Joshua Rothkopf

There isn’t much of an original signature here. Returning director Dan Trachtenberg hits the beats competently but not too stridently, like a good superfan should.

More testimony to the experience of eating at Nobu would have helped this feel less like a commercial.

A timid, far-from-revelatory film, authorized by the three surviving Zeppelin vets and graced by their presence in new interviews that give off the faint scent of impatience.

For the first time in Miller’s now-five-film franchise, he seems to be falling shy of the immediacy he’s sustained, often deliriously, for an entire feature.

Let’s credit debuting feature director Arkasha Stevenson (a former photographer for this paper) with the stylishness to pull off a potent sense of atmosphere and the kind of lovely period detail that deep studio pockets can fund but rarely have cause to summon.

Out of Darkness is effective enough — and gory — to function as a thriller of the loud-noise-springing variety. But a last-act grasp at profundity in Ruth Greenberg’s screenplay feels unearned.

The ambition here is invigorating and, during its most exhilarating stretches, Night Swim seems to be actually pulling it off — until suddenly it’s not, a victim of overplotting, pushing the water thing a little too hard.

Woo is capable of bigger and better.

Splattery, puncture-heavy violence — the hard-R rating is earned — alternates with deadening rafts of therapy-speak, including an actual therapy session. But there's no deeper meaning to any of it; the Scream idea, meta to its core, was always a preening celebration of its own cleverness, never mind the occasional half-explored nods to toxic fandom or cancel culture.

Black Adam is what happens when artists say they want to go dark but don't really have the stomach for it. Cue scenes of humorless mid-air wrestling, shake vigorously, wait for the sequel.

Before it lumbers to its big showdown — halfheartedly, with all the excitement of a third installment of a third reboot cycle — Halloween Ends is an unusually Michael Myers-free affair. Where's the big guy?

Even with the original cast on board, there's surprisingly little chemistry or humor, and the movie makes repeated pit stops to stress family values.

A Twilight Zone–worthy premise, subtly sold by ace make-up effects, makes for a decent-enough thriller, intriguing in the moment but ultimately too timid to say anything meaningful about ageing.

Course-correcting to some degree with the return of its most inspired director, Justin Lin’s latest F&F instalment is a little too plastic at times, but back on track.

Cats may flop but it will be found by a likeminded audience, maybe the same one that rescued The Greatest Showman. Don’t be the sourpuss to tell these people they’re wrong.

It feels like a massive retrenchment—privately, a rebellion seems to have been fought and lost—and only the most loyal fans will be happy about it.

Sophia Takal's update of the cult classic turns the real horror of campus assault into a springboard for cheap thrills.

The material is worthy, but this continuing struggle deserves a more nuanced take.

But for every Thelma & Louise–like golden-hour drive into the sunset (there are several too many), you wish the movie also had the sophistication to cram from that classic script’s complex sense of injustice, one that had room for a subplot involving a sympathetic lawman. Believe in Matsoukas, though; she’s the real deal and she’ll get better material.

Of course we all hate insidious environmental destruction; it’s valuable to have movies about that. This one works fine enough. But let the other less-talented filmmakers make them.

For all of its #MeToo heavy lifting, though, the film still doesn’t work, mainly for the same reasons as before: Constructed as symbols (not human beings), these characters have too much spy stuff to do and yet, not quite enough.

Steel battleships and raining fire are Midway’s primary colors; the movie flaunts its hugeness at every turn. You’ll never mistake it for the real thing, but Emmerich’s eye for historical detail is scary.

Yet it’s rare that we get a movie this municipally minded and Chinatown-ish, and Norton invents new elements with a free hand, including a Harlem turf war, a skittering jazz undercurrent (the music is by Daniel Pemberton) and a love interest in Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Alec Baldwin, playing a powerful urban planner, makes for a ferocious Robert Moses stand-in.

You could call it fan service, if the service is to teach fans that mimicking Stanley Kubrick’s chilly elegance—and even reshooting scenes from the original film with lookalike actors, a crime bordering on sacrilege—doesn’t make your take nearly as scary.

As proven by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Final Destination 3 or the spunky Jessica Rothe in Happy Death Day, these fate-driven, high-concept horror flicks can be redeemed by a committed central performance. Countdown’s Elizabeth Lail, as a nurse who wants to get to the bottom of things, joins their company; she’s got a certain Jennifer Lawrence scrappiness.

Heroically, Double Tap’s new actors, rare though they are, save it from being completely brain-dead.

There’s comfort to be had in executing on such a durable formula, and—life lessons accompanied by Coldplay’s treacly “Fix You” aside—Abominable usually resembles the swift adventure it wants to be.

Damon and Bale are unfailingly enjoyable company to be among, steering the psychology away from alpha-male dominance to something more complex and occasionally mystical.