Joshua Rivera

Ride or Die, the joys of Smith and Lawrence’s characters getting on each other’s nerves during improbably explosive shootouts is constantly derailed, as the script workshops or retcons every previous element from prior movies into the grand scheme of this one.

Hamaguchi slowly pivots away from dispassionate naturalism, building to an impressionistic, opaque finale.

Kingdom merely seems like an act of franchise maintenance, a reversal for a series of unusually thoughtful blockbusters. Every frame is a technical marvel. And every minute of it is probably better spent watching something else.

The movie represents months and months of sustained labor from hundreds of people, including many of the most talented and recognizable names in their field, in the service of a story that possesses no satirical edge, nor any human connection. It takes whatever pleasure that can be derived from a Pop-Tart, and chokes on it.

Godzilla x Kong (yes, it’s styled like that, like a streetwear collab) is beyond “good” or “bad” or “movies.” It’s an arena show, a pro wrestler shouting in the squared circle, thumping their chest and raising the jumbotron hype meter before doing their signature move.

It doesn’t fully cohere, but it sure is a party.

It’s merely pleasant, a nice diversion that mostly suffers from the strong association with a much better film.

In spite of its compactness and intimate focus, Oldroyd maintains enough ironic distance that the audience is never fully immersed in Eileen’s subjective viewpoint. In the way he lingers on details and nervous fidgets, the director invites the audience to speculate about what’s really going on with Eileen.

With Maestro, Bradley Cooper makes a metaphor of Bernstein through the lens of his tumultuous marriage. It’s less a portrait of a life than a depiction of the fulcrum creators pivot on, presented by a talented artist whose ambitions lie along similarly oppositional extremes.

Napoleon isn’t a movie about grand triumph, or about disastrous failure. It’s a story about masculine insecurity, and how it can reduce the world to violence.

Director Nia DaCosta, who previously helmed 2021’s Candyman remake, has inherited all the downsides of a project set in a shared universe, and few of the upsides. But the good stuff she has to work with? She makes it sing.

Flora and Son excels in its humane yet prickly depiction of Flora’s relationship with motherhood.

The Creator is a fully realized future in the service of a rote story and flat characters that only gesture in compelling directions; I’d rather not bother with that story at all.

The Expendables movies had one trick, and that trick has been played out. Director Scott Waugh has to resort to something else with Expend4bles: finally trying to turn one of these projects into a good action movie.

I admire Blue Beetle’s craft in portraying the rhythms of a day-to-day life I recognize, but I resent it for trapping that life in a snow globe, where it’s safe and removed from the lives of white folks who think of themselves as allies. In this movie, that life isn’t much more than a nice Latin corner of the DC Universe, a place to visit for good tacos while everyone waits to see what the next Superman movie looks like.

There are no surprises in The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Just about everything in the story plays out exactly how the average horror fan might assume it would, exactly how they know it will, because the movie begins with the end of the story, then does little to play up the dread that comes with that knowledge. And most of us, unfortunately, know too much about this story already.

Unfortunately, the film’s most compelling questions don’t ever get answered.

Sometimes, for a good time, all you need is a great actor and a story that seems like a real bad idea.

These films use movie magic to make real humans look like they’re actually doing outrageous things, rather than using them as faces meant to humanize a digital creation being put through its paces. This is why Dead Reckoning Part One makes for an incredible blockbuster experience.

It’s a bright, breezy film that is overwhelmed by corporate hagiography, a pat on the back for a bunch of movies that never really worked out.

The new White Men Can’t Jump will likely struggle to linger in anyone’s head the day after they watch it. Every character interaction is straightforward, every motivation and foible is stated out loud. Every joke is delivered for the camera, not the characters.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a Marvel film of unusual conviction, where every character beat is given the same weight, whether it’s the climactic battle against the villain, or perennial goofball Drax quietly explaining that someone hurt his feelings.

This new take on Mario is so faithful in its efforts to recreate iconography from four decades of video games that there’s almost no energy left to expend on reaching the unconverted. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a sermon for the Nintendo faithful, their children, and few others.

There’s a focus on ritual in Huesera that builds both its horror and its character study in compelling ways.

The movie’s drama efficiently ratchets up the tension for its action to hit hard and move on. Again: Like an actual plane, it’s a marvel of craftsmanship so unobtrusive that it’s easily mistaken for mundanity.

It’s all extremely effective, mesmerizing stuff, undercut by Shyamalan’s habits as a blunt, obvious writer.

Babylon marries bombast and tragedy in one fell swoop, embracing Chazelle’s hubris as an artist by letting him insert himself into the cinematic canon, while he’s endeavoring to earn his place there at the same time.

Cregger merely uses the premise as a foundation for something more ambitious, delivering a lean, surprising film with effective thrills, while also giving viewers plenty to contemplate afterward.