Nick Allen

Chupa willfully becomes one of those family films that takes plenty from the toy box of cliches left before and hardly gives anything back.

Even if it's not that funny, Detective Chinatown 2 proves to be snappy and persistent, complementing its bright color palette and energy with basic goals to alternate between silly, dark and slightly clever.

Simultaneously gorgeous and eye-opening, the film uses its grace to preach about the potential of storytelling — especially when it comes from an underrepresented perspective. Davis’ movie contemplates miracles and acts of love I’d heard about during a countless amount of hours at Sunday mass and beyond. But through the profoundly compassionate lens of Mary Magdalene, it felt as if I was learning about them for the first time.

Though it boasts a large scope with its ensemble cast, huge sequences and the star power of the almighty Jackie Chan, Railroad Tigers lacks the vital focus to come together.

Farrant’s confidence as a storyteller — along with Rapace’s full-bodied performance — enrich the story and guide it toward its delicately bonkers premise.

It can be hard to disagree with the heart and events of this true tale, except for when the movie reveals itself to be mighty self-congratulatory.

Not dunking on social media teens is a refreshing angle, enough to make you want to care about their inevitable deaths. But the movie's by-the-numbers horror will make you feel otherwise.

While Nona does eventually reward audience members with stark drama grounded in a daily nightmare, it risks cheating itself of its full impact, pretending for most of its running time to be a fairytale it certainly is not.

The culture clash here between "goddamn hipster freaks" and people of the woods is more complicated here, and the way it unfolds is brutal and shocking without being depraved itself.

In building this mystery, and in proving herself as a major entertainer, Joy always has something up her sleeve, including her savvy ways to suddenly spike the plot with a slickly edited fight scene that builds the mystery instead of just taking a break from it.

Every bit of this movie yearns to be on the same proverbial shelf as something like Bay “Transformers” or Anderson’s “Resident Evil” films, but it doesn’t do enough to carve out its own space. An alien planet shouldn’t look this rote; same goes with the life-or-death action that happens on it.

Tone is a revealing element for this project, which it borrows from the B-movie, apocalyptic seriousness of a later “Transformers” sequel. One of the movie’s biggest surprises is then that it has outtakes, which even include poking fun at how easily the intimidating alien’s costume head can fall off.

The Queen of Spain can only offer scant entertainment for movie buffs and non-movie buffs alike.

Blockbuster movies are often as loud and action-based as The Tomorrow War, but they’re rarely as diverse in tone or so delightfully wild when it comes to in-your-face entertainment.

Very little about this movie works, in spite of a certain ambition in telling a story based solely on unfathomable decisions.

Boarding School has some edge by being told from a child’s perspective, even though it's not for kids. A lot of great directors have told this kind of story, and while Guillermo Del Toro might be the most popular living one to do it, it’s Louis Malle that comes to mind.

Ross always preached that there were no mistakes, just happy accidents. A mess like Paint—all broad strokes and no point—proves that he wasn’t always right.

This is a movie for instant fans; it's explicitly for anyone who doesn’t needs any convincing about why we'd instantly love them, much in the same way its underdog tale is eagerly meant to be seen as pure, and even more cloyingly, as crowd-pleasing.

Salt and Fire is fundamentally bad, in its filmmaking and expressiveness, whether there is any meaning to a parrot quoting Nostradamus or not.

A stunningly drab take on the life and legacy of a photographer who merged pornography with grace, Mapplethorpe doesn’t have an artistic signature of its own, so much as a name it doesn’t live up to.

DriverX is worse than just one of the year’s most vapid movies, it’s an out-and-out nightmare of late-stage capitalism.

Even though it’s more of a vision board of what it could be, the film introduces a nifty premise that recalls not just “A Nightmare on Elm Street” but how that series was able to make multiple irresistible sequels. Choose or Die is also the rare mid-budget Netflix movie that gets better and better as it goes along, owning its weirdness and not playing it easy.

Calling a movie like Madres by-the-numbers would be a compliment, and an overstatement, because that would indicate that the makers were even mildly successful.

It’s baffling, more than anything, as to how all of this talent could create something so uncharacteristic to their collective abilities to make us laugh, or feel something.

The Takedown works overtime to uphold the façade of heroic policing in the most generic way possible, for god knows what greater good.

A wannabe-thriller about artificial intelligence with little wit of its own.

True to previous form, Mister America is more of a relaxed, giggly character study than one that treats gags like clockwork. In a natural tonal shift, this restraint makes way for a melancholy rumination on Tim's self-destructive narcissism, which gives the film its ultimate staying power.

Papi Chulo is a buddy comedy, but only by its ramshackle design — it’s a forced friendship, and it’s not cute, let alone funny.