Mike Ryan

As long as these movies keep their earnest, fun, ’90s action movie tone, there is no ridiculous plot point these movies could come up with I wouldn’t believe. By this point they’ve earned that. They are family.

By sheer willpower alone Majors makes Magazine Dreams something to behold. This movie exists as a vessel in which to watch Jonathan Majors act his ass off.

There’s a lot going on in Creed II, more than a movie featuring Ivan Drago really ever needed to have. But at its core, Creed II is about family.

It’s kind of remarkable what can be done with a Transformers movie with a director who actually likes these characters. (And also very much loves his mid-90s needle-drop jams.)

This isn’t a situation where Donald Glover shows up and is so good he saves the movie. And don’t get me wrong, Glover is great, but it’s at this point in the movie that everything gets better. This is the part where the movie finally knows what it should have been all along: a rootin’ tootin’ heist movie and not an origin story.

Concrete Cowboy is a nice movie about fathers and sons and humanity and the legacy of why there are people riding horses in places you wouldn’t expect to see any horses.

Like in the other two movies, Bill and Ted are both just so nice that it’s impossible not to start rooting for them.

Yes, this movie is so stupid! But that seems to be the point. And Serkis knows the heart of these movies is the relationship between Eddie and Venom.

This is a film that has such a strong first act, but then a head-scratcher of a second that left me actively disliking what I was watching in front of me, then an almost out-of-the-blue third act that ultimately won me back over.

Boseman is just so alive in this movie. This is not an “understated” performance. It’s like watching an athlete give it all on the field and we are left there wondering how this man isn’t just completely exhausted. Yeah, turns out Boseman did have one last gift for us. And, my gosh, he didn’t disappoint. He’s pure dynamite. It’s devastating.

So, for basically 90 percent of this movie, I’m sitting there thinking, Okay, this is awesome. Then things changed slightly. And I need to be clear: not to the point it changes how I feel about the movie. I still enjoyed it immensely. But Infinity War did send me out on an unfulfilled note, which, to be fair, is probably by design

Yes, Captain Marvel is an origin story, but it’s handled in such a unique way that it doesn’t always feel like an origin story.

The problem is the movie doesn’t always realize this should be a hoot. Rami Malek and Christoph Waltz realize what movie they are in. And I love Craig’s Bond, but there are times when he’s trying to be a Connery Bond in a clearly Roger Moore Bond movie.

The Spy Who Dumped Me does an effective job of putting these two outsiders into the world of a violent action movie, but then the plot of the action movie has some truly head-scratching scenes. But, whatever. This is an August movie and Kunis and McKinnon are funny and that’s what you’re paying to see.

If you have kids, they will probably love this because it’s very colorful … and even I found myself mesmerized by how colorful it is. A cornucopia of colors! (I guess that’s my pull quote.)

When the characters are just being the characters, instead of listening to exposition, this is a really fun movie. (And Destin Daniel Cretton excels at characters.) It’s all here. And it’s why I’m really looking forward to the next chapter now that we got all the explaining out of the way.

It Chapter Two is about redemption and the Losers coming together again to learn how strong they all are together. And the actors make it work. But the biggest problem is IT, because IT can be everything and IT can be nothing. IT has no real rules or motivations, or rhyme or reason, for literally anything he does.

Clooney wants to direct actors who aren’t himself, which I’m sure is why we spend so much time with the crew of the spaceship. But if Clooney weren’t directing, that director would have probably realized that the story thrives in those small moments with Clooney. It’s almost like the director George Clooney is the actor George Clooney’s worst enemy.

Look, I am in desperate need for entertainment and if Trolls World Tour is all you’re selling, well, right now, I’m buying. And here’s another thing: I like everything right now. There are no bad movies. If your piece of entertainment can knock off a couple hours of my day, that’s literally all I’m asking for right now.

Set right after the events of Captain America: Civil War, watching Black Widow kind of feels like watching that MCU movie you just never got around to seeing.

The tone of this movie is weird, but I kind of get what it’s going for. It basically feels like a cartoon, then all of a sudden a character will get stabbed in the head, or sawed in half, in the most gory way possible.

It’s an admirable effort. It’s just a beautiful thing to look at. And the whole endeavor is such a touching tribute from Fincher to his father. But, in the end, I found myself more interested in the behind the scenes shenanigans that led to the creation of, perhaps, the greatest movie of all time, as opposed to Mank the human being. And Mank focuses much more on the latter.

Though, yes, by nature the story does have to be a little convoluted after the events of T2 (and this time, it’s basically just a whole new evil entity), but Linda Hamilton is Terminator. And that’s why Terminator: Dark Fate is the best Terminator movie since T2.

Making this installment complicated is it doesn’t have an ending. It literally ends during the middle of a scene. After 2 hours and 20 minutes of Fast action, even I was taken aback when the credits started to roll.

with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, like I said, I think Peyton Reed has given us an installment that, with the material that has to be introduced, is about the best version this could be. But I found myself missing the more grounded and funny world of Scott Lang that the prior movies had set up. You know, being a palette cleanser is a good thing.

On the Rocks is light on plot, but makes up for it with just the sheer joy of Murray and Jones out on the town. The actual plot is only there as an excuse to get the ball rolling for those two.

Blue Beetle kind of encapsulates what is good and stale about these movies right now all in one package.

Most of The Commuter is a pretty fun ride.

It’s not as good as the first Shazam movie, which explored what it’s like to be a superhero when, in reality, you’re still just a kid. In this sequel, that aspect is still mentioned quite a bit, but not really explored.

An American Pickle is more interesting than laugh-out-loud hilarious. It’s introspective, without at all seeming that way.

I’ll admit, the sequel to Wonka looks pretty good! The plot of this movie leaves off exactly where you probably assumed this movie would start, but for some reason didn’t. And like I said earlier, Timothée Chalamet plays Willy Wonka with a lot of charm and I bet it’s not easy to play someone who is all-knowing, possibly supernatural, but is also not very smart at times.

At the end of the day (or, anytime of the day, really) I think I admire Aquaman more than I like it. It’s certainly ambitious.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a dumb movie that knows it’s a dumb movie and just tries to show you a good time and doesn’t needlessly bog us down with too much character development or exposition because it knows we don’t really care.

Sanders plays Bigger Thomas in such a unique, interesting way that I couldn’t help but be enthralled by his life. Unfortunately, the plot points in Wright’s novel, of all things, betray him.

What somewhat saves Samaritan is Stallone.

I think the Swift we have ten years from now will make a much more fascinating subject. What we see now feels more like the very beginning of her story. And there’s just not enough here yet at this starting point to sustain a feature-length documentary.

There were times it felt like The Rise of Skywalker was put together by reading angry reddit boards, just throwing in anything a fan might possibly want to see. It really is baffling.

The good news is you get about an hour of a movie that could be deemed “entertaining” or “enjoyable.” The bad news is, after that first hour (and like so many movies inexplicably do today), someone decided, “Look, hear me out, what if about halfway through we make this movie super convoluted? Like to the point it would be hard to explain the plot to anyone?” And then someone else decided, “Yes, that’s exactly what we should do.”

I realize this is an important movie for Shia LaBeouf, but I’m not convinced it’s an important movie for us.

The biggest problem is this is a movie that doesn’t quite realize that McEnroe is the star. When LaBeouf is on-screen as McEnroe, the movie works. But the film desperately wants you to love Björn Borg.

Even though there are some fun scenes with The Marvels trio, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend this to anyone who isn’t an MCU superfan. Again, even *I* was a bit lost with the latest in the Kree and Skrull political relationships — I felt lost by it all and I’ve seen every movie. I bet a pretty straightforward plot involving the main three characters would have gone a long way.

The plot makes sense. And Jaume Collet-Serra is a good director and the movie is mostly competent. For me, it’s just a sense of disappointment. There’s nothing that interesting here, but there certainly should be.

It’s hard to tell what this movie is trying to be, and end the end just kind of becomes just another superhero movie, despite Jason Bateman’s best attempts at preventing that. I swear, someday, someone will nail one of these premises.

It’s just a really long, more coherent version of that story. I certainly didn’t hate it like I hate the prior version – and, admittedly, I do like it more than Batman v Superman – but all the character motivation in the world still doesn’t help the foundation the whole thing is built on.

Irresistible could have been something that was just a pleasant enough, throwaway comedy – and it feels like that for most of its running time. If only Stewart read his own word, “resist,” and resisted that ending – that urge to try to turn this movie into something it just isn’t.

Most of the film involves meeting yet another new character, then being told yet another long story about his or her mysterious past. At times, The Crimes of Grindelwald feels more like some sort of Harry Potter encyclopedia or appendices than it does an actual movie.

I do want to make it clear that I think Venom is not a good movie, but I also want to make it clear that I had the time of my life watching it. I think in a couple of years Venom could be the type of movie that sells out midnight showings as people come up to the screen and act out their favorite parts.

Look, I get it, scripted films are not documentaries. And, sometimes, creative license has to be used to move a story forward. But I’ve never seen a film distort its facts in such a punitive way. It’s like the movie wants to punish Freddie Mercury.

It’s almost as if the filmmakers just thought the idea of a pair of legs were funny, like if it were in a The Far Side panel. But then decided to try to base a whole movie on what should have been at most a single still or a single joke.

The biggest problem with Skyscraper is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Detective Pikachu is one of those movies where, for about half the movie, I was trying to force myself to like it, until I just gave up. I kind of got the sense a lot of people around me were doing the same thing.

It has a killer premise, yet the movie seems to actively resent its own fantastic idea and just, instead, decided to become a fairly average romantic comedy — only with a lot more Beatles songs than the average rom com.

Glass is a fascinating movie. Now, having said that, I should quickly point out that I did not enjoy this movie and I consider it, after a 19-year wait, one of the biggest personal disappointments I’ve ever experienced in a theater.

Joker is a movie that thinks it has a lot to say and fancies itself The Social Commentary Of Our Time, but in reality it’s a mishmash of Hot Button Social Issues without anything interesting to say at all. So, in that respect, it’s the perfect movie for 2019. Joker is our comeuppance.

I am legitimately bummed out about how much I disliked Justice League.

Meg 2: The Trench commits the worst sin a movie about a giant prehistoric shark can make: it’s kind of boring. I went in looking for an audacious good time and, instead, I got a movie about rock smugglers.

Sadly, everything about Dark Phoenix just feels unnecessary – and it shows in the performances, as everyone just seems to be going through the motions, wondering how on Earth their contracts aren’t up yet.

If this movie was going to hit with people, I think I would be one of them. I know the people in this movie. Many of the people remind me of people in my own family. But it didn’t hit. Again, I don’t know who Hillbilly Elegy is for. Well, except maybe J.D. Vance.

It’s just filled with a lot of stupid characters who all do stupid things to the point that the “plot” is just some crazy afterthought of nonsense. What a mess.