Matt Singer

The group...make a fine crew. But the rest of the movie doesn’t find enough interesting wrinkles on the old formula to merit a reboot.

Whatever Demon’s autobiographical elements, this film feels incredibly personal; like a howl of pain ripped straight out of someone’s soul.

The film isn’t about catastrophe; it’s about the beauty of what happens when everyone works together to solve a problem.

Superficially, the movie looks a lot like past Phillips comedies about men behaving badly, with dirty jokes and wacky hijinks galore. But War Dogs is more critical of its protagonists’ behavior, and there’s plenty of sad commentary about the state of modern America.

The surprise standout is Chris Pine. Maybe because he possesses unfairly good looks and outrageous charisma, Pine hasn’t received much recognition as an actor. He is outstanding in Hell or High Water.

From the first scene to the last, it’s an absolute mess.

This movie isn’t just fun; it’s sincere and sweet and downright inspiring.

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.

The Legend of Tarzan is too boring to be truly offensive. In spite of some impressive hand and brow acting, Skarsgard’s Tarzan is a frustrating blank and Margot Robbie’s Jane is a simple damsel in distress.

The BFG’s sluggish pacing will test even older viewers’ attention spans. The visuals are potent, but the story is never urgent. The crux of the movie, inspiring people to dream, is a noble, beautiful thing. But not when you put them to sleep in the process.

Independence Day: Resurgence is a bad movie, occasionally in ways that are good for a chuckle, like when people earnestly deliver lines like “Now listen up! They’re going for our molten core!” but mostly just bad in ways that make you wish you hadn’t wasted your money or your time.

Surrounded by so many bloated, unsatisfying movies, The Shallows is as refreshing as a quick dip on a hot summer day — preferably in a pool, not the ocean. They tend to be safer and less shark-infested.

Tickled is a fantastic film to watch and discuss but it’s almost impossible to write about it, because most of its pleasures come from following Farrier as he tries to find the powerful figure atop the Competitive Endurance Tickling league.

This is a much better comedy than it is an action movie.

Even in its slightly rambling, Spielberg-less form, Raiders! moved me in ways I did not anticipate. Zala and Strompolos’ Raiders: The Adaptation remains an incredible piece of fan appreciation, and a true work of art in its own right.

Dory is an entertaining and heartfelt sequel, but it never quite shakes the feeling that Pixar, a studio known for breaking new ground in animation, is retracing its steps this time out.

True, Out of the Shadows is an improvement over the last Ninja Turtles movie, but only in the way that a mild cold is an improvement over the flu. It’s not good, but at least it’s not so terrible that it makes you want to lie in bed for a few days.

Popstar feels a bit like elite military snipers shooting fish in a barrel. Their aim is true, but the targets are almost too easy — not to mention awfully familiar.

Black’s general atmosphere of resigned melancholy fits perfectly with The Nice Guys and its portrait of sleazy 1970s Los Angeles, the ideal setting for a filmmaker interested in faded dreams and broken dreamers.

Clooney and Roberts are both good fits for their roles, and they do what they can with the material they’re provided. It’s just that the material they’re provided is so crummy.

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.