Nick Schager

Despite looking great, it comes off as a humdrum knockoff of yesterday’s fashion.

Aside from a couple of vicious set pieces, however, this genre effort’s gimmickry results in derivative cornball melodrama. It would have benefited greatly from speaking louder while carrying a big stick.

This creepy nerve-rattler confirms that the director’s excellent 2024 breakout Oddity was no fluke.

A no-frills survival thriller that’s as rugged as its wilderness setting.

All “Thriller," no infamy, presenting an uplifting, crowd-pleasing version of events that, for all its expert impersonations, is simply the palatable half of this sordid tale.

A deep dive into a pool of pretentiousness whose absurdity mounts with each new quasi-supernatural—and heavily symbolic—development.

[Its] sketchiness is second only to its inside-baseball humorlessness.

Plays like a torturous tone-deaf joke that won’t end.

Thanks to a host of colorful performances and an emphasis on over-the-top violence, they mostly pull off their double-dip trick.

A stirring celebration of bravery, camaraderie, and human ingenuity that goes big in every respect, not least of which by recognizing and foregrounding the majesty of larger-than-life movie stardom.

A rousing elegy to an underworld saga par excellence and, in particular, to a ruthless and tormented gangster whom, in Murphy’s expert hands, stands as an undisputed crime-fiction icon.

A Frankenstein-ian cine-monster that both reinvents and pays homage with all the clumsiness and unsightliness of its fabled creature.

Worst of all, Scream 7 doesn’t concoct the sort of ludicrous denouement that has always been these movies’ signature, instead delivering perhaps the most deflating conclusion in the series’ three-decade history. That alone should indicate that Ghostface has lost his luster and should withdraw to the Horror Hall of Fame where he deserves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Freddy, Jason, and the rest of the genre’s genuine icons.

An uplifting portrait of the possibility of rebirth—even for the most famous person on Earth.

A superb companion piece to the director’s 2022 biopic Elvis, it’s a feat of showmanship both by Presley on stage and Luhrmann behind the camera.

It might not deliver hilariously fatal blows, but it’s smart and spikey enough to leave a pleasurably painful mark.

An audacious indie that plumbs the depths of passion, loyalty, and sacrifice with beguiling earnestness and intensity.

No matter the out-of-this-world nature of their adventure, they remain an amusing and endearingly down-to-Earth doofus duo.

A film that lives up to its title by being, in every way, basic—and, in the process, confirms that there’s a reason some clichés endure.

With Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell as its tempestuous engine, it’s a captivatingly silly saga about the pitfalls of our modern techno-obsessiveness.

A fleetingly recognizable tale of love, desire, obsession, regret, bitterness, and ire that, at every turn, plays as florid, horny, juvenile fanfiction.

A steamy, sad, and amusing snapshot of desire and identity.

Just a pale imitation of scarier bloodsuckers gone by.

A joyous return to form for the Evil Dead auteur, whose no-holds-barred verve is equaled by that of Rachel McAdams.

A far cry from [Stanton’s] Pixar gems Finding Nemo and WALL-E, both of which have infinitely more to say about the human condition than this schematic and bathetic bowl of chicken soup for the soul.

Electrifying a taut tale of tough times and the desperate men they breed, [Hawke] makes sure that, even when it could stand to be a tad weightier, this genre film packs a wallop.

A stirring testament to both [Rushdie's] resilience and to freedom as a vital bulwark against the forces of extremism and evil.

There’s not much to latch onto here except the faint flickers of the better film this one, with more care and attention to detail, might have been.