Matt Singer

Before that, though, Knock at the Cabin is about as well-acted and intense as a movie of this kind gets. For a long time, Shyalaman had a reputation as a guy obsessed with twists. While he does still occasionally veer into that sort of territory, his movies these days are less about structural gimmicks than insistent messages. In Knock at the Cabin’s case, it is a poignant tale about faith and sacrifice — and, above all, avoiding family vacations at all costs.

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.

There’s a decent amount of craft on display, along with a filmmaker of genuine chutzpah. Throw just a little restraint into the mix, and you might really have something.

The thing that carries The Matrix Resurrections through some of those rough patches instead is Wachowski’s obvious affection for the characters, and the actors’ reciprocal love for this world and its endless intellectual curiosities.

If the goal here was to really understand how a brash kid from a backwater planet became an amoral smuggler, Solo failed. Han’s evolution in this movie is entirely superficial. He doesn’t become the character we recognize. When you get right down to it, the biggest thing about him that changes is he goes from wearing a vest to a jacket.

It takes way too long — nearly an hour of a 105-minute movie — for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s actual story to emerge and for Keaton to take center stage again. Once he shows up, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice springs to life. Er, make that afterlife.

This is a creature feature, plain and simple — and, at least on a visceral level, a satisfying one.

Murphy is really on his game; way more than I expected after 30 years. This is not Eddie Murphy in a Detroit Lions jacket sleepwalking his way through a big Netflix paycheck; it’s Axel Foley improvising his way through one crisis after another. And that’s fun.

Dumbo’s great skill, flying around a tent in a circle, becomes a little old after it’s repeated ad naseam over the course of two full hours. Adorable though he may be, Dumbo’s kind of a one-trick pony, in a matter of speaking.

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.

Every time one of these Avatar movies comes out, everyone jokes about how they’re gussied-up cartoons and people online joke about how no one cares about them. Then the film actually arrives in theaters and it’s epic and exciting and gorgeous and heartbreaking. Would I be interested in a James Cameron motion picture not set on Pandora? Absolutely. But after Fire and Ash, which really might be my favorite of the Avatar films to date, I’m also okay if he just stays on Pandora forever.

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.

Chazelle seems so enamored with his simulacrum of this forgotten world that he loses sight of the people in it.

Black Phone 2 conjures an artful milieu out of those disparate elements, and it’s saturated with the chilly ambiance of a classic campfire ghost story. But the actual story it tells never quite measures up to its superior influences, or even the previous entry in this series.

The lead performers bring a lot of energy to the material, and for a while Tetris hums along as part The Social Network and part Ocean’s 11, at least until a final act that collapses under the weight of an action sequence so ludicrous it feels like it belongs in a parody of bad Hollywood biopics.

A great cast and a fairly clever turn into the realm of horror can’t redeem what otherwise feels like a very familiar, very safe piece of satire.

Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett do know how to stage a good scare sequence, and Scream VI has enough decent ones to prevent the film from tipping over into disaster.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is drenched with symbolism and layered with ideas about lost innocence and the power of stories — and the power of creating something that resonates with an audience for years and years. I suspect this movie will do exactly that.

Firth might appear like an odd choice for an action hero, but he makes a surprisingly convincing one in the Roger Moore mold, the sort of unflappable British gentlemen who can kick your ass without wrinkling his suit. He’s a great straight man for Jackson and some of the movie’s sillier elements as well; Firth has this unshakeable dignity and poise that even the most vulgar moments in Kingsman can’t puncture.

If Suicide Squad felt like Warner Bros.’ deliberate attempt to replicate the quirky fun of Guardians of the Galaxy, Birds of Prey is its stab — and there is a lot of stabbing in it — at making DC’s Deadpool.

Reitman clearly made this film from a place of love and admiration for the institution of SNL and the people, then and now, who produce it. He might get the facts wrong at times; what he gets right is the feeling that every fan who grows up watching SNL imagines the show is like behind the scenes — giddy and chaotic and brimming with passionate creativity.

Warts and all, the new Ghostbusters is still one of the best tentpoles of the summer (admittedly, that’s not saying much). It doesn’t tarnish the legacy of the original movie, and its own legacy might have been even stronger if it hadn’t worried about paying homage to the old Ghostbusters quite so intensely.

To my surprise, those moments in this silly, busy blockbuster moved me. That’s what’s so great about Sam Raimi; it’s not just that he believes in these characters, he makes you believe in them too.

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.

So maybe Lightyear isn’t the kind of movie that Hollywood would have made in 1995. As a 2022 movie, it works just fine.

What a pleasant surprise that the movie is far funnier and more perceptive about this brutal, hilarious time in a child’s life than I anticipated.

Pretty much everything in Wonder Woman 1984 that’s not an excuse for a Gadot and Pine reunion flops. That includes both of its villains.

Lots of mystery hangs in the air of the El Royale, but when all is said and done there aren’t a ton of surprises in Bad Times at the El Royale’s story, or the way that story is told. Even with a bunch of twists, things progress largely how you expect, only slower.