Shirley Li

If the series were to fizzle out, that would be a relief. No amount of movie magic can save it now.

Snow White chooses to be fearless. A studio can too—even if this one so rarely does.

The Apprentice could have delved into the Trump persona or explored how it calcified. But by trying to avoid how Trump’s past reflects his current approach to politics—his zero-sum relationship to power, his pettiness and egotism—while simultaneously winking at viewers’ knowledge of him, the film lands itself in a trap.

To be clear, the Minions’s latest triumph is not unearned in artistic terms. The Rise of Gru’s story is instantly forgettable, but the film looks great, moves briskly, and boasts the vocal stylings of a cast that sounds like they’re having the time of their life.

The spectacle of a fantasy world can do only so much; a beautiful setting can’t compensate for a superficial story line. Raya loses sight of its heroine’s own connection to the cultures that the filmmakers had put so much care into depicting authentically.

Bullet Train is stupid fun—all neon-drenched style over substance. It’s the kind of late-summer flick that coasts on nonsense, violence, and actors trying out questionable accents. The film is a solid showcase for hand-to-hand combat up until it devolves into CGI drudgery.

Like a frustrated player speeding up the falling blocks to end the game, the film haphazardly stacks ideas atop one another until, well, it’s a relief when it’s over.

The Electric State is so transparently eager to satisfy as many demographics of viewers as possible that it proves its own message: that a world dependent on business interests and technological optimization dulls artistic potential and human ingenuity. All that’s left is a wasteland of half-baked ideas searching for a home.

If the film leaned all the way into its melodrama, it could have been something different: the rare mainstream, studio-produced summer romance made for female audiences, with rich imagery worthy of the big screen. But its source material’s blemishes were always going to be hard to avoid.

Despite a committed cast and often stunning cinematography, the film’s script is too blunt and the direction too ham-fisted to make Emancipation anything more than another rote—albeit expensive—entry in the slavery-movie genre.

Fair Play positions itself as a psychosexual thriller, but it’s neither truly provocative nor all that sexy.

A generic and plodding revenge thriller that’s nowhere near bold enough to justify the franchise’s resurrection.

Its spectacle is even duller than its story, which is already nonsensical.

The result is a tasteless endeavor that transforms the prescription-drug crisis into a flashy cartoon—a purported dissection of a broken system that takes too lighthearted a tone.