Joshua Rivera

Shang-Chi is refreshing in how little it’s concerned with big-picture universe-building details. Instead, the movie focuses on an extremely personal story that also implies exciting things about the future of Marvel movies.

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

Anything can happen, and Birds of Prey relishes in the havoc that implies. That manic energy is all that’s holding Birds of Prey together at times, and the fact that all of its characters seem to thrive in it makes it all the more disappointing that the movie doesn’t really take any time to get to know them better. It’s almost enough to derail the movie, but at a brisk hour and 47 minutes of genuinely fun spectacle, it’s hard to hold too much against it.

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

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

The script lets all three characters get satisfyingly messy, as each of them crosses small lines that surprise the others, in a series of transgressions that pile up until the three people at the end of the film are entirely different from the three at the start.

While Black Widow’s director and writers try valiantly to make the film a fitting swan song for Natasha and an impressive action vehicle for Johansson, tying up the Avenger’s disparate character beats across seven other movies in an action movie that out-fights her male peers, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that it’s circling around a cul-de-sac.

Gunn, for a time, was uniquely aware of how expendable he was. And The Suicide Squad is thoroughly focused on notions of expendability. It’s also violent, perversely comedic, and despite pacing issues, an impressive effects-driven spectacle.

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

It’s fine. A perfectly watchable film that could have been great if it, like its protagonist, remembered that the secret to magic is really believing in the wild thing you’re about to do.

There is nothing particularly bold about The Batman. Its strength is in execution.

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.

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.

Spider-Man: No Way Home brings Peter to his biggest screw-up yet, making for a fascinatingly messy film that tries to juggle fan service with a finale for Peter’s high school years.

There is some allure to Death on the Nile’s old-fashioned appeal, with its wide shots, its warm hues, and its utter confidence that its mystery is enough to keep the audience interested.

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

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.

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.

An overwhelming chunk of The Forever Purge’s brisk 103 minutes is devoted to the film’s Mexican immigrants saving the Tuckers’ lives, helping them survive, and furthering their moral development. It is, frankly, an insulting running thread that sours an otherwise deft horror-thriller.

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.

Old is a pretty lousy horror film about adults, but a pretty good one about children.

It’s mostly a plain thriller, but in its focus on espionage as relationship-driven work, it’s still entertaining.

Bad Boys for Life is admirable in its lack of ambition. It’s here to serve action and comedy in roughly proportionate amounts, with big set pieces that are just thrilling enough to hook you and jokes that are just funny enough for you to hope no one dies.

Ultimately, The Devil Made Me Do It’s attempt to shake the franchise up with a new director falls short, and like the young man at the heart of its supernatural horror, it risks losing its soul.

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.

After over a decade of the MCU formula’s dominance, it’s easy to mistake Eternals’ deviance for profundity. Films that wrestle with difficult experiences can often be difficult to watch, and intentionally so. Unfortunately, Eternals isn’t bold, merely incongruous. The simpler explanation is truer: Eternals is a mess.

Its battles are conceptually interesting — one rainy, neon-drenched fight across the alleys and rooftops of a city slum is a highlight — but an excessive reliance on shaky camerawork and jarring cuts makes the action unreadable. Rhythmically, Snake Eyes never really finds its footing, as fights end abruptly, and character stakes rarely align with the scale of a confrontation.

Smith’s dynamism painfully underlines the lack of imagination and energy elsewhere in the film.