Peter Travers

Jokester Karl Urban leads a cast of battling gamer brawlers against a plot that doesn’t exist. No matter. All you need to love it is blind devotion

Forget anything new. Director Renny Harlin is merely spitpolishing his same old bag of shark tricks. But the dude knows how to deliver assembly line product like nobody’s business.

Jason Segel and Samara Weaving get laughs, but their murder comedy is total tonal chaos.

This sugarcoated and sanctified biopic sees Michael Jackson as a creative musical genius with a terminal case of arrested development. Except for the glorious music and star Jaafar Jackson, this is an insight-free gloss on a life minus anything raw, relatable and scandal adjacent.

Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel are dynamite in a pop rock opera from director David Lowery that wins points for visuals and suffers from a terminal case of grandiosity

Rushed off to Netflix when theaters are readily available, this fitfully competent “Jaws” ripoff will have to do until the real thing comes along. Condolences to leading lady Phoebe Dynevor who deserved better.

In this romcom that evaporates while you’re watching it, a mismatched Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page fight a losing battle to outshine the scenery.

Even when the laughs evaporate in the final stretch, Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone know how to breathe comic life into a stoner buddy comedy that’s high on its own shitfaced supply.

Peachy for fans and painful for newbies, this animated joyride is on the run for box-office glory. So what if doesn’t have an ending. It just stops as if totally exhausted. Now that I can relate to.

If you need to spot the narcissist lurking behind a friend or lover, this Maria Tomei bonbon may be just instructional romcom you’re looking for. Or maybe not.

A zowie Zazie Beetz takes a fiery axe to anyone who messes with her sister, but we’ve seen it all before and better. Boring is too small a word to hold the heaps of tedium that come with relentless repetition of kill scenes where no one dies

This animated tale of a grumpy fish is as bland as blueberries, yet some wonder if sad Mr. Fish can inspire suicidal thoughts. Nah. Positive messaging swims will all these fishes.

In his final film, James Van der Beek raises the bar on a standard-issue thriller through the sheer force of his talent and magnetism.

Maika Monroe brings battered heart and soul to a Colleen Hoover soap opera that renders “big” emotions with the small details that make them count.

Cillian Murphy’s gangster icon Tommy Shelby makes his big-screen debut in a standalone film that can’t stand up against the great series that spawned it. For all its entertaining fan service, it’s an unnecessary coda to an unforgettable TV classic.

Despite Christian Bale and a wow Jessie Buckley as Frankenstein and his missus, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s big swing at remaking a horror classic is a hot, unholy mess. One caveat: no one who still values artistic risk should dream of missing it.

Watching Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds is usually time well spent, but this woebegone wintery love story makes you want to jump into an Amsterdam canal.

In this sadly stunted comic thriller, a delightfully depraved Glen Powell must kill seven of his family members to inherit $28 billion. Would you? By the end, the film’s lockstep quality commits the worst crime of all by killing our interest.

This hoop dreams animation romp from producer Steph Curry isn’t NBA quality, but it gets the job done for family fun. The inclusivity messaging abut teamwork is laid on thick, but still worthwhile for immature audiences of all ages.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Eloridi get steamy in Emerald Fennell’s overheated but undercooked take on Emily Brontë’s classic Gothic romance in which they suck each other’s faces with a wild, porny abandon that would shock Victorians. No complaints here.

The bloodsucking Count is back again, but this time in a strangely bloodless love story that even wickedly seductive fangboy Caleb Landry Jones can’t save from the cliché stockpile.

See this romcom for the soft side of Kevin James as a jilted groom in Roma and Italian scenery that’s gorgeous in any language. That’s the only way to come out ahead.

The visuals dazzle, the plotting not so much in this gender-switched take on “Hamlet” as a warrior princess revenge epic from Japanese anime master Mamoru Hosoda.

Props to Charli xcx for grabbing her brat moment at Sundance. The dance-pop princess shows real acting potential, even though this misbegotten mockumentary gives her few chances to show her range.

In this slow but touching biopic, Claire Foy excels as an academic who buries her grief about her father’s death by caring for a predator goshawk, so both can relearn to fly.

Maika Monroe plays a drug dealer facing off with her rodeo champ dad Troy Kotsur in a by-the-numbers thriller minus any real thrills. It’s the hints of a better film—fiercer, funnier, more attuned to a woman’s point of view—that nag at you.

As killer ape movies go, this one’s a bloody wonder—it’s too bad no one bothered to add plot, character or a reason to care

Before it reverts to moldy zombie tropes, this low-budget, no-frills survival thriller puts a fresh spin on the familiar thanks to Daisy Ridley as a human living among the walking dead.