William Bibbiani

It’s one of the great horror sequels, for about an hour. Then it’s a cautionary tale about how not to make a horror sequel, for about an hour.

Set aside for a moment that the movie is literally hard to look at: it’s also tonally chaotic, and repeatedly trips over its own unspeakable horrors, before falling face-first into bowls of insufferable sugar.

It’s a playground for the filmmakers and audience alike, a fantastical space where anything can happen, whether it’s silly or badass or both.

It’s a great sports movie about the urge to be great at sports, and it’s one of the smartest movies the genre has produced in a long time.

Bertino and Fanning are deeply committed to going to dark places, and they take us along for their freaky little ride. Whether it makes sense or not. (Probably not.)

Tron: Ares has, in no uncertain terms, a great frickin’ soundtrack. The movie, on other hand, completely sucks.

It may be odd and insular, but it’s very much intentional. Even the heavy-handedness feels genuine.

It’s hard to imagine Mark Wahlberg as Parker, even after you just watched him play Parker for two hours.

The Strangers: Chapter 2' is an improvement on 'The Strangers: Chapter 1.' Then again, a moderate case of food poisoning is an improvement on a severe one.

It’s suspenseful and smart. It’s got great performances across the board. It’s exactly the kind of thriller we keep saying we want, again and again, but which never get enough credit (or enough marketing).

Colin Minihan knows how to make a gnarly horror film.

Doin’ It' isn’t a great sex comedy. I don’t think I’d even call it a good one, so I won’t. But it sure as hell isn’t lazy. Noble intentions are splattered all over the walls, and the overall message isn’t in dispute.

You learn about as much from the movie as you do from the trailer, and the trailer is free to watch and saves you a lot of time.

It’s possible, maybe even likely, that Paul Thomas Anderson has stuffed so much into one movie that a lot of people will find something to take away from it. All I see is the lack of focus.

I admire you for trying to make it work, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, but I think we should both see other films.

It’s not that The Long Walk has made walking terrifying — although certainly it’s a fraught and frightening walk. It’s that it makes every trudge through every day remind us of torture.

It’s easy to see what attracted Fraser to this material, since it’s almost mechanically designed to make him look good as an actor, and enchanting as a star.

The film may be unbridled, unfettered and bold, but sometimes those adjectives aren’t complimentary.

As a scary movie, 'The Conjuring: Last Rites' is a generic film, neither good nor bad. It’s practically begging audiences to judge it on a 'pass/fail' basis. As the conclusion of the 'Conjuring' series, it’s a little more successful, but not much.

Liu points his lens at life and life does the work, guided by a masterful screenplay and tender performances.

At last, an Aronofsky film where it doesn’t feel like he hates us. O brave new world, that has such movies in it.

A heartwarming, horrifically violent homage to the most lovable dreck ever produced outside of the studio system.

Megadoc, whether it’s showing all there is to show or not, is a fascinating exposé of a filmmaker who risked everything so nobody could shoot down his ideas, only to shoot himself in the foot in the process.

The magic of La grazia is that Paolo Sorrentino makes a convincing argument that doubt is a beautiful thing.

An ambitious comedy, not because it’s so big but because it’s so delicate. This film could crumble at any minute. It veers dangerously from misery to whimsy to horror to hope.

Any movie that reminds you, simultaneously and favorably, of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Michael Mann’s Thief is doing something very right — even if it looms a lot lower than those towering works of genius.

Eenie Meanie plays like a decent adaptation of an unpublished Elmore Leonard novel. Even the title looks like it should be on a spinner rack next to Freaky Deaky and Rum Punch.

It’s so divorced from reality that it’s practically grounds for divorce.

It’s a generous production, one that lovingly offers meaningful moments to every member of the cast, even the actors with only one scene.

A sword-and-sorcery epic that can’t swing the 'epic' part.

It’s like a National Lampoon movie where Chevy Chase is a mass murderer. That’s a great pitch, dang it, and Timo Tjahjanto throws it at 105 miles per hour.

What [Cregger]'s getting at seems a lot less frightening, and a lot more contrived, than it would have had he not invited us to ponder more powerful possibilities for over an hour before tipping his hand.

It’s still sweet, it’s still funny, it’s still freaky, and it’s still Friday. Thank God.

My Oxford Year is shiny and affable, and if that was the assignment it’d get an 'A' for effort . . . actually that’s going too far, let’s make it a respectable 'B.' But that’s not the assignment.

There’s a confidence to She Rides Shotgun that many other movies can’t match, as though the filmmakers always knew exactly where to put their camera and how long to let it roll.

The Naked Gun is back and it's as naked as ever. And also as gun.

It’s not bad, guys. But guys, it’s not good.

A few odd touches and one impressively, cathartically violent sequence don’t compensate for the film’s resistance to its own ideas.

Matt Shakman has done something Marvel Studios doesn’t do very well anymore. He’s made a superhero movie that embraces the 'super' part. And the 'hero' part. And the 'movie' part.

Logic, be damned! And begone! Everything about the new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' strains credulity until credulity breaks open and spills fake blood and candy everywhere. And that’s for the best.

Sovereign is some of Offerman’s most complex and disturbing work. It’s a fine film, too.

You may want to leave the theater, go directly to a bookstore and buy the source material. That’s good! But you may want to leave before the movie’s over. That’s bad.

A fabulously smart and entertaining film whose flaws stem from trying too hard… which are the best flaws a film can have.

These above average, slightly forgettable movies may not live forever, but Theron’s badassery might.

Everything’s Going to Be Great understands the hopeless can-do spirit of not quite getting there but coming close enough that you’ll never, ever give up.

The filmmakers haven’t redefined the zombie genre, but they’ve refocused their own culturally significant riff into a lush, fascinating epic that has way more to say about being human than it does about (re-)killing the dead.

It’s all about radical acceptance but can only talk about the real-world application of its message in general metaphors, so people who don’t actually accept 'weird,' 'different' kids won’t have to think about how wrong they are.

Kosinski’s antiseptic visual style and Ehren Kruger’s limp screenplay (with a co-story credit by Kosinski himself) make 'F1 The Movie' an incredibly sterile film about virility. It’s so manly it can barely perform.

There’s an old expression that goes, 'If you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.' I propose we update that a little. 'If you can’t think of anything nice to say, you’re probably talking about Bride Hard.

They’re all trying to make a meal out of starvation rations. The cast’s efforts aren’t in vain, and the film is better for having them, but a thing can get a whole lot of 'better' before it gets 'good.

Kudos to everyone here for doing their jobs, and for doing them reasonably well, but the end result of all the effort is a film which, when people talk about How to Train Your Dragon, will eventually be referred to as 'no, not that one.

I do heartily recommend you see Materialists, and that you see it for what it is, not what it kinda looks like from the outside, as pitched to you by the very sort of romance-commodification salespersons that Celine Song’s movie criticizes.

A potpourri of general genre genericness, never making enough noise to rattle, or even produce an echo.

A glorified pitch reel, submitting for our approval a few nifty movie ideas and wrapping it all up in a tidy bow. All action, no filler.

A cluttered mess with a boring storyline but the action is often amazing, and there’s a genuine sense of humor to all its weird duels to the death. That’s something that’s been absent from the self-serious John Wick movies for far too long — an acknowledgement of their own wackiness.

Fear Street: Prom Queen is not the best Fear Street movie. But to be fair, it’s probably the third best Prom Night.

I would seriously consider cutting off one of my own fingers if it meant I didn’t have to spend two hours alone in a room with John Krasinski’s protagonist from Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth.

I guess when you take something that works and make it work slightly less, it still kinda works.

Del Toro hasn’t had a role this juicy in ages, and he’s captivating at all times.

We’re here for the kills and, again, every single kill in 'Final Destination Bloodlines' is a winner. Every time a head explodes, which is a lot, you’ll want to stand up and cheer.

Bring Her Back, like many great horror movies, hardly needs to dip into the supernatural to shred our nerve-endings.

If this is the end of the 'Mission: Impossible' movies, they ended on an adequate note.

Crackles with manic energy, fed at every turn by exhilarating fight choreography and a thoroughly game cast. Hartnett carries the whole silly, bone-crunching enterprise masterfully.

The only annoying thing about Summer of 69 is that this is the exact kind of laugh out loud, emotionally satisfying, share-it-with-a-friend comedy that would probably find a sizable audience in theaters — and instead it’s a Hulu exclusive.

It’s a film with potent ideas, inner conflict, historical imagination, dramatic challenge, queer power, human fragility, humor, sex, pathos. It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes it great, and that’s what makes it great. There’s so much to its muchness that the veneer can hardly contain it, not unlike Taffeta themself.

Never was a film I’m more likely to forget, than this of Romeo and his Juliet.

It’s that rare action movie that succeeds because it’s challenging and intriguing, which is a nice way of saying that maybe it could have kicked slightly more ass.

Minahan has made a film about embracing life when you’re not legally allowed to, and he refuses to make watching it a misery, no matter how rough it gets.

Although it’s hard to shake the sense that on a practical level this studio is just scraping the bottom of the barrel, desperately hoping their minor characters can be converted into headliners, they’ve done a damn good job of it.

If you can’t think of a better way to spend your time, 'Until Dawn' is a thing that exists.

It would be easy to write off 'Sneaks' as a hack job, a sole-less riff on a tired premise, but there’s more afoot here.

It’s impossible to watch a film in which Jesus Christ says it’s wrong to profit from religion and then watch the filmmakers panhandle for profit at the end. At least, not without imagining the screen getting struck by lightning.

It’s a sweaty, intoxicating, all-nighter of a movie, and its allure cannot be denied.

It’s impossible not to root for President Viola Davis as she takes down incompetent, mediocre white guys who want to crash the world economy. She stares down this generic production and walks away with another victory under her belt.

Its baseline competence is perfectly watchable. It’s just hard to imagine anyone signing onto this project with the explicitly stated goal of only making it watchable.

Screamboat' is not a great movie by any stretch but if Ricky Jay was editing this footage in a scene from 'Boogie Nights,' he’d have to turn to Burt Reynolds and admit: 'It’s a real film.'

If audiences expecting a cute penguin movie are forced to engage with the fact that any government which abducts people for having different political views is evil, and that everyone must do everything in their power to stop that miscarriage of justice, then nobody can say 'The Penguin Lessons' isn’t at the very least well-timed.

The word Competent! rarely makes it into a movie’s marketing materials no matter how accurate it is.

A rock musical like 'O’Dessa' only works if it sufficiently rocks, and 'O’Dessa' somewhat rocks.

There’s nothing wrong with Disney’s live-action remake of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' that couldn’t be fixed by making it 26 minutes shorter, 88 years ago and in hand-drawn animation.

So let me be absolutely, 100% clear: “The Alto Knights” is indeed a bad movie, but not the good kind. It doesn’t make you feel alive, it makes you feel dead. It’s a tedious, directionless, bumbling chore of a gangster picture, incoherently written and edited, featuring two of the limpest performances of Robert De Niro’s career.

Opus is a Cheeto without the Cheeto dust, so of course we feel cheeted.

We watch The Parenting in blasé curiosity, as we engage in the purely intellectual exercise of sussing out what’s gone wrong.

Jack Quaid was born for a role like this. The actor’s unassuming cheerfulness provides the perfect comedic counterpoint to the film’s increasingly absurd gross-out action gags.

May very well be [Lithgow's] creepiest performance since Brian De Palma’s “Raising Cain” — and that’s saying something.

An incredibly direct motion picture, and sometimes the limitations of its budget put a strain on the ambitious multi-decade narrative, but it’s a film — and a cast — that demands thunderous applause anyway.

Human weakness is 'Black Bag’s' greatest strength. It’s an insidiously great spy movie, mature and satisfying.

It’s a grim slog through the wastelands of human civilization, which makes a big deal about the generic parts and glosses over all the thrilling weirdness.

My Dead Friend Zoe' is a noble film, seemingly honest and open. It’s not a terribly exciting one, and it struggles to justify its modest length, but plot isn’t everything.

I’ve spent over two paragraphs now talking about the various movie trivia Cleaner reminded me of, since Cleaner doesn’t provide much other food for thought.

A sick and twisted work of comic genius where the punchlines punch so hard you’ll explode.

A welcome new patch in the sprawling 'Bridget Jones' tapestry. It’s got all the humor and romance we’ve come to enjoy and all the caring and maturity we’ve come to depend on.

An unexpectedly romantic movie coming from the 'Sinister' and 'The Black Phone' director, but it’s also a gnarly monster flick with memorable beasties galore.

There’s nothing brave about this movie. There’s nothing new either. And sure, it technically takes place in the world, but one out of three is bad.

Heart Eyes seems destined to become a Valentine’s Day favorite, that rare horror movie with a great and charming love story, and that even rarer romantic comedy with a great and savage serial killer.

If this is just one bullet point in your Valentine’s Day to-do list, an excuse to hold hands or neck in a darkened theater, or maybe as a litmus test for your date’s artistic tastes, it’s a harmless, mostly generic action rom-com.

For thousands of years it’s been believed that laughter is the best medicine. Unfortunately, it appears that the laughs in the new Netflix comedy 'Kinda Pregnant' have been recalled.

Although Omaha is powerful and ultimately depressing as all hell, there is a faint, faint, faint glimmer of hope. If not for the world around us, at least for the people in it.