The potential of this project as an insightful and thrilling look at superheroes was massive, which makes the fact that it’s just so boring and poorly put together that much worse.

American Assassin never transcends the exploitation at its core.

While Uncharted will never be a classic on par with Spielberg’s original swashbuckling adventure, it does no dishonor to that tradition, and even manages to deliver a few unique thrills.

It’s better than you may expect, a mostly tolerable movie made occasionally enjoyable by a few lively performances, one good fight sequence, and a solid punchline or two.

Kill Your Friends is effective and enjoyable in the way that dusty music compilations are.

A relatively accessible, often enjoyable adaptation of the best-selling video game of all time, its family-friendly good heart unencumbered by its overstuffed narrative.

While it’s a reasonably paced thriller, The Prodigy is almost wholly devoid of real scares.

The 15:17 to Paris is too unfocused, too hard to take seriously, and too short to really get invested in it. It’s an Eastwood misfire.

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

It’s still a reasonably funny movie when it hits its marks. It’s just a funny movie prone to going to some ugly, barren wells for laughs throughout as well.

At its best, Paint is a delightful and occasionally awkward ode to art, and how it defines us as creators and consumers. But at its worst, Paint feels, well, pointless.

While Afterlife is not a terrible movie, it can’t escape the burdens heaped upon it.

Angel Has Fallen is maybe the least objectionable of the Fallen series, but that’s not really saying much, is it?

It’s the worst kind of ridiculous: not enough so to be memorably fun, but far too much so to be taken with any degree of gravitas.

Literally every ounce of entertainment value you can get out of Willy’s Wonderland comes from thinking about the premise itself: What if Nic Cage fought demonic versions of the mascots from Chuck E. Cheese? But the budget and the talent around Cage just wasn’t there, which robs Willy’s Wonderland of even the dumb, modest thrills promised on the packaging.

There’s a fundamental disconnect between Cherry’s cynicism and Holland’s innate naivete that just makes the whole affair feel wrong somehow, not to mention crushingly long at nearly two and a half hours.

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.

There are plenty of fantastic films with Christian messages, but Miracles From Heaven is more interested in simplistic proselytizing to a heavily evangelical market that just wants their own existing beliefs confirmed. This is what makes the film so frustrating to watch; for the vast majority of its runtime, it’s essentially a good (if not great) family drama.

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.

If it never fully realizes the horrors of its prescient setup, it’s nevertheless effective in fits and starts.

It’s a big, vulgar, Saturday morning cartoon of a film, to both its benefit and detriment.

Tarzan is too dull to offer consistent pulp excitement, too self-serious to let itself have fun, and too reliant on same-y CG spectacle to truly thrill.

Uprising plods around like the giant robots that occupy so much of its space, moving too quickly to let almost anything resonate emotionally, but not quickly enough to lend much of an adrenaline rush.

Heart of Stone is the rare streaming movie that does not open with an in medias res action sequence, followed by a “[Some Amount of Time] Earlier” card and a flashback to simpler days.

The action’s not flashy but competent, the set pieces are a bit easy to predict but deliver some reliable gags, and there are even a few meta moments that generate a chuckle or two.

Grimsby’s provocative, but not stupid. It knows what kind of humor it wants to achieve, and often scores big.

It’s a nasty piece of work, and one that at the very least stands as an active interruption of the escapist, family-friendly superhero fare currently dominating the industry.

Unfortunately, what The Belko Experiment delivers in face-twisting gore and deliciously taut suspense, it lacks in insight.

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.

It’s difficult to overstate how badly Foe fumbles its heady premise and firecracker cast, a film so dependent on its biggest secret that it’s both predictable and hard to grasp by the time the trigger is finally pulled.

As with any number of popular YA novels-turned-feature films, Mortal Engines has a wealth of possibilities and curious ideas at its disposal. Instead, it tears past them in pursuit of some of the subgenre’s most exhausted narrative tropes, chewing up everything engaging as it grinds along.

Everything is dandy until it’s not and that’s what makes Hot Summer Nights such a stirring and vivid presentation. The stakes are real. Those stakes are what elevate the film from being strictly a chewy exercise in nostalgia.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t a film. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour movie trailer. Better yet, it’s one of those videos that pop up on screens before a ride at Universal Studios, where all the actors speak to you and keep hinting at bigger things to come — you know, like a ride? Basically, it’s everything the SEO-friendly title promises — and more.

It feels special, like a kind of prized trinket, a sun-dappled sexual fantasia, chased by the specter of death in pursuit of a life of leisure. The Jesus Rolls is a touching and singular work, a louche fantasy.

Freneticism like this isn’t for everyone. But as far as martial arts epics go, MK is a high-gloss geek show that repeatedly delivers.

The Bronze is so satisfied with its own winking crassness that it lets epithets constitute everything it has to say. Between that and the film’s scene-by-scene tonal shifts, what could’ve been an off-kilter curiosity curdles into a dull roar of disappointment.

Bloodshot accidentally calls out the hollowness of every superhero movie by trying to beat them at their own game. It admits Vin is a tool to be deployed in very specific circumstances, it comes so close to self-awareness but drops the ball. In order to actually play as auto-critique, it would have to be a much better movie with a real director, but I admired the attempt, as I always do whenever Vin’s on screen.

What makes The Princess so surprisingly fun is its commitment to a hooky premise.

Army of One recounts Faulkner, through Quixotan whimsy and geo-political smart aleck humor, which amounts to a quick screwball comedy about a loveable fuckup.

Hunter Killer has thrills, but they’re of the cheapest variety.

The film’s a fundamental fiasco of tone and timing.

Antebellum makes every moment meaningful or teachable. And under the strain of making its many, many points, Antebellum forgets to be a good movie, which is ultimately what draws audiences in and allows them to connect the dots for themselves.

It should come as no surprise that The Angry Birds Movie is a loud and dumb children’s film, but for what it’s worth, there are plenty of cinematic commercial ventures that are louder and dumber and so on than the well-meaning and slickly sold Birds.

Equals is composed of small, sensual moments which build to a climax that feels both gut-wrenching and potently universal, like an old torch song to which you already know all the words.

Because it’s Claire Foy’s turn, The Girl in the Spider’s Web cannot honestly be called a colossal waste of time. It’s merely a moderate waste.

The movie’s merely the latest A-list comedy of this sort, is happy to live in the middle, and yet it frustratingly outwears its welcome because of a lack of creativity and sloppy structure.

The bluntness of its messaging proves to be a bit of a detraction, but the fact remains that Where the Crawdads Sing is a heartfelt, and gorgeous picture, the kind which major studios used to make all the time, and now feel like a bit of an endangered species.

There isn’t much to love, there isn’t much to hate, there’s mostly just indifference.

The Circle aims for slow-building dread, but Ponsoldt’s direction and the script are both so uncharacteristically stiff that the film’s tone never solidifies.

In adapting Death Note for a presumably American audience, Wingard loses the whole of its identity, and never finds a different one with which to replace it.

Shyamalan comes off so smug by the end of this movie that it’s insufferable — and also kind of jarring. It’s as if he’s learned nothing from his past and still believes he’s pulling a quick one on his audience.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged may be a bit slight in the script department and features some cartoonish aquatic beasts, but it delivers non-stop, anxiety-inducing terror once it reaches its halfway point.

A silly yet successful enough distraction from the holiday chaos — A gag gift from someone who cares.

If you’re able to ignore the franchise’s 50-year history, you’re probably going to have a blast. After all, Scoob! is a fun, colorful, and funny movie that not only sends several great messages to younger viewers, but also proves to be highly entertaining for adults.

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.

It feels like a true labor of love, someone having a good time with funny people making something truly absurd.

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.

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.

If you’re looking for two hours of not-quite-escape, the solipsism of Locked Down has real charm and entertainment value, not least in its willingness to be a movie about adults — and for adults. If the specter of a global pandemic haunts the material more than it enriches, well, it’s not alone, is it?

The newest Transformers film, Rise of the Beasts, is a genuinely entertaining summer blockbuster, with its high point being Pete Davidson as Mirage. Highlighting a voice performance as the best quality of a film like Rise of the Beasts could be seen as damning with faint praise, but that's not the case here. Instead, it's an appreciation of how much Davidson's work enhances Beasts as a production, as these films continue to move away from Bay's super-serious vibe in favor of a new, lighter approach.

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.

Momoa’s raw on-screen energy remains infectious even in the driest scenes, and Wan does wring a real sense of human connection out of the scenes between Momoa and Wilson, whose tempestuous fraternal bond is the emotional core of the film.

Inferno, much like its predecessors, simply can’t work its way out of the disappointing middle ground between a slick, technically competent thriller and tongue-in-cheek absurdity.

Brave New World drags in places, losing momentum thanks to the plot’s inability to build up any real suspense over what’s going on... However, much of the action features nice clean direction, and while the humor is sparse, supporting cast members Danny Ramirez and Shira Haas get some fun moments.

While he has a decent enough handle on the right tone for the proceedings, Caruso’s action sequences are slapdash to the point of incoherence.

For Yimou’s colors alone, and one particularly striking set piece set in a kaleidoscopic stained-glass tower, The Great Wall may be worth the price of admission.

The House That Jack Built is an audacious and divisive film, sure, but only because of the context surrounding the film. The gore! The violence! The subject material! Oh my! At its core, though, von Trier has actually assembled his most accessible work to date.

Neither Bates Jr.’s assured direction nor the strength of the performances can salvage the narrative, which feels overly convoluted and spackled far too much finery.

Ostensibly, it’s a vehicle for Michael Biehn, whom no one else but James Cameron seems to know how to use properly, but everything else about the movie is forgettable.

A sloppy, blinkered epilogue that wastes everyone's time.

It doesn’t work on a purely aesthetic level or as a political statement, and the combination of the two goes together about as well as a mid-level Coens comedy and a morality play about racism masquerading as a thesis.

What we really get is a film made of utter nonsense that’s even less interested in its characters than it is in telling a story.

Make no mistake, this is a film made for frivolous consumption with car chases, swooping crane shots, cheesy one-liners, and crass humor. Sure, there’s some political commentary lurking underneath, but it’s not particularly savvy.

On its own merits, Black Adam might feel a little thin in terms of story, but it does deliver plenty of enjoyable moments and a solid ensemble to back up Johnson. But perhaps the most exciting aspect of it is how it might shake up the rest of the franchise going forward.

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

Many shots fired, all of them misses. This is a film without quality, care, or any real decency.

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 a paint-by-numbers would-be blockbuster entirely built around the delusional notion that general audiences can’t be scared by anything more thoughtful than recycled jump shocks and derivative monsters.

It’s so spectacularly inept, at so many different points, that it’s hard to imagine anybody will be able to forget it. It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s the kind of bad movie that audiences with the taste for that kind of thing will eat up by the spoonful.

Super Troopers 2 amounts to nothing more than a limp reunion tour where they seem to feel obligated to play the hits.

Sadly, The Grudge is an underwhelming entry in the long dormant franchise. This cursed production — delayed from release last year — hardly feels worth the wait, and is certainly not worth the price of admission.

The Week Of is the wedding you forgot you were invited to, weren’t all that stoked to attend, then wound up loving anyway because you had such a surprisingly good time.

There’s some solid action throughout, with sequences that vaguely approach James Bond in their silliness.

Another lump of coal in Gibson’s rapidly declining filmography. Fatman has no gifts to speak of. It’s kind of cheap. It’s fairly cynical and/or mean-spirited. It’s not fun. No good. Lumpy in execution. Deeply archaic in its thinking. Ho ho ho-hum.

It’s a genuine drag to watch talented actors struggle through tepid material, and Table 19 offers this more readily than it does its laughs or its pathos.

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.

Crass but quick, and agreeably popcorn-y, Unhinged could have gone off in far more risible fashion. Not quite a gas, but without crashing and burning entirely, Unhinged gets where it needs to go and fast.

While that can be entertaining at times, Shaft mostly reads as an oddly sexless, convoluted, and downright dull continuation. It’s as if the creators are afraid to take the character seriously in an age of ironic detachment. It’s a missed opportunity, particularly at the chance to comment on how being a “complicated man” has evolved since 1971, and how the world has never simply been black and white. Oh, well.

For all of the film’s nonstop, aggressive insistence on its subversive qualities, it’s about as radical and unconventional as a teenager buying a Leftover Crack shirt with their mom’s credit card from Amazon.

If Sam Raimi were in the director’s chair, rather than just producing, imagine the kind of fist-pumping schlock feast we could have enjoyed.

Still, as giant shark movies go, it’s a far more coherent entry in the genre than others, with effects work that’s several notches above the rest.

IO is dull, it drags, and it’ll beg the question: When will this, all of this, be over?

Marwen is too much, not enough, and yet still deeply watchable. It’s admirable for the wildly different approaches it takes. Only a stylist like Zemeckis could try something like this. Take a real man’s witty, real-life therapy-based photography and attempt to spin it into a mo-cap circus with every genre tool he can think of.

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

While the script is fundamentally flawed, the direction doesn’t help. Young, who previously helmed the brutal 2016 indie Hounds of Love, feels out of his element in the sci-fi action realm.

To his credit, Green makes great use of wide-angle photography so the action feels comprehensible, with surprisingly long shots and effective editing. It’s just a shame the director’s talents are wasted on this brand-stamped mess.

Pitch Perfect 3 is hardly a perfect movie, but seeing these women singing and having fun on screen together for the final time is frequently a lot of fun.

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.