Rodrigo Perez

The Internship might be the best worst comedy of the year thus far.

Fountain Of Youth may feel superficially dynamic, and cinematically, it sure tries its best to trick you into thinking it’s a vigorous thing, but it’s just a cup filled with empty calories, sustaining nothing and ironically, only just wasting precious minutes off your life.

Contrarian so-bad-its-good specialists with PhDs in advanced irony once hailed the “Venom” films as entertaining campy classics and tongue-in-cheek antidotes to the more conventional superhero genre, but you will not be surprised when none of those scholars pipe up in support of this grueling cinematic slog that further underscores just how bad the entire affair was all along.

Ultimately, put its questionable politics aside, Without Remorse, even as a simplistic action thriller is joyless and lifeless, an arid space of empty macho bullshit with a lead character who is the equivalent of a bulging forehead veins meme.

A weird, uneven mixed bag, there’s much about Mojave that’s paradoxically maddening and doesn’t really add up. As the movie plot becomes less interesting and more straight-forward — like a slasher movie with the evil antagonist character slowly closing in on the hero — it becomes funnier and more purely enjoyable.

Suicide Squad isn’t a terrible movie per se and judged against its forbearer, ‘Batman v Superman,’ it resembles a shining beacon of coherence. But Suicide Squad isn’t a very good movie either, a mediocre effort with commonplace ideas of rebelliousness and salvation.

Based on the story of a man beaten so mercilessly he had to construct a fantasy world in order to survive his great pain and suffering, Robert Zemeckis’ insipid Welcome To Marwen is a painfully schmaltzy misjudged disaster, and superficial retelling that dishonors a layered and agonizing story about trauma.

Aloha is bittersweet overkill. Familiar and unwieldy, the dramedy is one long, sustained and ultimately overwrought note of happy/sad wistfulness that loops itself into an echo of strained feedback.

Given how poorly made, poorly written, and poorly crafted “The 355” is —with action that is casually visceral, but actually borderline incompetent and super sloppily staged—the final product reeks of superficial vanity project intended to “let girls be badass” rather than trying to circumvent, better, or elevate the genre (or women for that matter).

Need For Speed possesses eye-rolling, tone deaf dialogue, passable performances (unless you’re Dominic Cooper or Kid Cudi) and plotting so conventional, there’s not even one surprise U-turn anywhere.

While Dirty Weekend may not quite live up to its title and is certainly his least tart effort to date, the film's milder flavor and less acidic aftertaste is mostly a pleasurable switchup.

While the poor, urban setting of The Deliverance is a little bit unique for the supernatural genre, the way the suffering and dreariness within the backdrop collides with the ghastly misery of the unrelenting horror of it all is just several steps out of bounds.

Make no mistake, most audiences will find ‘Believer’ revolting, but that’s also the point. It’s fascinating in the way it swings for the fences, is full of conviction, and is overflowing with stimulating ideas about acceptance, denial, community, and more, many of them engaging, many of them handled with no sense of taste (to which Green would probably argue is what Friedkin’s film did; good taste be cast out!).

The film is not unlike a classic rock supergroup reuniting to play all the greatest hits, with the payday at the end as the only true motivation, rather than returning with something new to say about their work.

The Dirt is ultimately supposed to be an unapologetic tribute to living the fast life, but in the end, it’s just painfully dated and pointless with zero depth or insights.

A humanist narrative about family, faith, and grief, ‘Acreage’ is an intimate film with few outsized dramatic moments, but as anchored by Amy Ryan’s mannered yet commanding performance—her finest in years—this lovely little story sensitively absorbs.

The fifth installment of the Terminator series cannot overcome the weight of its convoluted time travel leaps, its strained attempts at injecting twists everywhere, a clunky opening, and a painfully clumsy finish.

Packing a promising first act that quickly goes south and and a select few fun action beats, Ang Lee may be a disciple of technology, but if he’s going to trade the potential of meta-commentary on aging, youth, an actor’s legacy and more, for something meant to be slick entertainment, he’s still going to need a more convincing sermon.

It’s just dull, deeply bland, and unsophisticated, with little to say about any of its themes of intolerance, fear, misogyny, and gaslighting, other than these feelings exist.

There’s some interesting ideas floating around about identity, manhood, and what it means to connect with someone in an over-connected world, but A Case Of You (named for a Joni Mitchell song that’s not actually in the film) never actively explores them. Instead, it delves into generic rom-com and ropey cliché to little comic effect.

With a weak script, no visual engagement, and limp comedy despite the comedic actors on board, Kinda Pregnant was always a sure-fire miss.

As undercooked as ‘Jacqueline’ can be, the movie oddly comes to life at the end with its themes of pointlessness and God laughing at your plans finally coming full circle.

Its insistence on trying to balance wannabe sincerity and earnest actions with laughs is a tonally misconceived idea. Ultimately more forgettable then deplorable, Baywatch isn’t so much a disastrous spill in the ocean as it is disposable garbage making a mess.

Atlas is rote and routine, using the concept of sci-fi and artificial intelligence in the most obvious way: A.I. runs wild, attacks humans, and becomes the central enemy of the entire world; the ultimate threat that humanity must face, battle, and hopefully defeat. But all of it is conventionally realized, uninspired, dull, and something you’ve seen done more inventively a thousand times before.

Outcome—and it’s bad scenes shot behind obvious blue screen and fake, manufactured sunsets—is terrible. But what makes it memorable is the queasy way the movie keeps collapsing into the very pathology it thinks it is exposing. It wants to mock the famous for living inside a bubble of privilege, paranoia, and vanity, yet it ends up sounding like it was made from inside that bubble.

Never once does it carry any of the unclassifiable “It factor” charm that sometimes elevates a mediocre movie. Nope, “Red Notice” is just deeply unexceptional and pedestrian: a lot of lights shining on three worldwide-class superstars, with perfect white teeth with explosions and gloss all around them, and never once creating anything that resembles a captivating spark.

Super Mario Galaxy is nice to look at and dead inside, a committee-made franchise object masquerading as an adventure, and ultimately little more than an empty commercial for Super Mario branding.

The cavernous emptiness of The Canyons cannot sustain itself, and it makes for a mostly flat, strained and uninvolving experience (not helped by the pace which makes 90 minutes, feels like a sluggish two hours).