Richard Lawson

Those who feel that this Snow White is unnecessary or even worse should know that it is not the total disaster they were fearing. There’s some value to the film, even if that value will mostly be found by younger audiences

Eurovision has its clunky stretches—Ferrell’s script, written with Andrew Steele, could be a little tighter, a little sharper, and still keep its rambling appeal—but the film is routinely rescued by a deftly staged music number or an invigoratingly off-color joke.

Jungle Cruise is a two-hour movie that has far less consequence than a ride that’s a small fraction of that length. The experience the film more accurately simulates is the standing in line: all that tedious waiting in the heat for the fun to start.

My Policeman is studied and plodding in its period-piece solemnity, a dirge of a movie about reckless people that is never warmed by their implied inner fire.

Blonde is a film partly about exploitation that might be exploitative itself. If the film is aware of that meta function, then there’s something interesting happening in it. If not, and Dominik thinks he is genuinely ennobling Monroe and expressing some kind of radical pity for her, then Blonde is a little perverse.

The real trouble of the film is that it is stuck, like a spirit, between spaces. It’s cramped in the liminal room between “prestige horror” and something more slick, squalid, and satisfying. The balance is off, for which a strong cast—Rhea Seehorn is particularly sharp as a colleague of George’s—and stately aesthetics can’t make up.

Where Don’t Look Up finds its strength is in its lead performances, which can’t be undone even by the film’s exhausting, rapid-fire editing and McKay’s aggressive indicating toward his own punchlines.

Your Place or Mine occasionally gives off a glimmer of something interesting, but all too quickly snaps back to the featureless drudgery that has, sadly, come to define its genre.

Every actor, bless them, works hard to sell the movie’s overweening moxie, leaning into the mannered quirk with admirable, if ultimately doomed, commitment. Pitt and Taylor-Johnson are perhaps best suited to the movie’s patter; they manage to give some actual fizz to leaden material. But those moments are short lived, and then it’s back to the awkward squirm of watching talented actors debase themselves for laughs that never come.

Downhill is a clever movie when it could have been profound, had, perhaps, Faxon and Rash been willing—or capable—of digging deeper.

Let There Be Carnage tries to recreate the first film’s giddy shock while also upping the ante, taking what audiences liked and slopping more of that onto their plates.

The writing and direction is so erratic and confused that it’s near impossible to figure out who several characters are, let alone what they are seeking to accomplish.

The film may be a vessel for some noxious, platitudinous cynicism, but there’s nevertheless something still quaint about it. It mostly just wants you to have a nice time, it insists; to feel cheered and uplifted as a big, lumbering elephant carries us off a cliff.

Mothers’ Instinct is fun, in a throwback sort of a way. The performances are big and appealing; the period stylings are relatively lush for a lower-budget movie. Sure, there’s some silly stuff, overheated moments that merit guffaws—but that’s part of the mission of movies like this.

The movie is as engaging as it is sinisterly ridiculous. Its costumery is luxe and eye-popping, its courtly intrigue pleasingly low-stakes. The looming Revolution is only mentioned, in somber tones, in voiceover at the very end. Otherwise, Jeanne du Barry wants you to feel the fantasy.

The Gallerist is not without its occasional charms. There’s a chuckle to be had here and there, bits of zinging dialogue that actually find the right notes. Enough so that one roots for the movie despite its many missteps. The problem, ultimately, is that Yan chose a poor subject for her film, an environment that is an incredibly hard target to nail.

That the film has such a strong, timely moral argument makes one reconsider its creative merits.

Director Olivia Wilde has made an obvious and intermittently entertaining sci-thriller, one that borrows heavily from many better things but uses those pilfered parts effectively enough. For a while, anyway.

The film is a mess, opaque in its argument and tiring in its effortful weirdness, and yet in its best moments has a hypnotic pull.

Lisa Frankenstein never gets its blood up, essentially playing as a casual mood piece rather than full-bodied horror or romance or comedy.

Halloween Ends is a bizarre hash of tones and theses, stitched together into a movie that’s neither fun nor frightful.

Most vitally, the film has frightening, wiggly moments that ought to send young viewers happily scooting forward on the couch, or just as happily hiding under a throw pillow. The film, at its best, is gross and silly and amiably unsettling, which may be all that counts.

There is simultaneously a beautiful movie and a good play hidden somewhere in Woody Allen’s new melodrama, Wonder Wheel, a slight and clunky period piece that offers teasing glimpses of something more rich and interesting.

Book Club’s four stars—and others like them—deserve material that’s specific, clever, surprising in some way. These plug-and-play movies have lost much of their charm at this point, feeling more like a slightly degrading duty than any kind of demographic triumph. Which may be overthinking it. But shouldn’t a movie about a book club feel at least a little bit literate?

The film doesn’t do much to distinguish itself, or to retain audience interest. Jackman, dutiful thespian as always, gives it his all, but the specter his character is running after doesn’t have enough shape, or meaning.

There is, alas, nothing enriching about Capone. It offers none of the robust competence these dwindling-culture times are running low on. Perhaps more dismayingly, it’s not even entertaining. The film’s arresting oddity is fleeting, and then we’re just made to sit with it for another humid 90 minutes.

The Meg is bad, but only rarely in the fun way.

Very little happens beyond those walls, reducing the film to cramped psychodrama. It’s startlingly dull, a pointless procedural that seems to disdain its audience.