Josh Spiegel

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

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.

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.

If there is anything new to this film, it's the sense that the series is self-aware enough to understand that it's time to wrap up.

Queenpins boasts a cast of talented ringers, who elevate the muddled material far more than it deserves, without actually resulting in an all-around good movie.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Shotgun Wedding could've worked, even with the script as is, if the cast was a little sharper, a little less prone to yelling half of their dialogue, and a little more willing to get weirder and more unexpected. But only one of the ensemble got that memo.

The 355 is the cinematic equivalent of Hydrox. It's a bland and generic retread of something that's well-liked, if not beloved, something that feels vaguely like the real thing.

It fails to be either funny or dramatic.

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.

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.

Blitz Bazawule and a cast of talented performers do their best, but the end result just doesn't gel.

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.

Maybe if there wound up being a second animated film featuring Scooby and Shaggy, it might actually tell a story where they solve a supernatural mystery with their friends in the Mystery Machine. For now, all we have is this forgettable, lazy, pandering superhero film.

Thunder Force has too good of a core idea to be left so unexplored. Melissa McCarty can’t be stopped, but she continues to be content making films that leave her talent frustratingly untapped.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie brings together the many recognizable characters of the franchise, the musical flourishes, the colorful design, and even some replication of familiar gameplay, into a brisk 90-minute package that is as critic-proof as it is largely uninspiring.

Despite the mostly younger cast, Without Remorse is a bland throwback to the late 1980s and early 1990s, hearkening to an era of such simplistic notions of good and bad that its script could have been unearthed from a time capsule. Sollima’s direction is journeyman-like, which wouldn’t be a demerit if the film he was directing didn’t feel so lifeless.

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.