The film starts to risk adrenaline fatigue after the first hour.

However handsomely and efficiently staged, the actual action in this action movie feels immaterial. It’s a foregone conclusion that Mills is going to get his daughter back, no matter what obstacles are thrown in his way.

Loud, gory, sometimes silly, sometimes scary, and nearly always constant fun, Studio 666 is tailored to a pretty specific audience but has the potential to break outside of that niche, thanks to its commitment to old-school horror tropes with a hearty side of rock and roll.

Director Wes Ball frames the film as one long siege on the central city with few exceptions, and while that lends it a certain sense of momentum, after a while the sensation of watching it turns into one of checking off boxes

Even its ornamental excesses become beside the point, because the core conceit actually works. Boy, those George Michael songs bind the scenes together like Gorilla Glue. Nothing says quaint like Tom Ford storefronts, too. But these things fade into something warmer, grander, and even a bit telling.

As successful as its biggest, wildest swings are, it'd really be nice if the plotting of The Marvels lived up to those elements. That said, those other elements are hard to oversell. It might not be the most coherent MCU entry of 2023. But it's perhaps the most purely enjoyable.

Does Rebirth set up a promising new future for the franchise, as its title suggests? Not exactly — again, this feels very much like a stand-alone adventure. But it does prove that it’s still possible to tell a suspenseful and exciting stand-alone story within this franchise; while it might not quite match the original, it at least doesn’t lose sight of its most compelling elements. Dinosaurs might be dying out. But the audience’s desire to watch them gobble up humans will never go extinct.

Scoff, roll your eyes, and shrug all you want, but the hyperbolic nature of The Hunt is all part of the fun, and whether you take this literally, or metaphorically, rhetorically, spiritually, whatever, it all boils down to a big ol’ sensationalized portrait of a very heated country.

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

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 There’s a formulaic quality to it, an aversion to the basics of world-building that gives The Equalizer 2 an outdated feel in a cinematic landscape where more attention is being paid to continuity and myth-making.

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.

It isn’t the gritty, realistic portrayal of life on the streets that Caple might have been going for — he’s too poetic a filmmaker for that — but it lends shape and color to a truth that too many inner-city kids know too well: It doesn’t matter if you care about the future. The future doesn’t give a shit about you.

Fire Saga manages glimmers of fun through its laborious two-hour runtime when it sits the hell down and plays some fun Eurovision-y songs, but there are too many false notes in between to justify trucking through the tedium to find them. Just hit up the soundtrack when it comes out and bop along to some goofy songs.

Behind Meet Cute‘s smart performances and effortless humor lies a bittersweet tale about the agony of choosing to live another day, of making decisions not knowing whether they’re the right ones.

What’s more universal are the lingering feelings of loss and wasted time, and that wondering of what could have been. It’s a heartbreaking theme to reflect on both in terms of real-world consequences and for the characters at hand, and it’s one that may leave you just a little teary-eyed by the film’s closing moments.

The experience of watching Ticket to Paradise is pleasant enough; it goes down easy, like a smooth sugary mai tai. And for a while, it’s nice to just luxuriate in the confident hands of Clooney and Roberts, two movie stars who can coast through any old crap and make it fun. But after the sugar high of the honest-to-goodness blooper reel in the opening credits wears off, the rest of it is liable to give you a hangover.

Despite a fascinating set up, Zombie takes an extravagant U-turn straight back to The Devil’s Rejects to try his hand at telling it all over again. In the end, what could have been something more instead falls back into comfortable, familiar territory that’s bloated by meandering filler.

The chemistry between the two leads may not be indestructible, but luckily, their comedic chops and charismatic air give us a lot to root for.

Beneath the layers of magical realism and dot-com satire, American Society feels personal and raw, capturing the real depth and range of emotions that a person of color is made to feel, living in a country where racism remains ever-present, especially now.

Blonde is a maddening watch, a frustrating fumbling of the delicate tonal balance required to say what Dominik’s angling to say about his subject. It both condemns the conditions Marilyn suffered under while elevating it to the status of beautiful sacrifice. It’s demonstrably not a biopic, and yet its usage of a real-life figure, and the miseries she experienced, feels too cavalier to completely separate the two.

The real horrors of campus assaults should be examined, and horror makes for a perfect vehicle for that discussion. Yet this remake’s ambitions are too lofty for its own good. The messaging forgoes finesse and grace in favor of blatant lecturing, cramming patriarchy, rape culture, toxic masculinity, and white male rage all in an unsatisfying Christmas horror package.

It succeeds as a minor work from Jody Hill, which if nothing else is still good for more than a few laughs.

Much like the characters themselves, all of these off-kilter and seemingly disparate elements come together far better than they should and something just a little beautiful happens as a result.

The biggest problem with McKay’s stuff is that he thinks he’s the next Paddy Chayefsky, bringing down untold wisdom from on high and proclaiming disdain at the blinkered, media-soaked vagaries of our world. Unfortunately, he’s bought too deeply into his hype as a vivid truth-teller of society’s ills, and that smugness has infected too much of his films’ fabric.

An entertaining if mostly inconsequential romp, in its best moments What Men Want feels less like an update on What Women Want and more like a gender-flipped version of Jerry Maguire.

Without Evans, this review’s grade would be significantly lower. But even with Evans, The Gray Man simply falls short of expectations. This is exactly the kind of diversion that’s such a treat when done well, and to see it done shabbily is just a massive disappointment. With better editing and a story less strewn with cliches, this could have been such good summer fun. Instead, at best it feels destined to slip from our minds, like so many other Netflix original films.

"Jane" eventually comes alive, even if Jane never truly does.

Bohemian Rhapsody is another lame music biopic, and its failures ultimately lie in the poor creative choices, the gutless approaches to potentially explosive events in the life of this band. We’re not buying this new album. There’s no new material to be found in Bohemian Rhapsody.

There’s a universe where Bullet Train works — lean harder into the gaudy, neon-pop anime aesthetic, ditch the too-clever character work, and add some honest-to-God jokes into the mix. Unfortunately, as it stands, Bullet Train feels like a lost spec script from the mid-2000s, given a fresh new coat of paint and a few script reworks by some Reddit teens.

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.

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

According to Martin, the reason she wanted to make Little was that she so rarely saw people like herself on the screen. By that measure, the movie is a success. Fingers crossed for many more films like it in the coming years. And hopefully those movies will have an easier time being just one thing at a time, instead of trying to do everything at once and missing the mark in the way Little ultimately does.

Robitel and Whannel are still too bound to the franchise here to make something truly original, but The Last Key will make you grip your armrest, squint your eyes, and prepare for the worst. Sometimes, that’s enough.

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.

This is a mild return to franchise form, which is like saying that one of the descending plane’s jets started working again. Despicable? No. Deal-able? Sure.

The results are deeply, charmingly dumb, especially the extended focus on the tete-a-tete between our tic-heavy underdog and his murderous companion.

Gold is weakly written, predictable, and too placid to achieve any loftier ambitions. It’s just a soft-sold tale of a schemer’s paradise.

In its unwillingness to settle on a singular approach, Live By Night undercuts the things that occasionally do work, and leaves it a film in search of a grander purpose.

There’s a lot to be said for a movie that knows exactly what it wants to be and hits that exact mark; it’s not that The Instigators lacks ambition, but like its characters, it doesn’t dream too big. It shows up to do its job — finding the fun.

Shots are short, oddly made, and shoddily smashed together. There’s no spatial continuity, let alone consistency in time of day, or even a care for any kind of visual coherence. 13 Hours is just chaos. It’s unwatchable, unlikable, and unworthy of respect.

Goon: Last of the Enforcers often feels far more like a stock sports film than its predecessor, and that’s what ultimately turns it into a highly underwhelming follow-up.

This version of Lady and the Tramp actually lacks the thematic complexity of its ’50s inspiration.

It’s good to see Black and Dekker offer up something so boisterous and stupid as The Predator. Is it messy? Absolutely. But, is it fun? It’s popcorn, baby.

TRON: Ares doesn’t seem poised to change the culture in anything resembling a similar way; while it has a lot more life to it than the inert TRON: Legacy, Ares keeps its focus on big spectacle as opposed to big ideas.

Phantasm: Ravager will disappoint the uninitiated, but those who are loyal will find enough to love.

Underwater is a solid creature feature that isn’t afraid to acknowledge its sub-genre predecessors. Kristen Stewart shines amidst a mostly likable cast, anchoring a film that moves at a relatively brisk clip, particularly in its bombastic opening and closing sequences.

Good Burger 2 is a time machine that takes its audience back to a time before adulting became a verb or a burden. And on that front, it succeeds. Not always with flying colors, but just enough for a pleasurable distraction during a chaotic holiday season.

It’s also not all that good, even if it’s hardly the kind of “bad” that most would get riled about. Escape Room is cut from one of Hollywood’s most familiar cloths: the “mall horror” movie.

Vikander is a beautifully effective avatar for the American Ninja Warrior version of Lara Croft. Stripping down the bombast of the original games (and films) allows Uthaug’s reboot to feel comparatively grounded and immediate, without dragging itself down with unnecessary pathos.

Child’s Play is pure entertaining fun for the horror fan, but not much else. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor does it offer much depth, particularly with its characters. While the cast is amiable enough, they’re mostly surface-level archetypes.

In holiday gift terms, it ain’t coal, and it ain’t a new car. It’s holiday socks, with a big ugly candy cane and some wavy text on it. Noelle’s cute for a minute, but you’re not going come back to this thing after January.

The more half-baked elements in the screenplay prevent Gran Turismo from assuming its role as a modern sports tale for a new generation — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the ride.

It works, at least for a while — until the real short story stops and it’s time to get rid of the ambiguity.

The film’s flaws aside (those will come later), Blunt’s performance is a hell of a thing, wholly lacking in vanity and brimming with honest, ugly feeling.

Quantumania might be key to kicking off the big arcs to come in the MCU Phase 5, but it doesn't forget to have a good time.

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.

While Don’t Worry Darling isn’t perfect, the only baggage it deserves to be saddled with is the baggage of attempting to tell a story with an obvious twist in our twist-numbed culture. For in the end, the real twist is this: even in 2022, true equality between men and women still feels like a fairy tale.

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.

As hard as Pet tries to be something different, it still feels like a film about a woman in a dog cage.

Lords of Chaos can’t seem to find its center for the entirety of its indulgent two-hour runtime. From moment to moment, the mood shifts from comic to dramatic to horrific to exploitative.

Simply put, Prey at Night sacrifices its own identity to drench horror audiences in throwback familiarity.

King Cobra is a movie that’s just good enough to make you wish it were even better.

In the end, King of the Monsters is too philosophical to be a good dumb movie, and too dumb to be that much fun.

Morgan isn’t hard sci-fi. It isn’t trying to solve the questions that have suffused the genre since its inception. Rather, it couches those ever-more-timely concerns in scenes of high action and affecting character connection.

Haunted Mansion uses its existence as an opportunity to tell a story about life, death, and what it means to let go of someone you love — yet another reminder that in the right hands, previously existing intellectual property isn’t necessarily a roadblock for storytellers. Sometimes, it can be the car that makes the journey possible.

This wasn’t a movie, it was a boardroom meeting with some poor hapless dreamer strapped to the “directed by” credit like a keelhauled sailor punished for his idealism.

Unfortunately, the reverence Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt seem to feel for the material ultimately dooms it to—if you’ll pardon the seafaring reference—float along in the doldrums, doomed to a driftless existence enlivened only by the occasional giant whale.

A Cure for Wellness feels like a return to form for the director. It’s not hard to imagine how Verbinski might have come up with a baffling horror film about the pressures of work/health balance. His latest film is rich with invention, intrigue, and a mind-melting liveliness that’s impossible to ignore.

It’s two solid hours of disposable, forgettable action-thriller filmmaking with a competent Cruise performance in the middle.

There’s still plenty of originality in the mix, if only because of the boundaries pushed: Easily the most exciting moment of watching Lisa Frankenstein is discovering just how far Cody and Williams are prepared to take this story (which is to say, to places you just might not expect). That daring attitude is the spark which brings the monster to life — and it’s a monster you can learn to love.

It should be impossible to turn this kind of raw material into such an interminable slog, and yet somehow writer and director Marc Abraham...managed to do just that.

Yes, Irresistible is a farce about political theater, and an often painfully funny one, but it’s also a deeply unnerving manifesto on the pundit economy, campaign financing, and the narcissism, ego, and collective amnesia it all fosters.

The steam runs out fast with one generic chase after the next, forgettable gunplay, and gory violence. Its ham-fisted double crosses and half-baked moral dilemmas amount to little.

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.

Blair Witch is disappointing on multiple levels, all of which have nothing to do with the franchise.

There are just enough goodies here for parents and well-prepared kiddies alike. The nifty VFX, performances, and modern updates are what make this remake an easy-enough treat.

Mortal Kombat II ends with a pretty clear set-up for a third movie, which is already in development, and fingers crossed it'll do what this movie did: Improve on what came before, take the piss out of itself whenever possible, and never forget, at the end of the day, the reason people want to watch movies like this in the first place.

Winstead may be a bonafide action hero, but the world around her just isn't interesting enough.

Fury of the Gods tries to recapture what made the first Shazam! a disarming breath of fresh air, but it just can’t quite do it.

It may exhaust you, it may offend you; it may guide you through Hell into something more revelatory. And how you receive the film may depend greatly on how you feel about the man who made it.

Gringo’s obvious debt to the works of Tarantino and the Coen brothers give it a tone that’s too arch and haphazard to keep the audience rooted in its characters. The movie’s sense of humor is about twenty years too old, manifesting in glib jabs at other characters’ expense for being fat, or mentally challenged, or poorly-endowed.

There are some marginal but still noticeable stylistic improvements in the sequel. John M. Chu (a veteran of music videos and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never) brings a peppy energy that Louis Leterrier’s first film lacked, especially when showing off the flashy spectacle of the Horsemen’s almost-superheroic magic abilities.

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.

For any parents reading this — it might not be the best film of the year, but you're going to be able to watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie more than once without losing your dang mind.

It’s impressive what Jeunet is able to pull off with a shoestring budget, but the ideas and characters underpinning his visual imagination leave a lot to be desired.

At the end of the night, The Addams Family is a comedy, and a good one at that, delivering the kind of morbid humor that reminds us why we’ll always accept their invitations.

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.

Though the ensemble is too large, Frozen Empire does successfully find a decent balance between the multiple generations featured here, letting the younger cast drive most of the action without leaving the older characters on the sidelines

When Joy lets us peek in these tiny, intriguing corners of her speculative world, Reminiscence comes alive the most. Otherwise, the rest of it fades like a memory you’d just as soon forget.

It’s about as effective as a Walgreens Halloween display, where any terror derives from uninspiring shock value, and given that each and every pop-up scare can be seen from over a mile away, the movie fails in that respect, too. It’s exhausting even.

Trank’s had to suffer a lot to get to make his art, and Capone is one of the most bravely singular and uncommon films you’ll see this year.

Animal shelter/prison facility parallels become too heavy-handed, and performances packed with emotion give way to on-the-lam clichés.

It’s not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but The Meg is a perfect outing for a balmy late-summer evening at the movies. It’s a little preposterous, a little moving, and a lot entertaining.

Phillips’s sequel proves to be a muddled love story that falls apart due to its inability to express anything thematically substantial or original.

Although its leads find the odd moment of charm together, even Kidman in what’s somehow the worst-shaded part of all three, The Upside fumbles far too often when it attempts to enlighten or edify its audience.

While Kevin Smith may never appear on a list of great filmmakers, his movies do understand something essential about getting older and growing up. Sometimes, we all just need to go back to the well.

Wolves is more affecting than it should be by virtue of its cast, who deserve better, but the drama is so schematic that their Herculean efforts leave little impact.

For the majority of its runtime, They/Them seems to entirely forget its pretense of being a horror movie, with long stretches devoid of any sense of tension at all. If its drama was interesting then this wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, but as it stands, the sharp turn into slasher promised by its title feels like a last-minute remembrance in a series of plodding vignettes, something unfortunately furthered by how incredibly toothless the film’s climax comes to be.