Katie Walsh

The irony and meaninglessness of the violence rankles, especially when Ulysses is presented as such a nice guy who is prone to de-escalation and community care in his day-to-day work.

There’s no question about the talent on display. Coel is one of our most hypnotic screen performers, and had Hathaway decided to put her prodigious talents toward pop stardom instead of an Oscar-winning acting career, she’d be one of our top icons. Her Mother Mary performances are so fantastic it leaves you wanting more — of her, but not necessarily this plodding movie.

Forbidden Fruits can’t reconcile all of its influences and just ends up as a collection of references and high style without much staying power — it’s essentially the fast fashion of girly pop horror.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come feels behind the ball, not ahead of the game, and unfortunately, this is no escapist, or even cathartic, horror romp. Read the news instead if you’d like a real scare.

Made up of stylish pastiche, girl power slogans and one go-for-broke performance, The Bride!, like her Monster, isn’t much more than an assemblage of parts, and the slipperiness of time, place and character leaves the film unmoored and unrooted. Here comes The Bride! — unfortunately, she’s brain dead.

The surface pleasures of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights may be plenty, but the story itself, well, it never achieves climax.

Maybe every filmmaker should make their own Dracula — it’s a text that certainly can be quite illuminating

Greenland 2: Migration offers up a proudly, even defiantly, optimistic view of what comes after disaster, which can serve for the viewer as either cathartic fictional balm, or Pollyanna-ish fantasy — pick your poison.

Fuller demonstrates a strong command over his visual domain, but the pat allegory he presents about the monsters with whom we have to learn to live feels a bit muddled.

Thanks to Grande’s emotional performance, what does shine through is Glinda’s personal story about embracing change, stepping into her own power and defining what it means to be “good,” on her own terms — not because it’s her brand. This is decidedly Glinda’s movie, and that is the one good thing.

Bone Lake offers up an appealing surface, but it’s just too shallow to get very far.

Johansson’s direction is serviceable if unremarkable, and one has to wonder why this particular script spoke to her as a directorial debut. Though it is morally complex and modest in scope, it doesn’t dive deep enough into the nuance here, opting for surface-level emotional revelations. It’s Squibb’s performance and appealing screen presence that enables this all to work — if it does.

There are some affecting inner child healing moments here, but without details and specifics, this is a big, bold swing, but a beautiful miss.

With the dour drudgery of “Last Rites,” it has never been more clear that it’s time to move on from their story, even as the memories of better installments linger.

The character and Qualley’s performance is so beguiling that it would be a delight to watch Honey O’Donahue solve any manner of mysteries of the week, “Columbo”-style. It’s a shame, then, that the particular mystery at hand in Honey Don’t! is so convoluted and nonsensical.

Despite being two movies smashed together, torturously twisted in order to get all these legends at one tournament, Karate Kid: Legends isn’t an unpleasant experience, largely due to the charms of star Wang, who has a bashfully appealing presence that belies his seriously lethal martial arts skills.

Clown in a Cornfield is fun, to be sure, but feels about as substantial as a corn puff.

This flick isn’t a masterpiece, not even a vulgar one, but it’s cheeky and entertaining enough in its giddy hyperviolence, thanks almost entirely to the star turn of Josh Hartnett, who has proved in his recent renaissance that he’s especially great in bozo mode.

Levi plays Scott as somewhat smarmy and disingenuous — it’s hard to feel for this guy when he seems absolutely clueless about his own kids. Fahy carries the film in her supporting role, an acting imbalance that seems weirdly apt for this story: the supportive, capable wife sidelined in favor of showcasing the inept husband getting himself together and presenting it as meaningful or poignant.

Don’t sweat the small stuff (or even the Marvel brand) and Captain America: Brave New World proves itself to be a decent political thriller with something culturally resonant to say that exceeds mere comic book particulars.

The unpredictable nature of this thought-provoking tale and its unusual execution is laudable for its originality, but the ending of “Armand” troubles its strong start, with the sense that Tøndel’s assured direction at the outset has slipped as he makes his way to a strange climax and a questionable conclusion.

The film is a loving tribute from a son to a father figure, but perhaps Deen is too close to the story to have much perspective on it. We’ve seen this story before and Brave the Dark doesn’t shed new light.

While it is fun to reconnect with Big Nick and watch him try new foods, there’s just something missing in this rote “Ronin” ripoff — a danger. It seems Gudegast and his cast of characters alighted for Europe with only a few ideas in place, and the tapestry of this world is not woven as tightly as the original.

The film is a feat of maximalist and moody production design and cinematography, but the tedious and overwrought script renders every character two-dimensional, despite the effortful acting, teary pronunciations and emphatically delivered declarations.

Aside from the obviously unintentional humor, the quality of Kraven the Hunter is severely lacking. Perhaps that’s all the recommendation you need for some dumb fun at the movies.

The surface pleasures of Y2K are outlandishly fun, but plot-wise, the film is structurally unsound.

As far as family-friendly, faith-based holiday movies go, you could do worse than “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” though it might not quite connect with all young audiences, as the film leans more toward poignant than playfully riotous.

Never Let Go becomes an unpleasant slog for much of its runtime.

Certain qualities are undeniable, such as Keaton’s command of this character and O’Hara’s unique wit. Ryder has the heaviest performance lift, transitioning her character from teen to mom, but she finds her groove in the back half of the movie. But there’s something a bit bland and manufactured about this version.

There’s just simply nothing to hook into aside from Fishburne’s performance, which is the only captivating element of the film, and even that is derivative of his iconic Morpheus from “The Matrix.” Despite its many twists and turns, Slingshot shows no signs of life.

Blink Twice is a big, bold swing, even if its message becomes muddled along the way. It’s clear Kravitz wants to make a statement with this film. What’s less clear is what exactly that statement might be.

In the film, Lily is delusional about her relationship and the movie blurs the lines of the abuse for too long to a frustrating degree that essentially robs our hero of her agency, and elides some of Ryle’s obvious manipulation.

The premise still feels too thin and juvenile to grab audiences of any age. So what algorithm decided this movie would be a lucrative endeavor?

This fearsome foursome may be appealing, but the film is beyond formulaic, and far from fabulous.

While it will likely amuse its target audience of geeks and the terminally online, Deadpool & Wolverine is a whole lot of hot air and not much else.

It is a worthy, if somewhat abbreviated, toast to the woman behind one of the most iconic Champagnes in the world.

Goth holds MaXXXine together through the sheer force of her charisma, despite the bumpy plot, an underwritten character and the plodding, perfunctory kills that arrive like clockwork.

It’s a thin tapestry of lore with some interesting creative embellishments, but without any real interest in character, it feels flimsy and disposable. You could do worse, but you could certainly do better.

While there are pops of piquancy in Landon’s script, her direction and the performances (with the exception of Woodard) fail to inspire much more than a shrug. “Summer Camp” is only mildly interesting as another entry in the Keaton-verse.

Though the film is formulaic and somewhat annoyingly energetic, it’s cute and irreverent enough, and manages to bridge the generation gap, offering up a kid-friendly flick that can keep adults somewhat entertained for the duration, proving that even after all these years, Garfield’s still got it.

With its nonsensical, confounding story, it might not be for anyone, even if its heart is in the right place.

With a visual style that is straightforward and serviceable at best and a frustratingly limited emotional range, Back to Black never captures the beauty of Winehouse’s talent, the heartbreak of her performances or the horror of her tragedy.

Pine’s Poolman is sort of the physical, emotional and spiritual embodiment of Los Angeles itself: earnest, silly and a little (or a lot) ridiculous, but insistently charming if you decide to surrender to the experience.

It’s a humble story, one with the capacity to inspire in its simple message of perseverance. But the film itself, as an artistic product, feels limited in its observational scope, because the filmmaker doesn’t have any distance from the material.

Abigail is at times a bit too flippant, over-the-top and even protracted in its ridiculous Grand Guignol of exploding “meat sacks,” but it’s very much in line with the unique Radio Silence sensibility, en vogue with audiences right now.

There’s a harried energy to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which is enjoyable until it becomes tiresome and deafening. Perhaps multiplication was too much — here’s hoping subtraction is next in the mathematical equation.

Even this cast can’t save the rote machinations of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as it dutifully delivers morsels of memory.

Swank is appealing and amusing, decked out in fringe and affecting a twang, but it in no way feels real; it’s more of a fun character performance. Ritchson, on the other hand, demonstrates a softer, more expansive side to the tough guy persona he’s perfected on “Reacher.”

The slight and scanty Drive-Away Dolls could dissipate with a gust of wind, but it beats a hasty getaway before that becomes a problem. While its story fails to justify its own existence, it delivers what it says on the tin: dumb, randy fun, even if that feels retrograde in more ways than one.

Though the movie promises to tell a culturally and politically specific story, what could have been daring is ultimately trite, relying on familiar music biopic tropes.

Is Madame Web a good movie? No. Is it hilariously delightful? Often.

The movie strikes that wild, so-bad-it’s-entertaining chord vigorously. I can’t recommend Miller’s Girl but I also can’t recommend it enough.

The only time Wish shines bright is when it dares to get a little bit weird.

There’s so much that works about The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, it’s unfortunate that it’s all been crammed into one overly-long film.

If Thanksgiving had to be any specific dish on the holiday table, it would be stuffing: disparate chunks tossed together and baked. Stuffing is a dish where old bread goes to shine — a cheap and easy crowd-pleaser. But this particular serving of it is missing a crucial element, the binder.

The Exorcist: Believer is an exhausting affair, an unrelenting film that attempts to cover up its lack of shock and suspense with a kind of cinematic bludgeoning: a battering delivered via smash cuts, jump scares, overlapping sound design and chaotic camerawork.

Throw in a whole heck of a lot of puns and sand all the edges down so everything is gently charming, inoffensive and just silly enough but not too silly to be annoying.

Reaching for meaning in The Nun II is as fruitful as a wander down a dark and dusty old hall. You’ll find things that go bump in the night but not much else underneath all the doom and gloom.

Cooke and her character, Paige, inject some life into the proceedings, but the central mystery feels forced, the twists implausible. The screenplay strains for topicality, stuffing too many elements at once into this sad story in a bid for relevance that never quite resonates.

The script is standard sports movie fare without much subtext — in the mouth of anyone other than Harbour, some of these motivational lines would be real clangers, but he sells the material with his rugged soulfulness, and there’s true chemistry between him and Madekwe, as the unlikely sports star and his demanding coach.

All the elements are there — writing, performance, themes — but there’s not enough plot to sustain a nearly two-hour feature, and as the situation escalates, it becomes clear that they don’t quite know where or how to end things, and it lands with a thud.

It succeeds as a comedy but not quite as a horror film, the genre merely a setting and style for sending up insidious character stereotypes.

It’s easy to take for granted what’s good about Dalíland, namely Gala and Dalí as played by Sukowa and Kingsley. Sukowa’s depiction of a Russian woman with a taste for drama and the finer things in life is over the top, but deadly accurate; Kingsley balances imperiousness and vulnerability beautifully and with an ease only he seems capable of achieving.

All the excellent acting and sumptuous style can’t cover up that the culmination of this tête-à-tête is disappointingly hollow with an ironic bow on top.

Leterrier and Momoa bring an energy and excitement to Fast X that juices the engine to deliver the goods that fans want. But the jumbled lore and odd treatment of characters may leave audiences with more questions than answers, and wondering whether the franchise is running on fumes.

It’s fun to see [Rodriguez] color in new shades of film genre, but the script and performances in “Hypnotic” are too laughably absurd to take seriously.

One can’t help but feel that the man himself — grill and all — is so much more fascinating than this rote representation.

Directed by Stephen Williams with a sense of momentum and fluidity, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this version of Bologne’s life story glides over the most interesting parts.

The stylish Renfield is a bit of frothy fun. It may be too flip for some, but flippancy isn’t the issue — it’s the flimsiness. Hoult and Cage sell the toxic odd-couple dynamic well, but a sturdier story is required to fully support their performances, especially Cage’s operatic Dracula, who delights in terrorizing his foppish familiar.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is mildly amusing, swift, noisy and unrelentingly paced, which is par for the course considering this is the studio that brought us the Minions.

The film’s affable nature and the sheer charisma oozing off Pine and Grant is intoxicating, but overall, there’s a sense that it doesn’t quite gel, the engine revving but never hitting the speed of which it seems capable.

This final installment finds Soderbergh and Tatum toying with audience expectations to disappointing results. There are a few flashes of the original magic, but it’s lacking in the energy that made the first two movies a thrill.

The film is a slickly-executed piece, an enjoyable but almost unbearably twisty puzzle box of narrative fun, but once everything slots together the box is unfortunately empty.

The comedy isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, and the story beats are almost painfully predictable, but the picture hangs together thanks to this group of legends and the loose, absurdist humor of the screenplay.

Deadliest of all, Fear is just not scary. The jump scares don’t land, the fears themselves are all a bit silly and it feels like Taylor is holding back for the majority of the run time.

Deakins’ work is beautiful, Colman is incredible, and the role of Stephen proves to be a breakout for Ward. But the story is too scattershot and contrived for an audience to be swept away and moved in the same way that Colman finds herself swept away by the experience of the Peter Sellers classic “Being There.”

The result is amusing enough, but it’s as cinematically substantive as a sugar cookie.

Despite the narrative elements that are part of Michael’s coping mechanisms, Aldridge and Field effectively salvage the emotional core of “Spoiler Alert,” bringing us back to the heart of the matter, and giving space to the feelings that should flow freely in a film like this.

The film, while well-intentioned and informative, is a somewhat unfocused piece.

Fisk and Hoffman (the younger) make a fine pair on screen with a natural chemistry; it’s nice to see her back in a romantic leading role. You just wish the two had more substantive material to work with. In fact, the Hallmark holiday version of this film would likely have been more entertaining, or at least shorter.

What comes through loud and clear in “My Mind & Me” is Gomez using the film to declare her priorities, and her carefully controlled revelations are a chance to write her own story.

Henry is such an earthy, captivating presence that he holds the center of gravity in Causeway — when he’s not on screen, the film drifts, rudderless, as Lynsey does.

Though the film is politically and culturally urgent, it’s too much of a challenge to connect with the void of character at the core of this screenplay. We may all have the power to be Jane, but the image of Jane remains frustratingly hazy in Nagy’s depiction.

Halloween Ends has the feeling of dour obligation, and it’s clear that no one’s heart is really in this anymore, the limits of narrative possibility in Haddonfield stretched beyond their max.

Pasek and Paul’s songs end up having to do much of the emotional heavy lifting, and the rest of the film feels cobbled together from random parts scavenged from other kids’ movies and pop culture ephemera.

Bacon’s performance as well as Finn’s detailed craft manage to hold tension, and the audience’s attention, for the hour and 55 minute runtime of this horror curio, which is as opaque and somewhat silly as the smiles that drive it.

The 1990s framing device keeps pulling us out of the 1950s love story, sapping its power.

Medieval is a film with an identity crisis, caught between its lowbrow sword-and-splatter charms and grander ambitions. As a quick and dirty 90-minute corker, it could have been a nice and nasty slice of genre filmmaking, but Jakl aims for something more epic in scope, and the film drags, easily 30 minutes too long.

Miller asks the audience to level up its existential exploration, posing questions about the purpose of storytelling and, perhaps, about the lack of magic in our technological, science-driven world. But the film doesn’t offer any concrete answers, leaving us adrift in a sea of provocative queries. For a film about narrative, it meanders, and loses focus.

The Immaculate Room tests the audience’s patience as much as it does the characters’.

The entire film feels like an exercise in dashing expectations, for both our heroine and the audience.

Aselton has a light touch as a director, and she wisely trots out an all-star parade of comedy heavyweights to distract from the script issues.

A glib, slick and shallow slice of Japanophile action entertainment that offers a very bright, shiny surface but has absolutely no interest in revealing anything beyond that.

Though it is faithful, Where the Crawdads Sing is lacking the essential character and storytelling connective tissue that makes a story like this work — an adaptation such as this cannot survive on plot alone.

These references, and the relentless assault of ‘70s needle drops, are fun, to a point, but the movie itself is 87 minutes of pure chaos, a hallucinatory, cacophonous fever dream of nonsensical subplots and Minion gibberish.

The Lost Girls gets stuck somewhere in the middle of magical realism and a gritty psychological exploration of what it means to believe in Peter and still live in the real world.

Block Party is a lightweight comedy that frustrates because there’s the potential for it to be great, to resonate beyond its blandly formulaic charms.

The central relationship of “The Valet” is the weakest part of the film, and much of the comedy is a bit tiresome, though a few bits do pop.