William Bibbiani

The cast does the best they can to save the weak material, and it’s interesting to see how the filmmakers are trying to make this off-putting concept work. But it's not funny enough, or even weird enough, to get away with it.

Exactly the kind of insipid malarky superhero movies spent the last few decades trying to prove that they’re not.

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.

A few sharp moments can’t compensate for a film that feels half-developed, and only half-heartedly told. Like its protagonist, Bad Samaritan isn’t quite as bad as it could have been, but it’s not good either.

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

Breaking In is a clever twist not the home invasion genre, with a dynamic lead performance by Gabrielle Union as a mother protecting her family. It’s a crowd-pleasing thriller, good but never quite great, because the story collapses under scrutiny. The film is trying to be clever and yet it relies on big, and obvious gaps in logic, but those flaws probably won't ruin the experience.

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.

If you can get past the many bizarre inconsistencies, The Star is a relatively decent film for young Christian audiences. The writing, voice-acting and animation are unremarkable, but they get the job done, and the film’s heart seems to be in the right place.

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.

A road trip fugitive movie which barely works as a road trip, or as a fugitive movie, or as a movie.

It’s a film that’s full of love, but it’s an unhealthy love that’s detached from reality and the movie seems detached as well. It’s too maudlin to convey its own moral complexity and too foreboding to be sentimental.

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.

Absurd as it is, Moonfall represents yet another bold stroke of maximalist grandeur from a filmmaker who excels at making overwhelming chaos look beautiful.

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

Most of this new House Party is relatively uninspired, a modest and mediocre comedy that relies more on its high-concept plot to capture the audience’s attention than on interesting characters or, you know, jokes.

Even though they sometimes land a great joke, the troopers aren’t inherently amusing or even all that likable this time around. They’re undeniably corrupt cops, even if they are relatively benign about it. Super Troopers 2 still manages to be funny quite a bit of the time, but the word “funny” needs an asterisk next to it, warning that the laughs might carry with them a certain amount of guilt.

Summer Camp is not a particularly good movie but it’s the kind of movie that makes a film critic wonder what 'good' really is, anyway."

Yes, the movie looks scary. So scary it could almost be confused for a scary movie. Almost. But only if you’re not paying attention, and miss how shallow, derivative and underwritten it is.

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

Besson’s film feels like a relic by most modern standards: It’s a formulaic thriller from a director who invented this very specific formula, and just about all it’s good for is introducing audiences to Sasha Luss, who carries the film with elegant strength and unleashes a satisfying fury whenever she’s allowed to destroy or humiliate her oppressors.

The Carpenter’s Son' is a Biblical horror movie with interesting ideas. They just don’t seem interesting because the perspective is cockeyed, which nullifies the film’s ability to trouble our hearts.

Tim Story takes a classic movie franchise and drains it of all the action, sex and topicality that made it worth revisiting in the first place. Jackson, Roundtree and Usher have star power to spare but they’re asked to perform embarrassing and ignorant comedy routines, and the action is so unremarkable that the movie can’t even rely on that spectacle to compensate.

Fireworks takes you on that little journey. It may affect you deeply, or it may just come and go, a fizzling sentimental aside in an otherwise hectic day. But it’s hard to deny that it approaches its fantastical story with maturity and grace, and a thoughtfulness about what it would truly mean to leap into a “what if” and seriously consider never coming out again.

Domino offers a sloppy screenplay with underdeveloped characters and a half-written plot, pumped full of racist, fear-mongering, one-dimensional villainy. Only the most diehard De Palma fans will find anything to intrigue them, and they’re going to have to sift through a lot of boring junk to find it.

Beneath Us never lets the exploitation cinema elements get in the way of the serious conversation about actual, real-life exploitation. That makes it frightening, and that makes it bold.

It’s a mismatched buddy comedy which tries — and sometimes succeeds — to tell an emotional story about processing failure and shame, but it doesn’t have anything terribly interesting to say about it.

The screenplay captures the grizzled-cop-movie tone and draws some memorable characters, but the storyline is rote, the mystery is frustratingly predictable, and the imaginative deaths are less imaginative than ever. Spiral sacrifices entertainment value for respectability and in the process doesn’t quite achieve either.