Matt Singer

13 years later, the X-Men are bigger, and the effects used to bring their powers to life are even more convincing. But what’s missing at this point is that sense of awe and wonder from those early days. For all the fighting and blasting and bamfing, we’ve seen it all before — sometimes literally.

As a comedy, this is an unmitigated disaster. As a fever dream of nonsensical non sequiturs, it might be a secret masterpiece.

There’s almost nothing in this movie that hasn’t been seen elsewhere before. And done a whole lot better.

The brilliance is all in the execution, which is just about perfect, from the score of hard-rocking music (and ear-piercing feedback) to the gritty cinematography by Sean Porter.

Favreau’s Jungle Book is at its best in moments of visual splendor; when his camera pulls back to admire the sweep of the CGI foliage or yet another dazzling computer creation wanders into frame. Those images have a clarity that the rest of the movie often lacks.

It’s a comedy that seems perpetually in search of laughs it almost never finds, as if the filmmakers showed up on the first day of production, looked at the script, and realized they’d forgotten to write any jokes, and then had to scramble to find some on set.

In Snyder’s formulation, protecting the world from evil isn’t a gift or a calling; it’s a burden. And that feeling is reflected in the movie itself, a burdensome 150-minute slog about two men fighting over who is in the right when both are very clearly in the wrong.

The results are mostly pleasing and occasionally very funny (particularly whenever Manganiello pops up and Pee-wee tries to pronounce his name). But they also feel very familiar, something that flies in the face of the movie’s key theme about reinvention.

The film’s structure — off-putting in the early going, irresistible by the end — is ingenious.

Even though this is the fourth Mad Max, and it’s indebted to the style of the previous films, Fury Road stands alone. It’s better looking and more thrilling than any of the other installments. The color palette is vibrant and beautiful, and every inch of the frame is crammed with crazy, brilliant ideas.

This sort of ultra-dark crime picture is commonly described as “hard boiled,” but that adjective feels insufficient for Triple 9, which burns away any sense of hope until only misery and suffering remain.

How to Be Single isn’t particularly hilarious, but it’s not particularly unpleasant either. The characters are likable. Their lives are fun to wander through for 100 minutes. Their small, daily battles are relatable, even to a 35-year-old dude.

If Zoolander 2 was a party, the guest list alone would make it the greatest ever thrown. But Zoolander 2 is not a party. It is a movie. A bad movie.

While Deadpool’s core audience will appreciate the way it flatters their knowledge of genre conventions with winking, cynical humor, too much of this stuff just plays like smug self-satisfaction. The movie is so impressed with itself that the viewer’s satisfaction seems completely irrelevant.

Beneath the (sometimes hysterically funny) gags, is a surprisingly thoughtful examination of the same issues that bubble through Joel and Ethan Coen’s more serious pictures; the folly of man, the nature of faith, and the terror of trying to figure out what path through life is the correct one to take.

If The Finest Hours is light on surprises it’s still heavy on suspense, as the script by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, and Eric Johnson treats each new obstacle in Bernie and Ray’s paths as a new brainteasing puzzle with an impossible solution.

There’s no issue with De Niro and Efron’s effort; both are game for every disgusting line and ludicrous set-piece. But they have less material to work with than Aubrey Plaza’s costume designer.

It’s the very definition of a film with its heart in the right place. And also a prime example of how good intentions don’t automatically make great movies.

Although Star Wars has always been about the past, The Force Awakens is ironically at its best when it looks the future.

If Iñárritu wanted to show how life on the frontier was miserable and monotonous he succeeded — by making a movie that is miserable and monotonous. Some of the greatest cinematography in history can’t change that fact.

Joy has none of the energy or precision of any of Russell’s recent efforts. Not even Joy Mangano could invent a mop good enough to clean up this mess.

Even if it falls a little short as a character study, the fact that it’s both hugely weird and hugely watchable is impressive.

Those willing to put in the time will find a movie that is both beautiful and hideous, funny and shocking, and even thoughtful on occasion.

Kill The Messenger isn’t a great movie, but it’s a great vehicle for Renner, and a showcase for the kind of work he should be doing more regularly.

Neeson’s latest effort, A Walk Among The Tombstones, is slightly more subdued than his average shoot-’em-up, but no less gruffly satisfying.

The film actually has some solid elements—a couple of appealing supporting performances, a good villain, effective comic relief, and even some awkward but sincere attempts at subtext about its aging cast. But the fact remains: An Expendables movie should be fun, and for long stretches, this one isn’t.

Lucy earns points for its unpredictable treatment of its vaguely superhero-ish premise and an appealing silliness, but it struggles to match wits with the genius at its center.

Give Age Of Extinction this much credit: Of all the Transformers movies, this is the longest. And save for a few visual centerpieces and a couple of amusing supporting turns, it’s also an endless, incoherent mess.

At its best, Days Of Future Past feels not just like an X-Men comic book, but like an X-Men comic-book crossover... Like Days Of Future Past, crossovers in comics tend to be light on character development. But when they’re good, the huge stakes and epic scale of the action make them hard to put down.

The biggest problem with Draft Day is that even as it shows Sonny sticking to his guns, its absurd, saccharine third act suggests Reitman didn’t stick to his, and allowed his latest celebration of free-spirited mavericks to get co-opted by the very kind of system they were created to criticize.

Sabotage’s mystery component is mostly dead on arrival, and poor Olivia Williams has the thankless job of carrying it as the no-nonsense detective searching for the killer. But as Ayer proved with his previous film, End Of Watch, he has a natural eye and ear for the ecosystem of law enforcement.

Even though the film’s overall impact is blunted by Wheatley’s frequently inscrutable plotting (co-written with Amy Jump), Rose’s images...speak louder than words.

The small company of actors make convincing pilots, flight attendants, and air-traffic controllers, but their activities, tragic and brave though they may be, quickly grow monotonous.

Too bad no one else in Enemies Closer can match Van Damme’s oddball charisma.

Shadow makes an urgent, compelling case for the importance of bright, clear, fluid battles. This movie has everything modern blockbuster spectacles lack: precision, grace, intimacy, stakes, and genuine, gritty excitement.

The rare cinematic experience that is both wall-to-wall jokes and wall-to-wall depressing.

The film pinballs from one setpiece to the next with almost no concern for plot, characters, pacing, or stakes. At times, laughing at all the jokes actually gets a little exhausting.

This is a very confused movie, designed for an audience that doesn’t exist.

Occasionally entertaining but rarely memorable, 12-12-12 never goes beyond the level of a really good bonus feature on a special-edition concert CD.

Though the plot is predictable, individual scenes (and individual targets) are anything but. In the film’s best moments, it’s more than funny; it’s exciting, and almost as daring as its indomitable lead actor.

As a focused spoof of exploitation tropes, Machete Kills is, frankly, terrible. But as a surreal stream of subconsciousness from a filmmaker who’s spent a lifetime watching bad movies, it’s an occasionally entertaining diversion.

As in all of Wright’s films, the surface is just as satisfying as the subtext: hilarious comedy, compelling character drama, eye-popping visuals, and a juicy science-fiction story.

If Schrader and Ellis set out to prove that movies are dying or already dead, they might have done their job too well. The Canyons doesn’t play like the cure for a moribund industry, so much as a mildly effective, highly depressing administration of the last rites.

It isn’t simply a nostalgic movie, it’s a nostalgic movie about nostalgia. Lucas could have set the film in 1959, when Steve, Curt, and John were still in high school and still cruising night after endless night. Instead, Graffiti begins right as the fun is about to end, and gives its characters just enough self-awareness to recognize that this is last call at the party. George Lucas isn’t the only one mourning for this magical lost era; the characters onscreen mourn right along with him.

Mom and Dad gives Cage his most plausible in-story excuse to unleash his total Cageosity since Face/Off. Given a juicy part and the freedom to do whatever he wants, he embraces Brent’s madness with obvious glee.