Mark Kennedy

Project Power nicely mixes elements of sci-fi and crime thriller to create a cool trip with a wink, set against a soundtrack that includes 2 Chainz, Nipsey Hussle and Curtis Mayfield.

Kail’s camera captures actors’ intimate faces during key moments in a way impossible for theater-goers and incorporates audience reaction to create an electric filmed version.

Objectivity is not Meeropol’s goal here but better understanding of who this slippery character is, and this film succeeds in that.

It’s not a compelling environmental film or a good drama about racers. Like many of the electric cars on the track that season, it stalls.

More concrete examples of how mushrooms or dropping acid aided life are sorely needed.

The editing is more than a little rough and the plot gets a little stretched, but just as things start to get seriously hairy, the Pierce brothers suddenly have something really interesting to say about erasure and how families can abandon their histories.

The Hunt is not great satire or even a great film. It’s an unstylish and heavy-handed horror-thriller that turns into a revenge gore-fest as it mocks everyone with a big clumsy paw.

Spenser Confidential is a bit of a mess tonally with a plot that keeps attracting new weird layers, like lint on a sweater. It wants to be funnier than it is. It hopes to be deeper than it is.

For all of the inherent drama, it becomes clear that Burden, the man at the center of a film which bears his name, is really just a cipher, a sponge upon which we put meaning.

Written and directed by Stella Meghie, the film is a gentle and attentive inter-generational tale with a first-rate cast.

The little blue alien who can sprint quicker than the speed of light has ironically benefited from slowing it down, taking a pit stop to retool and emerge this month as a total crowd-pleaser.

The first half doesn’t fit with the second half, there are too many distractions and the filmmakers think it’s clever to leave clues but they do it clumsily and at the last minute and it’s really exhausting for the viewer.

Morano is absolutely adept in keeping tension rising, her characters grounded and her audience intrigued, a half-step behind.

Gretel & Hansel is as visually arresting as it is tedious, a 90-minute movie that really should have been a 3-minute music video for Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne. It’s in the horror genre only loosely. It’s more eerie, if that’s a genre. Actually, it’s like dread for 90 minutes. It’s dreadful.

Despite its flaws, this movie reminds us all of the sacrifices made by soldiers and to be mindful of how we treat them when they come home.

“Bad Boys” only works when the bickering cops are center stage.

Director William Eubank keeps the action taut and the look of the film is realistically impressive and dark, with grimy, dirty workers donning cool dive suits that make them each look like Transformers. His camera often goes tight on the shocked faces inside the helmets. Stewart, in particular, shines with a combination of steely nerves and harrowing expressions.

Just Mercy is not always an easy film to watch, but it is necessary.

Like all sequels, the second suffers from not having the delicious surprise of the first, but the seed to a third film is hinted at in the closing credits, which is more than the first film promised.

The remarkable Queen & Slim is a romance and a road movie, a film about outlaws on the run, two journeys of self-discovery and a nuanced social commentary. It’s not perfect but it’s close — an urgent, beautiful and socially conscious trip through the American racial psyche in 2019.

This infectious and engrossing story of the 1966 showdown on a French racetrack between car giants Ford and Ferrari is a high-octane ride that will make you instinctively stomp on a ghostly gas pedal from your movie seat.

The first thing director Roland Emmerich should do after his latest movie Midway hits theaters is apologize. Apologize to the visual effects crew, the stuntmen, the carpenters, the costumers and artists. He has squandered their considerable visual skill in retelling the crucial World War II battle at Midway by melding some of the best action sequences in years with the most banal of words.

This dark, socially conscious film about the intertwining of two families is an intricately plotted, adult thriller. We can go up, for sure, but Bong can also take us deeper down. There’s always an extra floor somewhere in this masterpiece.

The director ends on a righteous note but he’s not earned it.

The uplifting Edie is worthy of your time, mostly thanks to Hancock and Scotland’s natural beauty.

It’s a well-plotted film that excellently mixes gore and humor while also offering some social commentary by torching the clueless rich.

Roberts has clearly been given a bigger budget and it shows in the nicely realized submerged city the poor young women must navigate. He’s saddled with a terrible film title — 47 meters was the depth of the ocean floor in the first film — but none of that matters once the air tanks and masks go on.

The Red Sea Diving Resort is terribly overcooked, turning the real-life drama into a light caper like “Ocean’s 11,” adding cartoonish dialogue from hack superhero films and slathering the whole mess in white savior complex.