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.