Peter Debruge

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Miami Herald, Premiere, Variety
For 1,770 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Peter Debruge's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Josephine
Lowest review score: 0 Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,028 out of 1770
  2. Mixed: 593 out of 1770
  3. Negative: 149 out of 1770
1770 movie reviews
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per page
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Infidel
    Although Caviezel’s character is meant to stand in for all Americans unjustly imprisoned by Iran, it would be irresponsible to take the film’s “inspired by true events” claim too seriously. That doesn’t mean it’s not satisfying to watch Liz and several co-conspirators raid the facility in an attempt to liberate Doug and all those unjustly detained political prisoners. In this fantasy telling, at least, God is on his side.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Books of Blood
    With a certain kind of horror, a laugh’s as good as a scream, and Books of Blood delivers plenty of the former.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    My Policeman
    Alas, the older actors don’t have all that much to do (editor Chris Dickens keeping cutting back to McKee reading), but the younger trio are strong, albeit restrained, in their roles. Corrin, so great as a wife betrayed in “The Crown” (they played Princess Diana), could do this role in their sleep, while Styles has the tricky task of making Tom’s betrayal feel tragic for all involved.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Cooties
    Amusing as the Cooties script manages to be, one gets the distinct impression that its authors didn’t bother to visit a school at any point in the research or writing process, missing out on any number of jokes they could have made at public education’s expense.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Puzzle
    We should be grateful that it exists, if only because it affords a long-overdue leading role to Kelly Macdonald.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Honey Boy
    Ask yourself: Just how curious are you to understand the source of Shia LaBeouf’s insecurities and rage? If this is a subject of high importance to you, then you’re in luck, because Honey Boy offers a sincere window into the actor’s soul: a vulnerable, honest (or at least honest-seeming) act of therapy through screenwriting
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Personal Shopper
    This reunion between Kristen Stewart and the director who gave her one of her best-ever roles in 2014’s “Clouds of Sils Maria” is a broken, but never boring mix of spine-tingling horror story, dreary workplace drama and elliptical identity search, likely to go down as one of the most divisive films of Stewart’s career.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Man with the Golden Gun
    Enjoyment requires denying the increasingly problematic truth about Bond: As heroes go, 007 represents a bygone notion of the privileged white man taking what’s his and leaving destruction in his wake.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Lux Æterna
    Let’s be clear: Lux Æterna is a glorified Saint Laurent commercial. That’s the tweet-length analysis. But there’s more to it than that.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Tracktown
    What the film lacks in originality, it makes up for via its star’s naturally glamor-resistant sensibility, giving us an unpolished glimpse into the personal life of a professional runner.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    A Field in England
    Clearly, Wheatley is bored with the paint-by-numbers approach of his horror contemporaries, but has swung so far in the opposite direction here, the result feels almost amateurishly avant garde at times, guilty of the sort of indulgences one barely tolerates in student films.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Haunted Mansion
    While the visual effects are surprisingly weak for a film of this scale, the script (from “Ghostbusters” writer Katie Dippold) proves far better than anyone might expect, establishing an emotional foundation for what might otherwise be a gimmick-driven haunted house movie.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Redoubt
    If it all made sense, would it still be art? Ironically, the trouble with Redoubt is that it’s not obtuse enough. It’s the first Barney film audiences won’t have trouble sleeping after — or through.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Monster Hunter
    Very little of Monster Hunter makes sense, but it’s visually interesting at least and not un-fun to stream at home with a friend, asking questions and cracking jokes along the way.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Sun Children
    If one intention of Sun Children is to remind that all kids are created equal, deserving of education and encouragement, Majidi’s young ensemble makes the case loud and clear.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The People vs. Fritz Bauer
    Though relatively conservative in its approach, Lars Kraume’s teleplay-style treatment of a still-touchy subject has the nerve to name names.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Paint It Black
    As directorial debuts go, Amber Tamblyn’s Paint It Black is kind of a mess, but then, so are its characters, which makes the film’s raw, off-kilter style somehow right for the material.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Spy Who Loved Me
    Triple X posed an ideal opportunity for the series to rectify its dismissive treatment of women until this point, putting a lady on equal footing with Bond. To its credit, the film does feature a bit of screwball badinage between the two (a clunky bit about female drivers, unfortunately), but it has yet to introduce a single female character who doesn’t want to sleep with our hero.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Redemption
    A debut effort that occasionally bogs down in its own symbolism.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Drift Away
    Beauvois brings everything together in the movie’s final minutes, although it’s hard to shake the feeling that Drift Away has dodged what should have been its central social concern. Renier, a former child actor who began his career a quarter-century ago in the Dardenne brothers’ “La Promesse,” only gets better with age.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    All These Small Moments
    Though this sweet, subtle, and sentimental work is a smidge too simplistic in narrative design, it wins over any resistance with its quiet refinement and heartrending insight.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    We Live in Time
    It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Piece By Piece
    Paradoxically, the Lego approach gives the film a far more imaginative visual range than traditional documentaries, even as it robs us of the thing we most want to see: human faces.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
    The script never quite succeeds in making us care about Allan as a character (despite dubbing its quavering narration into English for the ease of American auds), but it finds an interesting balance for a personality who leaves a trail of disaster in his wake.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Deep Water
    This erotic thriller is still sexy and plenty entertaining, mind you, but it’s just not very useful insofar as what it says about real relationships.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    No One Will Save You
    The film is most successful when it finds Brynn in survival mode.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Moving On
    Tomlin’s terrific in this mode. The script is as bland as the “cardboard” they serve in her rest-home cafeteria, but she manages to inject it with vinegar and attitude, while embracing the realities of aging.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Weight
    While the pieces for a white-knuckle mission seem to be in place, The Weight has an uneven, lurching quality, where slogging through the picturesque-yet-endless expanse of tall trees (arboraceous Bavaria doubling for Oregon) is punctuated by bursts of excitement.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Kid Who Would Be King
    With its retro-video-game score and “Goonies”-style gang of misfit characters, the movie plays like a throwback to Spielberg-produced adventure films of the ’80s. And yet, the premise feels wobbly at best.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Tracers
    While Lautner is to be admired for his physical commitment to the role, the below-the-line team lighting, shooting and choreographing his moves deserves equal credit. The film wouldn’t have worked without such a versatile team, which otherwise operates without a trace.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Sing 2
    True to their brand, Illumination has engineered another easy-to-swallow confection designed to maximize audience delight, whether on first or fortieth viewing, although this time, there’s almost zero nutritional value.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Dark Places
    As heroines go, it’s refreshing to get one as complex as this: When psychologically scarred female characters do turn up in thrillers, they’re usually little more than shivering victims who set a group of male cops in motion, but here, Libby does her own detective work, while Hendricks lends star power to the flashback scenes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Like virtually every stand-alone MCU movie to come before, “Shang-Chi” does a fine job of presenting its hero as a relatable everyman during the first half before spiraling off into bombastic, brain-numbing supernatural mayhem for the final act.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Trumbo
    Trumbo may be clumsy and overly simplistic at times, but it’s still an important reminder of how democracy can fail (that is, when a fervent majority turns on those with different and potentially threatening values), and the strength of character it takes to fight the system.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Hellion
    More sensitive than sensational, Candler’s debut doesn’t add much in the way of insight to the juvenile delinquency genre, but boasts a stunning breakthrough performance from newcomer Josh Wiggins as the troublemaker in question.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Scripted by “Chicken Run” alums Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, along with newcomer Rachel Tunnard, the sequel doesn’t offer many surprises plotwise, but is consistently amusing in its dad-jokey kind of way.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    A Brighter Tomorrow
    Giovanni may be the main character of A Brighter Tomorrow — a conceit shamelessly lifted from Fellini’s “8 1/2” — but Moretti pokes fun at himself, privileging other characters’ points of view as well.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Manglehorn
    Something about working with Pacino forces what could have been a breaks-the-mold character portrait into factory-made territory.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Wicker
    The filmmaking pair don’t stray far from Wills-Jones’ intention, using the story’s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Rocketman
    While Lee’s script steers Elton’s life from the “Billy Elliot”-like tropes of his daddy issues to the equally trite “Walk the Line”-esque cautionary tale of what happens when fame causes talented musicians to forget who they once were, Fletcher at least has Elton’s music to fall back on.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Salvation
    There’s really only one ingredient for which The Salvation is likely to be remembered: Eva Green.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Despicable Me 4
    At times, it feels less like a feature than a collection of Looney Tunes-y shorts piled one on top of another.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Mortal Kombat
    True to the game, the violence is both ghoulishly creative and gratuitously extreme.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Sound of Silence
    The Sound of Silence is a deeply silly movie that takes itself incredibly seriously, and believe it or not, that’s its great pleasure.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Ride
    The Ride doesn’t break new ground, but its likable cast delivers some nuanced even touching twists.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    In Our Nature
    Writer-director Brian Savelson drags four characters all the way out to the woods to orchestrate the sort of politely confrontational chamber piece best suited to an Off Off Broadway stage in In Our Nature, an eloquent but overly rehearsed drama.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Emperor
    A striking discovery, Dayo Okeniyi will be unfamiliar to most in the lead role. He played a small part as District 11 tribute Thresh in “The Hunger Games,” and appears opposite Jennifer Lopez in “Shades of Blue,” but Emperor is effectively his breakout, which makes him feel as much a revelation to audiences as Green’s story will be.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Coldwater
    Suitable for teens — lies somewhere between indignant expose and unusually tasteful exploitation picture, with shower scenes and sweaty young delinquents aplenty.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Unicorn Wars
    The visually striking, not-at-all-kid-friendly result is all kinds of wrong: Picture pastel-colored anime bears impaled on the horns of sleek black horses, backlit by raging hot-pink infernos. “The Care Bears” this ain’t, though the comparison can hardly be accidental with this ultra-graphic, Saturday morning cartoon-subverting satire for which irreverent Bronies may well be the ideal audience.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Frankenstein
    Technically, “Frankenstein” was made for Netflix, and though the streamer will give it whatever theatrical run it’s contractually obliged to honor, the visual effects weren’t rendered for big-screen consumption. Alexandre Desplat’s baroque score, on the other hand, makes up for it in grandeur.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    Cavill and Hammer have each toplined major tentpoles before, so it’s something of a mystery why neither makes much of an impression here, but there’s a curious vacuum at the center of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that almost certainly owes to its casting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Magic Mike XXL
    Written raggedly enough for the actors to bring their own chemistry to what aspirationally feels like one of Robert Altman’s backstage dramas (a la “Nashville” or “Ready to Wear”), Magic Mike XXL is most fun when it isn’t trying to justify itself, but just kicking back with the guys — or better yet, giving them a fresh excuse to show off their creativity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Diamonds Are Forever
    Whatever connection Bond had to the real world has now been severed in favor of delivering the most satisfying possible experience for audiences, such as a throwaway scene of Q using an electromagnetic device to beat the slot machines or allowing homosexual henchmen Wint and Kidd to devise elaborate (and yet easily escapable) traps.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Summer of 85
    The movie has dug a hole for itself with the disingenuous framing device, and the last act feels like a cheat, revealing Alex’s “crime” to be anything but. While the midsection of the film proves to be the most charming — a kind of extended montage in which the young men tentatively test the limits of their relationship — it’s the final stretch that situates Summer of 85 squarely within Ozon’s oeuvre.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Match
    Without sacrificing the piece‘s warm comic undertones, this minimally adapted theatrical piece remains richer and far more thought-provoking than a typical night at the movies — if only the entire cast were as strong as Stewart.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Lean on Pete
    It’s frustrating to watch, but designed in such a way that the boy’s loneliness will haunt long afterward.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki
    Had Arakawa widened the portrait just a bit to include other voices — whether artistic collaborators or the young audiences still just discovering his work — the film would easily have demonstrated how his legacy will live forever. Then again, it’s assumed that anyone watching “Never-Ending Man” knows that already.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Close
    I am convinced that Dhont has a masterpiece in him. But there’s an immaturity to his movies that he must first overcome. He’s already so close
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Goodbye Christopher Robin
    All of this is reasonably interesting, but not as dramatic as it ought to be.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
    Fabian’s film is charming enough, though his attempts at romance remain earthbound as he makes a clean break from the TV version, offering a different interpretation of the character.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Hotel Mumbai
    Sitting through the harrowing events again nearly a decade later could hardly be described as entertainment, and the film plays to many of the same unseemly impulses that make disaster movies so compelling, exploiting the tragedy of the situation for spectacle’s sake.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Champions
    The performances come with certain limitations (the line readings sound memorized, never spontaneous), but as a whole, the movie makes memorable, three-dimensional characters of its players, and that’s a start.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    L'Attesa (The Wait)
    Benefiting enormously from its evocative Sicilian setting, this widescreen experience makes bewitching use of space, time and sound, creating an almost meditative atmosphere in which patient-minded auds might respond to its themes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Bleak Street
    Certain images...leave lasting impressions, though Garciadiego’s script doesn’t seem to do enough with the story, other than laying it out in linear order for Ripstein to film.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Foreigner
    The Foreigner amounts to an above-average but largely by-the-numbers action movie in which Chan does battle with generic thugs and shadowy political forces.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
    The film all too eagerly allows itself to be taken in by Payne’s charms, trying to capture her human side via interviews with her two grown children, while all but ignoring the all-too-obvious cautionary aspect in favor of escapist entertainment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Apprentice
    The movie feels a little too sparse and literal in places.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Fixed
    Sacrificing good taste in pursuit of the higher goal — which could be described as joining “Fritz the Cat” in animated infamy — Tartakovsky and co-writer Jon Vitti (a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons”) make no apologies for the project’s obscene sense of humor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    All the Money in the World
    We may never know how Spacey would have been, but Plummer is easily the best thing about a film that is technically accomplished, yet a bit too mechanical in the way it sets up and executes the high-stakes kidnapping at its center.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Art of Racing in the Rain
    Granted, there aren’t a lot of surprises in The Art of Racing in the Rain. If anything, knowing — or at least anticipating — how the film’s myriad tragedies will unfold seems to heighten the effect.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Courier
    Ironbark’s hook is that it’s based on true events, and the underlying history deserves to be shared.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Lost Bus
    The Lost Bus resembles several other Greengrass films in that it’s also slim on character (only one of the kids has a name and personality), but succeeds in plunging audiences into the action — which, in this case, means trying to steer an unwieldy vehicle through hell itself.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Silence
    Though undeniably gorgeous, it is punishingly long, frequently boring, and woefully unengaging at some of its most critical moments.... Still, viewed through the narrow prism of films about faith, Silence is a remarkable achievement.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    21 and Over
    Promising crude straight-boy humor, but delivering sensitive buddy moments and tons of male nudity, this by-the-numbers gut-buster looks slick, moves fast and packs enough laughs to enliven spring-break receipts and earn its helmers more work.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Most Hated Woman in America
    Though he clearly admires the woman, O’Haver doesn’t want to let her off easy, which makes for a more nuanced portrayal than the stock canonization another director might have chosen (it would have been just as easy to paint her as a devil).
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Elemental
    There’s poetry and soul here, but both are watered down by how much the movie seems to be multitasking. With Pixar, sincerity is elemental. The rest risks distracting from what really matters.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    It’s a shame that the plot gets so carried away with the supernatural power struggle, since the mile-a-minute movie is far more engaging when focused on Ruby — who makes an appealing addition to the DreamWorks Animation family — and the sitcom-ready aspect of kraken-human relations.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Miracle Club
    The movie’s nothing special, but it’s worth checking out just for the cast.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    3 Hearts
    The entire scenario, contrived to within an inch of its life, takes Poelvoorde’s appeal for granted. Marc’s anxiety becomes our own once he realizes what he’s done, though Jacquot makes it much more compelling to watch his characters fall in love than it is to see them writhe and twist amid its complications.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Hater
    Unlike “Corpus Christi,” which was loosely based on factual events, The Hater parts ways with plausibility early on — and yet, it’s relevant enough to prey on our anxieties.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    In the Earth
    The film feels right in line with the kind of mayhem that Wheatley has been serving up his entire career, including some graphically gory details that are hard to unsee. And in that way, it’s not unlike the pandemic itself, infecting our brains with sick ideas — which, of course, is just what a certain audience wants from a horror movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Family Romance, LLC
    The “LLC” in the film’s title is a clue that the movie wasn’t conceived purely in a spirit of empathy, although Herzog’s humor is good-natured enough. If anything, Family Romance is just the latest iteration of a uniquely human desire to replicate the relationships we can’t control in our lives.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    Rather than channeling James Thurber’s satirical tone, Stiller plays it mostly earnest, spinning what feels like a feature-length “Just Do It” ad.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Railway Man
    There’s something decidedly old-fashioned — and also dull as ditchwater — about Jonathan Teplitzky’s retelling of events.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
    These guys are so good at what they do, Ritchie fails to muster the expected tension. Instead of suspense, audiences feel a sense of delight in watching them succeed, no matter the setback.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Bluebird
    Edmands maintains too measured a pace as he cycles through the various lives affected, to the extent that one begins to wonder when things will start kick in.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Black Adam
    The surprisingly serious-minded (but still plenty pulpy) project deprives Johnson of his greatest superpower — his sense of humor — while giving the now-straight-faced star a chance to play a character with some interesting contradictions.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Glass Castle
    Cretton captures the incidents of Walls’ childhood (too many of them, to be honest, as the film really ought to be half an hour shorter), but struggles to connect them to the grown woman Larson plays in the present.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Mule
    There’s nothing inherently wrong with presenting bigoted people onscreen, since heaven knows they exist in real life, but the trouble with The Mule is that it invites audiences to laugh along with Earl’s ignorance.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Voices
    In tapping Satrapi to interpret this project, the producers have done about as well as one could expect with such material. Still, a bit more consistency in style would have gone a long way.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Ida
    It’s one thing to set up a striking black-and-white composition and quite another to draw people into it, and dialing things back as much as this film does risks losing the vast majority of viewers along the way, offering an intellectual exercise in lieu of an emotional experience to all but the most rarefied cineastes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Home
    Unimaginative and downright predictable by grownup standards, but bursting with elements sure to appeal to younger auds.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Alien: Covenant
    As acts of creation go, Scott has made an “Alien” movie for that segment of the audience that has always rooted for the monster.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Rental Family
    A movie like Rental Family lives or dies by its tone, and the one Hikari strikes is reflected in the concerned creases of Fraser’s forehead: It’s maudlin and unconvincing, means well but isn’t above manipulating us for the desired emotional outcome.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Generation Wealth
    Though it can sometimes feel invasive when a documentarian includes his or her own voice in the finished cut, Greenfield’s presence is essential here as we observe the rapport she’s established with people whom it’s difficult for us not to judge, and whom she views with all the complexity her portraits suggest.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Women Talking
    The whole scenario is designed to get your blood boiling, while the resulting conversation can’t help but instill hope, as Polley gives these women a rare opportunity to reinvent their world.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Wolf of Snow Hollow
    The movie does get some zingers in there, and it balances the humor with some nicely atmospheric creepy small town vibes (courtesy of DP Natalie Kingston), but the tone is all over the place and a far cry from the “Fargo”-y Coen brothers feel Cummings seems to be going for.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Over the Moon
    Sometimes it’s OK for an adventure to be just an adventure, and this one gets in the way of its own assets, while pointing to the potential of future journeys from the Netflix animation team.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Northman
    In most respects, Eggers is a unique artist with strong, singular ideas of how to script, stage and pace his films, and while The Northman is nothing if not a signature addition to a most original oeuvre — no one but Eggers would or could have reimagined “Hamlet” thus — it lacks the element of surprise that made “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” feel like instant classics.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Sacrifice
    There’s a virtuosity to Gavras’ filmmaking, which yields some surprising laughs and thrills along the way.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Wheel
    Pink, a veteran TV director who takes a rather self-important “a film by” credit on what feels like a first feature (it’s his fifth), shows almost no intuition for how to block or shoot a scene, inserting songs where silence would have been more effective. His clumsiness leaves the actors looking slightly amateurish, despite the strong, vulnerable performances they deliver.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
    It’s not as inspired as grown-ups might want, but innocuous enough for the kids.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    In Bed With Victoria
    If anything, what Triet has done is demonstrate that people are allowed to be complicated — and at times contradictory. And the tidy Hollywood ending betrays the fact that Victoria’s problems have less to do with sorting out who’s in her bed than what’s in her head.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Unfriended
    Simultaneously clever and exasperating, the film puts a novel spin on the genre Roger Ebert dubbed “the Dead Teenager Movie.”
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Queen of the Desert
    Herzog’s script loses its way in the desert at one point, dutifully chronicling a life whose principal conflicts are a bit too abstract to dramatize. In the end, it’s not clear what’s driving Bell, nor what’s holding her back.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Beanie Bubble
    Tonally, the movie walks a tricky line between easy-target satire and female-empowering corporate case study, falling into the overcrowded junk-culture nostalgia-porn category so recently represented by “Tetris,” “Air,” “BlackBerry” and “Flamin’ Hot.”
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
    The movie’s mostly just meant to be fun, and that it is, skewing young while giving lifelong fans (including those who grew up on the Turtles) plenty to geek out about.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Luck
    While the new studio’s debut can’t touch “Toy Story,” it’s an auspicious start for a talented group of storytellers.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Snitch
    It's nice to have actors of Sarandon and Pepper's caliber onboard for the office-bound wheeler-dealer scenes, but mostly, it's the prospect of witnessing Johnson at the helm of an 18-wheeler as he rams his way through machine-gun fire that excites.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Tom & Jerry
    No, Tom & Jerry won’t be winning any Oscars, even if Hanna-Barbera shorts in which they starred racked up seven during the series’ 1940-58 run. But it’s good enough to go down easy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Violet
    There’s bravery in Bateman’s willingness to explore this state of mind, to put so much of herself on the table, but she rolls credits just as things were getting interesting: when Violet blocks out the voices and finally starts listening to herself.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Infinity Castle
    The film’s humor doesn’t necessarily translate, and the animation style doesn’t come close to the medium’s most artistic work. Beyond the sheer inventiveness of the movie’s made-up martial arts, that leaves the tragic elements, which can be disarmingly effective in giving audiences reason to feel invested in the battles — battles that have only just begun.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Leave No Trace
    There’s a listless, almost meandering nature to the story. The film’s conflict is clear — this is no way to raise a child, and allowed to continue in this fashion, Will risks both his life and Tom’s — and yet there’s no sense of where the script it headed, and no urgency to its resolution.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Way, Way Back
    The story of a teen desperate for a father figure who finds encouragement from a wild-and-crazy water-park employee -- rather than from the guy auditioning to be his stepdad -- can be explosively funny in parts, but overall feels pretty familiar, relying more on its cast than the material to win favor.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Jackpot!
    Fitting neatly between “The Heat” and 2016’s “Ghostbusters” reboot, Jackpot! finds the dapper director squarely in his comfort zone, falling back on some of the tricks that worked so well in “Bridesmaids,” minus the underlying relatability of that film’s brilliant screenplay.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Amsterdam
    The result has all the red flags of a flop, but takes a strong enough anti-establishment stand — and does so with wit and originality — to earn a cult following. There’s too much ambition here to write the movie off, even if Amsterdam, like the history it depicts, winds up taking years to be rediscovered and understood.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Matrix Resurrections
    Essentially a greatest hits concert and a cover version rolled into one (complete with flashback clips to high points from past installments), the new movie is slick but considerably less ambitious in scope than the two previous sequels.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Nickel Boys
    For the first hour or so, Nickel Boys feels like the most exciting narrative debut since “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Then Ross tries something bold that doesn’t quite work, and the experiment collapses upon itself.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    In short, the movie doesn’t seem nearly skeptical enough of its subject, using his sometimes dodgy memory as a vehicle to remind audiences that their classic Hollywood heroes — so perfect on the silver screen — were human after all, with sex lives and carnal desires like the rest of us. Well, maybe not exactly like the rest of us.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Tigers Are Not Afraid
    For a film bursting with so many ideas, only a fraction of them seem to work. And yet, as an artistic statement, “Tigers” proves as fearless as its kid characters, and an indicator of incredible things to come from its creator.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Hooking Up
    In spite of its tweaks to gender roles, the duo’s sexcapades and Snow’s spirited performance, Hooking Up doesn’t offer much by way of surprise, which doesn’t mean that as the odd, amiable couple head toward their personal reckonings, you won’t find yourself rooting for them. Separately and together.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Simon Killer
    Considering how graphic Campos is willing to be, "restrained" may not the right word for his approach, and yet Simon Killer withholds so much that some amount of frustration is sure to follow.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Back on the Strip
    Despite wall-to-wall narration by Haddish (at her most raunchy), the movie does a clumsy job of telling a not-very-complicated story. Then again, this lean team effort is Sanders’ directorial debut, and he gets the laughs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    On Swift Horses
    There’s a current of tragedy running beneath all of the couples here, as the characters create obstacles to their own happiness. It can feel a bit diagrammatic, as if the novelist were setting up impossible loves and then watching them fail. But there’s hope too, and however contrived the last scene may feel, there’s poetry in watching someone betting their future on yet another horse.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
    Rather than linger on the project’s shortcomings, which only disappoint relative to the story’s incredible creative potential, it should be said that in partnership with Berla, Malzieu has created a fully realized, wildly imaginative storybook world and populated it with eccentric characters.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Spenser Confidential
    The film even pokes fun at itself in the process, fully aware that Spenser Confidential isn’t meant to be taken as seriously as Wahlberg’s last few movies — and just as well, since irreverence plays well on Netflix.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Front Runner
    Hugh Jackman proves an inspired candidate to embody Hart, downplaying his brawny movie-star persona, while still conveying the twinkle-eyed sex appeal that was not only Hart’s undoing, but one of the qualities that would have made the photogenic and well-spoken senator from Colorado a logical choice to follow the country’s first movie-star president.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    I Am Michael
    It cuts to the heart of the self-doubt, fear and prejudice associated with modern homosexuality.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Hocus Pocus 2
    Hocus Pocus 2 is actually the better made film, even if it amounts to little more than a stealth remake, with strategic decisions about the present-day and old-Salem witch trios being engineered to allow for more sequels, whether or not its star trio return.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Call Jane
    The female empowerment message comes through loud and clear in “Call Jane,” especially in Banks’ performance. What’s missing from the picture is the threat of discovery, the dangling sword of Damocles that might chasten anyone taking so much responsibility on themselves.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Raya and the Last Dragon
    A lot of the storytelling is clumsy, rushed or inelegant, but the movie’s timely message of unity and trust still resonates because the filmmakers figured out such a satisfying ending — albeit one that ties things up a little too neatly: so much world-building in service of a one-off. Is this overloaded origin story really the last we’ll see of “The Last Dragon”?
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Men in Black: International
    The connection between Tessa Thompson and Hemsworth is what saves the day, not anything their characters do onscreen.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
    While “The Secrets of Dumbledore” doesn’t exactly embrace simplicity, the screenplay — no longer credited to Rowling alone, but co-written by stalwart “Harry Potter” adapter Steve Kloves — feels far more focused. Happily, the execution proves that much easier to follow.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Pompeii
    While more coherent than much of Anderson’s recent work, the film proves less successful at combining destruction and damsel-in-distress storytelling within the same frame, serving up blurry images of Milo trying to rescue Cassia while the city crumbles around them.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    The Lego Movie 2 ought to have raised the bar, and while it’s faster, denser, and jam-packed with all sorts of catchy new songs (including one, “Catchy Song,” that’s insidiously engineered to get stuck inside your head), all that energy only goes so far to cover for the wobblier foundation on which this film is built.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Swan Song
    Kier isn’t panhandling for laughs by playing some tired gay stereotype. There’s a heart-on-his-sleeve sincerity to the performance that’s better than the material merits, for Stephens has written an earnest but anemic script.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Hope Gap
    Slow and stuffy, like a filmed play, but also considerably more nuanced and mature than your typical relationship drama.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Rebecca
    For about three-quarters of the running time, Rebecca does a respectable job of navigating between respect for the source and establishing its own distinct identity. And then, at precisely the moment where it stands to make a few enlightened improvements . . . this Rolls-Royce of an adaptation veers off the road.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Jurassic World Rebirth
    The movie offers an updated version of the same basic ride Spielberg offered 32 years earlier, and yet, it hardly feels essential to the series’ overall mythology, nor does it signal where the franchise could be headed.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Lousy Carter
    We’ve all seen movies like “Lousy Carter” before, and this one’s adequate, without being particularly insightful or memorable.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Maudie
    What little dimension Maudie offers is a direct result of Hawkins’ contributions, which draw from her character’s past to add texture to her performance.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    In Fear
    Jeremy Lovering’s tense debut might have worked better had it left more to the imagination. Still, crisp camerawork and amplified sound yield paranoia aplenty.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
    It may please the faithful, but it’s not quite epic enough to give less devoted viewers the same thrill they once felt from the live-action movies.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Port Authority
    So maybe “Port Authority” isn’t the most elegant queer romance audiences will see this year, but it’s propelled by a pair of terrific performances, and Lessowitz captures the spirit and energy of the vibrant ball world in a totally fresh way.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Lady Chatterley's Lover
    In the end, the couple’s chemistry is off the charts, and that’s all that matters — though there’s still a too-tasteful David Hamilton-like quality to it all.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Freud's Last Session
    So many movies are either mindless or completely disinterested with engaging the intellect of their audiences that Freud’s Last Session offers a welcome bit of brain stimulation — but does far less for the soul.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Five Devils
    The “Ava” director is more ambitious than successful this time around.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The Star
    As kid-friendly Christmas movies go, this one actually goes out of its way to remind what the holiday represents, which should please parents looking for something a little more sophisticated (but just barely) than the VeggieTales cartoons.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    Writer-director Adamma Ebo’s indie comedy (produced by sister Adanne) should tickle those who share her skepticism of organized religion — especially the profit-oriented variety — but doesn’t go much deeper than the 15-minute short film on which it’s based.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Love
    Given the escalating ambition of Noe’s oeuvre and the pornographic promo materials teased in advance of the pic’s Cannes premiere, who would have thought that Love would ultimately prove to be Noe’s tamest film?
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Standing Up
    Director D.J. Caruso offers a practical solution to the issue of adolescent bullying, as its two young protags respond to a case of vicious hazing not with despair or retaliation, but through teamwork and character-building.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Extraction
    Extraction isn’t the smartest movie you’ll see during lockdown, but it’s liable to be the most kinetic — assuming you have Netflix, since it’s the service’s big tentpole of the season, a dumbed-down bit of blow-uppy distraction that’s every bit as entertaining as the equivalent pyrotechnic offering from a theatrical motion picture studio might have been.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    The First Omen
    Stevenson’s consistently unsettling and gleefully sacrilegious offering packs its share of legitimate shocks en route to one glaringly obvious “surprise.”
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Heretic
    Go with it, and Heretic can be an entertaining ride. It may not change your mind about religion, but you’ll never think of blueberry pie the same way again.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Peter Debruge
    Weathering with You
    Shinkai hasn’t gone far enough into fantasy to excuse the enormous holes in his script, though he does a nice job of distracting us with detail.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    A Cure for Wellness
    The movie deprives us of either a tragic villain or a sympathetic lead, hoping that its grab bag of squirm-inducing details — dental drills, stillborn livestock, flesh-eating eels — will suffice, when in fact, they reveal how a shorter, tighter treatment ought to have done the trick.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Red Rocket
    Everything in Red Rocket happens just a little too easily, which is one of the weaknesses of a self-indulgent regional satire that stretches its perhaps-80-minute plot over more than two hours.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Isn't It Romantic
    While there’s virtually no risk that “Isn’t It Romantic” will make you to love your favorite rom-coms any less, Strauss-Schulson hasn’t figured out how to have his cake and eat it, too — to look down on the very confection he’s so busy peddling.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Shaggy Dog
    This is precisely the type of moviegoing experience engineered for those who still get a laugh when the Baha Men hit "Who Let the Dogs Out?" accompanies a doggie mayhem montage.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Catch That Kid
    While this Kid isn't up to "Spy Kids" standards, the good news is the film hews closer to the high-concept kids' movies of the 1980s than to all that Disney Channel goo that's been repackaged for the big screen lately.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    It's All Gone Pete Tong
    The entire movie rides on Paul Kaye's performance.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Monster-in-Law
    Imagine what someone like Danny DeVito might have done with the material, taking it in that darker "War of the Roses" direction instead of languishing in this sunny, not-nearly-sinister-enough "Legally Blonde" territory.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Hoot
    A filmmaker like John Sayles ("Sunshine State") who shares Hiaasen's issue-conscious outlook might have framed the lesson a bit more eloquently. But Shriner blows it.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Shark Tale
    If you were hoping to find another "Nemo," you're likely to be let down by this insincere and borderline unpleasant alternative.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    21 Bridges
    Boseman’s role doesn’t offer nearly as much complexity as the screenwriters seem to think — which is why the movie needs an actor like him to distract us from its many plot holes and paradoxes.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Kid 90
    In many ways, Frye’s collage only makes sense to its maker, where someone else might have brought enough distance to put all this material in perspective.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Walking with Dinosaurs
    Visually, “Walking With Dinosaurs” dazzles with its combination of Animal Logic-animated CG creatures...and beautiful practical backgrounds... Less dazzling is the constant stream of jokey banter, which thwarts the pic’s educational potential and caps its target age awfully low.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Freaky Tales
    Freaky Tales takes nearly 40 minutes to find its footing, but once it kicks in, there’s roughly an hour of grindhouse glory ahead (assuming streaming audiences make it that far).
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)
    The lack of a single clear character with whom to identify ultimately proves problematic.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Spoiler Alert
    Throughout, Spoiler Alert shows a maturity toward modern relationships, whether straight or queer, that’s refreshing and instructive. Unfortunately, too much of the movie simply doesn’t work.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Lucky Grandma
    Although the entire film runs just 87 minutes, as Lucky Grandma unspools, Wong’s predicament starts to feel increasingly outlandish, making it difficult for Sealy to sustain the offbeat humor and strong momentum of the opening stretch.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Bullet Train
    Bullet Train feels like it comes from the same brain as “Snatch,” wearing its pop style on its sleeve — a “Kill Bill”-like mix of martial arts, manga and gabby hitman movie influences, minus the vision or wit that implies.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Unforgettable
    It’s tawdry “Sleeping With the Enemy”-style fun while it lasts, boasting a better cast and splashier production values than the next closest Lifetime movie, while being so ridiculous at times that audiences can’t help but talk back to the screen.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Maya the Bee Movie
    All told, in giving parents nothing to object to, director Alexs Stadermann (who got his start making straight-to-video sequels for Disney) has also given them little to get excited about, apart from the idea of sharing Maya with another generation of preschoolers.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Greed
    The emperor is naked, Greed wants us to realize, but unless we agree to radically rethink our own wardrobes, does it make any difference?
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Unlike this summer's compulsively watchable "Hustle & Flow," Get Rich or Die Tryin' captures none of the thrill of finding your voice, recording a demo or landing a concert.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Ya lyublyu tebya
    If nothing else, You I Love delivers a brisk and spirited little taste of contemporary Russian culture through the eyes of three spontaneous, unpredictable and oddly charming characters.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    All I See Is You
    Look past the gimmick, and all that remains is an overly arty study of a lopsided marriage in which super-attentive husband James (Jason Clarke) actually seems to prefer when his wife Gina (Blake Lively) can’t see — and another opportunity for Lively to prove that she’s more than just a pretty face.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Hero
    Haley and Basch have mistaken what the AARP calls “movies for grownups” for a kind of mushy feel-good pablum, throwing together a handful of familiar clichés in the hope that Elliott’s charm will carry the day.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Earwig
    Earwig teeters on the brink of ennui for most of its taxing two-hour running time, asking us to care about characters the film hasn’t really defined.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Fury
    Though colorfully embellished with authentic detail and logistically complex to bring to the screen, Ayer’s script is bland at the most basic story level, undermined by cardboard characterizations and a stirring yet transparently silly climactic showdown.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Bronze
    Though no one would accuse The Bronze of not being funny, it somehow manages not to be funny often enough.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    A Monster Calls
    We’ve heard the same lesson countless times before in other movies, and though it’s certainly impressive to see Conor’s anxieties manifest themselves in such a stunning Ent-like being, as monsters go, Bayona’s creation is all bark and no bite.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    xXx: State of the Union
    Basically the first movie all over again, with plenty more of the bridge-jumping, rocket-launching action that audiences loved about the original.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Anthropoid
    The trouble is that for all the narrative intrigue and excitement such an endeavor might suggest, director Sean Ellis’ less-than-dramatic recreation of this daring act of defiance proves surprisingly stiff...barely redeemed by an even more surprisingly intense finale.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Yelling to the Sky
    Strong on texture but taxingly light on narrative.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Alien on Stage
    Amusing, but not outrageous, and while I’m glad Kummer’s camera was there to capture it, the movie doesn’t reveal enough about the performers’ backgrounds or personalities.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Mute
    What is Jones trying to say with Mute? One would hardly guess this over-congested generic exercise came from the same mind as the elegant, almost minimalistic “Moon,” which made far better use of all that went unsaid.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Animal Farm
    The message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Ask the Dust
    It would seem Towne is too much in love with the book to recognize its fundamental limitations as a film.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Outside the Wire
    Apart from his programming, there’s little that sets Leo apart from your average action hero. And that, of course, is the problem with nearly all of these Netflix movies in the end: They approximate, but seldom surpass, what they’re meant to replace.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Lilo & Stitch
    Somehow, Lilo & Stitch has lost its unpredictable sense of anarchy in the retelling.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Argylle
    While common sense and good taste may be inclined to resist Vaughn’s garishly over-the-top style at first, the movie eventually finds its groove.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Uncle Drew
    Uncle Drew may be tired, but it shows that one’s fundamental love for the game never gets old.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    War for the Planet of the Apes
    It’s fitting that the visual effects have advanced so dramatically since 2011, as it allows the series to suggest that its ape protagonists have evolved to an equivalent degree, and yet, “War’s” story is beneath their intelligence.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Anything But Love
    There's a lot to be said for a movie that isn't after instant fame, but only wants to make audiences feel good.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Everything Everywhere All at Once
    Everything Everywhere is ultimately too much of a good thing, a novel idea driven to the point of exhaustion.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Herbie Fully Loaded
    One of the great pleasures of the original Love Bug comes in watching all the live-action stunts, and CG just isn't the same.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Monsters and Men
    Mixing “gritty” handheld camerawork with an almost zen-like kind of restraint, Green’s approach is frustratingly thin on the kind of specifics that make for rich drama, leaving audiences to fill in the gaps.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    Rarely delivers anything above and beyond the scope of the series.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    In the Name of My Daughter
    A mobster movie without whackings, a thriller without suspense and a courtroom drama without resolution, this turgid retelling of an unsolved missing-persons case functions mostly as a portrait of a young woman who loved too passionately and the manipulative creep incapable of reciprocating her affections.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Weather Man
    Their movie is cold, and I mean that not as a weather pun, but in the sense that it's impossible to warm up to a character who sees the awful things happening around him strictly in terms of how they affect him.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    TRON: Ares
    While it was exciting to see what “Tron” might look like in the 21st century, the brand gets in the way of Ares’ internal evolution. However fascinating it might be to watch him “level up,” what audiences expect — and what Rønning delivers — are cycle races and dynamic gladiator battles.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Don't Move
    There’s something so schematic about Iris’ situation, it feels like an insult to those who deal with actual thoughts of self-harm. That doesn’t mean it’s not compelling to watch at times, as Iris does her best to overcome her immobility, but nothing about it feels believable.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Miss Bala
    Miss Bala no longer serves as a critique of a system that might allow innocent people to get caught in the crossfire of the drug war, but as the kick-ass origin story for a new kind of action hero.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Sometimes I Think About Dying
    It’s a thin, practically anemic observational movie for audiences who recognize themselves in Fran’s awkwardness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
    His vision is big, but the execution clunky and crowded with detail, such that it all plays like a regional-theater production of “The Wiz” staged within the walls of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.” Talbert is positively unabashed about Jingle Jangle’s too-muchness, as if trying to make up for a century of underrepresentation by stuffing everything he can into two hours’ worth of Christmas pageantry.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Just Friends
    This is superficial entertainment to say the least. But if you're looking for laughs, then Just Friends is just fine.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Bad Times at the El Royale
    At two hours and 21 minutes, this 1969-set period thriller is taxingly slow and almost oppressively self-indulgent, constantly backtracking and replaying already-drawn-out scenes from multiple perspectives.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Long Shot
    More creepy than romantic, more chauvinist than empowered — and in all fairness, funnier and more entertaining than any comedy in months — Long Shot serves up the far-fetched wish-fulfillment fantasy of how, for one lucky underdog, pursuing your first love could wind up making you first man.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Stockholm, Pennsylvania
    From its opening scene, the film feels desaturated and airless, as if the intrusion of energy or color might upset the characters’ delicate task of healing.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Hamlet
    With director Aneil Karia’s interpretation, we get the great Riz Ahmed in the role, which is reason enough for the film to exist — but it’s perhaps the only one in a remake that might better have chosen not to be.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Hostiles
    Though it basically argues that the surest way to overcome racism is to spend some time getting to know “the other,” Cooper’s film offers audiences no such opportunity, depriving its native characters of so much as a single scene in which they are treated as anything more than abstract plot devices in service of the white folks’ enlightenment.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Wildcat
    It’s emotionally exhausting, but audiences come away with a sense of her legacy, as well as an appreciation for the adversity she faced (and, to a lesser degree, a sense of the criticism that has been leveled against her).
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed
    Stephen Kijak’s documentary does him a disservice, reducing Hudson’s career — in exactly the way he went so far out of his way to avoid — to the dimension of his sexuality.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Willow Creek
    In angling for suspense, this low-budget stunt relies a bit too heavily on our suspension of disbelief.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    News of the World
    Suspense is not the film’s strong suit, and while the trek in between needn’t be dull, Greengrass has made it curiously unengaging.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Kings
    Kings is a tangle of conflicting moods and emotions.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Grudge
    American audiences have seen Ju-On. And The Grudge just goes to show why remaking it is such a frivolous idea: What's the use in wasting so much energy if the filmmakers aren't going to fix what was wrong with the movie in the first place?
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Percy Vs Goliath
    While well cast and plenty compelling (including feisty turns from Christopher Walken and Christina Ricci), this reductive farmer drama deals in emotions more than explanations as it seeks to convey what it means for a little-guy grower like Percy Schmeiser to go up against Big Agro.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Crash
    Almost certain to polarize audiences, this bit of emotional agitprop plays like a watered-down "Short Cuts" or "Magnolia" with a shrill, one-note message: We're all a little bit racist.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Klaus
    What goodwill the movie does inspire owes more to the splendid visual world than to anything the story supplies.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    High Tension
    Borderline reprehensible, High Tension is a living nightmare, but then, why else would you see it?
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Chupa
    The director could use a bit more practice working with kids, who give stiff and slightly unnatural performances here (Ciarra seems the most comfortable on camera), to say nothing of the so-so visual effects, which favor cute over convincing where the CG chimera is concerned.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The End
    There may never be another film like The End, and that alone makes it special, though surely all involved would prefer for it to be seen. As it is, the film feels like an obtuse missive, hidden in plain sight, just waiting for intrepid seekers to unearth it.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Firebrand
    Firebrand is clever to reframe Catherine as an important figure in England’s change. It just goes too far.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Finally Dawn
    One can sense what Costanzo’s trying to do, but he’s made a fatal miscalculation: Mimosa is not leading lady material, and 140 minutes is far too long to spend pretending otherwise.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Action Point
    The trouble is, presenting all of this mayhem within the framework of a by-the-numbers father-daughter bonding story saps the stunts of their usual appeal.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    A United Kingdom
    These two are meant to be together, as the film’s clever title suggests, though all the truly interesting things they accomplished happen only after that reunion.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    A Love Song for Bobby Long
    One of those slow-baked Southern character studies about taking an old flat tire of a man and finding some way to love him anyway.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Charlotte's Web
    Whereas E.B. White's beloved novel introduced kids to the cycle of life, tenderly broaching the tricky subject of mortality, this latest movie version plays like just another piece of vegetarian agitprop.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Woman and Child
    The psychology simply doesn’t add up.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    New Order
    Essentially picking up where “The Joker” left off, this ultra-provocative case of speculative fiction promises a view of what change might look like, only to succumb to a deep sense of cynicism as the scope of the film becomes unmanageable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Peter Pan & Wendy
    Where “Peter Pan” was a phenomenon, this straight-to-streaming version is but a shadow, scampering off and trying to have fun on its own.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Souvenir
    The movie doesn’t have the budget or imagination to permit subplots.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Tomorrow Ever After
    The movie’s one recurring joke stems from watching Shaina catch strangers off-guard, and it starts to wear thin by around the one-hour mark, when things start to turn dark.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Baby Invasion
    Though little more than a gimmick, the baby angle gives Korine a hook for an experiment that’s only intermittently engaging for much of its running time.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Down Low
    Hopelessly shallow Down Low is still light-years ahead of mainstream movies (including last year’s “Bros”) as debuting feature director Rightor Doyle delivers what an entire contingent of queer audiences have been asking for all their lives: namely, a comedy that’s as raunchy and inappropriate as the jokes they make among themselves.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Orion and the Dark
    Kaufman’s innovations all make Orion and the Dark less predictable, potentially engaging young viewers in the storytelling process. But they also make for a more stressful experience overall, as if Orion wasn’t high-strung enough already.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Outlaw King
    Whatever its value as rabble-rousing historical reenactment, Outlaw King never quite compares to the many films it’s so keen to imitate, and in some cases outright quote.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Arthur and the Invisibles
    This inventive family movie sets up the most delightful premise, then squanders it on the kind of yawn-inducing CG adventure you might expect from one of those long, plot-heavy cut scenes that slow down video games.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Ghostbusters
    While both funnier and scarier than Ivan Reitman’s 1984 original, this otherwise over-familiar remake from “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig doesn’t do nearly enough to innovate on what has come before.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Identity Thief
    With Identity Thief, Melissa McCarthy proves she's got what it takes to carry a feature, however meager the underlying material.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Employee of the Month
    Coolidge knows he's not making "Death of a Salesman" here (he names the store managers Glen Gary and Glen Ross in tribute to David Mamet's elegy to the American Dream), but he's got the same eye for detail that made "Office Space" great. What he lacks is Arthur Miller's (or even Mike Judge's) sense for character.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    A View to a Kill
    This jokey tone couldn’t be more different from the relative self-seriousness of helmer John Glen’s first 007 directing effort, For Your Eyes Only, and frankly, I yearn for more of that class.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    It's Only the End of the World
    Here, in cinema’s most unpleasant genre (the dysfunctional family gathering), Dolan has found a way to exasperate and exhaust his audience, but he has also achieved a completely unexpected catharsis at the end of an agonizing hour and a half.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The New Mutants
    Re-shot, re-cut and somehow rescued from total obscurity, Boone’s movie isn’t half bad. Alas, it’s not half good either. It’s basically just decent enough to motivate those sick of shutdown to risk getting sick for real.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Love Again
    An old-school, straight-faced studio romance featuring five new songs from Ms. Dion, writer-director Jim Strouse’s Love Again is all about such healing — to the extent that if it were a book instead of a movie, it would be filed in the self-help section.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Pusher (2012)
    What's missing cast-wise is an appealing personality in the sidekick role, and Webb is no match for Mads Mikkelsen.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Hot Milk
    The film unfolds in a dreamy, liminal place in Sofia’s personal evolution, but lacks the tangible sense of vicariously experiencing it ourselves — a shame, since it’s a splendid location in which to be doing such intensive self-healing.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Sahara
    Rojas is played by Penélope Cruz, who's endearing enough, but still comes across coarse and irritating every time she attempts a role in English.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Saltburn
    Fennell’s debut promised a fearless original voice and style. Saltburn certainly has attitude, but nothing new to say.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    You Got Served
    The beauty of You Got Served is that it delivers the moves from every vantage point.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Rapture-Palooza
    More irrelevant than irreverent, the unworthy script from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’s” Chris Matheson might play to apocalyptically stoned college kids, but offers nothing in the way of broader social satire, suggesting the waste of a perfectly good Reckoning — not to mention the talents of a cast far funnier than the doom-and-gloom results suggest.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Memory
    In the end, “Memory” isn’t terribly convincing, but it’s at least trying for something more serious than most.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Equals
    From Doremus’ side of things, it can’t be easy to depict something as subtle as “intermittent feeling” or “increased sensitivity,” though the helmer does a fine job of laying the groundwork for the attraction blooming between Silas and Nia — boosted by the resonant collection of electronic tones and chimes that constitute Equals’ futuristic score.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Boxtrolls
    The meticulously crafted world is stunning to behold, imagined to the minutest detail and photographed with the sort of dramatic lighting and dynamic camera movement rarely seen in stop-motion. Trouble is, it’s not a place most folks would care to spend any time.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    The technical side isn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds, and there’s only limited interest in watching White navigate the icon’s first serious bout of depression. That is, unless one understands just how much that record represents to the next generations of musicians and why.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Theater Camp
    Mostly, audiences are stuck watching everybody trying to be funny: testing out one-liners, singing off-key, panhandling for laughs. Running jokes trip over their own shoelaces.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Greatest Game Ever Played
    Considering its superlative title (second only to George Stevens's New Testament epic, "The Greatest Story Ever Told"), I'm sorry to report that The Greatest Game Ever Played ranks somewhere in the murky middleground of sports movies.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Midnight's Children
    It’s a vibrant journey, but not a terribly illuminating one.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Me and You
    Ultimately, such a stir-crazy two-hander can only be as interesting as its actors.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    White Boy Rick
    Although Demange directs the heck out of it, White Boy Rick ultimately feels like a glorified TV movie, albeit with a better cast and a much hipper score.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Bird Box
    Heisserer’s script endeavors to give Bullock a rich psychological backstory to play — something to do with her reluctance to accept motherhood and the redemption she experiences in accepting that role — and the wonderfully self-reliant actress plays that arc earnestly enough. But there’s no getting around that this is a monster movie without a monster.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Bonjour Tristesse
    While promising, Chew-Bose’s attractive but ultimately hollow debut offers audiences a vicarious vacation to the south of France, in which vivid sense memories are accompanied by words far too eloquent to have sprung from a 19-year-old’s head.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    Zola
    Sure, it’s fun to see a movie skewer the vapid soullessness of social media and the unregulated economy of male desire, but Zola ultimately rings hollow. The actors are fearless, and yet, how much do we know about these characters in the end? The answer: something of their values, but almost nothing of their lives.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
    The result is like a low-rent "Wizard of Oz" or "Labyrinth," sticking close to the formula of a kid who falls asleep and wakes up in a fantastical wonderland where everything's just a little bit off.
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