Scott Tobias

The more Frankel and McKenna acknowledge that their fresh-out-of-college heroine is now a seasoned editor in her 40s, the better The Devil Wears Prada 2 gets, not least because it doesn’t have to jettison the upscale fantasies and juicy machinations of Miranda's world entirely. Like Miranda herself at one point in the movie, it’s healthy to spend a little time flying in coach.

The words these characters say to each other are mostly boring and obscure, and it’s a mad scramble to figure out what’s making them so agitated. Keeping up with the film becomes as hard as it is to care.

The Mummy takes its silliness far too seriously.

It’s a piece of escapism that can’t escape from itself.

It’s a testament to the beauty of Chomet’s visual style that the picture book images of Paris and Marseille in the mid-20th century are transporting enough to make A Magnificent Life a comfortable sit. But Pagnol deserves better than this limp eulogy.

The satirical promise of Ready or Not 2 leads to few comic payoffs—or even much resembling a joke, despite the film’s irreverent tone—and the snippiness between Grace and Faith seems forced after they’ve been taking fire together for so much of the film. Here’s hoping that Ready or Not 3: Olly Olly Oxen Free better meets the moment.

Reminders of Him is a disciplined mediocrity, sticking to picture postcard images and a happy ending that’s so much easier to achieve than the story allows. Next time, please have the courtesy to be crazier.

Chong seems to intend for an escalating series of comic events that get more giddily absurd as it approaches the climax, but the film loses its soul in the process. Hoppers longs for the quiet beatitude of nature, but it’s just another noisemaker.

Aside from a lively stretch toward the end of the film where Jennifer and Fernando wrestle on equal footing, literally as well as figuratively, Dreams is blunt in its intentions and programmatic in its plotting.

Besson seems more at home making pop art than gothic tragedy, but the neither-here-nor-there quality of Dracula makes it chintzy and unsatisfying on both fronts. In a word, it sucks.

To want Statham to appear like he cares about any of it is to ask too much.

Only a scene where Helen defends her hunting trips with Mabel as “an honest encounter with death” suggests the tougher, more provocative movie that might have been. This one is mostly a genteel therapy arc.

Dead Man’s Wire is a curious shrug of a movie, especially from a director like Gus Van Sant, who has picked up some ho-hum work-for-hire assignments in the past, such as Finding Forrester or Promised Land, but usually puts some more spin on the ball.

The performances, particularly Seyfried’s, keep the film popping, along with some energetic rug-pulling from Feig, who treats the material like a deadly telenovela. But at an exhausting 131 minutes, it’s an indulgent feast on empty calories.

Though he still doles out kills in a thin broth, Nelson puts enough craft and spin on the material to make it better than it has any right to be. Making the best Silent Night, Deadly Night is the very definition of a modest achievement.

The sturdiness of Elphaba and Glinda’s bond throughout these tragic miscues—and Erivo and Grande’s fine dramatic and vocal performances—give this rickety enterprise a solid foundation.

Predator: Badlands may be formulaic and a little cutesy, but its relentless crowd-pleasing instincts wear down your defenses. You feel like the Dek to its Thia.

It’s fitfully inspired in stretches, as Jude runs various creative scenarios through a mirthless AI generator, but as a viewer, being inundated with crap still hurts, even when there’s a satirical purpose.

Cooper leans toward a chronicle of Springsteen’s depression, which makes sense given his emotional state at the time, but too much of the film is explained when it’s better dramatized. The act of turning angst into music is more dynamic than finding every source for it.

Derrickson’s instinct to lean on a low-res, Super 8-style camerawork in the film’s frequent dream sequences is fitfully effective, rendering nightmares like spools of home movies that have been decaying in the attic. But here, he’s having to reanimate a dead property.

The cast does well to make the button-pushing read like complexity—Stuhlbarg, the secret MVP of Call Me By Your Name, acquits himself best here, too— but it all looks a bit like Guadagnino is pleading for mercy for adults who should know better. No, thanks.

The best scenes in Spinal Tap II are either solid improvisational sessions between the three leads as the band tries to recover its long chemistry or sidebars with Nigel.

The film indulges in the Speed-like fantasy that a skilled and intrepid bus driver can blow through the inferno, but that’s Hollywood. The Lost Bus is convincing enough to expose its own nonsense.

Vin Diesel et al return for an overstuffed Fast and Furious chapter that delivers giddily effective action but an outsized and silly villain.

The film can feel worked-over and schematic, as if Bonello was too preoccupied with serving the thesis to trust his peerless intuition.

Natali whips up an atmospheric frenzy in kind, but every new addition is a subtraction. Two characters condemned to an eternal game of “Marco Polo” is scary enough on its own.

It’s a fatally old-fashioned and lugubrious historical drama, muting the emotional payoff it labors so hard to deliver.

Shin’s film gets tangled up in its own web. ... His film leaves a vivid impression without quite leaving a mark.