William Bibbiani

The scares are ridiculous, the plot makes no sense, and you’ll probably spend the whole running time wishing someone would spill a drink on their keyboard and erase the movie's hard drive.

Despite the film’s good intentions it’s an underwhelming adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, with cute side gags that make more of an impression than the characters or the story.

Joaquin Phoenix gives an admirable performance as an interesting artist, whose life story otherwise gets the short shrift by this conventional drama with a frustratingly narrow focus.

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.

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.

The First Purge completely earns its action-packed and rousing finale, but getting there certainly takes a while.

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.

Damsel is viciously whimsical, if such a thing is possible, and it’s thrillingly subversive. But the punchline comes early, and it’s only repeated as the film progresses.

All the human strife, all the political squabbling, comes across like an excuse to be “badass” but high-minded about it. The film’s shootouts are “cool” but lack anything resembling a meaningful perspective, so when the characters talk about the political rationales for their violence, it rings hollow. And when the bullets fly, nothing else seems like it ever mattered.

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.

Bernard and Huey isn’t particularly funny, although the script does tend to pump out a zinger once in a while. It isn’t particularly tragic, because the plight of these characters is well-earned.

It’s a stylish and amusing thriller, but a hollow one, with mostly broad-stroke characters populating an otherwise ultra-detailed fictional criminal underworld. Fans of crime movies like John Wick will be entertained by the big ideas and backstories, but they probably won’t form the kind of connection they have to other, better films of its ilk.

Hereditary is one of the scariest movies around, and a spectacular showcase for actors Toni Collette and Alex Wolff. The film’s subtle shocks and realistic drama combine to create a dreamlike atmosphere, drenched in psychological horror, which builds and builds to a climax that you won’t forget anytime soon.

Ocean’s 8 is the most satisfying installment in the franchise. The all-star cast is impeccable, the shift in focus yields sharp insights, and the heist itself is wily and enjoyable. What the film lacks in suspense it makes up for in style, and that style has undeniable substance.

Upgrade is an intense sci-fi action thriller with big ideas, incredible action and a remarkable lead performance.

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.

It’s gorgeous, it’s distinctive, it’s quirky, it’s definitely about mermaids, and it might just make you question your sanity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s a sweet story about someone who doesn’t know what their story is. It’s a funny film about seriously figuring yourself out. It’s a serious film about pain, in which no one intentionally inflicts it. Craig Johnson might not have made a particularly strange film, but it’s a particularly kind one, and it’s worth loving.

Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare is what happens when high concepts crash. The audience is here to watch people play a deadly game of Truth or Dare, and yet the film’s truths and dares are unremarkable, and the players are mostly boring.

This is a film about pain, and it forces the audience to live in and work through that pain. And it’s absolutely worth the effort. By the end it’s a transformative experience.

Unsane is a creepy little thriller, with a concept that could terrify just about anybody, and a plot that wobbles but ultimately stays on the rails. Claire Foy gives a standout performance and Steven Soderbergh’s intimate visual style sells the idea that we are watching something horribly sinister get revealed.

Without a strong guiding hand we’re left with a finely acted, but only adequate biopic, which brushes against greatness and then paints over it.

Game Over, Man! is a sloppy production, with screaming and bullying used as a placeholder for actual jokes. The characters are such enormous jerks that they probably don’t deserve to succeed, at anything, so it’s hard to want to follow their adventures through an entire film.

It’s a speedy adventure with diverse action set pieces and a mystery that boasts at least one halfway decent twist.