William Bibbiani

The fourth best animated Lord of the Rings feature, which sounds pretty good until you remember there are only four of them.

This Count Orlock is a gruesome monstrosity, gnawed on and gnarled, as repulsive as movie monsters get. But he is now also that sexual creature, a hypermasculine 1970s porn star, as virile as he is virulent.

There’s nothing particularly terrible about Moana 2, but the fact that it’s necessary to write 'there’s nothing particularly terrible about Moana 2' means something still went wrong.

Even the quietest moments of 'Flow' are tainted by existential threat. It’s suspenseful and pensive and painful in a way few films strive for, and fewer still achieve.

The story’s playful, subversive reinterpretation of 'The Wizard of Oz' as a work of propaganda, designed to obfuscate the true story of how political dissidents and minority groups are demonized by fascist con artists who trade in theatricality instead of competence, is fully developed and still (to our collective dismay) incredibly salient.

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.

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 a little happy, a little sad, a little off-putting, a lot like going home again. And it’s always interesting.

One emerges from the theater thinking we may have just had a good time, but the more it sits with you, the more you realize that no matter how epic the battles were — and they certainly were epic — they didn’t have anywhere near the same impact as the original.

Christina Milian and Devale Ellis are adorable. That’s the whole movie in a nutshell. Nothing else has to work in order to get what we need out of it. Pentatonix can’t even play themselves convincingly, at all, and it still doesn’t hurt this thing.

Red One might not save Christmas but at least it saves face.

This isn’t the first sequel to desperately transplant its characters into a tropical or jungle locale, and it isn’t the best. Then again, the competition includes Weekend at Bernie’s II, Speed 2: Cruise Control and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, so it isn’t the worst either.

Neeson]’s trapped once again in tired tough guy material, bringing gravity to a film that’s already dragging him — and the audience — down.

A bright, entertaining, intelligent film about how easy it is to get distracted by superficiality, and how important it is to look at Christmas — and by extension, Christianity — from a fresh and even critical perspective.

The time travel stuff is mined for funny jokes for a few minutes and then the film shows zero interest in all the worms it’s uncanned. It’s a whole lot of “what ifs” and not a lot of “then whats.”

It’s got great heroes, a memorable villain, and more whimsy than is probably recommended by medical science. Which is to say, just the right amount of whimsy.

All that effort and innovation and ambition amounts, in Zemeckis’ film, to little more than a mawkish intergenerational drama. Here genuinely seems to believe that the history of the world peaked with the possibility of mom and dad getting a divorce.

Brian Netto and Adam Schindler’s gimmicky nail-biter is intense and creative enough to quicken your heartbeat and make you wonder if you’d be clever enough to survive in the same situation.

A cheeseburger on Amazon Prime’s value menu, but they left out the cheese. And the meat.

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

Whenever the filmmaker’s emphasis is on the sinful humanity of these men of God, reducing them to Machiavellian backstabbers, it’s a satisfying and absorbing yarn. When it tries to say something profound — while refusing to acknowledge the many elephants who populate the Vatican’s many rooms — it makes cardinal errors.

An ordinary feature that could have been extraordinary as a series of three shorts. Instead, this is what we’ve got: a vaguely watchable animated Christmas movie that only works in fits and starts.

Allswell is one of those rare movies that feels less like a cinematic presentation and more like a personal invitation into someone’s home.

Brothers takes a tediously familiar comedy story structure and hangs some genuinely interesting characters and performances on it. It’s like a Frankenstein monster made out of Raising Arizona and Dumb and Dumber To.

Smile 2 is more of the same. A lot more. But it’s just as scary, and this time it’s feistier and funnier, proving that the premise has legs and also some malleability.

The story isn’t so hot. At least the leads are. That’s not enough to make Lonely Planet a good film, but it might be enough to get through all 94 minutes without clicking on something else instead. Maybe

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.

Taylor envisions a 'Hellboy' where the horror matters more than the humor or poetry or romance or even the good vibes, and he’s made a film that proves his take is valid.