Katie Walsh

Wright makes the argument that in such a dystopian, fascist state, there are only a few things that will save us: class solidarity, physical media and literacy. It’s a powerful and potent message that cuts through any and all of the bombastic busyness of The Running Man.

Ultimately, all we come away with is a few cheap laughs at online culture, which dates Love Me to its own time and place, an artifact not even of now, but the recent past. This love story isn’t futuristic at all.

Anchored by career-best performances from Long and Rossum, and a juicy script that bravely dives into the darkest parts of breaking up and making up, Comet is an original and inventive retelling of an age-old and universal truth.

Lynskey, Ellis, and Jackson are charming enough to buoy this lightly dramatic tale, but with a laid-back energy the stakes are never quite high enough. “Little Boxes” offers tame social commentary in a pleasant package.

It’s a pleasure to see Butler do his thing opposite a talented array of international performers — Fazal and Fimmel are standouts — and stretch his specific set of skills into more complex contemporary storytelling, making “Kandahar” worth the trip

Director Natalia Leite brings an emotional intelligence and sensitivity to Bare that raises it above its smutty late-night cable premise of a small-town girl falling into a lesbian affair and exploring the world of stripping.

47 Meters Down doesn't have the campy sparkle that made “The Shallows” a cult hit, but it's the kind of cheesy thriller that's good for a few jumps and a few chuckles at its own silliness.

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.

While the film’s execution seems expert on the surface, the internal narrative design is unfortunately ham-handed and woefully dull.

It’s arresting, but the rapid shift in tone could give one whiplash.

While the story lags and suffers in its attempt to adapt such a complicated internal narrative and personal struggle, the Smith brothers have created a truly beautiful and unique film that deserves to be seen; a creative accomplishment not only of filmmaking but of capturing this world.

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.

In The Sun is Also a Star, Russo-Young swirls together sun-dappled selfies, luscious skin, urban grittiness and hip-hop beats, the aesthetics perfectly matched to emotion. She creates a heady, knee-buckling mood that nearly conceals the weaknesses in story and performances.

The Contractor is decidedly Pine’s film. His performance is as efficient as the script, which Saleh mirrors with a crisp, smooth aesthetic. There’s nothing particularly showy about the style, but it serves the story of this professional warrior working his way through an unfamiliar place.

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.

Aside from its leading lady, what Everything, Everything has going for it is its light, fantastical aesthetic, an unexpected sense of buoyancy and light.

Carrie Pilby is a studiously quirky affair, but only the natural charm of Powley salvages that tone. The film swings wildly from melancholy to wacky, never truly melding the two; it somehow also lacks verve and energy.

No Man’s Land is an interesting twist on the border drama, daring to depict Mexico as complex and nuanced country: welcoming, fascinating and menacing in equal parts. But the story still centers a white male experience and hero’s journey.

With a stacked cast and skillful filmmaking, Triple 9 proves to be a satisfying crooked-cop heist thriller, imbued with complicated topical issues that last long after the adrenaline rush.

At times it is a bit unfocused, following a loosely chronological but otherwise haphazard structure. Yet it’s still a treat to spend time in the company of a true artist, never before illuminated with such clarity.

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.

It’s a film that ultimately feels less like a celebration and more like further exploitation of the star, leaving us all with much more unsettling questions about Houston’s life and legacy. Sadly, the disappointing “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” doesn’t let Whitney rest in peace.

The friendship lessons are sweet enough, but such a low-stakes story strains one’s patience for such affected cinematic style.

What The Last Full Measure demonstrates is how powerful it can be to shed light on these experiences, through testimony, bearing witness and yes, ceremonial recognition.

In Vengeance, Novak sets his sights on lampooning the big-city media types who go chasing stories in middle America and return with observations from the “flyover states” that are usually condescending, preachy, or inauthentic, and in doing so, he finds the humor, and something honest too.

Desierto is a generic thriller that happens to be wrapped in political packaging. That packaging is sometimes more interesting than the thrills themselves, but the film is bare enough to project what you want onto it.

Skyscraper — a sort of reverse "Die Hard," where a family man breaks into an imposing structure to save his family — scoots by on the thinnest of premises, and an even thinner script.

Risen is a fascinating cultural artifact, but as a film, it's destined for no glory greater than as an appropriate cable rerun on Easter.

Beautiful to look at, and diverting enough. The material written to fill out the story is entertaining, but it doesn't resonate. You can't top what Seuss wrote.

The film starts off a bit rocky, as the story elements are established, but gets better and funnier as it builds, leaning into the craziness as the dominoes fall into place.

The animation technology is top-notch, but the gentle spirit of Beatrix Potter's books is subsumed into a chaotic, violent mayhem, manically soundtracked to the day's hits.

OF: RDG is classic recent Ritchie: star-studded, snarky, and ultimately grating, lousy with weird glasses and bad accents. This thing is so slight, a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a “Mission: Impossible” that it’s barely a movie.

Treviño’s effervescent and empathetic performance as Marisol keeps A Man Called Otto on track, both actress and character proving to be the saving grace for this curmudgeonly fellow, and film.

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.

Papierniak’s film is energetic, jam-packed with talent and has a likable indie throwback feel with some memorable moments.

The Gentlemen is so blinkered by its outdated (and often offensive) alpha male perspective that it's blind to the elements that could have made it great.

On the wildly uneven rollercoaster that is Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, the lows far outweigh the highs.

It's a fun, rebellious romp that celebrates creativity and outside-the-box thinking, though parents might hope that their children won't be too inspired to copy the elaborate pranks that these characters pull off.

With scanty and thin characterization and a twist you can see coming from miles away, 21 Bridges just doesn't make it all the way to the other side.

Though the situation is far from realistic, the dynamically directed and swiftly paced Marry Me remains emotionally grounded, which is crucial to the execution.

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.

The jokes are stale, the energy is stilted, and the whole thing feels like a misbegotten vanity exercise cooked up in the pandemic to keep them occupied.

The film is exceptionally well-made... There is nothing warm about the style, yet it allows for moments of simmering tension, broken by a few emotional explosions that shatter its well-composed surface.

Ball and screenwriter Nowlin keep a tight grip on the tone and the relentless pace, but they often back the story and characters into corners that only a deus ex machina can fix.

It’s the performances and well-earned character arcs that make Last Christmas a satisfying holiday flick worth giving your heart to.

It’s campy, it’s cheesy, it’s way more fun than you expect it to be, but there’s a knowingness to the whole endeavor on behalf of magician and audience. “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” is the kind of lightweight, harmless and ephemeral entertainment that allows us to be escape artists from reality for a minute — so go ahead and indulge.

The film flies but never lets any emotional weight fully land.

They Will Kill You is both irreverent, and reverential to its references, and cartoonishly violent in increasingly surreal ways, but it also maintains the emotional core at the center, which is Asia’s blind big sister protectiveness over Maria, powered by the guilt she feels over not being there for her. It’s a simple, but primal character motivation that Beetz sells with a wild-eyed ferocity.

The Equalizer 2 just doesn't deliver the thrills.

Arnow sheds any trappings of fiction, presenting herself, her filmmaking, her relationships and her sex life in an at times shockingly frank manner. It’s refreshing to see a filmmaker embrace this honesty with such gusto (which, like life, is often painful or awkward to experience).

The Boss Baby is great fun for parents, but it remains to be seen if kids will get it at all.

Shoplifters of the World, in fact, belongs to Cleo, not just because Howard is such a dizzyingly charismatic actress but because her story, which unfolds parallel to Dean’s, is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama that perfectly embodies the youthful angst, ennui and romantic longing expressed so well in the music of the Smiths.

For the most part, it is warmly amusing without diving too far into the realm of the maudlin or treacly; and it side-steps anything insensitive while still enjoying some bawdy humor.

The Devil Has a Name has an important message if you can get past the unwieldy melodrama of the film, but the second coming of “Erin Brockovich” this is not.

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

Even the cute factor of A Dog's Way Home can't obscure its narrative weaknesses.

The time-traveling investigation is indeed optimistic, but in reality and execution, it’s just magical thinking wrapped up in a fussy, overly convoluted plot.

Stone had the right instincts about the part — she inhabits Senna beautifully, and her performance anchors the light-as-air All I Wish. It's the perfect role for her to sink her teeth into, sexy and fun, but she brings a sense of real intelligence and soulfulness to the character. That's true star power.

Please Stand By has its surface charms...but if you look under the hood, the film just doesn't work.

Henson is a gifted actress and physical comedian. She manages to hold together What Men Want with the sheer force of her powerful charisma, but the film around her is harried, messy and woefully underwritten.

Gudegast's twisty, turny tale of heists and homies is an action-packed romp with a good sense of humor and self-awareness. It's rendered with a startling attention to detail, but one has to wonder if with that detail, he can't quite see the forest for the trees.

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.

It's the centrifuge around which the rather uneven film whirls, and Malek keeps it going with his sheer will and talent, aided by a parade of legendary Queen hit singles.

The film celebrates Mary Shelley for the trailblazing woman that she is, but hews far too close to convention to truly represent her life.

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.

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

The themes that are unspoken, gestured at and repressed in “Force Majeure” are drawn out and made broad, obvious and slapstick in Downhill, which spoon-feeds the lessons of the dark-ish comedy and cuts short the plot for the easiest-to-digest ending.

While Adult Life Skills could often use more focus, it digs deep to achieve a sense of catharsis, and as a woman who's trying to be invisible, but can't isolate herself forever, Whittaker (currently the Doctor on “Doctor Who”) carries the film.

The message itself is poignant, and never gets lost in the antics or humor.

Spirit Untamed is a sweet film with a moving message about embracing family, heritage and most importantly, yourself, just the way you are, even if that means bravery and recklessness often go hand in hand.

The film is a fascinating and sometimes terrifying introduction to ayahuasca. Surreal sequences mimicking the hallucinogenic experiences during the ceremonies are unnecessary and pale in comparison to the real transformation we witness.

It’s not always easy to navigate the tonal landmines of a Colleen Hoover yarn. That Caswill, Monroe and Withers do so with aplomb and emotion proves what these films can be: deeply felt, transporting romances to be taken seriously.

Ultimately, Ford hedges his bets with How to Make a Killing, and lands in an unsatisfying no man’s land.

With seemingly all the right pieces, it's a disappointment that The Promise lacks the energy and originality needed to sustain itself. It might be fresh material, but the approach is decidedly stale.

The whole thing might as well all be written in Minions chatter. It's wacky, but somehow dull, kind of like conversing with a Minion.

Bissell has needlessly manipulated the real story, completely missing what makes it significant.

Unfortunately, there’s a missed opportunity to develop the suspense within a structure that has built-in tension. The pacing remains steady during the ramp-up to the final pitch, but it lacks competitive drama.

His latest film, Gold, directed by Stephen Gaghan, is his most extreme character work yet, with him playing a balding, paunchy, cigarette chomping gold prospector in the 1980s, and yet McConaughey is so good he makes it work.

The story is larger than life. Padilha brings a frenetic, authentic style and flair to this depiction and never loses sight of its larger messages and themes.

Despite the strange but winning chemistry between Danner and Lithgow, the script ultimately fails the fascinating characters.

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.

What unfolds on screen over the course of three hours and one minute in Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1 can only be described as a massive boondoggle, a misguided and excruciatingly tedious cinematic experience. That Costner has promised three more installments feels like a threat.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is a pastiche of its predecessors, using this mosaic of tropes and formula familiarity as a shorthand to keep the film pared down to the basics of what exactly makes it tick: increasingly sadistic puzzles and a great cast of characters.

It's satisfying, charming and surprising — a film that keeps its supernatural elements grounded in reality, with the focus on the spirituality of true love.

In its loose, hallucinatory narrative, we gain a sense of the nightmares caused by a loss of spirituality and physical connection. It may leave you questioning if the Mayans were right all along.

Rønning, who helmed a later “Pirates of the Caribbean” film and “Young Woman and the Sea,” provides serviceable direction of the material without offering much innovation. The film loses fidelity toward the end, as it becomes a crashy, pixelated monster movie, as the real world has no capability for hosting the sleek, bloodless appeal of the grid.

The film clearly comes from a place of deep knowledge about the intricacies of schizophrenia but has an unfortunate tendency to overexplain itself.

The refreshing element is that the story resists normative fantasies of sex or romance — in Paris Can Wait, Coppola focuses on the relationship to the self.

Underwater never quite breaches the surface from good to great, though this well-appointed creature feature proves to be an excellent showcase for Stewart’s screen presence.

This is a brutally violent reset on the '80s franchise that ultimately became a punchline, but while it goes big on gore and atmosphere, Child's Play doesn't muster up any actual scares.

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.

It is a bold, stylish and dynamic adaptation that makes big choices that may have one puzzling through both the characters’ and filmmakers’ intentions — or maybe not. It is a mirror after all, and the moral of the story is left up to us, which is perhaps the most daring move of all.

Written by Scott Wascha, the script is simultaneously crude, rude and whip-smart. Wexler‘s direction is a rapid-fire attack of highly stylized skirmishes and aestheticized action.

There isn't much nuance or complexity to be found in The Call of the Wild, but it's an old-fashioned animal-friendly adventure flick for kids, a modern-day and high-tech “Benji” based on a classic piece of literature.

Though the distressingly large lollipop heads of the characters are often disconcerting, some of the animation is striking and near photorealistic. At times though it seems all of the resources have been put into the background environment instead of the characters.

The Mountain Between Us falls flat, struggling to truly enthrall beyond a basic love story.

Unfortunately, The Syndrome fails to adequately elucidate the many nuances of this complicated subject.

It doesn't gel and lacks the kind of visual kinetic energy we’ve come to expect from films of this ilk.

Pet isn’t much more than a twist on an old conceit, and the character beats are painted with overly broad strokes, but it’s sharply shot with a crystalline sense of unease, and Monaghan and Solo lean into their creepy performances wholeheartedly.

Amazingly, somehow, an overstuffed Godzilla movie feels scant.

The failure of Morgan is in its lack of restraint. The first half of the film is as tightly controlled as the lab facility, with small moments of foreshadowing planted expertly, if obviously. The second half descends into a violent bloodbath, and the twists in the story that lie just below the surface waiting to be discovered are spoken aloud, taken from theory to fact

The film is well-made — the direction is strong, the cinematography by Barry Markowitz compelling and the script by two first-time writers is confident. The biggest problem with the film is Charlie himself.

Gorgeous and naturalistic shots by cinematographer by Autumn Durald speak volumes, and the atonal, foreboding score by Nathan Halpern creates a sense of dread, though they are ultimately squandered in an underdeveloped story.

Sonic the Hedgehog is legitimately funny, heartwarming and entertaining.

It feels like a bad parody, a shadow of what a film is, not an actual film itself. The color palette is a dreary mud puddle of grays and browns, and there’s no sense of space or geography. It has no weight, no heft, no texture, no color, no sense of magic or wonder in the least. The story itself has no sense of stakes or resonance, and the actors vary in affect from lifeless to dutiful to pained.

It’s faithfully formulaic, but the cast makes it appealing.

Same Kind of Different as Me takes its time, but the performances by Kinnear, Zellweger and especially Hounsou sneak up on you, building to an emotional, but not overstated climax.

Dog Days is in some ways a very strange movie, in the way it straddles the worlds of weirdo comedy and family-friendly fare. But ultimately, it’s the pooches who steal the show.

A Cure for Wellness is an odd film. It's exceedingly well-crafted; the attention to detail and design, composition and camera movement on display here has largely been abandoned by recent horror films grasping for a jarring sense of realism.

There’s enough verve in the concept and performances — and in debuting feature-maker Williams’ exuberant direction — to carry Lisa Frankenstein through.

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.

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

Max is a big slice of patriotic, down-the-middle genre fare, but it manages to work — and jerk a few tears along the way.

He (Stewart) bogs down his talented cast with a bewildering plot, tired tropes and embarrassing dialogue. This one, well, it's simply resistible.

There are a few inventive battles on a frozen pond and atop the tiled roof of a temple, but they are so CGI-enhanced as to seem cartoonish, not marvelous.

Masterminds still has its riotously funny moments, thanks to the fearless, uninhibited actors and a director who lets them play.

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.

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.

This curio of a film could have gone deeper into what it means to be a gangster, but its core themes resonate all the same.

It may be a shoddily made Skittles ad masquerading as a superhero riff, but it’s Levi’s performance that sends it into the stratosphere of cringe.

This one will likely only appeal to fans of the genre who appreciate reverence and twists on this kind of material, but it’s bloody — if lightweight — fun for those who enjoy this kind of good old-fashioned romp in the woods.

A story that’s specific, but universal in many ways, of family complication and connection, A Country Called Home, bolstered by the excellent score by Bingham, and Poots’ delicate performance, is worth the time.

Everything about Gringo, from the storytelling to the comedy to the cinematography is incredibly lackluster. The film is dark and dim, like everything's covered in a layer of dust. Oyelowo is quite endearing and funny as Harold, but he's given very little to work with.

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.

The cast is rounded out with likable comedians, but this fable can’t decide if it’s going to be deliciously bad or morally upstanding.

Cinematically, there isn't much of a breakthrough, or breaking of a mold, when it comes to how these stories are told. But what distinguishes the film is the daring depiction of a complex, flawed, fierce and faithful woman.

Jeong and Schaal are quite funny in the limited time they're given, but one can't help but think the story would have worked so much better as a drama, or some kind of "Man on Fire" actioner, with Coleman's chops and Bautista's brooding presence. Hopefully a director can figure out what best to do with him as a leading man, and soon.

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 appeal of this The Addams Family, which doesn’t break the mold, is simply to spend some more time in this gently spooky world, which is a gateway for budding creepsters and goths. It’s refreshing that it doesn’t try to overreach the limitations of its story, but it’s so slight, it merely whets the appetite for more Addams fare, rather than providing anything truly satisfying.

With its unexpected story and businesslike filmmaking, Unlocked proves to be a satisfying thriller starring one of the most exciting current female action stars, who toils and shines in these workmanlike roles.

It may be treacly and unrealistic, but “Book Club: The Next Chapter” has heart and soul, and it’s as sweet and quaffable as an Aperol spritz on a hot day.

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.

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

Unfortunately, despite the interesting history, the film itself is a dry, scattered slog, neutered of all the thorny, contradictory details of the real story.

The modern noir style and genre innovation are such a neat cinematic twist that it’s a bit of a letdown that the world doesn’t always feel fully fleshed out.

The surface may be ominous, richly textured and morbidly fascinating, but storywise, it remains shallow.

Ultimately, what's revealed in the new biopic of young Salinger, written and directed by Danny Strong, poses some interesting questions, but doesn't live up to the power of the mystery around the man itself.

An angry, violent and despairing film, without much of a point other than that existence can be angry and despairing and memory is a prison. As a piece of art, entertainment or cultural ephemera, it is indeed bold, but it is significant not for what it says about Capone, but rather what it says about Trank, and the ongoing saga of his career.

The costumes are giving Halloween, the sets and props are giving Xena: Warrior Princess and the story and performances aren’t giving anything at all. Mortal Kombat II seems destined to go the way of the ‘90s sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation — directly into obscurity.

Tyler Labine, known for his comedic work, contributes a fine dramatic performance tinged with comedy, and Crawford is equally as good. A smart script deftly opens and builds upon itself in a controlled slow burn.

While there are some missteps in the story, there’s a lot to admire in The Free World, particularly in what is sure to be a breakout role for Holbrook.

It’s a warm, uplifting portrait of the potentials to be found in startup culture, but feels blinkered by its specific focus.

It’s a silly, fairly rote animated film, but underneath the hijinks and mishaps is a rather devastatingly sad story. It’s this poignancy that makes Luis & the Aliens a step above the rest.

Beyond Skyline is a boldly bonkers film, and it leans into its genre goofiness with a straight face thanks to Grillo. But more humor would have gone a long way in sustaining interest and entertainment, as it’s not quite funny, and too low-budget to take seriously.

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.

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

There is real potential in this premise, and a few flickers of genuine artfulness, but the storytelling is frustratingly abstruse, making for an Exit Plan that’s a real missed opportunity.

For a first time feature outing, Coldwater is a fine effort from Grashaw, and the setting feels fresh and new. It's an original take on a coming of age, young masculinity tale, but ultimately, it doesn't quite live up to all of its potential.

Uncharted is fine, and entertaining enough, but while some moments are inspired, others are completely inert. It’s oddly neutered and bloodless, the stakes negligible. It feels like a project with so much potential that never fully achieves liftoff, stumbling when it should soar.

It’s a breezy, funny, highly self-referential flick steeped in movie history.

The breathtakingly bad Justice League, with its corny banter and terrible effects just might signify a return to that goofy Batman form.

The story is spread too thin, or perhaps there just wasn’t that much substance to begin with.

Jolie Pitt’s insistence on creating a piece that reflects the harsh inner state of a person suffering to understand herself as a wife and as a woman in the world is commendable, and fascinating in her growth as a filmmaker.

Though this movie has its outrageous moments, Di Novi puts the female emotional journey up front and treats things respectfully. But every erotic thriller needs some crazy, and thank goodness for Heigl's full commitment to her character's insanity.

Imbuing a story like this with issues of grief and trauma can be a good lesson for kids, but it just makes the whole affair that much less splendiferous and that much more solemn.

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

The willingness to let Stephanie be human and react as such brings a sense of reality and authenticity back to the action-spy genre, which has become too slick.

Mark Gill’s debut feature, England Is Mine, tackles the early life of Moz, but unsatisfyingly stops just short of the Smiths, telling a rather disjointed origin story.

Nothing on screen is as electrifying or surprising as it was on the page, as semi-fictionally enhanced as the writing was.

This treatise on what to expect when you're not expecting offers up biting cultural satire with a hearty dose of humanity and humor to boot.

At the heart of the “Has Fallen” franchise is the affection between men, and Butler has always shared the best chemistry with his male co-stars. That spark in “Angel” comes from Butler’s scenes with Nick Nolte, as his father, Clay, a veteran living off the grid.

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.

Queenpins does nothing other than waste your time with bad wigs and poop jokes, and that is the biggest crime of all.

While the film runs a bit too long, and the heartstring tugging becomes overwrought, overall, this family melodrama about a devastating illness and the freak accident that cured it is surprisingly effective, even for those of little faith.

Power Rangers maintains the essence of its origins in that it’s rather pleasantly bonkers. It errs on the side of goofy rather than gritty, and that’s to its favor.

The film wants to speak to some kind of old school, lone-ranger American hero type (as portrayed by a man from Northern Ireland), but it’s too vague, shying away from any controversy, to say much at all.

The Miracle Season moves with a brisk energy and pace, pausing only to draw a few tears hear and there. It's peppered with girl power bangers, training montages and inspirational speeches. But it relies on storytelling that tells rather than shows.

In the overstuffed plot of Then Came You, Skye’s terminal illness isn’t even about her. Her life merely serves as a lesson for Calvin to overcome his fears and seize the day. It’s a shame this manic pixie dream sick girl can’t even get her own movie.

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

For all of Berry’s breathless, screechy effort, Kidnap doesn’t contain any suspense or tension.

By the end of the film, you're left with the unshakable feeling that everyone involved, from actors to filmmakers to the audience, is, and should have been, better than material like this.

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.

Everyone here really wants to make something good and moving, but they’re all working so hard to make something out of nothing.

Burger presupposes all the right questions (and anxieties) about the realities of climate change-induced space migration; it’s just that as a film, Voyagers feels like a role-playing game rather than a character-driven story.

Clean is so lean, it’s as if the story itself was sacrificed for atmosphere. Clean brings the cold, moody vibes and extreme violence, but narratively, it’s a mess.

Visually, it's busy, hefty and propulsive, but emotionally and thematically, it's as light as air. These engines could have used a bit more in the tank.

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

The Dancer is such a bold and assured film, wildly creative and sensual, that it feels far more sophisticated than a debut, and signals Di Giusto as one to watch.

Although every cinematic experiment and story beat doesn’t always work, Hot Summer Nights is downright intoxicating, oozing with panache and sensuality from every pore.

The protagonist's unlikable routine is too high a degree of difficulty to execute flawlessly.

Predictably, it descends into a meaningless blur of gravity-defying physics and robotic limbs by the end, where a lot of violence is happening but you’re never sure exactly why or even how.

Aftermath can’t quite sustain its controlled tone, relying on operatic melodrama and limp plot twists as it concludes in an uneasy resolution.

The geography and some of the coincidences are as baffling as the messaging. The 96-minute runtime feels cyclical and endless.

Old stereotypes are trotted out for humor's sake, and it's not a question of offensiveness, just that the jokes feel 10 years old.

Wish Upon isn't over-the-top wacky or campy, and in fact, feels slightly low-energy at times, but it's the kind of simple filmmaking coupled with absolutely insane writing and plot points that make it an ideal candidate for so-bad-it's-good viewing.

Hunter Killer needs its radar calibrated, because while it bounces between serious and silly, it never quite finds a suitable place to land.

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.

Proves to be more than just a gimmick, and it doesn't skimp on any of the quirky wackiness that you might expect from a film about blob-shaped, flightless birds battling pigs.

The story on screen comes off as a naive interpretation of the homeless experience as imagined from a place of great privilege.

Refreshingly resistant to predictability.

The whole schtick of these movies is the treat-motivated, not-quite-getting-it doggie voice-over, performed by Josh Gad, and it lightens the film. But going dark and emotional makes the film work better than the prior two.

This peek into a famous love story makes the audience a participant in the affair, inspiring questions of perspective and truth in love and art, where the only truth worth anything is one deeply felt.

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.

Bleeding Steel is a cartoonishly crazy, completely nonsensical cyberpunk action flick that is torturous to behold, and well below Chan’s caliber.

The focus of The Aftermath is in all the wrong places, spending time with characters in which we are unable to gain an emotional foothold. This misplaced attention makes for an erotic drama that feels cold, and a political thriller that feels empty.

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

Bell jettisons any possibility for radical ideals or emotional poignancy in favor of a hackneyed rom-com ending tacked onto a movie that’s both stale and unpleasantly madcap.

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.

The film has all the emotional resonance of a dog-themed novelty coffee-table book. Adorable, but ultimately forgettable.

Roberts, working with a much larger scenic and visual palette this time, seems adrift.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, while a tearjerker, is a very strange movie, starting with its mouthful of a title.

The greatest strength of Office Christmas Party is its casting. If you’ve got fabulous weirdos Kate McKinnon and T.J. Miller in lead roles, there are bound to be more than enough laughs.

My Father Die is all provocation and no substance, and therefore completely meaningless.

There is absolutely no reason to catch a ride with the nasty, brutish and shrill "Stuber," a horror movie about our current American nightmare of late capitalist economics and unchecked law enforcement masquerading as an "action comedy."

Coltrane displays a range he hasn’t shown before onscreen, dipping into darker realms as the romantically spurned blue collar townie Victor. But Fitzgerald runs away with Blood Money as femme fatale Lynn.

Unable to rise above this internal conflict, it’s a film that’s both dull and disposable. Though it sets up the opportunity for more interconnected franchise filmmaking, this is a beast that needs to be put down.

The story is an intriguing twist on the western genre, but in piling on other subgenres and story elements, including a dangerous and charismatic cult, it dilutes the essential nature of what could have been a potent revenge tale.

This high-concept romp demands an over-the-top and facile narrative, and some of the bits are a bit hackneyed, but Mafia Mamma is much more wacky, funny and violent than the too-tame trailers would have you believe. Collette goes for broke in her performance and Hardwicke juggles the tone, style and genre play with ease.

The whole endeavor is an exercise in trying to do too many things — rehash a nostalgic property, propel Mexican film star Eugenio Derbez to mainstream stardom, revive Anna Faris' film career — but it never actually manages to be a good movie.

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 filmmaking itself is suspenseful, classic horror filmmaking, with plenty of jump scares and ominous camera movements. But where the film succeeds most is in its realistic use of technology.

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

Pure spectacle has since been subsumed into narrative filmmaking, but the cinema of attractions is always present, especially in modern action movies, and there may be no greater current example of this than xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.

The Great Wall defies any expectations — it’s absolutely bonkers wild.

With wooden performances and a lack of character development, Below Her Mouth is more X-rated, late-night cable skin flick than trenchant exploration of female sexuality.

The disappointment of Breaking In is the wasted potential — there are a few plot setups that could have been further fleshed out or brought back around (why was her father being investigated by the DA?) and Union isn’t given enough opportunity to truly display her charms. This thriller could have really used some room to breathe.

What's offensive about A Bad Moms Christmas (and “Bad Moms”) is just how shoddily made it is.

It's a serviceable animated movie appropriate for the season, but there's nothing beyond its source material that marks it as particularly unique or special.

In trying to do too much, Halloween Kills ends up doing nothing at all, other than tarnishing this franchise’s good name.

Ultimately Suburbicon is woefully underwritten. Gardner and Maggie are mere sketches, a set of facial tics and accessories masquerading as real characters.

The film positions Black women at the center of their own stories, and this authentic portrayal of the platonic relationships that hold them together feels rich and true, a celebration of a feminine community that becomes family.

Memory has a decent director in Campbell (“Casino Royale,” “Vertical Limit”) and a great cast (yes, that’s Ray Stevenson as a corrupt cop), but a crippling case of a bad script that can’t manage to make us care about any of these characters.

While the film does feel cobbled together out of spare parts of other superhero movies, and it’s almost instantly forgettable, Collet-Serra manages to hold it all together out of sheer force of will and an inherent sense of style. If there’s any superhero to write about with Black Adam, it’s him, and it’s a good thing to see he still has some lightning coming out of his fingers.

It’s underwritten yet over-stuffed with songs, and the production itself feels chintzy and airless.

The soundtrack is fantastic and Samuel eminently watchable, but "Asthma" suffers from near-lethal doses of self-satisfied hipness.

Home Again" is pure fantasy, all softly-lit, perfectly styled, looking like the cover of Sunset magazine. A world where a 40-year-old single mom is pursued by no fewer than four handsome men. But within that fantasy is also a wonderfully deft demonstration of feminine autonomy in matters of sex, love and marriage.

This “Last Dance” may be shaggy, silly and even a little bit stupid — and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, especially when it’s winking so hard at its own genre play.

With such a fractured narrative, it's difficult to get into a groove with these short, shallow and over-simplified stories.

The film is light and follows a distinct formula, but Walsh is incredibly charming, and shares a potent chemistry with Godrèche.

The Curse of La Llorona is middling B-movie schlock that goes for the low-hanging fruit: sequences you know will end with some kind of jump, bump or scream, and jokes that cut the tension and indicate everyone here knows what's up.

The facade the film offers is a lovely, and mildly diverting one, but there’s little insight to be found below the surface.

A film littered with tired tropes.

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 problem is that one can't help but think of better, more interesting movies based on this premise.

On first glance, Monster Trucks looks so-bad-it’s-hilarious, and it’s a bit heartening to report that it’s not quite that. The monsters are cute and charming, the production value is high, and the trio of Lennon, Levy and Lowe bring just enough quirk to brighten up the humorous beats.

The comedy waffles between nonsensically heightened and realistically grounded, often alternating between the two modes at random, never landing on a tone.

Hardwicke is a talented director who brings an addictive verve and visual dynamism to this bombastic take, and Rodriguez has a charm so appealing it could be weaponized.

What is remarkable, though, is just how unbelievably unbelievable this inspired-by-true-life tale is.

Have I changed so much that I can't find this funny anymore? Nah. Broken Lizard hasn't changed enough to keep up with the times, turning in a badly degraded copy of the original. Stale, unfunny and offensive is quite the hat trick.

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.

As the film turns toward black comedy, mystery and horror, away from social mocking, it becomes far more compelling.

It’s hard to pick apart a film that is as well-intentioned as Here Today, which earnestly wants to celebrate life, and every beautiful, tragic, poignant and surprising moment. But for a film that seeks to be so humanist, there’s only one truly human character in it. As likable as he is, that oversight is impossible to ignore.

Cool New York City detective John Shaft is back again in, you guessed it, Shaft, with a modern update that goes completely sideways in all the wrong ways. This Shaft is a bad mother all right, and it'd be better if he just shut his mouth.

Heralding the arrival of Seth Fisher as a voice to watch, Blumenthal is much like its characters: a frankly funny and original piece of work.

The Goldfinch is both too long and too short; dull to watch but scanty on the details about logistics, character, and just how anything of note actually occurs. The mystery of the film is something to be endured, rather than solved. But the real mystery is our leading man. We never know who Theo is as an adult, or if we’re on his side, or why we should care.

It’s an odd viewing experience, to have the second half of a movie not necessarily redeem the bland first half but rather find its sea legs, leaning into the slippery silliness of a summer shark flick. With a blue drink in hand and movie theater air conditioning blasting like salty sea air, there are worse ways to spend an August afternoon.

It’s a remarkable story, but “Father Stu” is a broad, somewhat brutish film.

Though it's nice to see Smurfette get her due, the whole endeavor feels tired and tiring.

Ultimately, any sass, sentiment and personality are obliterated in the noisy chaos of the climax, which is a grayish brown blur of flying spaceship parts, whirling turtle shells and shouts of "the beacon!" It's more cacophonous than cinematic, and loses the quirky charm of the cartoon in the avalanche of computer-generated violence.

Pitch Perfect 3 is so breezy it's completely weightless, but it manages to deliver just enough of the goods.

This adaptation completely bungles the update.

It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who already love it, it’ll be just right.

The biggest problem with Why Him? though, isn’t him, it’s her. Stephanie is so underwritten that even though these men are competing ruthlessly over her, she drops out of the story completely. She’s the center of attention, but she’s a void. That’s not the fault of the winsome Deutch.

Every character states their inner motivation out loud, often without prompting, making for a film that loses its intrigue almost immediately.

This is your warning that if you have any affinity for the ballet, avoid this at all costs.

Though the messaging is a bit flat-footed, it’s nonetheless effective, and clearly deeply felt, and it brings a sense of significance to this otherwise wacky real-life story, one that really does have to be seen to be believed.

The story of Here surrounding Richard and Margaret is relatable, entirely predictable and utterly dull.

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.

For anyone over 5, it’s best as mild, inoffensive background noise, but no more thrilling or satisfying than that. It turns out to be nothing more than a merchandising opportunity after all.

A couple of flashbacks color in their history but feel unnecessary, as the script and actors ably express the complicated history between the two men. The weekend in the desert is all that is needed to bring to life this romantic drama about revisiting the roads not taken.

This limp, lifeless, one-joke action comedy sequel, directed by David Kerr, comes 15 years after the 2003 "Johnny English," and manages to overstay its welcome, even at a scant 88 minutes, mostly because writer William Davies didn't bother to write anything other than "Johnny English is bad at spying."

It never feels like Brooks has a grasp on the material here, which careens aimlessly through Ella’s harried day-to-day, in a handsomely bland, serviceable style.

There are no new treasures to be found in this installment, which is dragged down by the anchor of a prescribed franchise blueprint.

The effort put into making this film work is palpable, but the result is something deeply surreal and strange. Perhaps this story simply can’t work as a film, or perhaps it wasn’t a very good musical to begin with. It’s a question that may be debated for years to come.

The music is great. Jaafar Jackson is a star. But the movie itself is uncomfortably problematic in a way that’s hard to overlook.

Directed by Deon Taylor with a cheeky sense of fun and deep knowledge of the genre, The Intruder is the kind of schlocky yet satisfying genre filmmaking that makes you jump and laugh at the same time.

A dirge of unfunny scatological material, techno-anxiety and child endangerment masquerading as familial bonding. Settle in for the "Long Haul," because this is one bumpy, miserable ride.

While Just Say Goodbye reveals the filmmakers’ inexperience, with a bit of finesse, Walting could be a promising new voice.

Hunt gives it as all as the tortured Louis, but Patterson is the heart and soul of the film, giving a far more interesting performance as his long-suffering wife.

The film ends up as a heartwarmingly raunchy celebration of unabashed and diverse sexuality without shame or hang ups. And somewhere along the way, writer-director Jeremy LaLonde manages to squeeze in some romance too, turning this sex comedy into a rom-com.

This movie looks so good, it’s tempting to overlook things like character, story and theme. As a purely sensorial experience of sound and image, it’s sensational. As a searing examination of the body horrors of football, fandom and fame, it’s weak.

Freed from the respectful restraints of non-fiction, Berg goes completely hog-wild, cinematically, and it doesn't exactly work. The film is a riot of nearly incomprehensible editing, a violent melee of intertwining scenes, shots, characters, formats and timelines, straining the limits of coherence and cogency.

It's clear that Roth was trying to say something about the brave new world of social media-enabled social justice, and public shame as a tool for change, but the message is garbled. That it comes wrapped in a horror package that just isn't truly scary or suspenseful is the real shame though.

Shipp nails the energetic, motor-mouthed cadence of the outspoken Shakur. But the film surrounding Shipp is rough going.

Bad Santa 2 relies entirely too much on the salty stuff, offering an opportunity for audiences to titter at the firehose of vile gutter humor that leaves no one unsullied, and delves into some truly dark places.

Despite the ever-present layer of cheesiness, every now and again, some of those emotions are just big enough to land a somewhat effective blow right to the heart.

A sweet tale with a smart storytelling device and charming performers, but not much more beyond the cute.

It’s not funny, it’s not satirical, and it’s not worth your time, or Toni Collette’s

The Addams Family 2 feels as if it’s lost the spark of the first one. The jokes that felt fresh in the first film are stale here, with the story’s twists glaringly predictable.