William Bibbiani

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.

One of Wes Anderson’s best movies, an imaginative and amusing travelogue through incredible settings, populated by wonderful characters, with a lot of heart and even a little insight. You can feel the love radiating off of this movie, like a hug from your own beloved pet.

Dibb’s adaptation will have less of an impact if you aren’t seeing this story play out for the first time, but if you are seeing it for the first time, it’s probably going to break your heart.

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.

It takes extremely familiar plot points and plays them straight, adding nothing new except the premise - a white American joining the Yakuza - which ultimately has very little to do with how the story unfolds. The film might be a functional crime drama but it’s an incredibly unremarkable one.

Death Wish takes the serious topic of vigilante violence and reduces it to melodramatic hero worship, and it’s not even particularly good at that. The action is forgettable and the plot barely holds together.

Red Sparrow is too disturbing and brutal to be popcorn entertainment, and by trying to make the uncomfortable storylines and interminable torture sequences palatable for the audience, it completely undermines its ability to operate as a serious drama.

It takes real intelligence to make the best dumb jokes. Game Night has plenty of both, combining skilled filmmaking and ridiculous gags in equal measure, and letting the seriousness and silliness play off of each other for maximum effect.

Fifty Shades Freed concludes the trilogy as it began, with a romance you can’t believe in, endless montages of affluence, lousy dialogue, weak plotting, and - admittedly - a heck of a lot of sex.

You won't lose yourself in this haunted house, even though that was supposed to be the whole point. A film about a labyrinth filled with ghosts quickly becomes methodical and familiar, stranding a great cast in an inert supernatural thriller.

The familiar story and underdeveloped characters aren't nearly as magical as the animation, but there's still a lot to enjoy in Mary and the Witch's Flower, even if it's not Hiromasa Yonebayashi's best.

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.

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

Saoirse Ronan gives a standout, brilliant performance and so does Laurie Metcalf as her long-suffering, big-hearted mother. It’s a remarkable solo directorial debut from Greta Gerwig.

At its best, All the Money in the World is a rich and exciting story about a woman trapped in a universe of apathetic and powerful men, fighting her way out any which way she can. At its worst it’s a well-shot but ultimately middling thriller.

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.

Scott Cooper directs Hostiles with an eye for quote-unquote “greatness” but the actual material simply isn’t deep enough to justify the solemn presentation. It’s not entertaining, it’s not illuminating, it’s not even complicated. It’s mostly just a bummer.

It’s not very funny, it’s not very dramatic. There’s a spark of intelligence here, a valid critique of doomsday culture and escapism, but it’s the sort of message you can easily get off of a cocktail napkin.

I, Tonya is a fairly conventional biopic of the scandalized sports star, but one buoyed by Margot Robbie's performance.

Gorgeous and unpredictable, and maybe a little indulgent, Phantom Thread is another fascinating drama from Paul Thomas Anderson, with captivating lead performances by Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps.

Steven Spielberg tells an intimate story through extravagant storytelling, giving audiences an intensely relevant historical drama, and giving Meryl Streep one of her most nuanced roles in years.

Molly’s Game doesn’t announce Aaron Sorkin as the next great filmmaker, but he’s a good one. It’s a competently filmed production with some fine performances, but it lacks the focus and showpersonship that would be necessary to make it feel like more.

Gary Oldman gives an impeccable performance as Winston Churchill in a gorgeously photographed, suspenseful World War II film that suffers from too much hero worship.

The Disaster Artist is a hilarious and heart-wrenching ode to outsider art, with a baffling story that would be impossible to believe if it weren’t apparently true. James Franco directs the film with sensitivity and painstaking detail, and gives a fantastic performance as one of the worst filmmakers - and one of the most unusual human beings - ever.

Mudbound is a daring approach to a classical narrative, a film that tries to look from multiple perspectives at an intimate human drama that has far-reaching ramifications. Its imperfections are debatable, and fairly minor. It is the work of a bold storyteller working at the top of her game.

Call Me By Your Name is a romanticized coming of age film, for better and worse. It’s a lovely place to visit but not particularly absorbing as a narrative, even though Armie Hammer gives an impressive performance.

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.

Trier manages to make a movie about passion that feels almost completely detached, right to the end. It’s an approach that gives Thelma, the movie, the appearance of portent without fully exploring the fascinating themes, characters or storylines that might actually have justified that self-serious tone.

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

Daddy’s Home 2 seems like just another cookie-cutter comedy, but its heart is in the wrong place. It’s mean-spirited and half-hearted, and more than that… it’s just not funny.

Fiercely intelligent and deeply suspenseful, Roman J. Israel, Esq. is an absorbing morality tale from writer/director Dan Gilroy, and boasts one of Denzel Washington’s finest performances.

Unsettlingly intimate, and nearly bursting with dread, My Friend Dahmer is an intriguing biopic about the early life of one of America’s most notorious serial killers, with an extraordinary and breakout per-formance by Ross Lynch at its center.

Takashi Miike’s blood-splattered and emotionally ripping Blade of the Immortal is a terrific samurai thriller.

Jigsaw barely feels like a part of the Saw franchise. It has deathtraps, but takes no pleasure in presenting them. It ignores most of the ongoing storyline. If it wasn’t part of the official franchise it would play like a knockoff.

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.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos lures us into his dream and shackles us there, for his own fascinating reasons. The experience is exquisite agony, both revelatory and painful. This is one of the best and most disturbing movies of the year.

A decently made but unsurprising thriller.

Wheelman has a few great action sequences and one interesting idea, but is let down by a mediocre screenplay.

The Snowman is a detective vs. serial killer thriller devoid of any thrills.

The Babysitter had potential but director McG treats this material like it’s one of the lamer American Pie sequels. The broadness of the humor detracts from the characters and the story and the horror, instead of complementing them.

It’s a straightforward celebration of these heroes’ lives, with a few meaningful revelations along the way, but nothing that will completely blow your mind. These are interesting, likable people who led interesting, exciting lives.

My Little Pony: The Movie falls apart in the end because it resolves its conflict the way that conventional blockbusters do, and not in the way that My Little Pony does.

Leatherface is the worst Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie ever.

Flatliners had every opportunity to improve on the original, and it doesn’t take most of them. It falls flat as a horror movie but the cast is good enough, and the sci-fi concepts are interesting enough, to keep it from crashing completely.

Gerald’s Game is a set of tightly wound gears that cranks out dread. Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood are as superb as they have ever been.

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.