William Bibbiani

Although it’s almost too much story, too much humor, and too many ideas for one movie to contain, the breathlessness of Happy Death Day 2U is irresistible. This is one frightfully clever sequel that audiences will want to revisit again… and again… and again… and again… and again…

The House With a Clock in Its Walls is easily Eli Roth’s best motion picture, and that’s not an attempt to damn the film with faint praise. It’s a spooky and amusing piece of family-friendly Halloween cinema, sharply produced and mostly effective, told with skill and panache.

The target demographic for Lorne is SNL fans who won’t benefit from a documentary like Lorne.

Zombie’s film, though clearly sweet and well-intentioned, seems only partially formed, a Frankenstein monster with only half the parts.

The good news, for a lot of people, is that Maggie Gyllenhaal just made your new favorite movie. The bad news is… hang on, let me see if I can find any… no, I got nothing. There is no bad news.

It’s in little danger of becoming a classic but it’s gratifying to know that Barry Jenkins made this film his own, telling a fine story with genuine emotion and visual aplomb.

Scarlet' might be [Mamoru Hosoda]'s most narratively ambitious work to date, adapting and warping one of the most famous tales ever told, adding new layers of complexity, and centuries of new, invaluable context.

It’s What’s Inside understands the concept of sympathy, but with people like this, the movie advises against it.

It’s a well-intentioned comedy with funny performances and a handful of great humorous set pieces. If it feels as though it’s three or four different movies fighting each other for dominance, then at least those movies are all, in their own separate ways, relatively entertaining and amusing.

Isn’t so much a movie as it is a corporate merger with stabbings and wiener jokes. A shameless piece of self-congratulation, fueled by self-cannibalism.

Louis Leterrier’s installment does an impressive job of making all the old nonsense make a little bit of sense again. It’s got the absurd action sequences we’ve come to expect, but instead of following a small army of unstoppable heroes, Letterier’s film casts them as underdogs against an even more unstoppable villain.

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.)

Scott Cooper has directed a film with a gimmicky premise but genuine dramatic weight, anchored by handsome filmmaking and striking performances.

The fact that it's released by Paramount plays like a punchline, and it’s unclear who’s getting punched.

The pros don’t come from trustworthy sources and the cons require a lot more elaboration.

Swapped won’t change the world, probably, but it’s a step above a lot of similar films and an effective fantasy story for all ages.

It’s intelligently crafted and falls together quite well, despite a narrative that turns complicated quite quickly. You are safe in writer/directors Logan George and Celine Held’s hands. They’ve thought it all through.

It’s a larger than life World War II thriller in the Guy Ritchie house style, and he strikes a fine, fun balance between the threat that the Nazis posed and the thrill of watching hunky heroes slaughter them at great length, then chuckle and smoke cigarettes and call each other 'old boy' about 50 million times.

It may freak you out a little bit, and that may be enough for some people, but it only briefly grabs hold of something significant. Then it lets go.

No matter how frightening the individual moments may be, and no matter how impressive it is that we only ever see enough of the monster to excite our imagination, and no matter how exceptionally the eerie sound design turns out to be, The Boogeyman never quite gets under the skin.

Even though 'Whistle' offers nothing new to the supernatural death curse genre, it’s directed by Corin Hardy, and Corin Hardy likes to go hog wild.

An awful story, in a great way.

It’s a weird and wonderful superhero adventure that strives — and almost succeeds — to be the most epic superhero movie ever made.

It may not provide the rush of adrenaline that many people seek from their horror movies but Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is a smart and elegant piece of creepiness.

It’s hard to imagine a film with less strength of conviction than The Flash, a time travel movie about why it’s bad to retcon the past, but which exists entirely to convince the audience that retconning the past, present and (potentially) the future of the DC superhero franchise is a super cool thing to do.

Polsky’s film digs into the rot in his characters’ psyches for a time but gradually climbs back out again, perhaps in an attempt to put their madness in a larger context social context. But mostly the final act of the film comes across like clunky, though well-earned, moralizing.

The contrast between the impossible events happening on-screen and the hyper-realism of the imagery doesn’t always work in the the movie’s favor.

he Secret Life of Pets 2 is a fast-paced string of mostly mediocre jokes that younger audiences will enjoy, but aside from a few centerpieces, there's not much here to capture the attention if you're older than the intended audience.