions.

I Smurf-ing loathed it.

It’s a lot better than the 1997 version, if equally as stupid.

For a change of pace, you leave the entertaining “Superman” not confused or clobbered, but feeling good.

The once-great franchise is hardly reborn from the amber this time. It’s slammed by an asteroid yet again.

With “M3GAN 2.0,” the filmmakers have employed a bold strategy: Take a $180-million formula, shred it and forget it.

The fact that Fiennes went right from playing a cardinal in Best Picture-nominated “Conclave” to a nearly-naked hermit with a hobby that would raise Hannibal Lecter’s brow makes me wish we could send the actor’s brain out to be analyzed by scientists.

Beyond the requisite lessons, there are some witty touches.

Is “F1” too long? Absolutely. But not once did I say, “Are we there yet?”

The transition from the DreamWorks CGI version from 2010, one of the best family flicks in years, to real human actors is thankfully smoother and not as off-putting as most of Disney’s recent, pitiful princess efforts.

Too bad “Ballerina” drops the ball. Despite being led by an actress who once took on the role of Marilyn Monroe, it’s a much less attractive movie — downright ugly sometimes.

Legends is the latest in a long line of terrible “Karate Kid” movies. A passing of the torch, such as it is, to the next inferior rip-off.

What was great fun before is mostly mopey and depressing now. A hunk, a hunk of burning IP.

Running in the footsteps of the last two entries directed by Christopher McQuarrie, “Fallout” and “Dead Reckoning,” No. 8 is another high-voltage, gargantuanly envisioned test of Cruise’s bodily limits. Only this franchise can make wincing fun.

The tragedy of Hutchins’ death overshadows anything that’s good about the film, sadly including her own grand cinematography.

A funny-but-tortured femme-fatale performance from Florence Pugh as Russian assassin Yelena Belova, brutal and tactile fights and a merciful lack of confusing backstory makes for the most enjoyable MCU entry in a while.

In combining the old genre tropes with a potent message — the eternal recipe for a great horror film — the ever-entertaining director again shows he has something forceful to say, be it with boxers, superheroes or blood-suckin’ vampires.

Mine all you like. You’ll never find any smarts in this cavern of stupidty.

The plot goes nowhere glacially. Underdeveloped side characters are so far to the side, they’re out of frame.

The timeless classic, a groundbreaking achievement for animation, has been turned into another pointless and awkward live-action automaton that vanishes from your mind the second it’s over.

The plot is a watered-down grab-bag of old, tired ideas.

It’s far from terrible and a pleasure to look at. But, perhaps inevitably, after such a raging success, Bong’s latest movie is a disappointment.

Nothing’s wrong with a few buckets of blood, but Perkins’ movie waters them down with its repetitious plot and weak attempts at humor. “The Monkey” strains to be a comedy as much as a horror film and effectively works as neither.

If you thought Marvel Studios was committed to getting back on track by making fewer movies of higher quality, wait till you see Captain America: Brave New World...The situation over there is so dire, they’ve brought back a plotline from “Eternals.” “Eternals”!

Ultimately “Mad About the Boy” is much like Bridget herself: endearing, silly, messy, wacky, kind. I like it… just as it is.

You’d be hard-pressed not to enjoy the jolly jaunt. Clumsy Paddington, as always, makes an adorable mess of things.

“Love Hurts” is only 83 minutes long. “Hurrah!,” you say before it starts. But the film feels endless because the story is such a chore to follow.

This film should be reliably filling as pizza for dinner. But the deliveryman is an hour late and has dropped the box.

Directed by James Griffiths, this is the sort of hilarious heart-warmer that only comes around once or twice a year to offer a blessed break from darkness, snobbery and streaming schlock. It’s so easy to love, even if love doesn’t come easy for its characters.

The overlong and too-steady movie tries to say so much — about the struggles of being gay in the ‘80s, gender identity, nontraditional relationship structures — that it all comes off as white noise. Albeit white noise that has a borderline oppressive desire to make us cry.

Writer-director Mary Bronstein’s absorbing psychological drama about a mother at her breaking point is two hours of mounting anxiety and nervousness.

It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen at Sundance.

Exploring pain in novel ways in film is a good thing. Next time, though, pick a different novel.

Dreamgirls director Bill Condon’s off-putting movie is a visual and narrative mess: polished where it should be gritty and ugly where it must be glamorous. Bland, almost always.

You’ll begin “Twinless” with basic expectations, and you’ll end it with your mouth agape. And then you’ll ask the most satisfying question there is after first encountering an exciting young filmmaker’s work: When’s the next one?

To say I was never bored wouldn’t be quite right. Rather, I was always transfixed.

What’s different from the previous entry is that humor here, despite a formulaic plot, is balanced with surprising dramatic heft.