Siddhant Adlakha

The best Disney live-action remake in a decade (not that that’s a particularly high bar to clear), Snow White adapts the broad strokes of the 1937 original, while fleshing out its themes of kindness. Rachel Zegler crafts a remarkable, melodic version of the classic princess who leads with her heart, even if her CGI co-stars are difficult on the eyes.

It Lives Inside feels desperate to project specific cultural experiences, but it has neither the tact nor the aesthetic flair to weave a competent horror movie around them.

It’s a film that fits perfectly within the confines of a romantic comedy even while it swaps out every familiar element and explores brand-new dimensions in the process.

A dreamlike fictional biopic about Marilyn Monroe, Blonde features a stunning, volatile performance from Ana de Armas, whose daring vulnerability is matched by director Andrew Dominik’s equally daring formal approach, which keeps Marilyn in constant conversation with her iconic photographs, with the camera, and with the public at large.

An impression of much better action films, spy thriller The Gray Man (directed by Joe & Anthony Russo) wastes its all-star cast by giving them little to work with beyond quips. While it eventually becomes watchable, it spends most of its runtime being visually and emotionally indecipherable.

The movie is largely entertaining, despite being pulled constantly in two directions: as a predecessor to an iconic work and as a distinct beast, with its own gripes against patriarchal norms.

At nearly four hours in length, it surpasses even its gargantuan predecessor “Youth (Spring),” but it also uses that film as a platform for deeper exploration.

The first chapter in Kevin Costner's epic western series is a meandering, regressive snooze.

The Protégé is so bad that it feels like it has to be on purpose.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives it his all in The Thing with Feathers, but the horror movie lives up to neither his performance, nor its own heavy-handed metaphor of a bullying crow-creature representing grief.

Nothing comes of anything either man says. It’s all noise — all passionless anger going in circles, captured by a camera that seems averse to lingering on the tremendous talents of Hopkins and Goode, who try their best to rescue Freud’s Last Session from itself.

Its all-star cast performs admirably, in a film that takes its time to get going, reveals and confronts little once it does, and uses none of its story swerves to build on its dramatic themes, or its one-note humor.

As ugly as it is amusing, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy takes the kind of tonal swings you rarely see from a Hollywood studio.

It looks drab and feels like it was made by people who want to leave its magical premise behind, even though the series refuses to have anything resembling grown-up politics or perspectives.

Harmony Korine’s infrared assassin movie Aggro Dr1ft is a video-game-inspired experiment that’ll have you in a trance.

Corner Office is a just-okay office satire saved by Jon Hamm playing the anti-Jon Hamm.

It’s visual soup where nothing pops or stands out. Almost nothing anyone does or says feels rooted in recognizable character traits, and despite Marsden’s most sincere efforts, he finds himself once again unable to meet Sonic’s eye-line (a production kerfuffle that would be funny, were it not also another reminder of VFX crunch).

It can’t decide whether it wants to tell the real-life story of respected mob boss Frank Costello and his comrade-turned-scheming-enemy Vito Genovese, or if it wants to skewer the entire genre of films they helped inspire. However, with Robert De Niro in both leading roles, there’s always something interesting to watch, even if it’s buried by mountains of repetitive dialogue.

Sweet Girl is front-loaded with fun action, and it has a great performance by Jason Momoa as a widower seeking vengeance against a pharma CEO. But its story slowly loses steam, before being replaced by an entirely different movie with much sillier political messaging.

The worst thing about Joker: Folie à Deux is its unfulfilled potential. It begins with the promise of a novel approach to the Joker and Harley Quinn, placing them in a world where the opposite of cruelty is musical romance. Unfortunately, the DC sequel gets bogged down by a lengthy courtroom saga, which not only keeps the dazzling Lady Gaga away from the spotlight, but centers the movie entirely around its own predecessor, without doing or saying anything new.

Neither polished enough to be engaging drama, nor campy or exploitative enough to be effective horror, They/Them is a plodding, tensionless, and ultimately cowardly movie. Even if it had something worthwhile to say, it would have no idea how to say it.

Sylvester Stallone doesn’t seem thrilled to be playing a superhero in Samaritan, a hodgepodge of non-ideas borrowed from better movies.

The film often does too much, reaching for too many different sources for its attempted thrills and chills, which results in a mostly scattered experience. However, it has a couple of notable strengths. The first is its handful of tense moments.

Despite the caliber of its cast, “The Fabulous Four” never shakes the feeling that its on-screen talent is being severely misused.

Everything that unfolds in The Crooked Man does so with exceptional dullness, including various psychic visions experienced by the characters, which feel more obligatory than inspired.

Minions: The Rise of Gru is more Minion compilation than Gru prequel. It wastes its fun ideas and comedic setups in favor of disconnected slapstick gags, which may delight the diaper-wearing crowd, but will end up a chore to anyone forced to comprehend its inert dramatic scenes and ’70s pop culture references.

The psychological thriller-horror film Antebellum mishandles its sensitive & painful subject matter on multiple levels.

Where The Crawdads Sing is only mildly interesting if you look up the accusations against its author.