Simon Abrams

While Les eventually becomes more tolerable, LaBute's cloying dialogue makes it impossible to appreciate what turns out to be a bracingly pragmatic sense of optimism.

There's not only nothing new here, there's nothing convincing either. And if I'm supposed to judge Bumblebee based on how well it succeeds at what it tries to do (rather than what came before it), it's still not very good.

Writer/director Chad Archibald still shows some promise here, especially whenever he lets his actors, cinematographer, makeup, creature, and production designer sell what is, at heart, a generic possession story. He thankfully does this often enough to keep the plot’s familiar and slowly dispensed beats from feeling too rote.

Cornish's gift for working with child actors is still apparent, as is his knack for dynamic action set pieces. The Kid Who Would Be King is not, in that sense, everything that it could have been. But it is fun where it counts and that's realistically what matters most.

In spite of its conspicuously crude sense of humor, Delhi Belly is much more family-minded and innocent than it would like its young target audience to believe.

Dumont's characters' motives are consequently hard to divine, despite convincingly twitchy performances from French actors Fabrice Luchini and Juliette Binoche. So while I do recommend Slack Bay, I must warn you: this is a misanthropic comedy that features cannibalism, weird religious overtones, and a lot of goony pratfalls.

The movie’s fun, if a bit staid, when it’s in all-monsters-attack mode, but Ultraman: Rising doesn’t stand out whenever it requires more of your attention.

The Archies celebrates its protagonists’ character-defining youth by letting them be cute, doofy, and mostly self-absorbed.

Unfortunately, The Public Image is Rotten often feels like an illustrated airing of grievances that also happens to be an in-their-words history of Lydon's best band.

The movie’s cast members all seem to understand their assignments, which makes even the sketchiest material seem more robust. There’s also more technical polish, as well as a general knack for comic timing, than you might expect from a remake of “The Toxic Avenger.”

Scafidi’s movie appropriately reflects its director’s neurotic need to show all the different ways you can think about Argento and his art.

Goofy, over-earnest, and just good enough where it counts, Kalki 2898 AD outdistances its competition simply by digging deeper than expected into its patchy lore’s rich melodramatic turf.

Stevens slowly and subtly unpacks that heady, provocative conceit with care and in a way that makes his directorial debut feel like the arrival of a major new talent.

People are not good or bad in The Cut — they are subject to violent whims, and rarely given fair opportunities to defend themselves. The Cut can therefore be seen as a historical corrective.