Rodrigo Perez

There’s certainly necessarily nothing off with Diane Von Furstenberg: Woman In Charge in terms of its craft, its breezy structure, its slick pace, etc. It’s a handsomely made documentary, but it always borders on fawning puff pieces, letting us into the life of the fashion mogul but still making you feel like it’s a surface portrait meant to resell something vintage, like a classic dress everyone already knows and admires.

Elusively told to the point of irritation, joyless and shot in chilly incarcerating rooms, War Story has the look and feel of an exhausted ashtray and borders on the pretentiously unclear.

For all its rage about moral decline and the psychic poison of content culture, Faces Of Death never rises above the same cheap sensationalism it pretends to condemn. Instead of confronting the sickness, it feeds on it and spits out something just as rancid as the faux snuff films it claims to abhor.

Its patchy tone, plot, characters and sympathies make for a film that’s difficult to wholeheartedly endorse.

Carnahan may be the real MVP here. “The Rip” isn’t a masterpiece, and it can be blunt and workmanlike by design, but it’s brawny, confident, and it moves.

Ultimately, Aster just unleashes his inner freak and vomits it all on the screen, with anxious flop sweat, jittery bodily fluids, squishy terror, paranoia, and some gut-busting laughs that prove this writer is deeply troubled in the best and most complicated odd way possible.

Mangold has crafted the definitive portrait of this era and the poetic, aspiring, rebellious kid who refused to be pigeonholed, held down and defined.

If you’re seeking an escapist popcorn-like thriller, Caught Stealing should do the trick. But if you’re yearning for something more substantive, you may end up feeling slightly swindled. Still, credit Aronofsky for picking your pocket with a deft touch, and stealing a base with style.

Ron Howard arguably captures it in his enjoyable, escapist ‘Solo’ movie, but the burden of keeping fans happy means if you’re looking for surprises, you may have come to the wrong place.

Both Stearns and Gillan commit to the detached tenor. Still, it’s often more distant and isolating than it is funny, therefore leading to a movie that feels misjudged and far too remote, even for those well-versed and conversant in this weirdly lopsided style.

Godzilla asks you to care about its characters, achieves that aspiration, earns your trust, and then not only pivots towards a far less interesting character, but abandons most of its absorbing emotional legwork for a fairly rote and straightforward rock ‘em, sock ‘em monster movie.

Campy and cartoonish, Burton’s Big Eyes is not the return to form many were hoping for. It is another phony and hollow piece of sugary kitschploitation masquerading under the guise of an “important true story” that places a nearly grotesque premium on style over any traces over substance.

Eventually, the comedy coalesces enough to chalk up a small win. Mind you, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F isn’t reinventing the wheel, and low expectations might help. But it does make a remarkable transition from something that initially feels dire to something that eventually lights up, pleases, and produces some foul-mouthed ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ energy to feel familiar in the best sense.

Goodbye To All That is not going to impress the visual, form or style cinephiles of the world, but it really shouldn’t matter. The content is tops. And as an astute and empathetic portrait of human crisis, resolve and survival, it’s a wonderfully authentic and perfectly touching one.

Sleight is imaginative and refreshing as it shape-shifts effortlessly through familiar narrative tropes and invents something unexpected and unique.

Good Fortune is a refreshing comedy that audiences haven’t seen in a while, a movie with a message that both advocates for a cause and entertains.

While it’s hard to indict the movie for wanting to admire and honor this extraordinary girl, the movie loses its own inherent potency with a haphazard structure that jumps around far too much in time and a monotonous narrative about Malala overcoming oppressors to bravely speak out and inspire the world.

Enemy is a transfixing grand slam that certifies Villeneuve as the real deal and one of the most exciting new voices in cinema today.

Chandor crafts a film in that contemplated vein of consequences, with a moral consideration for everything at stake, including the very souls of these soldiers, No one comes out clean.

As an sensory experience, 'WOWS' is mostly a terrifically visceral one, a full throttle fast and furious bacchanalia of drug-fueled madness. But as a scathing indictment of American rapacity, it isn't particularly deep or resonant beyond the exterior.

The Yes Men Are Revolting is an entertaining and interesting examination of the anxieties that make us question who we are and if we’re making a difference. But on the whole, this minor film is not nearly as imperative as the vital activism these guys have dedicated their lives to.

If Suncoast ultimately lacks major insights, it is hard to argue that it at least combats its slenderness with a poignant sense of empathy and compassion for draining emotional hardships.

McKay’s movie is bold and impertinent and perhaps won’t be for audiences that want a film to play by the rules, but his chutzpah and ambition is something to behold.

Unflinchingly honest and grim, Sunlight Jr. is a valuable piece of work from a filmmaker who has a distinctive voice and concerns.

“You Have to See It to Believe It” is a well-worn movie cliché, but trust that it applies to this utterly bananas corporeal bath of cinema in all its glorious sound and vision. As the film ratchets up to its batshit, gnarly, and beautifully mutilated conclusion, man, prepare yourself for how transgressive and hypnagogic it gets.

The Wolverine wants to have it both ways: a dark character story and an action-packed superhero film. But it never reconciles the two notes, and thus becomes more and more atonal as it wobbles towards its symphonically jarring ending.

It’s an inferior, often frustrating film, it’s hard to root for, and its consideration of its people of color is dubious, even as it features them as protagonists. But nonetheless, there’s some value, especially in is visceral qualities and the chilling nihilism of its violence.

Decker is good at articulating sinister moods and unstable psyches, but anything resembling a cogent narrative is challenged.

As a comic book movie writ large, as an adaptation of an imaginative, gonzo, frenzied, devilish graphic novel not meant for kids, Birds Of Prey is arguably perfect as a blast of that kind of feverish dynamism. However, as a movie, Birds Of Prey can’t really break free from the cage of quirky insanity it is so content to nest in.

A lovely, but uneven moral tale of love, forgiveness and heartrending misdeeds, Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans is conceptually sound, and at times, beautifully gut-wrenching. But the plaintive picture often becomes engrossed in conveying at all times just how precious life and love is.

Digging For Fire is low-lit and pitched in a minor key, a quiet meditation on compromise, individuality, the loss of identity within a marriage, and the aftermath of disorientation that comes with having children and losing touch with your former life.

No One Will Save You is a very bizarrely unremarkable, abnormally lifeless movie, seemingly starting right out of the gate in the second act and then trying to reverse engineer the audience’s sympathy—and everything else— for the unknowable protagonist.

Not even the funniest actors on the planet could save what is an occasionally humorous, but largely unremarkable rehash.

For all its emotional horrors—witnessing the worst of ourselves and hoping for the best versions of ourselves eventually triumph over our inherent faults—Multiverse of Madness is arguably lacking the humanity, the heart, and soul of Marvel that works so well when balanced with humor and spectacle.

Kill The Messenger hopes to solemnly lionize and exonerate Webb, but rarely does it reflect anything back to its audience other than reminding us how corrupt and unprincipled our system is.

Intimate, expressive, agonizing and beautifully rendered.

A movie that is fundamentally ill-conceived, poorly written, and missing most of the basic charms that made the original “Wonder Woman” such a delight (minus the last act). Directed again by Patty Jenkins, the film is also something of a nonsensical mess narratively, even by the most lenient and forgiving standards of superhero movies where fantastical, impossible things routinely occur. Suspension of disbelief is crucial to this genre, but ‘WW84’ is constantly breaking or conveniently upgrading its rules in ways that definitely break or at least always test your suspension of disbelief.

Steeped in a nostalgia that often feels borrowed and canned—the space-age era impulses of progress and possibility from the 1950s and ‘60s—Tomorrowland asks that you never give up or lose hope, literally and figuratively, over and over again, to the point that the movie has little else to say.

Immersive and committed to its austere form, the solemn, often-dialogue free Dark Night never spoon feeds and always allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

It’s bleak and uncompromising, but it’s a hell of an experience.

Respectfully presented, Unbroken is competently made and even has a sequence or two that’s impressive, but it’s ultimately very familiar and eventually draining.

The risible Stoker is a brutally empty, deeply unfortunate movie, and Park Chan-wook's jackhammer of a tool he calls a brush is, on this evidence, something that should be locked away.

There’s a terrific ensemble at the heart of Magic Magic, including its talented director, but this psychological horror is only creepily superficial and has very little of anything insightful to say about people, its characters or its lead.

It’s essential to have characters and a good story around a ‘GvK’ movie because, without it, all your left with is an empty trailer of fight scenes. The irony is this overly involved story detracts from one’s engagement in the movie. Legends may finally collide in this installment, and it’s mildly entertaining in spots, but the whole endeavor is ultimately almost as hollow as the earth’s empty core.

The Boy Downstairs straddles a patchy line between comedy and drama with mixed results, but when all is said and done, the auspicious film acts like a mature consideration of the scariness of vulnerability and laying your heart on the line.

Good Grief arguably doesn’t quite get there in the end, but there is a promising sense of possibility for what the future could hold for Levy as a filmmaker next.

The Drama remains a vital, bleak, and admirably mean-spirited look at the cost of being known and, more expensively, the price of trying to save face. It doesn’t fully cash in on the nastiness of its best idea, but it is funny, queasy, and wholly willing to make everyone miserable for your amusement. In an era of soft, therapeutic romantic storytelling, that alone gives it biting validation.

Jurassic World takes the sensibilities of Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” the sense of wonder, the awe, the thrills, and transports them into the 21st century with ease, plausibility and storytelling clarity.

As a taut thriller, it works, but the “why” of it all, the substance that generally makes even Sheridan’s worst efforts still fascinating, is strangely and glaringly absent.

A major gaffe, God Help The Girl finds a great artist taking on a huge challenge and stumbling painfully on its ambition almost every step of the way.

Frustratingly uneven, Kelly & Cal is too glib and prosaic to truly be insightful or impacting.

For all its problems, Bourne is still thrilling and an undoubtedly engrossing action film thanks to its taut construction.

Victoria & Abdul is a movie that flirts with exploring prejudice, cultural tension, power, and religion, but never really consummates the ideas. At best, it tries to humorously dismantle the absurdity of empires and royalty, but that’s about as subversive as it gets.

An American Pickle is a most unexpected Seth Rogen film, maybe less funny than you hoped, but still charming, amusing, and far more considered than you would have ever thought.

Theron can survive almost anything onscreen. Apex proves, once again, that she can carry weak material farther than most actors. It also proves that even she cannot quite drag a dull survival programmer up the mountain.

Despite some creative missteps, there’s still some fight left in “Christy” and Sweeney to make it to the next round.

As epic, grandiose, and emotionally appealing as the previous pictures, The Hobbit doesn't stray far from the mold, but it's a thrilling ride that's one of the most enjoyable, exciting and engaging tentpoles of the year.

The film plays nary a note of reprieve and the dank aesthetic does nothing to help the mood. “Low Down” is unequivocally a downer.

In the depths of the abyss below, The Gorge mostly turns into a high-concept action film that’s so dull, predictable and ugly to look at it’s extremely easy to tune out and have your mind go on autopilot while the otherwise charismatic Teller and Taylor-Jones are wasted.

"Billie Eilish: Soft & Hard” is thrilling as a concert film, but its force comes from how carefully it maps the machinery behind the magic—the lighting choices, stage movements, emotional calibration, hidden pathways, and private moments of anticipation. It is vivid, immersive, and unusually personal, a portrait of a performer who understands the scale of her platform and still wants every person in the room to feel seen. For a film this massive, its most impressive trick is how close it comes to witnessing everyone.

It’s all largely an ugly, vulgar, vacuous time that’s disposable and never as amusing as it clearly thinks it is.

Snyder’s best movie since his debut, the zombie film “Dawn Of The Dead” (2014), Army Of The Dead is tremendously compelling and deftly navigates a lot of different tones, even if it quickly leaves more interesting ones behind. Largely captivating and thrilling, for all is gore, darkly twisted comedy, and delicious tension— surely something satisfied audiences will walk away with—there’s also a minor but palatable sense of loss and melancholy. One that echoes the hardships of the pandemic age and ruthless American capitalism and gives the film some socio-political edge.

While stylishly capturing the verve, exotica, and free-spirited mojo of swinging '60s London, uber-prolific English director Michael Winterbottom's portrait of legendary U.K. smut impresario Paul Raymond is otherwise a shallow misfire.

A very routine twelve rounds of tragedy, resilience and redemption, the boxing film Southpaw is a conventionally told dramaturgy high on intensity, but low on human insight or novel ways to tell a familiar story.

Thor: Love & Thunder can be enjoyable in spots, but disposably and inconsequentially so.

A darkly mysterious and extremely accomplished first feature.

Evans at least provides enjoyable pandemonium in Havoc, which is not a perfect film by any means, but certainly more worthy than some of the Netflix originals that aren’t delayed and are delivered at your streaming front door immediately.

I Origins is a fascinating examination of belief, spirituality and otherworldliness through the skeptical lens of science, however, it's not always perfect.

Not particularly sophisticated, the searing intensity of revenge in The Equalizer is still occasionally arresting (and even entertaining) in its stylish hard-R violence.

Mufasa: The Lion King could have been a very great and worthy ‘Lion King’ successor, but thanks to the perceived requirements of what this franchise demands, it’s only just a good one, which is a shame, given its regal and majestic potential.

Beautiful, yet dark and moving, unsparing, but told with a sympathetic eye, Ginger & Rosa is sometimes relentless in its examination of emotional pain.

Despite the oh gee golly wiz Midwestern yokel-isms and the aforementioned cartoonish makeup she wears—historically accurate, yes, but still bordering on the ludicrous in reality— Chastain manages to bring such dignity to the character, really plumbing the depths of her soul for the moments of pathos, heartbreak, and despair. Much of this comes to an incredible crescendo in the third act, when Tammy Faye is tragic, washed-up, but never willing to give up or radiate compassion, even when she’s being mocked.

Intimate, but never actually involving, The Glass Castle at least has admirable performances to watch.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 feels like a darker, the-end-times-are-near blockbuster in the vein of a big “Avengers” Marvel movie, and it’s unclear how being like everyone else serves a franchise that has been perfectly content to be its weird, wacky, lovable little self.

The overall shape of the movie can sometimes be akin to F-word abuse for comedy. It can be thrillingly funny at first, especially coming out of the mouths of heroes you don’t typically hear such foulness from (not Wilson, obviously), but by the 90th time you hear an F-bomb, it starts to lose its value and power. Still, despite all its flaws, ‘D&W’ humorously diverts in the moment, but as a durable movie or even a long-lasting MCU film, it’s no slam dunk. Nostalgia doesn’t necessarily cause deep self-harm in the picture, but it arguably doesn’t help the aim to create a memorable and enduring movie either. LFG? Sure, I guess.

Seedy, unsettling and nightmarish, director Gerard Johnson crafts a suspenseful and anxious journey despite the destination pointing to obvious points well known.

With no plot to speak of, a baggy tangent across Europe in the mid-section, and no forward momentum, War Machine soon descends into the quicksand of its own design and never recovers. From there it’s an enervating slog of two hours that invites sleep.

The Fence presents a theatrical style that paralyzes the film into a tense but frustrating checkmate for much of its running time.

As uneven as the psychodrama can be at times, one thing is clear, Ross is a major talent worth watching. He’s got an eye, a strong p.o.v., and the movie has many perceptive observations about the self-destructive perils of possessiveness, ownership, and holding on too tight.

Well-intentioned and intimate, Alex Of Venice has its heart in the right place; its pains and struggles might be small stakes and personal, but they’re very genuine, relatable and universal. There’s a lot to admire, which is why the movie’s uneven grasp of narrative fundamentals is so frustrating.

It’s disturbing and engrossing. It doesn’t fully grapple with every moral, political, or philosophical consequence of the AI rush, and there are moments when it arguably lets some of its most powerful interview subjects off the hook too easily. But it still lands because it understands the essential terror at the center of this conversation: not simply that we are building intelligence at breakneck speed, but that wisdom—human, moral, civic—may be arriving nowhere near fast enough.

Playing like a slightly more reflective B-side to the director's greatest hits, his style in this film isn’t for the more cerebral audiences. But for the viewer who relates to family dysfunction, its maddening contradictions and its mercurial tenor, Joy can be painfully funny, engaging and full of relatable heartache.

There's a great movie somewhere inside Touchy Feely desperately trying to swim to the surface, but its obscurity also comes with an inarticulateness that robs it of its potential.

There’s great craft, impressive creature design, a lugubrious, eventually-soaring score by Max Richter, an excellent Paul Dano nailing the childlike tenor of his inquisitive creature, and low-key Adam Sandler sitting in the pocket, enjoying the chill ease of never overdoing it.

Fennell leans into excess not as provocation, but as emotional truth, letting obsession swell until it becomes the only language the film speaks. The feeling cuts here not as poetry, but as pressure—barbed wire wrapped tight around a heartbeat. In all its wildness, Fennell seals the film with an embrace and a bruise, then lands the kiss like a sudden dagger to the ribs.

Largely harmless and tame, but also shallow and uninvolving.

It takes a huge leap of faith to go along for the ride, but Boyle’s impassioned, viscerally paced, and well-directed movie is so heartfelt, even the biggest pessimist will likely begrudgingly warm to it, flaws, and off-key notes and all.

Admittedly heartbreaking and moving in its final moments, Hellion just can’t quite convince or coalesce its ideas of struggle, pain and fury in a meaningful or new way.

This visually clumsy and gauche, but spectacular, movie knows what it wants to be when it grows up for better or worse.

Meant to appear as some kind of tribute to the victims and families of the Kursk, Vinterberg’s poorly strategized film barely justifies its existence.

It's Middle America vs. big bad corporate America, and while the (not so) "bad guy" predictably finds salvation in salt-of-the-earth people, Promised Land often leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Ninjago is mildly entertaining, and kids should find it pleasurable enough, but it’s missing that special spark, the kind of joyful flicker that compels children to ask for the movie on DVD at Christmas

Without a marriage of inspired storytelling, straight up regurgitation doesn’t elevate new tech. Also, thinking about could and should, one needs to consider good taste, but that’s clearly not driving any of the decisions here.

Well intentioned and commendable, Tim Blake Nelson’s film does not put his dialogue or writing strengths into question. But movies have to convince us on myriad levels, and this can be tough enough as it is.

Those impatient with Malick’s cyclical fixations will easily find themselves worn out by Song To Song especially in the enervating third act that essentially repeats the entire movie and its theme exhaustingly.

With the sound off, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby surely looks as radiant and extraordinary as some of the most dazzling movies ever committed to celluloid, but with the sound up and the experience on full volume, the movie is mostly a cacophony of style, excess and noise that makes you want to turn it all down a notch...or three...

Magic In The Moonlight is good in many regards, and mostly enjoyable for most of its 97 minute running time. But it’s also admittedly uneven in spots, familiar and ultimately a bit slight.

Part escapist action-adventure, part would-be exhilarating quest of self-discovery, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty isn’t so much a mess because it wants to be everything at once, but because it employs hackneyed and mawkish methods to achieve a false sense of joyfulness.

ZSJL is a fan cut as much as it is a director’s cut, with all the indulgence that the notion applies. As for any continuation of the story, as the fans hope, that seems gravely unlikely considering the direction Warner Bros is headed. But for a director who had to abandon his grand superhero project because of a family tragedy and because a big movie studio tried to wrestle control of the film, which was too much to bear at the time, one supposes, this postmortem collectible for die-hard, is about as good as an outcome as one could get.

Semi-flat with only a few jokes and emotional beats that land, the picture is often dull when it should be poignant.

Rohirrim is told with great fervent conviction, and no true ‘LOTR’ fan will complain about that.

Ricki And the Flash is about mistakes, regrets, and of course, redemption, but all of it feels a little too neat, familiar and convenient even if no one’s quite belting out “Kumbaya” by the end.

No one tries to reinvent the wheel, and everyone plays the greatest hits, steering things right off the cliff into explosive, slow-motion ecstasy, where ‘Bad Boys’ thrives and survives best.

The climax is entertaining and crazy but not necessarily as satisfying as it hopes to be. Still, for all its flaws and inability to deliver in the end, False Positive is a captivating take on the misrepresentation of the pregnancy “glow.”

Anyone who finds this conclusion a humanistic or socially reprehensible dealbreaker can hardly be faulted. Before these questionable issues come to a head and then falter in the finale, there is a lot of value in The Girl.

[Clooney's] out-of-current-fashion movies can feel quaint in some ways, but more power to the filmmaker who can make whatever the hell they want and do it well and do so on their own terms.

Moore’s goal — save the country from the worst Presidential election of all time— is sound, but his ungainly presentation and shaky arguments make for an uneven polemic that never takes fire, even when doused in gasoline.

Especially in its upending, pivoting-away-from-crime norms, morally ambiguous ending, Hancock’s picture reveals itself to have much more on its mind than expected, and becomes a thoughtful meditation on the rigors of police work and the psychic toll that it takes on the soul.

To see Daniel Day-Lewis reemerge under his son’s daring direction is more than a comeback; it’s a cinematic conflagration, a collision of legacy and reinvention that feels historic.

A stunning, often flooring masterwork about desperation, writer/director Tim Sutton’s, “Donnybrook” is a brutal elegy for those living on the forgotten fringes of America.

Hypnotic features a well-crafted suspense sequence or two, a couple of clever twists – but also some wildly stupid ones, and a bone-headed over-explainer ending that treats the entire audience like dopes. [Work in Progress SXSW 2023]

A genuinely sweet, charming and funny tale of identity lost and found.

A sinister dread pulses through Bridgend, one that is engrossing and terrifying.

Billy Lynn has its moments, but its critical and unexpected folly is that the cutting-edge technology diminishes the picture emotionally, its ungainly look trivializes the drama and indulges it with an undesirable air of superficiality.

While it’s Lawrence’s most mature and relatively subtle effort to date, it’s also, unfortunately, a slog. The director’s well-intentioned patience ultimately means nothing when its interminable pacing makes the movie feel twice as protracted as its longwinded, two-hour-plus running time.

Much more of an adolescent male fantasy than a relatable, genuine film about love or relationships, “5 To 7” is deeply naïve and has very few, if any real insights to the heart or human condition.

The aspiration itself—what seems to be the clear desire to elevate a conventional murder drama to something greater—feels unmistakably tangible. And ambitious attempts are often intriguing even if they don’t always land.

A superficial tale about the casualty at the center of the story, Extremely Wicked, rings hollow and false and is really just as interested in the sensational and salacious as any other reductive thriller.

Blackhat is a meticulous and exacting procedural, as obsessive with its hunt for its intangible antagonist as Mann’s compulsive desire to appreciate the flow of 1s and 0s in the virtual space. It’s chockablock with technobabble and jargon that may alienate the average viewer, but Mann’s secret weapon is his infectious fascination with the subject. The movie is like a conductive surface for his unmitigated zeal, and its potency is viral.

[A] benign, only marginally-amusing-at-best nostalgia cash grab.

Shyamalan’s crafts a deceptively simple experience. The plot is rather ingeniously straightforward, at first, but the fraught journey of a father and killer trying not to upend and upset the carefully constructed delusional fabrication of his life—and how the two identities crash into each other on one fateful day— is exhilaratingly multifaceted.

In some senses, Zhao bucks the Marvel formula, but goes so far off-piste, everything that’s enjoyable about Marvel—the breezy snap, crackle, and pop of escapist watchable entertainment—go out the window in favor of something far more muddled. In another sense, it’s not all that different, just not orchestrated very well with an ill-advised structure that mars the entire affair.

Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus is, without question, bold, distinct, and idiosyncratic filmmaking with its own voice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good or in any kind of reasoned key.

At the very least, the skillful film generally doesn’t insult the audiences intelligence and generally is a lot smarter and sharper than most mainstream moves in cineplexes these days.

Visually dazzling, but dispassionate and hollow, the film often looks impressive, with some incredible action sequences to boot, but otherwise keeps the viewer at a considerable distance.

An uninspired narrative and disengaged performances ultimately keep persuasive deep feeling and captivation at a far distance.

Despicable Me 4 is just messy and wearying, even at a scant 95 minutes.

Even if the movie is based on an existing property, a beloved French graphic novel, as a producer and designer, Besson should be lauded; ‘Valerian’ is out of this world. But next time, he might want to reread the comic for its characters, checking the little word bubbles to see if there’s actually something there.

Project Power, especially from these “Catfish” and “Paranormal Activity” filmmakers ultimately feels like a big let down— a captivating idea about the way the system preys on the disadvantaged and the constant exploitation and appropriation of black and brown voices, that fizzles out fast once the high of its concept wears off.

It’s, unfortunately, just one-dimensional, a little first-draft-y, perhaps rushed and hurried, and never as powerful or emotional as the film obviously hopes to be.

Song One is well intentioned, well-shot and has its musical heart in the right place, but it often feels incredibly familiar, and the more contrived, credulity-straining moments don’t help.

A would-be but not-actually-inspiring movie about a landmark LGBT rights case that loses sight of the flesh and blood people at its heart, gets bogged down in tedious municipal politics and fails to find a way to compellingly dramatize an important story.

To say it’s a step backward for the franchise is an understatement.

Fuqua’s movie, unqualified to create anything other than superficial poignancy, is empty, tiresome and uninteresting, satisfied with repeatedly communicating that if you exploit the innocent, harm the oppressed or abandon your code of conscience, Robert McCall will be there to set things right and severely punish you several times over.

White interjecting its social commentary, “Snow White” otherwise tackles much of the same ideas—the notions of true love, the power of friendship, and the triumph of good over evil—but it’s all put together in a very familiar and garish package. The fairest in the land? Far from it.

It’s McAdams’ believability, even tangibly intense commitment to this absurd role, that really sells Dobkins’ winning film and makes it sing sonorously, warts and all.

American Ultra hopes to leave you both shellshocked and blissfully stoned, but as perfect storm of aggressively repulsive choices, it’s a queasy bad trip worth avoiding at all costs.

Murphy and Hill do lift the film often, the former being wryly sarcastic and meanspirited but cool, the latter finding much comedy in being overly vulnerable, earnest, and painfully sincere. But otherwise, this comedy has no safe spaces for anything resembling authentic human behavior, the kind that anchors comedy to feature truths that make laughs all the more lacerating.

The Greatest Hits is way worse than just a sophomore slump, more accurately, a long-the-works opus that should have just stayed in the vaults.

While it has its moments, a few good laughs, a few impressive thriller sequences, and Evans with his delectably douchey little trash stash, “The Gray Man” is generally an unremarkable swing and miss that wants the best of both worlds, but can’t really thread that needle.

Deeply over-reliant on flashbacks, and ones that don’t particularly transition well, Jane Got A Gun is nearly a holding pattern movie.

It’s an audacious odyssey that buckles under the weight of all its ornate and flights of quirky fancy. But if you’re a cynical optimist that’s disgusted with the rise of despotism, absolutism, rancid lies, revolting white supremacist beliefs but still wants to believe in humanity, hope, and the goodness of people, it might just strike a major chord.

In doubling down on would-be humor, the already poor, perspiring, flop-sweat CGI mess of Venom actually gets worse and arguably even more incoherent, thanks to the unbearable, overweening quarreling between Brock and Venom and the vaudevillian crazy legs antics and presentation.

Low on ideas and high on atmosphere, Dixieland is a promising debut, but it likely won’t find you overwhelmingly writing back home about it.

The McConaissance finds no purchase here. Mining for something adventurous and coming up empty handed, ultimately the dramatically-challenged Gold digs for something fiery and collects zero treasure along the way.

Tiresomely told, uninteresting, and turgid, Electric Slide is as insipid as it gets — a meaningless movie about almost nothing at all.

Labelling Live By Night a disaster is a little uncharitable; the baggy drama is perhaps more painfully mediocre than full-blown folly, but it’s close.

This is a B-movie of the week at best, which should be starring also-ran actors looking for a paycheck, not some of Hollywood’s finest.

Ultimately, Tron: Ares is all voltage and no current—an aesthetic overload that confuses stimulation for meaning.

Unexceptionally directed by Roar Uthaug (Norwegian hit “The Wave“), Tomb Raider is superficial even for a mainstream tentpole, clumsily and unpersuasively put together and tests and breaks suspension of disbelief at every turn.

Acerbic and purposefully vile, LaBute’s story is clearly self-aware of its various cruel manipulations of character and audience, but the formula itself -- taken from his early modus operandi -- is simply becoming more and more rote.

Forgettable and only mildly entertaining, 300: Rise of An Empire seals its own fate at the initial story level by being so deeply invested in its own mythmaking and playing super safe.

Quantumania is not all dud, per se. Even if it’s not as comical or entertaining as usual, there is a good cast involved here, Kathryn Newton is a welcome edition, and Paul Rudd can’t help but elevate sub-par material. But otherwise, Quantumania is shockingly unremarkable.

Boldness and ambition may get the best of the film, but just like Booksmart, which announced the promising beginning of an intriguing directorial voice, Wilde proves she’s not a one-hit-wonder, at least technically and artistically. Don’t Worry Darling may be a misstep, but Wilde’s still got a flair for cinema that feels worth keeping an eye on.

The filmmaker clearly has great skills and a knack for pulling strong performances out of actors. But the tone-deaf misjudgment of the film’s second half is catastrophic.

Visual daring is nice, but it means little in the end when the ultimately safe and harmless story never rocks the boat.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back isn’t a throwaway, and mainstream action/thriller fans should come out more than satisfied at the visceral nature of the film. But anyone hoping for more than a superficial on-the-run chase movie will probably wish Reacher had stayed home, instead of going back.

Young Ones and its serious, bone-dry approach won’t be for everyone. The picture is languidly paced, but its ideas, moods and tones strike many thought-provoking chords.

At this point, the Monsterverse needs the much simpler, dumb-fun, pleasurable joy of “Kong: Skull Island” because ‘New Empire,’ just ain’t cutting it beyond loud and senseless brawls that aren’t even a delight to watch.

Featuring a fittingly shallow funk-lite score by Christophe Beck, Gringo, is ultimately like a Taco Bell version of the ‘90s crime genre; tasteless, cheaply made and just as inauthentic.

The heroine of the film may not be in distress, but oh boy, is this movie in desperate need of saving.

Ultimately, Fifty Shades Of Grey is embarrassing and depressing, especially when considering the picture as a reflection of the quality of mainstream modern romance today.

When Horns thankfully concludes, relief sets in; this hellishly misguided effort concludes with an inferno and sequels are never sprung from the equivalent of a mouthful of ash.

Every Secret Thing is not built to satisfy, and so its sour ending doesn’t help its uneven experience. Every Secret Thing is not unlike last autumn's abduction drama "Prisoners." Both demonstrate an excellent level of craft and are handsomely shot and composed, but both suffer from narrative issues.

Pain & Gain fails at being an entertaining and ridiculously fun Michael Bay movie and curdles into something much more tone deaf and obnoxious.

Flower is hilarious one moment, tender the next and takes some surprising turns. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a dynamic lead who steadily navigates the twists with an emotional authenticity that keeps the movie on its bumpy track.

It’s a curious mix of contradictions, sentimental in its longing worship for “Ghostbusters” and yet cynical and manipulative in the way it seems to rehash every classic moment of the original, insulting the audience’s intelligence along the way by giving them every cameo, wink, and nod they never knew they actually didn’t want until it was slathered all over them like so much disgusting green ghost goop.

It also portends to be a sincere moral fable about avarice and the way it corrupts people—via the bookends of the beginning and end of the story—but it hardly convinces and leaves one a little puzzled at the jejune attempt at blurting something meaningful after 90 minutes of wacky crime tales and dishonest people.

Heart Of Stone purports to have characters made of sturdy, gritty, golden, unbreakable stuff, but that’s a tagline, not a movie or story; it’s really just flimsy work easily tossed off and broken as it tumbles into the ever-filling bin of barely-one-use Netflix movies.

To her credit, Zlotowski’s film does capture the lulling feeling of a séance, but there’s a gossamer-thin thread between the mysterious and the mystifying and perhaps her delicately ephemeral film just doesn’t know how to recognize the difference.

Knock Helgeland’s unpersuasive plot, his broad writing platitudes, and some of the more ridiculous twists of the genre all you want, but the filmmaker at least seems to know, understand, and capture the milieu and people of these communities. Sure, that’s not enough to save Finestkind, but there is something there.

For anyone who even gives even the remotest care about movies, god forbid you dare to waste your time with this utterly disposable discard.

Unremarkable but occasionally enjoyable, Levy’s dramedy is pleasant enough, but it grows tired, losing focus by the end.

The wandering, strictly bush league movie, unfortunately, cannot reprise the unbridled strut of Quintana’s ‘Lebowski’ braggadocio, suggesting perhaps we should leave the resurrection of beloved characters to the professionals.

The trio of Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, and Joey King create an interesting dynamic; the ultimately well-intentioned film has some interesting things to say about late-in-life love, the many facets of self-absorption, and the way we use the notion of protecting the ones we love under the guise of selfish self-interest.

The film rests squarely on Farrell and Robbie. They have chemistry and a guiding hand in Kogonada, but ultimately A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is undone by a syrupy, over-romanticized screenplay untempered by the director’s usual delicacy and restraint.

Its atrocious, expository dialogue, cumbersome plot, whiplashing character motivations, unintentionally funny moments, and often corny costumes, ensures, Dark Phoenix will be remembered in the annals of mediocre movies (and for somehow utterly wasting Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy in the same film).

Ultimately, Glass is a killer concept that suffers from a wobbly execution. Shyamalan nails the intimate stuff, but that third act is just bound to shatter and confound audience expectation.

It’s maybe not excruciatingly bad, but certainly even less nourishing and satisfying than even the most fleeting and calorically empty of sugar highs.

Resembling a patched together sketch of an idea, and a thrown-together filmed play, set (mostly) inside a house, Locked Down should have just been terminated in the lab, instead of rushing out like a vaccine of entertainment that cured absolutely no one of their doldrums.

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).

Largely inert and undramatic, what you're left with is a tedious sentiment: “by the grace of god” this horrible crisis ended without violence, explosives, or spark. Congratulations?

Certainly possesses a lot of energy, but it's never harnessed or focused effectively. As a buddy comedy, all four leads have done better, and you already know what those movies are, and this one doesn't stand among them.

Venom isn’t sure what film it wants to be, and it makes for an unintelligible, queasy roller coaster ride.

Chandor and Aaron Taylor Johnson deserve better, frankly, but they also both read this screenplay and still signed on. They push beyond the boundaries that have been set up for them, but they can only do so much because a bright and shiny polished turd is still mostly a turd, no matter how much campy lion mane costuming you try and bedazzle it with.

Paradise is neither a good film nor is there any evidence it was a good script.

Much like ‘A Child Of Fire,’ “The Scargiver” is exhausting, enervating, and exasperating, frantically flailing around with explosions, lasers, laser lightsaber-like swords, grenades, et al., but always failing to make you give a damn.

The Dark Tower is a tepid non-starter from minute one.

It’s incredibly soulless, disposable, and as generic as they come.

Zoolander 2 is no disaster, but it’s almost worse; a tedious jag that barely works as a disposable and mild, if-its-on-cable-TV, diversion.

The Mummy is a dated, empirically dismal, laughable excuse to kick off a franchise, and it should have remained entombed.

A deliriously quick-footed and orchestrally pitched character study, Steve Jobs is an ambitious, deeply captivating portrait of the high cost of genius.

Charlie Countryman opens up with an interesting first section, but only backslides deeper and deeper in its overwrought and incoherent second and third acts.

“Rebel Moon” is nearly unwatchable and one of the most stunning misfires of this scale in quite some time.

Get A Job is such a baffling endeavor the callow movie could conceivably come with its own milk carton campaign asking: “Where is Dylan Kidd and what have you done with him?”

It would be unfair and an exaggeration to say 'Part III' ends with a whimper, as there are a few moments to savor, but there's hardly a climatic bang and, sadly, absolutely nothing epic and explosive about this rather tepid and forgettable trilogy closer.

The Electric State really aims to be an epic, spectacularly shaped, crowd-pleasing blockbuster, but missing the mark so often, it just veers more and more off course, to be a loud, blustery, hectic extravaganza that’s all noisy dressing and no depth or humanity. It says nothing and offers little other than a folding laundry distraction.

Bright tries to create a unique and dynamic world with the juxtaposition of harsh police life, crime and modern life contrasted with this imaginary magical realm, but it’s contrived, unconvincing and most of all calamitously preposterous.

The premium placed on upmarket, glossy, muscular cars is so conspicuous that Fuqua scored buyback product placement cash. Elon Musk would surely be enamored. It’s essentially that kind of movie, “The Matrix” and Nolan-lite for dudes who check their bitcoin futures during the movie on their smartphones. Sick, bro.

A Good Day To Die Hard isn’t dead on arrival because that would suggest it has a pulse.

The Last Knight is like a Red Bull-charged Bay yelling “I regret nothing!” as he jumps out of a plane backwards with no chute, detonating a megaton nuclear explosive while firing Uzis at his skydiving pals above him because hell, dude, that sounds like a wicked fond farewell. [

The film is curiously schizophrenic. Brill’s screenplay mixes traditional rom-com generics with sporadically funny R-rated vulgarity and ludicrously dumb gags.

The now pat, unimaginative knock on McG was that he was the Guy Fieri of filmmakers, — loud, crass, garish, tacky, hacky, double fisted with Monster Energy drinks and reeking of Ax Body Spray. But you know what? Sadly, that shoe seems to snuggly fit and he seems more than willing to wear it.

Bafflingly witless, The Clapper is an oblivious non-starter with myriad deficiencies. Artless and clueless at every turn, writer/director Dito Montiel’s inane movie is a one-note half-gag somehow stretched into a painful 90-minute movie.

Accidental Love is mostly a mess, a curiosity for fans, and a mangled misfire you'd understand anyone hoping to omit from their CV.

For some audiences, Bleeding Heart may deliver some much needed catharsis, but it’s ultimately a hollow film that isn’t concerned with consequences or the echoing cycle of violence, just vanquishing the bad guy, reclaiming a dime store sense of “freedom,” and not much more.

This soulful and serio-comedic drama is far less interested in race and much more concerned with examining the state of contemporary male friendship.

As the clock ticks, the film asks, who can this qualified woman trust, but mostly, we’re just looking at our watch, waiting for the dull torment to end.

If this E6 portrait gets anything right it’s the chaotic creativity that seemed to burst out of many of its members like exploding sunlight their bodies could not handle as if something out of a kooky sci-fi film.

More of a treasured time capsule for die-hard fans than a primer for newcomers, nevertheless, It’s All Gonna Break remains an authentic portrait of a radiant, messy, and ultimately triumphant collective that defied the odds and stayed alive.