Witney Seibold

Godzilla Minus One is one of the rare Godzilla pictures about the indomitability of the human spirit.

"Believer" is not the worst "Exorcist" film by any stretch, but it's certainly the least intriguing. It's a rote, choppy thriller that forgets to scare us.

Expend4bles may be the best of the series. This is not a compliment to Waugh's film, but a mere note on how badly this series of films has fared over the last 13 years. These are useless, badly written gimmick films whose gimmicks never bore fruit. As the title implies, the flick is expendable. Or perhaps expend4ble. Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/1399641/expendables-4-review/

The canon of "The Equalizer" has never taken the world by storm, usually percolating in the background of popular culture as a piece of intense ephemera. Robert McCall is a former Marine and DIA officer, but that is entirely ignored in part 3. He's a superhero played by Denzel Washington, and the filmmakers assume that is enough. For many audience members, it will be.

Overall, the details of Blue Beetle are fun, and the characters may inspire a few warm familial smiles, but the whole is frustratingly shabby and rushed.

There is a great deal missing from Ritchie's film. "The Covenant" is almost aggressive in its complete lack of wartime litigation. While the harrowing nature of a soldier's experience is laid bare, the meaning of the actual, prolonged quagmire of the Afghanistan occupation will be lingering in the back of most audience's minds.

Despite the film's clear edict to include as many tasteless jokes as possible . . . Quasi possesses a strangely disarming, hangout quality, leaving it feeling ultimately harmless and even a little bit friendly.

The Way Back is a somber sports drama more interested in exploring the plight of its hero than in just the big games.

Rambo: Last Blood captures everything that's gone wrong with this action franchise over the years.

Ad Astra is grand but, rather frustratingly, it's not great. James Gray’s film is a most impressive technical achievement, and the first half is exciting and flirts with profundity. The second half, however, slows to a maddeningly sluggish pace, and the film ultimate leaves you worn out and disengaged.

Despite a problematic ending, Midsommar is an emotionally harrowing and slowly insidious journey, languidly forcing dread on the viewer, wrapping them in a weird nightmare summer camp of sunlight and cheer.

Brightburn doesn't take its satire to any kind of satisfying extreme – although a mid-credits stinger does include a larger joke at work – but as a superhero murder thriller, it is perfectly entertaining.

Cold Pursuit is partly a great action thriller, and Liam Neeson is still kicking plenty of butt, but the film is mostly an intriguing, relaxing, totally tuckered-out character study of old men running out of the energy required to run a criminal enterprise. As thrillers go, this one is more adult than your average.

Once Upon a Deadpool is a cute idea that doesn't live up to its potential, leaving audiences with little more than a less interesting version of a better movie they might have loved.

Peter Jackson's technical ambitions sometimes muddy his otherwise moving WWI documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.

Melissa McCarthy gives one of her best performances in a surprisingly relatable story about a criminal misanthrope with a heart beating deep inside her.

The Halloween monster mash iconography is incredibly strong and the cast is excellent, but Goosebumps 2 is in far too much of a hurry – and perhaps too eager to be widely accessible – to be actually scary or wholly effective.

The Old Man & the Gun is a fitting swan song to screen legend Robert Redford.

An exciting and scary final act makes up for a middling kid horror fantasy that is marked by a slow start and an inappropriately comedic tone.

The Darkest Minds is a wholly rote YA sci-fi adventure that continues a genre that is pretty much dying out. Despite this, the film is capable and enjoyable and features a great lead actress in Amandla Stenberg.

The Equalizer 2's conventional storytelling is certainly weak, and the violence is particularly brutal, but Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua have created a unique Punisher-with-heart vigilante character that is a pleasant thrill to watch and a modest delight to revisit.

Certainly weird, confrontational, wildly satirical, and certainly unique, Sorry to Bother You is one of the funniest, energetic, and best films of the year.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is a darkly thrilling film with excellent performances, and its gritty, intense action is balanced by heady themes of moral decay, but overall, because of recent political developments, it feels behind the times.

Superfly features an appealing lead, and captures small tastes of amazing, striking cool, but is also bogged down by plot and characters that reduce an otherwise slick flick into something that is more capable than amazing.

Action Point contains some crazy stunts and some funny-ish gross-out humor, but is ultimately a pale echo of the dark destruction Johnny Knoxville became famous for.

Although featuring some good acting, and certainly ambitious in its critique of the characters, American Animals is too sleepy to strike a chord.

Mary Shelley's fascinating life story is told to contain a few brief glimpses of modern insight, but ultimately weakens under its over-use of conventional, romantic storytelling tropes.

The chases and gunfights in Manhunt are impressive and brisk, containing just as much panache as you remember from John Woo films of 20 years ago. The plot, however, is even more old-fashioned, effectively undercutting any drama with a silly cheesiness that may not always work.