Matt Singer

While many Marvel films, even some of the good ones, feel like small pieces of a larger story, Black Panther is an entire cinematic universe unto itself.

There are some highlights — mostly the lead performances.

Clichés usually become clichés because they resonate with audiences, and all it takes to freshen one up are a couple of new twists. Proud Mary has just enough of them to make some satisfying out of very familiar material.

It is quite literally the company’s biggest disaster to date; a colossal waste of time, money, and effort.

The Last Jedi checks off all the boxes you want from a Star Wars movie, including one of the coolest lightsaber fights in the series’ 40 years, but Johnson is also interested in exploring new territory, including a consideration of the shadings and nuances to the Light and Dark Sides of the Force.

Phantom Thread is classical and deliberate, with few of his former signatures like ostentatious flourishes of camera, editing, or music. That may frustrate some Anderson fans, but Phantom Thread’s luxurious but restrained aesthetic perfectly matches Reynolds Woodcock’s approach to design.

All I can tell you is The Post is the first movie that ever made me cry about an abstract concept. And when it was over, I found myself particularly happy to see Meryl Streep’s name first in the closing credits.

As showy as that makeup and voice is, and as big and boisterous as Churchill’s speeches are, Oldman finds nuances that few actors do in this sort of role. He’s not all fiery tirades and tearful monologues.

Justice League is a collection of missed opportunities and flubbed ideas.

Geostorm is so punishingly bad it makes Independence Day: Resurgence look like Last Year at Marienbad. (Or at least its less well-known sequel, Last Year at Marienbad: Resurgence.)

The Snowman Killer is one of those ludicrous movie bad guys who is both supernaturally smart and conveniently stupid.

This movie is so colorful and zippy and packed with outlandish supporting characters, that Hemsworth’s job is relatively easy. He just needs to look great, kick ass, nail the one-liners, and ride off into the sunset (or Avengers: Infinity War, whichever comes first). Thor: Ragnarok is sort of like a giant flatscreen TV hanging on a wall with an enormous hole in the middle of it. The TV is beautiful, but it doesn’t fix the hole. It just covers it up.

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.

Ford’s memorable performance is just one of the many ways Blade Runner 2049 surpasses the original film. Its clever and compelling storyline is another. And then of course there are Deakins’ incredible images.

Let’s face it: The LEGO Movies were always better than they had any right to be. At their core, even with their clever writing, colorful visuals, and memorable voice casts, they were still feature-length toy commercials. The LEGO Ninjago Movie is just the first installment in the series that actually feels like one.

This isn’t quite solid-gold filmmaking. But it might be gold-plated.

In a way, though, Robinson’s less-edgy aesthetic is even more subversive than graphic sexuality. By treating the Marstons’ lovemaking the same way arthouse movies have treated heterosexual couples for decades, she refuses to portray them as aberrant or abnormal.

The screenplay, written by director Peter Landesman and based on books by Felt and John D. O’Connor, does a fine job of condensing a sprawling conspiracy into a digestible feature, although it sometimes favors clarity over nuance and winds up enunciating important plot points in glaringly unnatural dialogue.

Franco’s performance as Tommy Wiseau is a thing of beauty. Without ever inflating Tommy’s achievements or his talents, and while still having a great deal of fun with his peculiar behavior, he makes him into what he always wanted to be: A true cinematic hero.

It is a movie about how anger consumes and destroys, and how the only cure for that anger is empathy, something that’s in short supply these days but Three Billboards has in abundance.

With little drama or humor, it mostly amounts to watching a guy complain about his fairly decent life for 100 minutes.

The movie cuts back and forth between the two, and their themes speak to one another in some ways, but the competing narratives barely intersect. At times, it seems as if director and co-writer George Clooney made a movie where separate but equal is not only the subtext but also the organizing principle.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard is not the best movie of the summer, but it is easily its most pleasant surprise. An unapologetically violent and vulgar buddy action comedy, it updates the template set forth by Lethal Weapon and particularly Midnight Run for a new era.

Even when the movie around him is total garbage nonsense, it is fun to watch Idris Elba; the way he walks, the way he stares at people with eyes blazing with intensity. He is an ideal action hero. He looks like the coolest man who ever lived in his fantasy Western garb, and he moves with a rare combination of grace and force, like the greatest possible combination of Gene Kelly and Chow Yun-Fat. He makes an amazing Gunslinger. Sadly, he’s trapped in a not-very-good Gunslinger movie.

There are plenty of words that can describe The Emoji Movie. Here are a few of them: Unfunny. Saccharine. Nonsensical. Painful. And, of course, crappy. (If you prefer the poop emoji, that works too.)

Dunkirk would have been even better, though, if any of the characters seemed as fully realized as the aerial and naval warfare. Without that, it works best as pure sensory experience; incredible visuals, intense battles. In the rare quiet moments, we’re invited to observe an unusual instrument featured in Hans Zimmer’s score: The ticking of a clock, a reminder that while Nolan can change the march of time, his heroes cannot.

This movie takes big risks, and many of them pay off. War for the Planet of the Apes proves that big movies aren’t incompatible with big ideas.

It is, from start to finish, one of Pixar’s best films.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is a return to form, featuring an incredibly likable cast, a compelling and complicated villain, and a irrepressibly charming Spider-Man. Welcome home, Peter.

The Last Knight is not, in any conventional sense, entertaining or good, although parts of it are spectacular.

While this movie may not reach the heights of Pixar’s finest achievements, it certainly stands as not only the best Cars, but the most mature one as well.

The nonsensical story would matter less if The Mummy would get out of Cruise’s way and let him do what he does best. Instead, it buries him beneath punishing dialogue scenes and surrounds him with unconvincing and unoriginal special effects.

Wonder Woman is exciting, romantic, funny — and my favorite DC Extended Universe movie to date. With her courage and strength, Diana sets an example for everyone she meets, and she holds fast to her ideals even under great pressure. With any luck, she’ll provide similar inspiration to the directors of the DC Extended Universe in the years ahead.

Baywatch’s comedy (credited to six different writers) is second-rate and its action is even worse, with special effects that rank among the absolute worst I’ve seen in a big summer movie in many years.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is the sort of sequel that’s so bad it makes you retroactively wonder why you liked the original film so much in the first place.

The reason to look past the movie’s issues is Fassbender.

A bloated action movie with occasional breaks in the monotony. It’s Perfectly Fine™; entirely competent but unexceptional in just about every way.

The characters and their relationships are strong and the dialogue is sharp, but the whole thing feels like a minor installment in an ongoing series.

Even though Walker is still present, his absence is already felt. It is strange to watch a movie that is this much fun and this sad all at the same time.

Its unhurried pacing, complex themes, and magnificent visuals that must be seen on a big screen make it feel like an artifact from an era of big-budget filmmaking that has been rendered essentially extinct by the franchisification of Hollywood.

McGrath and screenwriter Michael McCullers are too preoccupied piling on chase and action scenes to exploit their title’s potential to its fullest.

Life jolts audiences with relentless ferocity, but it’s not interesting.

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

It’s a mature consideration of the ideas underpinning its comic-book motifs. It’s also easily the best Wolverine movie of the three, and an impressive sendoff for Jackman’s version of the character.

Fifty Shades Darker is a very faithful sequel; a milquetoast continuation of a bland romance between two boring people.

Like The LEGO Movie before it, The LEGO Batman Movie is far more entertaining than a giant piece of crass commercialism has any right to be.

It does what all great horror movies do: turn real-world anxieties into the stuff of nightmares.

This is one of those stories when reality was stranger, and more entertaining, than fiction.

The crime story, involving the hunt for the men who murdered this girl, is strictly by-the-numbers (and there are a few clue that still don’t fit together in my mind) but Sheridan proves himself a surprisingly effective director of action.

On paper, The Little Hours sounds like a combative anti-religious tract, but Baena’s less interested in mocking the church than in basking in the gulf between humanity’s lofty aspirations and its baser instincts.

This film disturbed me way more than most conventional horror movies, because Lowery understands that the really frightening part of any haunted house tale isn’t the ghost or the demon or the everyday objects moving of their own accord. It’s the reminder that death is coming for us all, whether we’re ready for it or not.

The film is almost as messy as its characters’ love lives, and the early scenes, which take a long time establishing the various subplots, play less like a dramedy than a comedy that could have used more jokes. But the movie gets more earnest and impassioned (not to mention better) as it goes along.

The film works effectively on its own terms as a new variation on a timeless subgenre, and as a warning to people who share their lives freely online.

One of the best things about The Big Sick is that the obstacles facing this relationship are real and relatable. It’s a funny movie, but it’s about really serious stuff.

Live by Night is a very mixed bag: Earnest, handsome, even passionate — and also slow, digressive, and a little bland.

With his mastery of composition, editing, and music, Scorsese has made some of the most engaging movies in history, experiences that express fascinating ideas through gripping stories, compelling characters, and unparalleled craft. Here, all of those elements seem sublimated to the larger points Scorsese wants to make.

Assassin’s Creed makes you actively work for its pleasures, and it’s heartening to see a film of this scale that’s strange and ambitious and doesn’t spoon-feed viewers every little detail.

So many of the decisions by director David Frankel and writer Allan Loeb make absolutely no sense.

Edwards is very good at crafting images that straddle the uncomfortable line between beauty and horror, and at dwarfing people with giant monsters and machines with powers beyond mortal comprehension. It’s his comprehension of mortals that sometimes feels lacking.

With a cast this good and this likable, it’s hard to completely hate Office Christmas Party. Still, with a cast this good, it’s also hard to believe how consistently dull the film is.

This movie offers very few insights, and has no apparent point beyond mythologizing the early days of a company that doesn’t exactly need assistance in the self-mythologizing department.

Bates notwithstanding, Bad Santa 2’s supporting cast just isn’t up to snuff.

Prisoners is too nuanced to dismiss, but too silly to take seriously.

Even at its most comprehensible, there’s a lot Sicario deliberately leaves unsaid, and it builds to a crescendo of mayhem and moral rot worthy of a great film noir.

The Da Vinci Code wasn’t Da Vinci, but it was an actual movie with texture and characters. Inferno is dumbed down to a shocking degree.

The bad news is the studio’s most innovative visuals are wedded to one of its most formulaic origin stories. In some scenes, Doctor Strange is Marvel’s most exciting movie yet. In others, it might be its most boring movie since Iron Man 2.

The film is a bit of a mess; a heartfelt, scattershot, mostly unfunny, intermittently moving polemic about our country and its people.

If you're looking for something lean and unpretentious, you should be pretty satisfied.

Never Go Back could have used a bit more personality in the bad guy department, and the middle section sags a bit before the inevitable (and satisfying) denouement. But everyone involved seems to understand exactly what kind of movie they’re trying to make, and they deliver on just about every promise made by the title Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.

The world-building is engrossing. The premise is refreshingly peculiar. The action grabs your attention. As long as the movie keeps a lid on what precisely is going on, it works.

A famous (though almost certainly false) quote attributed to President Woodrow Wilson compared Griffith’s work to “writing history with lightning” and the best sections in Parker’s Birth of a Nation are charged with a similar kind of cinematic electricity. Many of his directing choices are obvious but bluntly effective.

As a director, Berg is known for his brutal action scenes, and while Deepwater Horizon’s second half is full of intense sequences, the film’s first half is just as exciting thanks to the wonderfully uncomfortable dynamics between Wahlberg, Russell, and Malkovich.

There are an obscene number of funny people in this movie — though Mascots is not as obscenely funny as that Murderers’ Row of comedy talent would suggest.

This is the sort of film that is more frustrating than bad. Vigalondo had something really special here. He just didn’t quite pull it off.

With infectious enthusiasm, charismatic leads, gorgeous songs, vibrant colors, and dazzling camerawork, La La Land restores the original movie musical to its former glory.

Blair Witch does deliver the requisite shocks demanded of a horror movie for a multiplex audience, but maybe it’s time for filmmakers to stay out of these woods for a while — at least until there’s a new technology for the Blair Witch to mess with.

If (Re)Assignment played more like a spoof of vintage pulp and less like a tacky rehash of it, that choice could have worked. Instead, it just comes off as clueless — about gender as well as filmmaking.

The Girl With All the Gifts is full of surprises. It keeps shifting before our eyes, from atmospheric horror to intense survival thriller to thoughtful contemplation of humanity’s place in our planet’s food chain.

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.

Arrival is a smart film, but it’s not a cold or clinical one. Both the first and last scene brought me to the verge of tears.

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.

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.