Stephen Whitty

The switch between moods—obvious comedy and sermonizing message—comes often, and clumsily.

A few minutes into The House with a Clock in Its Walls, you realize Eli Roth knows what he’s doing—and that means carefully mixing the scares and stillness for a horror comedy that’s made-to-order for certain monster-loving 10-year-olds.

A movie that really mined that story would be worth the gold. This one barely doesn’t even capture the bronze.

Director Jodie Foster's Money Monster runs a trim 98 minutes, but it's still not quite worth the investment.

Too much of Kursk revolves around scenes of sodden sailors sitting around wondering why someone doesn’t just hurry up and rescue them. A sentiment likely to be shared by some audiences, as well.

Like the first film, The Secret Life of Pets 2 is at its best when it concentrates on the unconditional love offered by mankind’s best friends, or gently mocks familiar situations.

The film—Weitz’s first since 2015’s indie Grandma—feels a little cheap and shortchanged.

Instead of ever getting truly "Magnificent," these multicultural gunslingers remain largely a meh seven.

Director Ava DuVernay’s version of the beloved children’s classic has a big cast and the best of intentions. It’s socially progressive, racially diverse and packed with positive messages. It’s just not much fun.

The script takes forever to get started, and once it’s going, labours to create a single plausible character. Nor can Taylor, who last handled the dreary The Girl On The Train, wring any suspense from his scenes.

Real films breathe, alive with imperfections, accidents, with everything that Lee's worked so carefully to guard against. Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk is long, all right, but only half-alive — as careful as a diagram, as chilly as a statue.

People who crave a movie about a secret agent with her own sexual agency — and a mission to give male predators exactly what they deserve — are going to want front-row seats. And a sequel.

See Remember. You won't regret it — or forget it.

The new Murder on the Orient Express isn’t a whodunit. It’s a why’d-they-do-it. Why make a new version of a perfectly good old movie if you’re not going to do anything new?

It’s a deliriously silly, often preposterous movie...but director Susanna Fogel keeps things moving too quickly to leave much time for complaints.

When the story does wrap up, it's all too little, too late, and far too long. Which given everything stuffed into it, just leaves the super-sized Triple 9 triply disappointing.

The special effects remain startling, and in your face. But there's nothing new here, and what's old feels like less. The corporate villains seem to have wandered over from "Rampage." The humor has vanished.

This smart, raunchy comedy is a movie aimed at women. Full of frank, just-us-girls talk about men and wicked gags about drunken sex and intimate "landscaping," it's probably a poor choice for date night. But it's a great pick for girl's night out.

It never stops for a minute, yet it never goes anywhere. And much as it promises to take you to a thousand planets, it can’t find one sign of intelligent life.

In the end, you get a Sunday morning sermon when what you really want is a Saturday midnight screening.

Stupid as a bag of hammers and twice as loud, Hardcore Henry sounds like the title of the worst Kissinger bio ever. Actually, it's an action movie that feels more like you are trapped in a video game. A really, really bad video game.

Going in Style has gone a little soft. The geezers-go-gangsta story is back, but in a remake that lacks the edge that made the 1979 original memorable. It’s cuddly when it should be cranky, nice when it needs to be a little nasty.

Clear-eyed and sharply written, it feels like a natural fit for the small screen, although it may be too quiet to make much of an impact on theatrical markets.

Demolition is a wreck.

No one has been too naughty to be subjected to this reindeer poop.

The film has to rush at the end, to wrap up all these different stories, and it still leaves one of them open-ended. It’s possible that they ran out of time. But it’s more likely that another sequel is already planned.

True, the movie's intense, and Jovovich is certainly in fighting shape. But after 15 years of this franchise, it's getting hard to tell Alice from the things she's fighting. It's all squint and grunt, slash and groan.

Although Affleck's been a decent director - capturing real local color in "Gone Baby Gone" and "The Town," building tension nicely in "Argo" - his work here is dim and dull. Live by Night may be about rum, but the pacing is like molasses.