Josh Spiegel

The Croods: A New Age is going through the motions, accomplishing the basic level of work required in pulling off a computer-animated feature. It’s a strange way to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, even in a strange year like this.

This is a sweet, friendly, low-key affair that often feels less like a story and more like a home movie Linklater collected to share with his grandkids.

Vivo is plenty colorful, with a bright pastel palette both when the film’s action takes place in Cuba and in Florida, though the backgrounds are far less detailed than would be ideal. It’s good, but not good enough. The same is true of the story, and of the songs.

where Shaun the Sheep Movie felt comedically risky and goofy and brilliant, Farmageddon is a bit dated on arrival, making the kinds of jokes that would have felt a bit old hat a decade ago, let alone now. It’s a good thing this movie exists, even if it’s not quite up to snuff.

Onward is a decent, well-paced, well-animated, moderately enjoyable film. It’s got a good message, an emotional third act, and some pleasantly surprising jokes. Onward is…OK. The problem with Onward is that Pixar’s original films are incredible. OK is, simply, just not good enough.

Willem Dafoe isn’t delivering one of his all-time performances, but he’s also not phoning it in. And these are, truly, good dogs. Togo is content in showing you those good dogs, and not much else. It’s a decent enough way to spend two hours, but only just.

Deep Water has its pleasures, some of which are of the inexplicably daffy variety . . . And when you compare Deep Water to ... well, just about every other movie available right now, either in theaters or streaming, it really does feel like a singular sensation.

Where previous wartime productions that Hanks helped spearhead had the grit, suspense, and complex characterization that defines great modern drama, Greyhound is a stripped-down touring production with an unexpectedly recognizable lead. It’s a serviceable way to spend 90 minutes, but serviceable isn’t saying much.

A Haunting in Venice does try to spice things up, but all the skewed angles in the world can't hide the fact that this mystery is half as eerie as it wants to be, and roughly as entertaining.

Flora & Ulysses is, at its core, a very nice and sweet film. It’s low-key, but frankly, that’s fine. Sometimes, the stakes in life don’t have to get much higher than whether or not two struggling adults can find each other again, and whether or not a child can traverse a world without a strong family unit.

Stargirl is a slight, but cute teen dramedy.

Giving a movie marks for not being as bad as possible is the same as giving someone a participation award. Could this have been worse? Of course, which also means it could have been a hell of a lot better. Maybe with a different director. Maybe with faster pacing.

Yes, it could’ve been worse. But as daring as this film’s costumes are, and as fun as Stone and Thompson (and Hauser and Fry, to be fair) can be, it can’t help but give into its lazier instincts.

It's now hard to imagine that "Unforgiven" felt very much like Eastwood closing the book on his Western era. Cry Macho is more of a slow-paced postscript to that book, but a surprisingly well-worn and welcome postscript nonetheless.

As hard as the cast and Taika Waititi try, though, it just doesn't work. "Thor: Ragnarok" felt effortless. "Thor: Love and Thunder" is working very hard, and not getting a lot to show for it.

This is neither a uniquely marvelous film nor a teeth-gnashing pain. It’s OK in the moment, and it evaporates as soon as the end credits roll.

On its own, DC League of Super-Pets is a tolerable, painless, sometimes mildly clever summertime experience, but comparing it to other DC animated fare only highlights its more meager aims.

The title says it all: Safety hits recognizable beats and never really challenges its setup, making for a maddeningly, mystifyingly safe crowd-pleaser.

A movie like Elf, as its opening credits suggest, seemingly sprung to life out of a children's book. Spirited evokes the sense that it sprung to life out of a series of focus-group sessions among corporate executives.

While Clouds absolutely has its heart in the right place, that heart doesn’t translate into a similarly winning story.

Beast is no great shakes, but it's also a rare enough summer movie, in that it knows its limits, it delivers on its specific promises, and it doesn't belabor the point.

Compared to a lot of other Adam Sandler movies, Hubie Halloween is watchable without being actually very good.

Kendrick and Timberlake are…fine, as they were in the first film. What holds Trolls World Tour back is what holds back so many films from DreamWorks Animation: they thrive on pop-culture references, loud humor, and little else.

Jungle Cruise is, on the whole, not quite as enjoyable as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and of course nowhere near as good as the Indiana Jones franchise or even The Mummy, partly because it is entirely unable to shake loose of those reference points. But it’s still a solid summer action film, or at least a solid enough entry for this specific summer

George Clooney and Julia Roberts remain two of the best, most charismatic movie stars to ever grace the silver screen, and we're fortunate to have cinematic proof of their heat and chemistry. Ticket to Paradise just isn't that proof. It's OK. But it should've been better.

Considering the majority of modern mainstream fare, we can look at "Bullet Train" as a mild win, a presumably high-budgeted action film that boasts no superheroes, no extended universes, nothing like that. But though this film clears that low bar, Bullet Train is only ever mildly fun, while reminding you of movies that are often a whole lot better.

Spirit Untamed is inoffensive, which both makes it far more tolerable than most other DreamWorks Animation titles and also not terribly good in and of itself.

Most of what Disney+ has released among its live-action fare is the kind of mid-budget movie that served as the Disney studio’s bread and butter in the 1990s. Godmothered, even with its connection to the Disney fairy-tale universe, is very much in line with those watchable, wholly unremarkable films. It helps that Jillian Bell and Isla Fisher do their best in predictable roles, but the roles being so predictable is hard to look past.