All of Ridley Scott's glorious pageantry is undercut by a script tragically burdened by cliches and characters who make stupid choices.

Carell, Chalamet and their supporting players can only spit-shine a relatively rote addiction story so much; by the time the thrill of their work passes, it’s easy to find oneself waiting for more.

It’s not that a great disaster movie can’t be made in two hours or less, it’s that Roland Emmerich doesn’t know how to do it.

It’s probably a bad sign that of all the players in this film, the dinosaurs are probably the ones one roots for the most. They didn’t ask to be revived for a confusing new era filled with cars and pollution and ridiculous celebrity lawsuits! They’re dinosaurs! They’re innocent in all this!"

Sometimes you’re laughing at the movie, not with it. But there are plenty of laughs, no matter what.

The Little Hours is reasonably entertaining, but it hints just enough at something deeper that it may well leave you wanting.

It’s genuinely funny at times, but at two hours, it drags on for far too long, and Chastain suffers from having to hold up too much of the film’s weight on her thickly padded shoulders. It’s a killer performance looking for a movie to support it, and it’s just not here.

There’s a rich, hilarious novelty to the film’s juxtaposition of glittering pop and ultraviolence, but by virtue of the clear disconnect between story and song, that novelty quickly wears thin.

Mister America aims for the acerbic pitch of a ‘70s alternative political farce like The Candidate, but the parting feeling is that it’s just an overdeveloped ramble. It’s not ha-ha funny, which is fine in the world of a muted humor like this. But like Heidecker’s campaign, it’s not entirely convincing as a satire either.

The Mule is a functional take on capitalism, work-life balance, and the creeping, overlong process that is aging. The tense moments click.

Though it may not be an awards contender, there are still sparks throughout to appreciate, especially in Blunt and Evans’ performances. Thanks to them, there’s a lot of humanity to be found in the film — the best and the worst of it.

A lot of it’s funny — especially any scenes involving Powell’s admittedly charming Finnegan or Hoechlin’s testy McReynolds– but hanging out with these guys eventually becomes a chore.

Kinda Pregnant is a relatively painless, if predictable, diversion.

While it flirts with some exciting and original concepts, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things is plagued with an uninspired story, flat characters, and a pair of romantic leads that have zero chemistry. It’s not overtly offensive, but it’s certainly the kind of movie we won’t remember two time-loops from now.

The performances are strong, and the film excels in isolated setpieces. It’s just a shame to see a neat idea largely go to waste.

When Lawrence plays to the cheap seats, the film comes to life. When she’s the blank slate expected of a spy thriller, it falters, because it doesn’t play as though she’s concealing or deceiving. It plays as though she’s empty

Compared to a lot of other Adam Sandler movies, Hubie Halloween is watchable without being actually very good.

Things move at such a breakneck pace and the film is so manic tonally that Rough Night winds up feeling more like a series of vignettes than an actual movie.

Peninsula combines components from I Am Legend, Mad Max, and the Fast & Furious series for a nonsensical joy ride that, while entertaining, lacks the sharpness of its predecessor.

While The Call of the Wild is silly, and never completely pulls the wool over the eyes with respect to the CGI, there’s enough meat on the bone to gnaw on before burying it in the backyard.

Eve’s backstory proves relatively trite, and the character is given nothing to connect with before or after she sets off on her quest.

While the film’s intentions are noble, and its story worth retelling, it struggles throughout to lend a lasting weight to its straightforward plotting.

It’s great to see Arnie and Linda Hamilton in the saddle again, and Davis and Reyes are welcome additions to the cast, but it’s probably time to terminate this franchise for good, and be thankful they went out on this serviceable note.

The Monster is worth watching for Kazan and Ballentine.

Gray’s many fans will probably love Armageddon Time, and it may even win over some more neutral viewers who respond to his decidedly non-nostalgic look at a pivotal (and not especially promising) moment in U.S. history. But anyone who has found his movies less articulate than the ideas behind them will only get occasional respite here.

With its wacky space shit, off-kilter gore, creepy atmospherics, and hammy breakdown, most of which happen all at the same time, Colour Out of Space is, inarguably, one hell of a trip. It’s just not a trip that everyone is going to enjoy taking.

For its unconventional structure and occasional flights of fancy, The Glorias all too often reads as a bog-standard biopic more interested in recounting history than telling a story.

Better than My Super-Ex Girlfriend, sloppier than Hancock, it’s nothing dynamic but fun all the same. And frankly, not every superhero flick or comedy needs to be the Super-person of its domain. Likability is sometimes an underrated super-power, and Thunder Force is bursting with it.

Murray and Wever are as attuned to their roles as Smith is awkward and miscast in his. But perhaps that’s an appropriate fit for Harron and Turner’s divisive-yet-gripping take on this story: at the end of the day, the Manson women are deeper, more fascinating, and more worthy of exploration than the insecure man that connected them.

Towards the end of the film, Bale’s character embarks on a monologue about the “power of kindness” and the “tapestry of life” that is so wildly heavy-handed it almost veers into parody. Perhaps it wouldn’t feel so hollow, so blatantly fraudulent and insincere, if it were written by someone else, but we’ll never know.

Watching John Wick: Chapter 4 sometimes felt like watching an above-average assembly cut. At an unwieldy two hours and 49 minutes, your eye will immediately be drawn to what cuts through the noise — and there are plenty of these moments. But “moments” does not a well-told “movie” make.

Underdeveloped characters and a mishandling of their queerness make the film feel both exploitative and disappointingly flat – and while all the whimsy, color, and dance-punk needle drops are welcome, they’re only brief distractions from Drive-Away Dolls’ speedbumps.

McDonagh seems to have more to say in this film, but it’s lost among the narrative and stylistic inconsistencies.

In fits and starts, the film matches the fire of its lead performance. Miles Ahead is far from a traditional, boilerplate music biopic, for better and worse alike.

To watch it is to open a pizza box that’s been jostled a few too many times. Inside, the cheese clings to the cardboard, sauce splashes against the sides, and pepperonis drip with grease. It might be sloppy, but you’ll be damned if it don’t still taste good.

The performances are so strong in Other People that they just about make up for the weak storytelling. Maybe “weak” isn’t the best definition for writer/director Chris Kelly’s debut feature film, but its structure definitely pales in comparison to all the effort given on screen.

It’s refreshing to see a buddy movie reclaim some of the grit and emotional connection of bygone decades, but for all of its killer fight sequences and shootouts, Stuber just isn’t all that funny after a while.

This Ben-Hur is closer to an ‘80s actioner about two men who once loved each other parting ways, only to reunite and settle their differences through vicious means.

The problem is that something never adds up to much of anything. Even thematically, the whole picture feels all over the place, oscillating hazily between half-baked meditations on man vs. nature and unfinished portraits of family values. Even so, Saulnier’s scope and visual endurance is admirable, to say the least, and it’s clear that he could do something this brazen eventually with a much stronger script.

How To Be Single doesn’t break much at all in the way of new ground, but it’s a decent walk over well-trodden territory.

The film’s belief in and commitment to the simplicity of its premise takes it a lot farther than it might otherwise go.

It’s handsomely made, and Erivo carries the film on her shoulders, but its movements are too clumsy to give Tubman the actualization she deserves.

The faults of Gemini are in its screenplay, and Katz’s inability to sustain interesting character dynamics and maintain a consistent narrative. As a director, Gemini is easily Katz’s most confident outing to date.

Fans of [Herzog's] unique style and humor will find much to enjoy in Salt and Fire, even if the film does lack some proper cohesion. Anyone who’s wavering in their critical affections, however, can easily use this as an example of what happens when a good artist buys into their own hype and mythology.

Spree works better as a performance piece for Keery, who never eases up on the pedal. He’s legitimately haunting as Kurt, and like the best sociopaths in film, there’s a subtle guilt that comes from wanting to see what he’ll do next. Oddly enough, that feeling speaks louder than anything actually said in the film.

There was a point, midway through the film’s major third-act climax, CGI beast raging against CGI beast, when a thought came to this humble critic: “This shouldn’t be boring.” And yet this is what happens, when there’s no emotional weight to the stakes, and the characters themselves feel as hollow as the earth they live on.

In the end, it’s less the Circle of Life and more the Line of Indifference.

Legacy wears its heart on its sleeve and you can feel the love for the source material. There’s an endearing and timely focus on building community, which is foundational to real witchcraft, and the message that our differences are what make us strong is one worth repeating at every opportunity. Unfortunately, there are key ingredients missing in the cauldron, and the film feels stilted by its narrative arc.

Concrete Cowboy is visually engaging, and might appeal to younger teenagers (its R-rating is primarily for language). But anyone already familiar with the dynamics of summer-vacation character-building may find it unsatisfying—even unconvincing.

Imagine all the best parts of E.T. (written, like this film, by the late Melissa Mathison) and all the worst parts of Hook, and you have a pretty solid picture of what it’s like to spend two hours with The BFG.

To have seen a disaster movie before is to have seen The Wave. But if there’s not necessarily anything remarkable or new about the film, Uthaug finds ways to make the familiar immediate, with a fraction of the money usually involved.

There’s a note of reflexive, self-aware irony to it, but portions of Knight of Cups feels as though they’re indulging in precisely this same kind of early-college navel-gazing.

A comedy of manners and femininity gets bisected by gnarly effects, and the two-tone approach works in its way.

Every time you think Hypnotic has fully lost you, it’ll do something just interesting enough to pull you back in.

To be clear, Dragon is not the worst live-action remake this year — congrats to Snow White on holding onto that prize. It’s just a slightly distorted copy of what came before. Its best attributes are fully a credit to the original, while its worst qualities all come from the foolishness of adapting a movie that was just fine the way it was.

Everything, Everything is a film that achieves its ends in appealing fashion.

Take away the delusions of grandeur, and the film is a perfectly acceptable – even enjoyable – tour vlog of a particularly interesting set of shows.

In spite of sensational direction from Trey Edward Shults and raw, emotive performances by Kelvin Harrison, Jr. and Taylor Russell, the polarizing two narrative halves of Waves don’t gel to produce a satisfying whole.

Andra Day’s Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Billie Holiday elevates this film and allows us to overlook some of its shortcomings. Her onstage presence is absolutely undeniable. However, Daniels’ interpretation of the singer’s final years fails to fully explore key aspects of Holiday’s life that informed who she was beyond her addiction and activism.

The more affecting moments in Sully come when the film puts aside its posturing and really examines what it is to be heroic in a cynical age.

The strong atmospherics and performances aren’t quite enough to keep In the Tall Grass from feeling like, well, wandering through a bunch of tall grass.

It’s the awkward tween of gay coming-of-age movies: earnest and confident, but more than a little clumsy.

Morbius, at best, will be remembered as the latest effort on Sony's part to make its nascent Sinister Six franchise happen. And, like "fetch," it's hard to see that happening.

Here’s a film with all the right ingredients and a few too many wrong moves, yet one that’s admirable for trying as hard as it does.

The question is whether its lol-random approach will appeal to you, or whether its giddy need to throw everything at the wall just flattens into an obnoxious desire to please. Prisoners of the Ghostland knows exactly what it is, but that may not necessarily be a good thing.

At its core, it’s a simple and triumphant tale of sisterhood, but with so much ladled on top of it it begins to feel as though it’s grasping for a grandeur it doesn’t need. Sometimes, even the most intense emotions can benefit from a light touch.

John and the Hole is more of a collection of memorably uncomfortable scenes as opposed to a cohesive (w)hole.

While some viewers may get enough of a nostalgia kick out of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, the film doesn’t feel entirely fleshed out. There are elements that make for creepy experiences, keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, but they often serve as short bundles of anxiety in a serviceable story.

Houston’s magic as a performer was in her unpredictability; her voluminous range, the trailing vocal journey her famous runs took us on from note to note, measure to measure. When she (and Ackie) come alive on stage, Lemmons’ biopic soars with vibrating energy. It’s all the moments in between that grow ever more frustrating — the thin characterization, the flattening of her story into Behind the Music story beats, rushing from milestone to milestone without taking a breath.

What really hurts the film is its messy screenplay and boilerplate direction.

At the end of the day, the best parts of Snow White are the parts that feel genuinely real and authentic. If only there were more of those, and less screen time spent dancing in the realm of mind-breaking absurdity.

The movie is too vividly realized to be boring, but it spends a lot of time scrambling out of the gap between pulpy fun and serious allegory. It’s also hobbled by the fact that it’s very much, as the opening credits say, Part 1; no real resolution is offered by the end of its 155 minutes. It’s just half a movie.

The film is a friendly, warm, and inviting documentary that dances and shouts without ever shaking its body down to the ground. There aren’t any revelations, there aren’t any demons, and there’s zero drama. It’s simply another rolodex of talking heads — including David Byrne, speak of the devil — that want to talk about Michael Jackson.

Of course, there are still product placements, and lowbrow jokes, but there’s an empathetic streak in Sandy Wexler. And that’s something we haven’t seen from Sandler in a long time.

The franchise, however, feels less solid than Washington’s performance. There’s a formulaic quality to it, an aversion to the basics of world-building that gives The Equalizer 2 an outdated feel in a cinematic landscape where more attention is being paid to continuity and myth-making.

In turning Force Majeure from a sophisticated tale of broken masculinity into a thunderingly-obvious marital drama, Downhill unfortunately lives up to its title.

Even if this story doesn’t hold its weight, it contains several worthwhile themes and ideas. Emancipation is an average film searching for something better, but can’t figure out how to get there.

It’s easy, breezy, and centered around a core of welcome sweetness. Unfortunately, it’s also far less thoughtful about its body positivity message than it thinks it is.

It’s steamy and transgressive in a straightforward way, an in-your-face bacchanal of sex and violence of the kind Fennell so delights in depicting. But as the film barrels toward its bonkers but highly predictable twist, the shine on Saltburn begins to fade.

As a family movie, Detective Pikachu is enjoyable enough. But if the Pokémon games drew players into the world through immersion, it’s then strange that the first major live-action adaptation frequently races through those moments of immersion in order to get to the next sequence of middling buddy-cop banter.

Power Rangers ably sates all appetites: it’s absurd enough to avoid the self-seriousness that threatens to swallow it throughout, but just straight-faced enough to stop short of the kind of referential irony that would sink it.

Life is like a box of mediocrity. You more-or-less know exactly what you’re gonna get. But for what it’s worth, Daniel Espinosa’s space shocker, while totally born from the same stars as many other films, still lands about half the time.

A boilerplate action-comedy, that, while not wholly original, provides enough memorable two-fisted tough guy action and likable characters to waste a Wednesday night with on the fly.

After their muddled but well-meaning Tammy, McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone’s follow up is a superior mix of jokes, to the point that even when the film misses its mark, McCarthy and her crew wheel and deal to the bitter end.

What Skin lacks in history, context, or behavioral psychology, it compensates for with pure angst, dread, and guilt. It’s the human element, the bare skin as it were, that makes this film stand out. It’s a melodrama with characters that inspire interest, if not fondness.

Bugonia, the newest movie from Yorgos Lanthimos, features a simple-enough structure, some stunning performances, and some twists that make it damn hard to write about without getting into spoilers.

There’s a lot to sink your teeth into with Emily the Criminal, between its strong Plaza turn and a pitch-black moral core that refreshingly commits to the bit. But outside of those devilish comforts, a lot of Ford’s debut is frustratingly thin, more concerned with giving Plaza plenty of opportunities to bore through the screen with her eyes in extreme close-up than in really breaking down her psychology and the perverse romance at its center.

Halloween deserves credit for its efforts to balance old and new, for taking us back to Haddonfield in a way that isn’t purely for cheap nostalgia, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s something more that it could have been achieved.

It feels like a missed opportunity overall, a movie that’s just funny enough often enough to make you wish that more of it fit together.

While Long Strange Trip is full of rare or untouched archival video and audio, there are very few revelatory treasures to tell those seriously interested in understanding the Dead’s impact something new.

Green Book means so well, and admittedly, it just gets by on its leads and its good humor.

Get Me Roger Stone offers its audience an unblinking, if disappointingly straightforward, look at the infamous operator.

As Stefan might say, this movie’s got everything (you’d expect from a Sundance movie): A period coming-of-age story inspired by the filmmaker’s own life, broader political themes, known stars like Linney and Harrelson playing eccentric characters, and a weepy conclusion.

Rebecca is a psychologically rich story with so much to pick at and probe. That means decisions need to be made on where to focus, and Wheatley bats about .500 in that respect.

Schwimmer’s great in a role that’s very much in his wheelhouse, but the second half never quite lives up to the first half, and the first half feels incomplete as a narrative, which leaves the whole film feeling like a disappointment.

For a film that’s all about hope and rebellion, it’s kind of ironic how it’s such a conflicted mess in and of itself. The Force should have been stronger with this one.

Trap does have one brilliant touch: At its best, Shyamalan has given us a perfect portrait of the power of straight white male privilege.

Though Raya and the Last Dragon is a visual and audible spectacle anchored by an all-star cast, the film’s lack of originality and paper-thin characters leave it on the less memorable end of Disney animated films.