Mark Kennedy

The tagline for “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is “Some things are meant to stay buried.” That also applies to the misguided “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” which should definitely stay deep underground for eternity.

Maybe [Borgli's] trolling America but “The Drama” is clearly the worst thing he’s ever done.

They Will Kill You may remind you of the marriage between madcap, social satire and bloody mayhem from “Ready or Not” but it’s a warning of how hard that combo is to get correctly.

Reminders of Him is a well-crafted, well-acted sad-happy Hoover adaptation.

Lumbering along while fatally wounded, this is a franchise that doesn’t know it is dead, staggering ever onward without an ending in sight.

It’s not as funny as it thinks it is and tiresome in its overly familiar redemption arc.

Shelter is everything you expect a Jason Statham movie to be, no more and no less.

There’s plenty of good music in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, including Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” and one of the most gloriously unhinged uses of Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” ever conceived. If the previous film had a Fellini-esque vibe, this one has punky, anarchic feel.

Overall, it’s just not so good, so good.

Based on Freida McFadden’s novel, “The Housemaid” rides waves of manipulation and then turns the tables on what we think we’ve just seen, looking at male-female power structures and how privilege can trap people without it.

It’s an incoherent mess, something that, back in the day, would be straight to DVD. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 has an after-school special vibe with no real horror and no real awareness that it should.

A satisfying conclusion awaits but, truth be told, it has been a bit of a slog, with soft digressions into social critiques and the meaning of faith grafted onto a setup that, by the third movie in the franchise, shows its seams instantly. Wake up, indeed.

Could the movie have hit harder at the self-involved stars we often worship? Of course. But what makes it powerful is not the Hollywood drama. This is a movie for any of us who have missed a child’s school recital, asked an assistant to work late or skipped a family dinner because a client was running behind. It’s about time. It’s about where we choose to spend our time.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t does what sequels apparently must do these days — load up the characters, return to favorite bits and go global — but nails the trick, a crowd-pleasing return that already has a fourth in the works.

Trachtenberg who previously directed and co-wrote the story of “Prey” in 2022 and the animated “Predator: Killer of Killers” earlier this year, is confident in this world and it shows. He’s created a story about the betrayal of family and the joy of found family — and slicing horrific, nightmare creatures in half with a laser sword. But it’s both parts of Fanning that steal the show.

In many ways, this movie is, then, a mirror of “Nebraska” itself — unexpected, complicated and very American gothic.

Watch it and it will linger in your mind. It’s a movie for Iranians, of course, but it’s valuable for any society hoping to one day mend a divided country.

How do you go back and yet forward at the same time? The filmmakers have rather cleverly done that by incorporating plot points from the first two movies and building out with new characters and blurring the divide between flesh and digital worlds.

All of You is a sort of second stab at this story, which Goldstein and Bridges (“Black Mirror”) first explored in the canceled-too-soon AMC anthology series “Soulmates.” Fittingly for a story about second chances, this time it sticks.

Fitting for a movie with an actual skeleton in a closet, “Adulthood” is about legacy and how we become our parents. It’s also about recognizing that our parents are human and complicated.

Spinal Tap II is filled with ghosts. It’s like watching a cover band playing the hits but then realizing it’s actually the original band onstage after all.

"Last Rights” — part of a universe that includes “The Nun” and “Annabelle” franchises — is a decent enough final cinematic prayer for this franchise, combining the personal story of the Warrens and their daughter, Judy, with a new paranormal possession that’s created a freaked-out family.

There are dark marriage comedies and then there’s “The Roses,” an escalating hatefest that, by the time a loaded gun comes out, all the fun has been sucked out. It’s hard tonally to go from microaggressions to the burning of someone’s prized books to attempted murder and stay a comedy.

Somebody, anybody, should drag Odenkirk away from this nobody franchise.

If “Barbarian” came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, “Weapons” doesn’t disappoint but it doesn’t have the advantage of surprise. It will, at the very least, make you feel a little dread when the clock hits 2:17 a.m.

The Bad Guys 2 has clearly lost its moorings.

Look, we hate to break it to you, it’s not going to end well for many of this privileged set, as they hunt whoever is hunting them. Coherence is also stabbed a lot because a clear motive for the mass murder is really hard to understand.

In many ways, the folks behind Jurassic World Rebirth are trying to do the same thing as their mercenaries: Going back to the source code to recapture the magic of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster original. They’ve thrillingly succeeded.

Two hours later, it’s not clear if this is really an upgrade.

Bride Hard — which combines thrusting male strippers dressed as Vikings as well as deadly automatic weapon fire — isn’t funny or thrilling. It has the kind of lazy pacing you’d usually find on the Hallmark Channel and a level of acting not much better than porn.

The setting of a boat in the middle of the Coral Sea unlocks a delicious new home for terror.

Disney should have left the original alone.

Most impressive is that DeYoung has not created a collection of connected “SNL” skits. Each part cleverly feeds to another, with echoes throughout the script.

On Swift Horses belongs in the same category as other hushed ’50s-set same-sex romances, like Todd Haynes’ “Carol” or Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” But this adaptation hasn’t made the leap to the screen very well. Sometimes swift horses stumble.

The Jared Hess-directed action-adventure artfully straddles the line between delighting preteen gamers and keeping their parents awake.

A Working Man is exactly what you expect when you unleash Statham on a noble mission.

Green wobbles as he tries to land this plane and what had been an intriguing premise to talk about fame and the parasitic industries that live off it turns into a gross-out, run-for-it bloodfest and a plot that unravels. It becomes what it intended to satirize — a pop spectacle.

Director Julius Onah does well with the action but fumbles the quieter moments and supervises editing that’s the opposite of crisp, not helped by script writers who ape military language — “Negative, the package is the priority” — and grandiose sentiment — “The country is lost.”

No Other Land is a piece of resistance but also humanization.

Peter Hastings, director, screenwriter and animal voice of Dog Man, has had a hand in Pilkey’s much better adaption of “Captain Underpants,” but this time smashes together characters and plot lines from several of the books in a way that is hard to follow even for fans.

But no one emerges unscathed from this funny-when-it-shouldn’t-be mess. The movie’s slogan is the weird “Y’all Need a Pilot?” but it should be “Y’all Need a Filmmaker?”

Slack when it should be terrifying, “Wolf Man” suffers from cheap sentimentality, laughably obvious script reveals, poor continuity and a creature that is less predatory than painful. Pity comes to mind.

A Complete Unknown is utterly fascinating, capturing a moment in time when songs had weight, when they could move the culture — even if the singer who made them was as puzzling as a rolling stone.

Kraven the Hunter can climb sheer walls like a gorilla, snatch fish out of streams like a bear and outrun deer. But there’s something this slab of human beef can’t do: Anchor a decent movie.

Queer is best when it’s a character study of Lee, who in Craig’s hands is charming, selfish, arrogant, abrasive, foppish and sometimes unable to read a room. It’s a million miles from 007, even if Lee carries a pistol.

Joy is not all joy. There is frustration and loss and tears along the way, but it is a triumphant film about the way humans can make the world better and how a baby’s cry can be a priceless gift.

So beautifully constructed and acted in the first half is “Heretic” that you won’t really notice when it turns into a horror movie.

Here fails to connect all these centuries of human experiences, other than to celebrate the human experience in all its messiness, triumph and sadness.

Over two hours ends up being too long. But [Finn] has found a great satirical target, given life to a third film easily and showcased another rising star to watch. That’s a reason to, well, smile about.

It is deep and surreal and often adorable. Is it high concept or low? Like Williams, it’s a bit of both.

Is this the best animated movie of the year? Totally, so far. It might even be the best movie of the year.

The saddest thing about “Transformers One” is the wastefulness of another dull outing in a universe geared toward kids just learning to transform themselves.

Director-writer Megan Park has crafted a wistful coming-of-age tale using this comedic device for “My Old Ass” and the results are uneven even though she nails the landing.

It’s a triumph of small-budget, naturalistic filmmaking, where cars on a gravel road kick up choking clouds of dust and arm bones crack when pressure is applied.

In his attempt to give new life to the cult hero of comics and film, [Sanders has] given us plenty of beauty at the expense of depth or coherence.

But It Ends With Us doesn’t end quickly enough — more than two hours drag — with tangents and poor editing, like sudden scene cuts that leave viewers looking for clues to where they are.

This is a premise that could turn horrifically treacly or maudlin. But Greg Kwedar — who directs and co-writes with Clint Bentley — has a firm, no-nonsense but emotional hand, even if he uses a few too many razor wire-though-the-window shots.

“Axel F” is not exactly Murphy’s finest hour, either. But Murphy just saying “Jesus!” is funny. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 30 years for our next Axel Foley fix. God, we’ve missed him.

Part of the problem of “Chapter 1” is that in addition to overstuffing it with too many characters, the editing is pretty bad. Viewers will struggle with some violent cuts in which Costner has jumped the action forward months within the same chapter without any clues.

McCarthy’s visual style is too fragmented, happy to capture his scrambling camera and sound operators in the frame and changing up his shots from guerilla-style jerky iPhone images to tasteful, polished portraits.

It’s a documentary, ultimately, about creativity and a singular mind, one who dreamed up a gaggle of friends for life: Big Bird, Cookie Monster, the Count and, of course, Kermit, stitched from an old coat.

A curious new animated attempt to monetize the comic icon again by giving him an origin story and then asking him to do things a galaxy away from what he does in the funny pages.

By the time Miller is finished, he’s built an epic, gritty history in the Wasteland like “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones.” But was the point of this franchise a better understanding of the negotiating tactics of untrusty warlords in a hellscape? No: It was rocket-propelled grenades, motorcycles, chains, massive sandstorms and cracked skulls.

Starting with the potentially crippling proposition of a key death, this franchise has somehow found new vibrancy.

If you always thought your garden-variety heist movies could do with a bit more blood-sucking vampire, have we got a flick for you.

A bewildering 90-minute, narrator-less and wordless experiment that’s as audacious as it is infuriating. It’s not clear if everyone was high making it or we should be while watching it.

Writer and director Goran Stolevski gives us an atypical family portrait that’s brilliantly political without being preachy, loving without being maudlin and epic by being specifically tiny.

The action scenes are dynamite, layering POV camera work with great, thundering, bottle smashing stunts. It knows it’s silly, but it’s still a good time.

The series’ first new installment in eight years is a reliably funny, sweet and wonderfully realized passing of the torch, with a paw in the past and another into the future — an elegant goodbye and a hello. Many other filmmakers — ahem, Marvel and DC — might learn a thing.

Problemista is not like a Wes Anderson-type hyper-whimsy, but more like the surreal bursting joy of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” It even breaks space and time like the latter. It is absolutely captivating.

This is pure lazy storytelling, like thinking that just showing us a clip of Bob Ross painting is somehow uproariously funny.

Orion and the Dark is about fear and overcoming it but this movie directed by Sean Charmatz has too much junk clogging up the vision.

Jenna Ortega’s stark rise as Gen Z’s goth-glam princess takes a pointless, awkward turn in “Miller’s Girl,” a new romantic horror movie about cerebral people that’s simply tiresome.

Samuel never stays with any idea for long and “The Book of Clarence” lacks cohesion, as well as consistency, even if the acting is superb, especially from a soulful Stanfield.

It’s perhaps appropriate that the latest Aquaman movie is about a lost kingdom. In many ways, this mini-franchise is just that, a Jason Momoa kingdom that could just quietly sink below the cinematic waves.

Most of Mann’s toolkit is here — slick and moody camerawork, a poetic surrounding and heightened use of music, even the car porn of “Miami Vice.” But Ferrari — despite Mann’s leaning on Italian opera — fails to ignite.

It’s a story brilliantly adapted and directed by Sam Esmail, showrunner of “Mr. Robot,” who has made Leave the World Behind into a homage of Alfred Hitchcock, complete with the image of a man trying to outrun a crashing plane and using the master’s discordant loud music.

By sanding off all the dark human quirks from their deeply human heroine, the filmmakers have left us a film that’s just filling the space.

Next Goal Wins isn’t a tale of “woe” or “woah!” but “meh.”

As wonderful as Domingo is, it’s the astonishing amount of talent in front of and behind the camera that will take your breath away. No matter how small, each performance brings fire and makes the most of a few minutes on camera.

Caught between PG and R, as well as lost at the crossroads of inadvertent comedy and horror, the PG-13 Five Nights at Freddy’s has to go down as one of the poorest films in any genre this year.

It’s so dated there’s even a mention of Halliburton.

The Royal Hotel shares a vibe with Alex Garland’s sophisticated horror film “Men” — an arty indictment of toxic masculinity that often felt like a lecture. But Green’s film doesn’t feel like that. The final scene will make you cheer, even if the ultimate message is murky.

It’s lovingly told — and intimate.

The populist message here is clear — the longer Wall Street overlooks the value of people, the financial system will remain broken.

A Million Miles is wisely more about one man’s obsession and nicely touches on topics like racism, assimilation, deferred dreams, family guilt and dedication.

A new directing and writing team fails to shock or scare with a color-by-numbers plot and a meandering, languid wannabe frightfest.

Golda has seeds of interesting insights, like the suggestion that she was betrayed by some of the men she relied on during the war and yet protected them. Or how false intelligence is nothing new when it comes to Middle Eastern conflicts. Or how female leaders inevitably face catch-22s. But none of these is taken.

The loving, lyrical Maite Alberdi -directed documentary is the story of one man’s decline due to Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s so much more. It’s a stronger love story and one that tries to say things about a country’s collective memory, too.

A stylish, well-crafted piece of filmmaking that marks the auspicious arrival of twin Australian filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou.

If you do give in, you’re in for a treat — a heart-pounding, never dragging, mission accomplished that takes audiences from the frozen Bering Sea to the rooftop of Abu Dhabi International Airport and the narrow alleyways of Venice.

If the “Insidious” franchise is your jam, by all means go and see the original Fab Four of the Lambert family battle hollow-eyed demons for perhaps the last time. But for everyone else, why not let the past stay in the past?

Hemsworth is re-joined here by Marvel Comic Universe–screenwriter Joe Russo and stunt-specialist-turned-director Sam Hargrave, but their ace-in-the-hole is cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel. He creates impossibly long single takes of complicated fighting or driving scenes that put the viewer directly into the action like few other thrillers.

This is more than just a snack-version “Rocky” story, with the filmmakers exploring the insecurity of factory shift workers, the stress of integrating into white culture, how hard it is for corporations to innovate and the ability to silence the voices in your head that urge you to quit.

The problem with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the same problem faced by all of the installments — balancing the humanity with the metal.

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco has co-written and stars in this big sloppy Italian American kiss about family that not only leans into stereotypes — working-class Italians on one side, WASPs on the other — but plows the field with them.

With a foot in the past, one in the future and one on the gas, Fast X is pure popcorn lunacy. Was that too many feet? Oh, excuse us, you wanted logic?

The gripping and hugely enjoyable BlackBerry is about the famous — and later infamous — Research in Motion gadget that helped trigger the global smartphone era as we know it, before sliding into obsolescence.