Richard Roeper

The screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift is sharp and funny, and contains knowing insights about misogyny in the workplace and the shifting dynamic between a toxic male boss and an overlooked and mistreated female employee. Mostly, though, “Send Help” is about paying your ticket for an R-rated, Sam Raimi thrill ride with projectile vomiting, flying ropes of blood, and a handful of scenes that fly so off the rails that you wonder if we’re in the middle of a dream sequence, or the mayhem is real.

By the halfway mark of the screen-popping and kinetic but ultimately tiresome and borderline dopey AI thriller “Mercy,” I found myself yearning for a wireless mouse so I could log off.

While there’s no new ground to be covered—Elizabeth’s captors were long ago brought to justice—it’s still a journalistically thorough and fascinating look back at the story, highlighted by present-day interviews with Elizabeth, her little sister Mary Katherine (who witnessed the abduction) and Elizabeth’s father, Ed Smart.

One can’t help but feel sad, and yes, sometimes infuriated, that Chevy Chase never fully figured out a way to enjoy his great success without making so many others in his circle miserable.

A well-produced, visually impressive, character-driven fable about the man who would be king.

Not Without Hope is a respectful and impactful dramatic interpretation that feels true to the real-life events.

It’s a predictable and straightforward accounting of events, featuring interviews with 1985 stalwarts Mike Singletary, Willie Gault, Jim McMahon, and Gary Fencik (who all look great some four decades later), and a treasure trove of archival footage in era-perfect, beautifully imperfect analog—slightly grainy, with warm color palettes and that “mildly smeared” look that screams mid-1980s.

“Rental Family” is unabashedly sentimental, almost Frank Capra-esque at times. It’s also a thoughtful and insightful presentation of this unique and admittedly strange business of renting humans to help other humans. And it’s a knowing character study of a gaijin in Japan who knows he could live there forever and never fully grasp and understand the culture, but will never stop trying.

Happy Gilmore makes par through the strength of its sheer stupid energy and the game efforts of Sandler and his 50 or so co-stars.

After all the clutter and noise, it turns out that “Snow White” is a perfectly serviceable, gorgeously filmed, toe-tapping musical that pays homage to the animated film while making significant changes, including deviating from the original storyline to make Rachel Zegler’s Snow White more of a People’s Princess and girl-power rebel than someone warbling “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”

With clear and obvious influences from films such as “Joker,” “The King of Comedy,” “Whiplash” and, most prominently, “Taxi Driver,” writer-director Bynum and Majors team up for a disturbing and blistering case study of a man who feels utterly unseen and is obsessed with making a name for himself.

De Niro infuses Costello with a kind of avuncular charm, while Genovese has the fiery temper and paranoid fury to match Jake La Motta in “Raging Bull.” It’s a privilege to witness one of the best actors of all time, still at the top of his game.

The Electric State short-circuits from a severe case of Character Overload, with great actors mired in hopelessly silly and underwritten parts.

I’m not going to pretend I always knew exactly what everyone was talking about as we plunged ever deeper into the weeds of double-crossing and triple-crossing among a batch of mostly iniquitous secret agents, but it’s a zippy and darkly funny ride every step of the way. The dialogue jumps off the page, and the performances are universally brilliant.

The running time is 104 minutes, but it felt longer than “The Brutalist.”

Despite the stylish direction from the duo of Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and winning performances by Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, “Novocaine” sputters to the finish line.

Drawing from behind-the-scenes footage and photos on the “Rust” set, police footage from the scene and from interrogation rooms, interviews with actors and production staffers as well as director Joel Souza (who was wounded but fully recovered) and Hutchins’ personal archives, “Last Take” is a powerful piece of work.

While the documentary doesn’t provide conclusive proof of a link between any covert government operations and Manson, it’s at least fodder for lively debate (not to mention a Netflix documentary).

It’s a variation on the teletransportation paradox as filtered through a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, with some B-movie creatures thrown in for good measure.

The darkly entertaining but derivative crime comedy/drama “Riff Raff” features an amazing cast — some of them playing the kinds of roles we’ve come to expect from them, others out of their go-to comfort zone but reminding us of their range and versatility.

With a running time of just 92 minutes, “Last Breath” will keep you in its grip throughout. Just remember to inhale, and exhale. Slow, long, steady breaths.

Some of the resolutions of this myriad of conflicts and issues are perhaps a bit too tidy, but this is a richly layered and truly moving set piece, with a smart and insightful screenplay and great performances from the ensemble cast.

While these folks aren’t always the most pleasant to be around, we understand them and can relate to them, and at times feel empathy for their predicaments.

Everyone knows this is a gory B-movie where taste is not an issue, and they play their roles accordingly.

Cleaner is “Die Hard,” just with different people.

I’m going to tread lightly so as not to spoil too many of the twists and turns, but I will say it’s not often you experience a film that at times plays like a rom-com from the 1990s spliced with something from the John Carpenter playbook.

This is one of those movies where on a handful of occasions, you feel the urge to look away from the screen or at least squint a bit, because you know something truly (and wonderfully) dreadful is about to happen. But you’re not going to look away, because that’s the chilling fun of it.

Granted, the pleasures offered in “Captain America: Brave New World” are neither grand nor groundbreaking, but they’re consistent and earned.

Writer-director Christopher Andrews’ brutal and unforgiving and sometimes almost cruelly funny “Bring Them Down” is like a biblical tale brought to life. There are times when this rural west Ireland fable makes “The Banshees of Inisherin” feel like a soft-pedaled buddy comedy. It’s that bleak, and nearly as searing and memorable.

The dreary, derivative and punchless action comedy “Love Hurts” is proof that a movie can have an 83-minute running time and still seem like a slow-motion slog.

Even though it is quite likely the longest romance in movie history in terms of the time period covered, the one-point premise is stretched washi paper-thin over the course of just 92 minutes.

Directed with grace and grounded style and a keen eye for outdoor visuals by Anders Lindwall, and filmed in beautiful Door County, Wisconsin, this is a warm and authentic slice of farm life, with magnificent work by the 80-year-old Craig T. Nelson, who looks every inch the world-weary Wisconsin farmer.

Ferrell and Witherspoon play off each other with impeccable timing, and the supporting cast (which includes a couple of celebrity cameos) is universally terrific.

Companion is darkly funny and has some great jump scares, but it’s also a meditation on how some men have a default switch that makes it far too easy for them to be manipulative and abusive.

This is a serviceable, suitably gory and intermittently scary film with some solid action sequences.

Based on a true story, this is a tribute to the strength of a matriarch who doesn’t have time to grieve or feel sorry for herself. She has children to love and protect.

Everything we witness in this film is literally seen through the point of view of a spectral presence, but it’s the machinations of a deeply dysfunctional nuclear family that makes it all so intriguing.

Director Seth Gordon (“Four Christmases,” “Horrible Bosses”) knows how to film fast-moving comedies with star appeal, and Diaz (who hasn’t lost an ounce of onscreen charisma) and Foxx are terrific together, but wouldn’t it have been lovely if they had tackled more creative and challenging material?

Just as Whannell breathed new life into the story of “The Invisible Man” in 2020, he offers a fresh and grotesquely chilling take on the well-trodden storyline of the man who becomes ... something else.

So, if we’re in the mood for an R-rated, sometimes cartoonishly violent, occasionally salacious comedy where you know some jokes will score and others will land with a thud and we’ll just move on to the next scene, here’s your ticket.

Even though events have been compressed to fit a 22-hour timeline into a 94-minute movie, and some conversations and characters are fictional, there’s never a moment when it feels as if events have been amped up or overcooked.

We know exactly where this story is going, and we're happy to come along for the ride.

Even with the occasional stumble and that self-indulgent running time, this is a unique and at times brilliant piece of work.

It’s not shocking or groundbreaking or attention-getting; it’s just consistently good at telling the story of a handful of characters who feel fully lived in and utterly real.

It is a not a viewing experience one shakes off easily, nor should it be.

All well and fine, but it’s a dark thrill to see the return of the fantastically gnarly, nasty, disgusting, humorless and utterly post-human vampire — the O.G. Dracula — in the gothic horror feast that is Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.”

Whereas so many of these films end with the big game/fight/match and a freeze-frame moment of glory before the credits roll, The Fire Inside is finding another gear.

Babygirl works primarily as an unapologetically and outrageously bold and sexy thriller.

Timothée Chalamet gives an Oscar-worthy performance in one of the best films of 2024.

With “Mufasa,” the visuals are screen-popping and glorious and stunning to behold — but yes, you either go with the idea of these realistically rendered lions dialoguing in English and occasionally bursting into Broadway-esque tunes, or you don’t. If it’s not your bag, nothing that happens here is going to change your viewpoint.

Carry-On is a sharp, smallish thriller with some big and satisfying payoffs.

Clocking in at a slow-jog time of 2 hours and 7 minutes, filled with howlingly bad CGI creations, green-screen scenes that would have looked rudimentary in the early 2000s and clunky dialogue, “Kraven” doesn’t even provide much in the way of camp value. It’s just an undercooked pile of steaming mediocrity.

What elevates “Dirty Angels” to the status of a solid slice of R-rated action entertainment is the stellar cast led by Eva Green and the surehanded direction from 81-year-old veteran Martin Campbell, director of the Bond films “GoldenEye” and “Casino Royale” (which co-starred Green as Vesper Lynd) and most recently, the Liam Neeson-starring “Memory.”

This isn’t so much a traditional musical drama a la “Wicked” as it is a turgid, heavy-handed and preachy melodrama interspersed with musical numbers that are serviceable but hardly memorable.

Unfortunately, “Y2K” fizzles out somewhere around the halfway point, in part because the characters aren’t fleshed out much beyond familiar tropes, and the screenplay seems not quite finished. It’s as if the filmmakers ran out of fresh ideas at some point but just plowed ahead anyway.

Director Garret Price (“Woodstock 99"), who is clearly a fan of the music, nimbly weaves in current-time interviews with Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins and various session greats and producers with archival footage.

If you’re a Chiefs fan, you’ll probably get a kick of out the whole thing.

Alas, the songs are more on the level of Lara Trump than Taylor Swift in this corny romance between Bowyn and Laith Wallschleger’s pro football star.

The Order is an enormously effective thriller, and yes, a timely reminder that there has never been a time in this land when darkness and hate didn’t thrive, and in numbers.

Queer is a good-looking film with moments of great promise that is much like Lee in that it wears out its welcome and tries your patience far too often.

Nightbitch positions itself as an edgy, body-horror film with shock-value imagery, and there’s no denying the validity of its premise that even in 2024, the sacrifices of motherhood are taken for granted and underexamined.

Directed by David Tedeschi and produced by a team including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Martin Scorsese, “Beatles ’64” could have been subtitled, “Everything Old Is New Again.”

This is a smart, funny, original piece of work that turns some well-worn tropes upside down in clever fashion, a heartwarming slice of comfort comedy.

For a time, “Moana 2” seems more fixated with creating memorably weird imagery than telling a story, but it regains its footing in a third act filled with genuine emotion and a spiritually rousing finale.

This is an exquisitely filmed and at times deeply melancholy portrait of an artist who had once made the rafters of great opera houses hum with her bel canto technique and had been mobbed by fans and adored by millions, but spent her last week surrounded by the echoes of sadness.

Much of the plot feels like we’re retracing the footprints of the original, especially in the early going, and there are a few moments when the CGI looks like one of those slick but cheap AI demonstration videos you see posted on social media, but “Gladiator II” is a welcome slice of R-rated, popcorn movie fun in the middle of the generally super-serious awards season.

It’s sweet and lovely work, but at times lacking in the type of subtlety required for film acting, even in a musical role with as much comedy as drama. Still, Erivo and Grande have chemistry in abundance and make for a memorable duo.

It’s awful, but disposable and easily forgotten.

This is a smart and accomplished work with a quick wit, a palpable sense of melancholy and genuine heart.

After spending a bit too much time taking us through the all-too-familiar chapters of Elvis’ career, from his embrace (and yes, appropriation) of Black music to his ascension to stardom to the Army stint to the movie career that turned him into a caricature, “Return of the King” soars in the final segments, as we see Elvis rise to the challenge and achieve greatness in the live-on-tape performance.

The Piano Lesson is occasionally overwrought, yet proves to be a worthy adaptation of a classic play.

With Cillian Murphy’s quiet, almost small and yet grand performance carrying the story every step of the way, “Small Things Like These” is quite possibly the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

For the first 45 minutes or so of this well-filmed and creatively staged production, “The Heretic” flashes the potential to be one of the most memorably insane horror films of the year; unfortunately, it all comes crashing down via some increasingly outrageous, credibility-smashing twists and turns, and a disappointing reliance on well-worn horror movie tropes in the stretch run.

In ways sometimes subtle and sometimes anything but, writer-director McQueen tells a story that on one level is a conventional tale of valor but is also a cutting commentary about how even as war-torn England was united in its staunch repudiation of Hitler, racism and classicism were all too commonplace in its own backyard.

There’s never a moment when the story lulls. Alas, it’s all just so … preposterous, due to that mistrial of a screenplay.

With explorations of themes ranging from identity to forgiveness to corruption and fear and self-love, “Emelia Pérez” is one of the most creative and striking films of the year.

Yes, it feels as if we’ve seen this movie before — but thanks to the suitably gritty and grainy, New England-set direction by Hans Petter Moland, the still-resonant star power of Neeson and a terrific supporting cast, “Absolution” delivers a punch with a sting all its own.

This is a home run swing that results in a strikeout and a long trudge back to the dugout.

With the great American filmmaker R.J. Cutler (“The War Room,” “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”) delivering a briskly paced but thorough film that ticks off the many amazing chapters in Stewart’s life, “Martha” is one of the best documentaries of the year.

The Boss is a poet with an axe, and sometimes an axe to grind — but whether he’s lamenting a tragedy or embracing the best of life, his works seem singularly American, through and through.

It’s not that we haven’t seen this type of frat-life social commentary before, but Berger and the outstanding ensemble infuse his film with a docudrama authenticity. This is a not a movie you can easily shake off.

Venom: The Last Dance is dopey and silly and filled with familiar stock characters and well-worn tropes, but it’s almost never ponderous.

There is much to admire about “Conclave,” but in the end, all of its lofty aspirations come tumbling down due to that poorly constructed Jenga tower of a plot.

Thanks in large part to the empathetic and layered performances by the terrific cast, we believe in these characters, and we’re hoping all will work out, even though we know that’s probably not going to be the case.

This is one of the best crime thrillers in recent years, with Anna Kendrick demonstrating a strong set of storytelling skills and a keen eye for period-piece visuals in her directorial debut, while also turning in one of her career-best performances as the “bachelorette” who unknowingly chooses Alcala as her “dream date.”

After an initially promising first half-hour, it’s a long and tedious slog to the finish line as we follow a group of paper-thin caricatures who are only mildly interesting and intermittently funny.

With Pugh and Garfield delivering authentic, genuine movie-star performances, “We Live in Time” is an old-fashioned weeper, done with heart and originality. It’s a Movie We Think You’ll Like.

From the opening scene right until the wholly expected finale, Lonely Planet is pure romantic-drama escapism. It’s so thin that if the original material had been in book form, that book would have been a pamphlet.

Most impressive of all are the performances by Sebastian Stan as the raw and ambitious younger Trump, and Jeremy Strong (the “eldest boy” from “Succession”) as the unconscionable Cohn. This is “The Art of the Deal” told as a Frankenstein dark fable.

What IS remarkable, and kind of awesome, is that these confabs were beamed directly into the living rooms of some 40 million Americans via a rather unlikely platform: “The Mike Douglas Show,” a pleasant and mainstream daytime program aimed primarily at what we used to call housewives.

If you’ve seen “Wonder,” it will add some depth and context to the viewing experience, but with the surehanded direction from Forster, the excellent script by Bomback and the strong performances from the veteran actors as well as the younger faces, “White Bird” flies quite well on its own.

Perhaps this story actually could have benefitted from the multi-episode series treatment, thus providing room for us to get to know more about these characters and their back stories, but as an old-fashioned scary vampire movie, “Salem’s Lot” serves its purpose.

Even with a coked-up George Carlin (a spot-on Matthew Rhys) and the ubiquity of marijuana and the hard-R language, “Saturday Night” is a smooth and polished gem — a far cry from the spirt of raw anarchy permeating the birth of the series.

Ultimately, though, the sequel has very little new to say about Arthur Fleck and his place in this world, and the musical interludes start to feel like gratuitous self-indulgence rather than insightful and illuminating passages that advance or enhance the material.

As you can image, there are scenes that elicit shock and outrage, even after all these decades. However, it does make for a Familiar Viewing experience, as virtually every sequence in this impressively mounted and well-photographed docudrama is straight out of the standard-issue biopic playbook.

From the unconvincing CGI to the meandering and convoluted storyline to the preachy messaging to the unfortunately hammy performances, “Megalopolis” is a most foul and unpleasant journey.

It’s a film that works almost too hard to surprise us; some late developments are so absurd they lessen the impact of the main story. Still, Schimberg is a unique talent who excels at delivering provocative work.

Not even the star power of Clooney and Pitt can elevate this beyond the level of a passable, disposable thriller.