William Bibbiani

It’s a classy, riveting remake, and it will make you want to see even more adventures featuring this particular Poirot.

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.

The Crimes of Grindelwald probably had enough plot to drive a four-hour mini-series, but even so, what we get is often absorbing and grand. The sense that this magical world is actually, well, fantastic is finally back in the series.

The film’s breakneck zaniness sometimes gets into the way of the labyrinthine story, and you’ll be forgiven if you completely lose track of what’s going on (or at least why), but this is a remarkably entertaining and unusual Agatha Christie adaptation, and Randall’s take on the character is, surprisingly, one of the best.

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.

Surge captures the protagonist’s collapse but shies away from catharsis, judgment, or context. Karia’s film lives in the moment and no matter how overwhelming it may seem, the moment is fleeting.

It’s almost a romantic melodrama, but it’s emotionally inert. It’s almost a biting statement about cultural appropriation, but it barely shows its fangs. It’s almost a murder mystery, but it abandons the plot for vast periods of time. It’s almost a good film except, no, that’s really stretching it. At its best it’s an unfocused plod.

Living up to the legacy of Die Hard is a tall order, and Skyscraper never reaches those heights. But it's a gigantic and silly blockbuster matinee of a movie, with likable performances, absurd action sequences, and a heck of a lot of duct tape.

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.

Neeson]’s trapped once again in tired tough guy material, bringing gravity to a film that’s already dragging him — and the audience — down.

It never quite kicks into high gear, and plays a lot more like a TV movie from the 1990s — a very good decade for historical TV movies — than a major feature in the 2020s.

Malignant might not hold up to scrutiny but by the time all its mysteries are revealed, it’s clear that it was never supposed to. It’s an absurdly entertaining frightfest with a heavy emphasis on the absurd, and thank heaven — or hell — for it.

The romantic part of Johnson’s rom-com barely reaches a low simmer, but the comedy part burns a little brighter.

Clerks III is serious to a minor fault and breezy to a minor fault. It’s got all the same laid-back, chill vibes cinema that Smith is well-known for, and the same immature approach to genuine maturity that he’s also known for, with a new sense of emotional severity that makes it harder to laugh than it probably should be.

It’s remarkable how far McConnell’s film can coast on little more than novelty power, star power, and Doritos, but there’s no denying that “Studio 666” hits a wall after about an hour, and spends the next 50 minutes stumbling around in a daze.

So it’s not an instant classic like The Invisible Man. I think we can all live with that. It’s still a scary and interesting movie about a wolf man, anchored by a haunting performance from Abbott, who understood the assignment and went for extra credit.

It’s a shame that The Maze Runner movies are going out on their flattest note, but The Death Cure isn't completely off-key. Wes Ball has directed every entry in the franchise and he’s evolved into a very skilled action filmmaker. Complex set-pieces with an incredible number of moving parts are depicted clearly, excitingly, and with visual panache.

It’s a magic act without the storytelling, so every moment is the prestige, and none of it feels prestigious. It’s goofy and shallow and delightful and in a couple days I’ll forget I ever saw it.

Brothers takes a tediously familiar comedy story structure and hangs some genuinely interesting characters and performances on it. It’s like a Frankenstein monster made out of Raising Arizona and Dumb and Dumber To.

Zobel’s film grapples directly with the political spectrum and uses everything we love and hate about each other as fodder for humor and horror.

The Equalizer 2 makes more-or-less the same impact as “The Equalizer.” It’s a reasonably satisfying mid-budget action thriller, with slick style and an intriguing hero, who only uses violence when necessary, and as a means of redemption for himself and his community.

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.

There are exactly enough thrills to fill a 90-minute movie, including the closing credits. No more and no less. So thank god 'Elevation' is short or it probably would have stunk.

It’s cheap and it’s silly and it has a laughable premise that some people will mistake for terribleness. But it’s also winking and whimsical. It knows what it’s doing and it’s doing it on purpose. Somehow it actually kind of works.

James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) keeps his film permanently trapped in a liminal space between childhood and adolescence, where magic is real but intangible and largely metaphoric.

Disney may be in the process of updating Jungle Cruise, the ride, but Jungle Cruise, the movie, isn’t trying to reinvent much of anything.

Jason Statham knows how to Jason Statham, and as usual, he Jason Stathams Jason Stathamly.

At its best, Out of Blue captures a slightly intoxicated “eureka” sensation, as the whole detective genre transforms elegantly into a philosophical awakening, and as the greatest threat comes not from a murderer but from our protagonist’s sense of self (or lack thereof). At its worst, which is most of the time, it’s a conventional detective story that resorts to lengthy scientific-namedropping when it probably should be getting on with it instead.

The film undercuts its admiration of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by judging, harshly, her life choices and reducing her timeless masterpiece to simplistic metaphor for a lousy marriage. Mary Shelley deserves better than Mary Shelley.

Berg’s life is a natural for the movies, but it’s difficult to imagine how the film we got out of it turned out so dramatically inert.

Insidious: The Last Key may be somewhat engaging but it’s also sloppy and doesn’t amount to much.

It’s a whole lot of pretty good and not a lot of amazing, but hey, remember how Tyriq Withers also starred in Him? No one can say they got the title wrong.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a bold and brisk superhero story, unlike any other mainstream Hollywood film in the genre. It crams a heck of a lot of movie into an hour and a half, but it doesn’t feel like it needed to be longer. It just feels like we need more movies like it.

These Greenland films may not always have a coherent point, but when they focus on the nuts and bolts of survival and the toll that surviving takes on these characters, they’re efficient, effectively crafted genre pictures.

The Eggers Brothers have a canny way of balancing those wildly different tones. We’re frightened for each character, even when we point and giggle at them. It’s a twisted film.

Make no mistake: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions may be fun, it’s also incredibly stupid. The premise makes no sense. The mechanics make no sense. The plot makes no sense. Look elsewhere for storytelling sanity. Look here if you want to see confident, creepy absurdity, with a ghoulish imagination and showmanship to spare.

It doesn’t glitter, it doesn’t explode. It’s just fluffy and sweet. Bean’s film suffers a bit from minor technical issues and, despite a few improvements, it just doesn’t have the same emotional impact as the original, but it still deserves a good home.

There are lots of jokes, even though they’re only sporadically funny. There are lots of action sequences, even though they’re edited haphazardly and sometimes hard to follow. There are lots of monsters, even though the more we learn about them, the harder it is to care.

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

While there are some creepy ideas in this surprise Netflix-Blumhouse offering, the quality of Mercy Black is strained.

The Greatest Showman is wildly entertaining even when it’s spectacularly false, which is a lot of the time. But everyone is enjoying themselves on-screen, so you might as well enjoy yourself too.

At the end of the day, “DASHCAM” actually doesn’t seem to have much of a point to make. It’s a mean little joke of a horror movie, one where the worst people seem to live longest and endure no consequences, and if that’s what “DASHCAM” has to say about life itself then fair enough, but it’s not presented with cleverness or pointed satire. Savage’s film just keeps digging a hole and somehow it never reaches any depth.

Jungle eventually leads to an exciting survival story with an intense performance by Daniel Radcliffe and suspenseful scenes that might make you squirm. But it might not be worth the journey it takes to get there.

If logic had anything to do with it, that would mean 'Thrash' was a bad movie. But logic has no place in these soggy halls. 'Thrash' may be arbitrary but it’s too energetic to be bad.

It’s a movie about escape rooms that literally kill you, and if you’re willing to buy into that premise, it’s about as good as a movie with that premise could probably be. So, hey, 2019 is looking up.

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

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.

If you were trying to produce a parody of what a Tolkien biopic would look like, you’d get the exact same film.

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 gets through its storyline and makes its underscrutinized points about fidelity — it’s right there in a title — and then it’s over, and the only thing we have to show for it is a missed opportunity to let these characters reveal their inner selves for more than three minutes.

Cronin has an uncanny knack for human mutilation, which would probably be a bad thing in any other context, but if you’re making gross-out horror movies, it’s practically a requirement.

While many of the subplots of “Secrets” fall flat or go nowhere (usually both), there are globetrotting sequences of political intrigue that sometimes make Yates’ latest foray play out like an exciting, fantastical espionage thriller.

The film eventually provides some memorable gore but the ultimate conclusion is unconvincing and perfunctory.

A popcorn-spilling, shriek-inducing, tricky little treat.

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.

Like many of Emmerich’s movies, even the better ones, Midway loses sight of the humanity inside its vast vistas of devastation. It’s a giant film with a very small impact.

A hodgepodge of exuberant stylistic flourishes and pop culture references, and while it’s often briefly entertaining, it’s never consistently anything except manic.

The problem with describing a movie like The Nun II is that its many inane moments sound entertaining when you list them all on one page, but they’re so spread out through this movie that the entertainment is usually quite scarce.

It’s no small compliment to say that 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire' is expertly crafted drivel.

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.

When Shazam! Fury of the Gods tries to look like a big blockbuster action movie it comes across as perfunctory and soulless. The fury signifies nothing. The heart is where this movie’s home is.

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

It’s neither funny nor exciting enough to obscure what a miasma of unfocused randomness it is, even though the cast is clearly trying to make something out of all this half-baked material.

Medieval struggles as a work of historical fiction, but when the action mounts, it’s immersive and exciting.

This disturbing riff on 'The Country Girl' (the country ghoul?) never seems anything less than earnest and sometimes — all puns intended — a little confessional.

What it lacks in intelligence it makes up for with good vibes and great casting.

It’s a spooky, entertaining, but totally goofy entry in “The Conjure-verse.”

Don’t Breathe 2 may not be the first horror movie sequel to try to transform the monster into an antihero, but it’s hard to think of another one that whiffs it this hard.

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

Mortal Kombat II isn’t the best Mortal Kombat movie, but it’s hard to deny that it comes second. At least with the number 2 and all.

The Meg is a big, dumb shark movie that takes itself a little too seriously, and that’s the point. Jason Statham is perfect for the material, the shark attacks are entertainingly broad, and the supporting cast brings personality to the otherwise straightforward script.

What’s most impressive about Joker: Folie à Deux is the way Phillips willingly undercuts his own billion-dollar blockbuster. He’s looking inward. Arthur is looking inward. Hopefully the audience will too, and question why they care so much about Arthur Fleck in the first place.

It’s not so much a movie as it is multimillion dollar background noise while you stare at your phone.

Krasinski’s film is a vague celebration of imagination and wonder, but it can’t imagine a world that makes sense or entertains, and that’s just not wonderful.

The Watchers' isn’t very scary and it’s only interesting for as long as it’s an intellectual curiosity, and it’s not intellectual curiosity for the full 102-minute running time.

The story isn’t so hot. At least the leads are. That’s not enough to make Lonely Planet a good film, but it might be enough to get through all 94 minutes without clicking on something else instead. Maybe

Avery’s film is a solid piece of genre entertainment, grounded by excellent performances, and clever enough to find a new way to present the same old tropes. Like an old hunk of junk fixed and cleaned up, and made into something new again, and worth paying full price for.

It’s attractively filmed and, mostly, solidly performed, taking some historical liberties but otherwise getting the gist of the tale out in the open for new generations to discover and appreciate.

Instead of an instant classic, we get a noble effort. We need more of those. This is a bright and earnest attempt to craft an on-screen fantasy for modern kids, with a practical moral that anyone could appreciate.

Part throwback, part update and a little bit creaky, it’s all-in-all an excellent showcase of Izzard’s wonderful talents.

The Prodigy may offer some shocks to those susceptible to this genre, or who have never seen it before, but to horror fans it will probably seem unremarkable and even bland.

The Rhythm Section takes well-worn genre material and removes all the substance and ingenuity, leaving behind only an undeveloped plot, a blank main character, and a sense of gravitas that is entirely unearned.

Writer-director Rockaway (“The Abandoned”) hits all the major bullet points in the gangster’s life but ignores almost all the connective tissue that would make this outline of intriguing anecdotes really come alive.

Reitman’s direction may be sharp and professional, but that’s only in the service of familiar material, so it falls to an excellent cast to make the most of a very repetitive situation.

Although the film takes place in a dystopian near future, the story rarely reveals any meaningful information about how society functions after an environmental collapse, or indeed portrays hardly any scene as though it could take place only within the confines of Mondocane.

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

It’s hard not to feel a bit scammed, like you just bought a brand-new AAA game and found out most of its content is still locked behind an additional paywall.

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.'

There’s nothing really to recommend The Union except the fact that it exists and you can watch it. It’s a harmless waste of time because it’s a serious waste of a good idea.

The problem is that not enough of the fun rubs off on us, the audience, to make this experience truly worthwhile.

Taylor envisions a 'Hellboy' where the horror matters more than the humor or poetry or romance or even the good vibes, and he’s made a film that proves his take is valid.

It takes a farcical premise and tries to find something meaningful to say about it. It doesn’t succeed, but the effort is worth analyzing.

It’s an overpowering world of steampunk delights, almost Miyazakian in its presentation. It’s hard to complain about a path being well-worn when all the sights will make your eyes pop.

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

The Gates' is constantly on the verge of getting better, sometimes on the verge of getting good, but it never quite gets there. It’s a missed opportunity for thrills, social commentary, humor and/or horror.

“Welcome to Raccoon City” overstuffs itself with so many characters and plot points that nothing has room to develop. The pretty-good cast gets buried alive in a rushed and ill-conceived screenplay, and it doesn’t help that the film is murkily photographed and tonally dreary.

A deft combination of excitement and thoughtfulness, an excellent and unexpected film.

It just never goes far enough with its ridiculousness to reach pure entertainment, and it certainly can’t be taken seriously enough to justify its melodrama.