Johnny Oleksinski

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.

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.

When a movie wades into the vast pool of World War II and Holocaust titles, the viewer expects a splash. One Life is, at best, a spritz. It delivers a lot of what we’ve already seen before, but on a less-than-cinematic scale. Yet spending some time with Hopkins and exploring a speck of light in one of the world’s darkest chapters is just satisfying enough.

Having written this script for themselves, Sharp and Jackson are a scream. Imagine if a vodka Redbull transformed into two human beings — that’s who they are.

In attempting to dramatize their harrowing story in the film Thirteen Lives...the director doesn’t make quick, from-the-gut decisions the way that the intrepid team did. Instead, he takes a chill ride on the Lazy River.

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

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.

Pretty far-fetched even for a franchise about rare genetic mutations that allow people to read minds and shoot lasers with their eyes. It’s not bad, just crazy.

Blunt and Dornan’s chemistry eclipses anything the hunky actor ever managed with Dakota Johnson in “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Even after nearly three hours of sitting, I didn’t feel as though I’d gotten to know the characters very well.

Despite the lacking wrap-up, “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is, like most of the “Hunger Games” films, a well-made dystopian yarn that’s better acted than it needs to be.

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.

It Ends With Us is, despite its failings and indulgences, a highly emotional and absorbing couple of hours.

Things Heard & Seen is an adequate haunted-house film, to be sure, but it will certainly give you pause about that three-bedroom, three-bath listing in Kingston.

Heller’s enjoyable film is not the cringe fest you walk in expecting it to be, even if the premise will be a hairy leap for some moviegoers.

Off-screen, Oyelowo moves the camera elegantly, and he creates a few cool moments in the woods.

What’s strangest about this almost-comedy, though, isn’t its mish-mash of unlikely genres, but the earnest approach to them. “Apocalypse” begins as a “High School Musical” look-alike with poppy group numbers in cafeterias and hallways. One song, “Hollywood Ending,” is a dead ringer for “Stick to the Status Quo.”

Does it tug the heartstrings? Absolutely. Is it funny? The funniest of the quartet, in fact thanks to a weird new character. But Pixar, like its former funder Apple, has conditioned audiences to expect more than a nice little movie. We want to be amazed — not subscribe to Apple TV+.

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

Writer-director Greg Jardin’s seductive — if occasionally difficult to follow — movie is a wicked spin on a familiar tale: a group of friends spending a dramatic drunken evening in a big, luxe house.

Although mostly routine, Pet Sematary is intermittently scary.

Lathan, who has had a long and fruitful career as an actress in TV shows like “The Affair,” does well in her first go as a director. She has just enough visual flair so as to not overwhelm the rich characters and vibrant place.

While the film is best for fans of the cloth, non-Catholics, too, will gain insight into one of the most prominent leaders in the world.

In short: Too Many Cooks plus too many minutes.

The Upside has a downside: We’ve seen it a million times before.

It’s an intimate film that moves at the deliberate, careful pace of an excavation and, in so doing, uncovers a few gems along the way.

Here’s some perfectly mindless couch viewing.

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.