Johnny Oleksinski

While the off-kilter film is a fine showcase for the personalities of two of our best emerging comedic stars, Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”) and Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”), the humor falls short of being very funny.

Finally, on the series’ supposedly last outing, one of its films lives up to the ever-deepening talent of its leading man. Equalizer 3 adds nothing new to the thriller genre, true, but it wisely acknowledges what’s worked well before.

Directed by Guy Nattiv, the sluggish film caves to the worst tendencies of forgettable biopics. Mirren is ensconced in prosthetics and a gray wig in hopes that a lookalike transformation can distract from bad writing and a total lack of insight.

Most of DC Comics’ dreadful movies deserve to be violently squished, but not Blue Beetle, a refreshingly spry new film featuring the lesser-loved, bug-shaped superhero who’s been crawling around in some form since 1939.

As always, Dracula sucks blood. But his latest movie simply sucks.

The fight scenes are remarkably exhilarating and spontaneous for being, well, animated. And all of the jokes — written by Rowe, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, among others — are truly very funny and witty while still making sense for this vision of the five boroughs. They’re spoken by a genuine, young cast, who sound like they’re having a party after school instead of the usual stiff, one-day-in-the-studio delivery.

Waffling Disney can’t decide if it wants this thing to be a quirky and fun but unsettling movie like “Beetlejuice,” with some real guts and creativity, or another schlocky ad for a Disney World FastPass. At times Simien’s film is surprisingly dark and emotionally honest, while at others it’s kitschier than “The Country Bear Jamboree.”

Director Christopher Nolan’s seismic Oppenheimer is that rarest of things: a sophisticated and bracing movie that’s made for adults and makes nobody say, “I’ll wait till it’s on streaming.”

The packaging of “Barbie” is a lot more fun than the tedious toy inside the box.

The will to live is missing from Netflix’s not-quite-sequel Bird Box Barcelona, and so is our will to watch.

Seven movies and 26 years on, Ethan Hunt’s mission is more satisfying than ever.

Like in "Crystal Skull,” director James Mangold’s movie aims to merge Indy’s earthy supernatural framework with science fiction, to mixed results. The love-it-or-loathe-it ending is a real doozy.

A solidly entertaining if predictable time-travel film that boasts something most DC movies sorely lack: a strong lead performance.

The love story is nice, but Ember and Wade’s relationship also goes from zero to 60 awfully fast. There have been many a romance told inside of two hours, but these guys’ instant gushiness is awkward and doesn’t ring true — even for CGI blobs.

The seventh movie in the franchise, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, is a predictable return to rock-em-sock-em stupidity with nothing to add except Michelle Yeoh as a talking aluminum falcon.

Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson and writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham web-swing to such high heights by treating Miles Morales, our Spidey, as a complicated and hormonal New York teen who love-hates his parents and not just another cog in a franchise.

Really, though, it is just another tiresome and impenetrably brooding Gerard Butler movie in which no event seems to matter any more than the next one — and grimaces are mistaken for drama.

Despite real actors, CGI and brand-new material, “Mermaid” is the studio’s latest flesh-and-blood cash grab that’s more lifeless than far better two-dimensional painted drawings.

Miraculously, this clunker is worse than the original in every respect, but zero is as low as we can go. Like the original, “Spring Awakening” easily ranks among the worst movies of the year.

Don’t expect a single novel element here — everything is recycled from the junkyard.

It’s a “Dumb and Glummer” of a sequel that confuses the worst punchlines ever for Prosecco fizz, when the groaner jokes go down like lukewarm vodka.

Although lacking the gravitas and moral conundrums of Facebook-centric “The Social Network,” Johnson’s dweebish film turns every one of these tech breakthroughs into a stirring victory worthy of “We Are The Champions.”

The utopia-via-laboratory aspects of “Vol. 3” resemble “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” — only it’s the Wrath of Gunn. This chilling paperweight clocks in at 2 hours and 30 minutes, making it the fourth longest Marvel film so far. And it’s wildly self-indulgent.

The gory-as-hell movie is as campy and fun as any chapter in producer Sam Raimi’s four-decade-old horror series. But trapping kids in an apartment — as opposed to college-age friends in a cabin — raises the stakes and brings on legitimate scares. And some hearty laughs, too.

The duo’s journey is gripping, but long stretches elsewhere in the film drag and it feels much longer than two hours.

Crowe — knowingly, I think — clowns around from start to finish. Even if the horror doesn’t have you screaming, his Italian accent will.

Cage is amusing though, and exemplifies the old stage wisdom “if you’re having fun, they’re having fun.” However, that’s the biggest problem for Renfield: Whenever Cage leaves the frame, which is often, we immediately stop having fun — as if Dracula commanded us to.

For all its detailed worlds, like the Mushroom Kingdom and Jungle Kingdom, the Nintendo film is just another soulless ploy to sell us merchandise that doesn’t bother to disguise its creativity-starved greed. Mostly the movie comes off like a video game we’re unable to play.

Be you a fan of basketball or basket weaving, Air will snugly fit the tastes of just about anybody.

Netflix has padded its catalog of cinematic background noise some more with Murder Mystery 2, the instantly forgettable sequel to its rancid whodunit comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler as married crime solvers.

Honor Among Thieves is a useful reminder of something that’s been forgotten in the age of dense film universes and ultra-violent action films: Light-hearted adventure movies like “The Princess Bride” remain the perfect vehicle for humor, romance, fights and special effects. When done properly, as Dungeons & Dragons is, they give audiences a full-bodied experience that’s hard not to like.

Four tremendous films and nine years into the adrenaline-fueled, Reeves-led action series, director Chad Stahelski has yet to let his franchise noticeably dip in quality.

With sub-par material, Levi pretending to be a kid and naively shouting and pouting has turned grating.

That’s the worst thing about these new Scream films — they couldn’t spook a kitten. They’re much more concerned with so-so jokes and overly geeky observations about the horror genre. Yes, Scream always commented on other scary movies, but never so obnoxiously and repetitively as now.

Lazily bopping around to exotic locales in France, Turkey and Qatar, it’s a generic collage of mega-yachts, luxe hotels, fancy parties, disguised identities and tame fights that add up to a big nothing.

Brilliant star Michael B. Jordan does double-duty in “III,” returning to play Adonis Creed and directing a film for the first time — the man is a champ at both athletics and aesthetics.

Impressively, however, director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.

There are some surprisingly attractive shots in director Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s low-budget film — honey drips from Winnie’s mouth in a sadistic “Silence of the Lambs” way — and the acting is committed rather than arch (even if the dialogue is lousy-to-inaudible). Yet it is impossible to recommend to the average horror fan in search of a good movie.

Sorry to Raid on your parade, “Ant-Man” fans, but the third chapter is a pile of dirt.

Donna Summer’s disco classic “Last Dance” does a good job of summing up Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Magic Mike’s Last Dance: When it’s bad it’s so, so bad.

80 for Brady would be close to worthless were it not for the prodigious talents and chemistry of its marvelous cast.

Knock at the Cabin, the “Sixth Sense” director’s latest anvil, is less “Old” and more Old Testament. No fun here! Yeah, there’s much more competent filmmaking and acting on display, however it’s all wasted on a strained and ponderous story with stratospheric delusions of grandeur.

A movie needs more than a smart idea and an impressively visualized concept of the future to run smoothly. Two-thirds of the way through, “The Pod Generation’s” battery is already at 1%.

The well-known story beats are also given renewed vitality by the young actors, whom director Christopher Zalla expertly steers away from being typical overemoting movie kids.

This comedy soars squarely on small moments and big jokes.

Director William Oldroyd’s mouthwatering drama, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, misleads and misdirects all the way to the shocker ending.

Even without the laughable new material, the addictive quality of the short story is lost in adaptation from the get-go.

Director Oliver Hermanus has as much restraint as his star (and for a modestly sized movie, impressively manages a visually believable 1950s Britain), and the viewer never feels emotionally manipulated.

I wanna feel the HEAT … but I don’t. On the contrary, the animatronic new Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” left me shivering from a gust of arctic air as it so clinically and lazily examines the tragic life of the famous singer.

A useful aspect of watching the movie on streaming rather than onstage is you can turn on the subtitles to catch all of Minchin’s clever lyrics. Many of the quirky phrases, coming fast and furious, were muffled on Broadway and the score improved when I listened to the album later.

Yes, it’s your typical Macguffin, with everybody chasing down a trinket, but a fairly creative one with a lot of good jokes. The comic-book-style action sequences also set co-directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s movie apart from the litter. The No. 1 reason to watch, though, is Banderas’ top-notch voice performance. If only more A-listers treated their animated film roles as more than a pet project.

The movie is a good 40 minutes too long and momentum ceases to build a while before it finally ends. Still, when the director’s party is raging, you’ll wish you had an invite.

Spending more than a decade pining for Pandora was worth it. Cameron has delivered the grandest movie since, well, “Avatar,” and with an over-three-hour runtime that never sags. What better way for struggling cinemas to regain their footing than with a gargantuan film that so celebrates the glory of the big screen?

As he did so ingeniously with “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the Spanish Civil War, del Toro explores fantasy, myth and childhood in a time of oppressive fascism; the specks of light that escape the darkness.

Emancipation, which is an otherwise well-tread period drama about the horrors of slavery, features more of Smith’s rich emotionality and laser-focused intensity that he’s uncovered late in his career and that won him the Oscar for last year’s “King Richard.”

Bones and All is a surprisingly effective and affecting cannibal love story.

A sweet, science-fiction family film with a loud environmentalist message (speaking of “Avatar”) that’s good fun. It’s also nicely self-contained.

One sequence is amusing: a number called “Fairytale Life (After the Spell)” in which panini grills and espresso machines sing along like they live in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. You struggle to care about the rest.

Directed by Maria Schrader, the film that’s part of one of the most reliably galvanizing genres — newspaper reporters doggedly chasing down a tough story — is a disappointing, sleepy metronome with made-for-TV diminutiveness.