Marco Vito Oddo

A stay-at-home mother's slow descent into lycanthropy serves as a metaphor for maternal struggles in this uneven adaptation that never fully commits to its provocative premise, despite Amy Adams' raw and transformative performance.

In Joker: Folie à Deux, director Todd Phillips's attempt to blend courtroom drama with musical elements results in a disjointed and sluggish narrative that fails to capitalize on its potential.

Netflix's The Union is a formulaic spy thriller that wastes its promising premise. Despite the star power of Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, the film suffers from a predictable plot, mediocre action sequences, and shallow character development.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F struggles to balance nostalgia and reinvention, with Eddie Murphy's charm unable to save it from a muddled script.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die leans heavily on nostalgia and fan service. While Smith and Lawrence's chemistry remains, the film's predictable plot and over-reliance on past glories make it a forgettable experience for all but diehard fans.

While 'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' is highly entertaining, it fails to capture the chrome-painted perfection of 'Mad Max: Fury Road.' Instead, we end up with a bloated epic that focuses too much on world building and not enough on its titular character.

While 'IF's colorful creatures and set pieces might offer a temporary distraction, the weak script and superficial world building crumbles into dust at any sign of scrutiny.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 just feels like an overstretched introduction.

Brutal Heat delivers a curious experiment that never fully embraces the potential of its concept.

In the end, Meg 2: The Trench is not much different from the first installment in the franchise, for better and mostly worse.

While fans of Cox and Beckinsale‘s work might still enjoy some moments of Prisoner’s Daughter, the overall lack of polish in the script makes for a dull experience that’s filled with inconsistencies.

Crater's stakes are low for its characters and the audience. It abuses clichés, never deviates from its formulaic script, and fails to surprise the viewer.

There’s no way to hide the lack of substance in We Bought a Zoo, making it hard to justify returning to this decade-old film.

If viewers manage to sync with this specific wavelength, they will definitely enjoy Sen’s methodical noir deconstruction. Still, it might be asking too much from the audience, especially where there’s so little payoff to be found in this corner of the Australian outback.

The shocking images of Superpower can move us, but the movie ends up being nothing more than a piece of propaganda. Even worse, the documentary is a wasted opportunity to give a proper voice to the people who still live and fight in Ukraine. Instead, Superpower seems more concerned about contributing to the mystification of Zelensky and the image of Penn as a lonesome and brave hero.

While Disco Boy is gorgeous to look at, a more coherent script would have done wonders to hold the movie together.

Smith is still a competent director, and Consecration can boast some moments of brilliance sprinkled all over it. However, the messy script drags Consecration down, and fans still expecting a new Triangle will have to wait a little longer.

What hurts Waking Karma more than anything else is the lack of polishing both the screenplay and direction got. And with a little more production time, the movie could have become something more memorable.

Director Brad Anderson’s Blood is one of the rare vampire movies to focus entirely on the subject of drug addiction, which could make it a refreshing entry to the subgenre. Unfortunately, Blood’s script leans too heavily on tropes. Besides that, Anderson’s competent direction cannot help with Blood’s mixed messages about drug addiction and an ultimately unlikable protagonist.

If only All Jacked Up and Full of Worms had a script capable of bridging the gaps between its most inspired moments, it could be praised as a refreshing experiment of shock cinema.

There's Something Wrong With the Children is fine as it is for a casual watch, but it’s painful to watch such a talented cast trying to salvage a bland horror film that had so much potential to be unforgettable.

The movie is as sloppy as a horror movie can be, but that also contributes to its charm. The only major downside of the experience is a drag of a first act, that’ll most certainly scare away impatient horror fans, and with good reason.

Despite all its flaws, Door Mouse remains an interesting cinematic experiment. And we must commend Jogia for his devotion to comic book language.

Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge suffers from the same issue as superhero media in the last few years, as it demands some homework to be done so you can follow and maybe enjoy the story the movie is trying to tell. That won’t be an issue for hardcore fans, but Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge still didn’t find a way to make the franchise more widely accessible.

Since a creature feature lives and dies by its monster, Troll has the clear advantage of conjuring a magnificent beast from Scandinavian folklore. Of course, that might not be enough for viewers looking for something fresh to watch. Even so, Uthaug ultimately succeeds in developing a movie that’ll most likely please fans of giant creatures.

Where Slumberland truly shines is with its cast. While Slumberland is one of Barkley’s first feature credits, along with Spirited, the young actress already shows she can deal with a huge range of emotions. And while Slumberland’s story can feel bloated, Barkley’s Nemo is the emotional anchor that holds everything together. The biggest surprise of Slumberland, though, is Momoa, who embraces a dad energy we didn’t know he had.

The movie doesn’t stand out for its action scenes, has nothing new to say about the old good-versus-evil conflict at the center of any superhero story, and is incapable of giving its villains real purpose. Stallone is a strong man, but even he cannot carry the weight of an entire movie alone.