William Bibbiani

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.