Richard Lawson

There are a few laughs to be found in the film, little moments of wit or weirdness, but the film is otherwise a mirthless drag rescued only by its bright leads. Maybe let them make the movie next time.

The film is, plainly stated, terrible, and I’m sorry that everyone wasted their time and money making it—and that people are being asked to waste their time and money seeing it. I hate to be so blunt, but it simply must be said this time.

The bulk of Rampage is, alas, a slog, as passionless as I’d imagine the fandom is for the I.P. the film is based on.

There’s a sort of bell curve of tolerance; the film begins loud and over-egged, gradually settles into a sad and gnarly bildungsroman, and then burns itself out with an operatic finale. It’s an exhausting experience, which I realize may be the point.

The movie is fun, which could be all we need right now. Let’s do it again next summer.

The film is mostly just a rehash of Lord of the Flies set in space. It turns down all the expected corridors and leaves most of its chilling implications unexplored.

Mortal Kombat is a disjointed, halfhearted trip to the past, where things probably should have been left finished for good.

Lisbeth loses a bit of her individuality in her conversion to action star, becoming a more generic butt-kicker with plainer motivations.

For all I know, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey actually takes place on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise, so phony is everything contained within it.

A movie like this—about such a fiery, singular person—should not play like mere misty elegy, a brief recounting of happy memories and sad ones that amounts to a sentimental sketch of an artist. Where is the whir of the world as Winehouse saw it, the matrix of pleasure and heartbreak that so fascinated her? Where is the Winehouse who, in the full glare of her being, ought to be remembered?

The movie feels too late and too little, a minor work that’s perhaps too streamlined to be really messy, but nonetheless has an air of shambling inexactness.

Glass is simply Shyamalan giving a book report on the basic structure of comic-caper narratives. There’s something endearing about his eagerness to explain these simple things, to show us what he knows. But Glass still suffers for that pedantic self-seriousness.

Scoob! is a dumb movie, full of creaky topical references and jokes that are above kids’ heads but below adults’. It’s also pretty boring, because it makes no real effort to give the plot any sort of cinematic build.

Locked Down is a grating yank into a nasty headspace, a pompous sort of fury. There is no empathy for the common cause of quarantine in the film, only spittle and outrage and corny existential angst.

Bad Education (which honestly isn’t a great title for this movie) is an arresting, nuanced depiction of insatiable want, of the bitter fact that reaching for things is often more instinctual, more human, than holding on to what we’ve already got.

Brave New World is a bunch of characters wandering around in search of meaning, the Marvel machine creaking loudly as it tries to whip up some grand mythos around these B-tier figures.

The House That Jack Built is a tediously navel-gazing exercise in von Trier trying to explain, and make half-hearted atonement for, his “totally twisted, man,” worldview, an explication of his personal psychology that is almost heartbreaking in its conflicted self-regard.

For the most part, the film’s offhanded, listless vibe feels like an insult to viewers, especially those who will pay actual money to see this thing.

Best to move past Without Remorse. assured that Jordan will find another, more fitting star vehicle for himself. Maybe one that’s a bit hipper to the mores and styles of the present day, and is more willing to let its lead express something beyond the wordless violence of so much canned fury.

Moonfall is all cobbled together financing and bad green screen, simulated locations weakly standing in for the real thing and a host of capable but wasted actors. What an accidental irony, that Moonfall should, after all that, prove so weightless.

The movie is a pallid, dull slog of bad acting and worse storytelling.

As Shelby Oaks moves further away from its original conceit, it grows ever clunkier, ever more derivative. Stuckmann’s dialogue is stilted and generic; his storytelling and world-building even more so.

It’s a story of reinvention for an actor trying to do the same. It mostly works a treat. Lohan’s performance is perky and agreeable, a shimmer of that old Mean Girls (or, hell, Parent Trap) charm dancing around her for the first time in a while. I’d happily watch her in more after this—though preferably in something a bit meatier than a Hallmark knock-off.

Unhinged is a nasty piece of work, jarringly rough but also, in fits and starts, bracing entertainment.

I wish all of Tartt’s tender and moving allegory—the way she pours the density of growth and regret into a solid thing that can pass hands—had space to bloom in the film. It doesn’t, and I left the film appreciative of its style and strong performances, but not emotionally altered in any lingering way.

Meg 2 is confident in its schlock, piling on one ridiculous conceit after another at such a pace that the audience can’t help but be swept up in it. That is a harder needle to thread than many filmmakers seem to think—it’s not enough to just be stupid.

Farrelly shows us the formative experience, but only a little of its consequence. Perhaps too much consideration of that would make the whole thing seem something less than great.

Believer is in tortured dialogue with the original Exorcist, attempting to expand that film’s worldview while also paying reverent homage. It seems a bit guilty in its grave robbing—which is commendable, in a way—but it’s still doing the robbing.