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

This is Meg Murry’s movie, and while DuVernay’s visually stunning film may occasionally stumble, Reid does nothing less than soar.

There’s something distinctly odious about a storyteller exploiting both a city’s tragic reality and a country’s debate about firearms to make a film that thrives on violence.

It’s a harrowing moral fable, a political fable, and above all, a deft lament.

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

Mute has gobs of style to burn, but it’s virtually the textbook definition of sound and fury signifying nothing.

It’s one of the most arresting, affecting science fiction movies of the last few years, and certainly one of the best films to see release in 2018 thus far. It’s ambitious and haunting, which makes its international streaming release all the more tragic.

It’s essentially David Fincher’s The Game matched with the comic overtones of Horrible Bosses, which is why it winds up being an entertaining jaunt.

There’s talent in every corner of the film, and it elevates Black Panther beyond so many of its superhero contemporaries even as it exhibits some formulaic tendencies. It’s a sterling example of formula done exceedingly well, however, particularly in the ways it uses the familiarity of that formula to tell a new kind of story.

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.

The Ritual is rich, meaty horror that, despite your feelings regarding its twists and turns, offers up a gripping balance of psychological terror and physical revulsion.

Give or take one excellent joke about the practical applications of handcuffs — delivered with expert awkwardness by Dakota Johnson, who remains the only moderately charming element of the trilogy — the film is as devoid of wit as it is of subtlety, and that combined absence, courtesy of screenwriter Niall Leonard, leads to some of its biggest unintentional laughs.

It’s weird, intermittently amusing gobbledygook that should help a drowsy weekday night pass a bit quicker. Unfortunately, mediocrity won’t do much for the Cloverfield brand, which set a high bar for itself with 10 Cloverfield Lane.

To say that Vega is marvelous in her portrayal of Marina is nothing short of an understatement. She’s an inspiration to transgender and non-binary people across the globe, all while delivering the performance of a lifetime.

While these are major hurdles to the film holding together as a consistent exploration of its subjects, On Body and Soul is still an intriguing, cerebral comeback for Enyedi.

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

Although the film lacks his absurdism, there’s a musicality to Wain’s direction that’s addicting, and the emotional punch in the final five minutes proves there’s a future for the filmmaker that goes way beyond the yucks.

There’s a good movie hidden somewhere inside 12 Strong, probably tucked between the many explosions and the endless exposition. Unfussily directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, this is a film that’s all business.

The Final Year may feel like a fly-on-the-wall production, but there’s an element of careful curation in the personalities and events shown that undercuts some of their earnestness.

It’s not that the film doesn’t have an opinion on Lewan, it’s that the opinion seems to change every few scenes.

Henson, ever the magnetic performer, elevates so much of Najafi’s boilerplate direction with sheer presence alone; while the film consistently suffers from the tendency to bathe nearly every scene in maudlin strings and over-exposition, the actress manages to convey multitudes about Mary’s interiority with little more than a sustained gaze.

Humor Me is essentially the feature film adaption of writer-director Sam Hoffman‘s web series Old Jews Telling Jokes, and much like ideas that are typically created for a web series, the execution of the material appears to be just a bit too lacking to serve the purpose of a full-length film.

It’s beyond playful. Wonderful and whimsical, for that matter. Fun to look at and completely immersive. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, and humane, as well. It’s even a tad sagely in its universally appealing lessons of manners, sympathy, and open-mindedness.

As the latest installment in what has become its own subgenre at this point, The Commuter serves as a fine example of the kind of tightly-coiled thriller that Neeson and Collet-Serra can do together in their sleep.

As it lurches into its second act, Before I Wake begins slavishly following the beats of its studio horror contemporaries, (mostly) abandoning its nuance for rote investigations into the cause of the phenomena and horror set pieces that defy the previously established logic of the dream manifestations.

It’s a sparse film, to be sure, but one authentic to the time in which it takes place, even if that authenticity reads in a significantly different light in our own time.

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.

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.