Roger Moore's second outing as 007 does not do the subject matter justice. Or the character. Or any paying member of the audience.

Blood Red Sky could lose a few minutes, but overall, it's a ferocious and fun merging of vampires and hijackers.

For a movie about a guy trying to save himself and his kids from a car that might blow up at any moment, it's curiously low on thrills and complications.

Mother/Android tries to bring an emotional heart to the robot uprising genre, but it’s so laden with tropes and short on personality that it’s hard to care about the characters. What little novelty exists comes far too late in the long, slow movie.

Dark Phoenix is ultimately yet another fumbled take on the classic saga from the Marvel Comics, albeit one without the side plots of The Last Stand. Add to it a jarringly uneven latter half and some underdeveloped cosmic villains, and Dark Phoenix is fortunate to have not fully ended the X-Men’s current big screen run on a completely down note.

The New Mutants didn’t deserve to be locked away for years. It’s not some unwatchable mess but rather a perfectly fine, entertaining, if at times formulaic small-scale genre movie.

What’s frustrating is that with better lead performers and a tighter script, Wingard could have made a great adaptation. Instead it settles when it should have soared.

There are hints of greatness, but Glass is tonally confused and will likely disappoint fans of Unbreakable and Split.

Anaconda is a disappointing follow-up for Gormican, who cannot crack the code on Sony's bewildering aquatic not-really-horror reboot. A cast of proven funny people are lost in a thick brush of hacky bits and ineffective storytelling, unable to machete their way through to a redeeming climax. There are brief bursts of creature-feature excitement and belly-tickling humor, but way more stretches of bafflingly unclear ambitions that feel like they're struggling to keep the "movie within a movie" gimmick afloat. It's Anaconda without the aqua-horror chills, throwback practical effects, and midnight-movie entertainment—what an odd choice.

The earnest and entertaining Scoob! is a perfectly fine distraction for kids and parents stuck at home, with enough cute and amusing elements throughout to keep viewers engaged.

Stuber is an awkward, uneven action-comedy that never realizes its full potential. It squanders a good premise and an odd couple pairing with potential that could have delivered something special.

Despite a great cast, Needle in a Timestack lets the fuzzy logic time travel tropes trample the characters and our care for them and their plights.

There’s a fun slasher buried beneath the too-faithful reboot plot of the new I Know What You Did Last Summer. Unfortunately, it’s overshadowed by too many callbacks to the first movie in the series and too little originality. The mix of new stars and returning favorites provides some urgency, but does little to give it an identity all its own.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts proves that the Transformers franchise is accelerating in the right direction, delivering solid Autobots action and a solid voice cast behind the infamous robots in disguise.

The cast does the best they can to save the weak material, and it’s interesting to see how the filmmakers are trying to make this off-putting concept work. But it's not funny enough, or even weird enough, to get away with it.

When Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is being an Aquaman story and leaning into the silliness and family aspects of it all, it’s fun. The enjoyable bits are just sandwiched between some ugly effects and a weird first act that feel cobbled together from a very different movie.

Swiped is constructed well-enough for the movie it’s trying to be, but its lack of ambition and nuance keep it from being its best self. It can still be a worthwhile enough watch for Lily James’ admirable performance as Whitney Wolfe, but the movie never affords its subject the same level of depth as what James tries to imbue her with.

Captain America: Brave New World feels neither brave, nor all that new.

Although Holland takes place in a unique setting full of kitschy Midwestern details, even Nicole Kidman in frustrated-housewife mode can’t sustain the sloppily plotted thriller.

Amityville: The Awakening has a good cast, and, if viewed by a group of rowdy friends late at night, may certainly do its due diligence in periodically startling you for 87 minutes, but never manages to transcend its genre in any meaningful way.

Terror Train doesn't really hold up, but it does offer a fun dose of low-brow slasher mayhem.

Opus isn't a tremendously effective horror film, often feeling like a number of A24 horror movies rolled into one. Those looking for scares will be disappointed. The first film from writer director Mark Anthony Green is, however, interesting enough when it has things to say about pop stars and the people who write about them – not that it makes the movie any more chilling.

The movie is predictable and formulaic and all of those things, but it's great in spite of itself.

Breaking In is a clever twist not the home invasion genre, with a dynamic lead performance by Gabrielle Union as a mother protecting her family. It’s a crowd-pleasing thriller, good but never quite great, because the story collapses under scrutiny. The film is trying to be clever and yet it relies on big, and obvious gaps in logic, but those flaws probably won't ruin the experience.

Writer-director Jason Lei Howden does try to sneak social commentary into proceedings, the film satirizing reality TV and attacking the poison of online comments. But ultimately this is balls-to-the-wall action, with Guns Akimbo delivering thrills, spills and genuinely spectacular kills.

Persuasion is a disappointingly limp adaptation of one of Jane Austen’s great romances. While Dakota Johnson does her best to give director Carrie Cracknell a contemporized, charming version of Austen’s heroine Anne Elliot, the screenplay’s foundational reframing of the character strips away everything that makes the book’s version interesting and quietly heroic.

Love Hard isn’t reinventing the wheel, but Nina Dobrev and Jimmy O. Yang are adorable to watch in this feel-good Christmas rom-com.

Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union are great pillars here, though the film itself isn't consistent enough with its tone, snapping back and forth between sweet sentiment and cheap gags.

Night Teeth's winning lead trio and its glossy, electronic buzz save this Collateral clone from sinking into full nonsense. The film's usually interesting, though it never truly strikes with malice or meaning the way it wants to

The Bad Moms sequel suffers from an uneven script and the addition of too many new, superfluous characters.

If you can get past the many bizarre inconsistencies, The Star is a relatively decent film for young Christian audiences. The writing, voice-acting and animation are unremarkable, but they get the job done, and the film’s heart seems to be in the right place.

Halloween Kills suffers from being the second chapter in a trilogy, but it still delivers gory fun, fantastic performances, and an electrifying score from John Carpenter. There are enough callbacks to the original film to satisfy Carpenter fans while also expanding the mythology around Michael Myers and the town of Haddonfield in meaningful ways.

In its best moments, Suburbicon is the dark, truly funny examination of 1950s suburbia it wants to be. These moments, however, are all too rare and more often than not the story is just a flat Film Noir tale purporting to expose the evil that lurks all around us.

The most frustrating thing about Ritchie's take on King Arthur is that it has all the necessary elements to be a great version of the story, but rather than giving them to the audience as such, they are put into a blender and thoroughly mixed.

Underground is cartoonishly raucous explosion porn from mayhem maestro Michael Bay that feels like a film that was made over a decade ago and was just somehow recently unearthed by Netflix. It's a testament to star Ryan Reynolds and his seemingly effortless charisma because without him the movie would have been a snow-blind mess.

Paul Feig’s Jackpot! may not know what it wants to be – riotous comedy, sincere drama, or sprawling action film – but its breakout supporting players elevate it from pure mediocrity to moderately entertaining.

Fear Street: Prom Queen fails to channel both the outrageous aesthetics and the brutal violence of the films it’s imitating, making this indifferently made exercise in YA horror supremely skippable.

Memory is a well-made if uninspired action flick that forges an interesting new take on the genre… then forgets all about it.

Try as it might to capture lightning in a bottle, Black Adam never manages to find its spark.

Billy Porter's five fantastic on-screen minutes as the electric "Fab G" are over far too soon. Instead, Cinderella focuses on humor that rarely works (like James Corden’s huge head on a mouse body), an overstuffed, meandering soundtrack, and underwhelming vocals to back it. Ultimately, live-action Cinderella peaked in 1997.

Fountain of Youth is a robust showcase of Guy Ritchie’s eye for action, but it falls well short of capturing the magic of the quintessential treasure-hunting movies it’s so clearly trying to replicate.

Venom: The Last Dance trips over its own tendrils and lets a boring, generic plot, and bad action distract from the surprisingly resilient central relationship between Eddie Brock and his symbiote bestie.

Even the most ardent defender of Paul W.S. Anderson’s work might think In the Lost Lands is the kind of mess that proves the Resident Evil director’s detractors right. It’s not just a barely comprehensible failure on its own, but an adaptation that takes a character-based drama and turns it into an ugly action flick.

Hellbound is gorier, larger, and more accessible than the first. It rehashes the original at the outset so people can grasp it whether or not they'd seen the first and as a result is an easier film to enjoy.

Even as Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse goes through some familiar paces, it’s elevated by the presence at its center of star/producer Michael B. Jordan.

Moonfall makes its big ideas feel small and unimportant.

The Curse of La Llorona offers some decently suspenseful set-pieces and has a family you care about at its center, but it's also a very familiar and formulaic Annabelle-adjacent entry in the Conjuring franchise.

The Woman in the Window has both flash and fizzle. Amy Adams is great in the lead role, presenting us with a shattered recluse who wages war on lucidity daily, but the rest of the cast, while noteworthy, are sort of relegated to being plot pawns. Still, if you're looking for a higher class of claustrophobic Noir, and don't care too much about the resolution, there's a playfulness on display here that might scratch an airport novel itch.

Miss Bala never quite delivers on its potential and lets down the woman at its center.

The Reef: Stalked is another middling mid-budget fin flick that’s tonally confused somewhere between Shark Week and Lifetime.

Meow, it may feel familiar, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have fun along the way with Super Troopers 2.

There’s nothing fresh, exciting, or particularly unique about Nicolas Pesce’s take on The Grudge. His passion for character-focused drama fails to spark in a barrage of scenes that feel like tedious outtakes from Lifetime movies.

The setup of the mystery is more satisfying than its payoff, and the film breaks down into an uninspired grab bag of contemporary horror influences.

O'Dessa delivers a bold, catchy musical set in a vibrant cyberpunk world that mixes naturalistic visuals with an aesthetic indebted to 1980s sci-fi and fantasy films. Sadie Sink shines as a singer who can change the world with her ballads, with a gender norm-defying performance and an enchanting singing voice.

As usual, Adam Sandler presents a mean-spirited comedy, but an unengaged cast and uninspired writing also make The Week Of a bore.

Lethal Weapon 3 picks up where Lethal Weapon 2 left off, with the same gags and tough-guy dialogue but things are starting to wear a bit thin.

Rife with great performances and disturbing imagery, The Carpenter’s Son transcends its trappings as a mere horror take on Christ and verges on challenging.

With any other actor as the menacing lead, Unhinged would have been a TV movie or straight-to-streaming release, but Crowe and a few well-executed scenes of action still manage to hold the viewer’s interest throughout what’s essentially 90 minutes of genre filler material.

Tim Story takes a classic movie franchise and drains it of all the action, sex and topicality that made it worth revisiting in the first place. Jackson, Roundtree and Usher have star power to spare but they’re asked to perform embarrassing and ignorant comedy routines, and the action is so unremarkable that the movie can’t even rely on that spectacle to compensate.

While Cronenberg works, the two other main humans - Boone and his girlfriend, are flat and boring, mostly due to uninspired performances. Still, that's like blasting Star Wars for Mark Hamill's acting. While this isn't as great as Star Wars, it's in the same vein, and if Nightbreed had made some loot, I think we would have gotten some very cool sequels with a fantastic mythology.

Theo is an engaging character – for the most part well played – and his journey is both entertaining and heartbreaking. Meaning much like the painting at the centre of this tale, Theo’s story both survives, and endures. despite the fragmented film’s shortcomings.

Meg 2: The Trench has all the excitement of fishing solo for two hours without a single bite. Wheatley is a shell of himself behind the camera, devoid of personality and originality.

IO provides a different take on a familiar premise. The story is intimate in nature, with a plot that highlights the importance of relationships – not just between partners or family members, but relationships in general. Its pacing and lack of urgency betrays the drama though.

The Astronaut has a game lead in Kate Mara and the decent stagings of a monster mystery, but it winds up being a humdrum offering in a genre usually teeming with imagination and innovation.

Director Robert Zemeckis hits a new artistic low with Welcome to Marwen, a film that mistakes schmaltz for substance and employs downright boring novelty animation in a hackneyed attempt to stir the emotions.

Despite a talented cast and great director, Netflix’s Lift proves to be an exceedingly unremarkable heist film.

Netflix's Extinction has its moments but is marred by a familiar premise, an uneven pace and a weak lead performance.

The Twin wastes its desolate location, talented cast, and strong opening in a meandering story that hinges on a last act reveal that doesn’t pay off.

Pitch Perfect 3 tears up the rule book for the franchise but sadly all the rules in it are what made the original work so well and the second film work well enough.

I was at least able to follow the plot (which is not to say it wasn't as ludicrous as any Bond film -- just that I could follow it). But most of all this movie has camp value -- it's fun to sit there and make fun of every last detail, and that redeems it quite a bit.

A sequel that hopes to court Saw fans and mainstream audiences alike, Spiral: From the Book of Saw is likely to alienate them both. It’s a hollow imitation of the series, unable to meet its most basic visual and narrative expectations. It’s also a bad film in general, which tries to tell a socially relevant story that it can’t seem to handle.

Leatherface is the worst Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie ever.

My Little Pony: The Movie falls apart in the end because it resolves its conflict the way that conventional blockbusters do, and not in the way that My Little Pony does.

Jigsaw barely feels like a part of the Saw franchise. It has deathtraps, but takes no pleasure in presenting them. It ignores most of the ongoing storyline. If it wasn’t part of the official franchise it would play like a knockoff.

Abraham’s Boys has some interesting ideas when it comes to a Van Helsing-based Dracula spinoff. Unfortunately, its weak visuals and lack of atmosphere stop it from fully delivering.

An uneven and festive offering brimming with glitter and gaudiness that excels when it embraces its strangeness and the brilliance of the production design.

The Boss Baby: Family Business delivers middle-road mirth, full of action and quasi-clever jokes, and featuring the fun voice additions of James Marsden, Jeff Goldblum, and Amy Sedaris.

Pete Davidson does solid enough work in a more dramatic role and the supporting cast does the best they can with the material, but The Home collapses under its muddled messaging, overly familiar and sometimes ridiculously heavy-handed imagery, and a lack of tension.

Peter Farrelly's follow-up to Green Book is a war drama with some solid laughs and a great Zac Efron performance, but a manipulative script with ugly optics and boring visuals that never achieve the prestige it clearly wants.

A one-angle drama spanning centuries, Robert Zemeckis' comic adaptation Here is experimental in appearance, but highly conventional in approach.

Hearts are ripped out, heads are smashed, and there's plenty of flesh to be seen. If that's what you crave for a night of retro viewing, this is your flick.

Andra Day delivers a commendable performance as matriarch Ebony Jackson, but the entire experience is neither scary enough as a horror film nor insightful enough as a drama to leave a mark.

Though its predestined, blockbuster exorcism sequence just manages to provide a satisfying conclusion to the story, the underdeveloped synchronized possession element creates more problems than it solves and adds bloat to a movie which would have benefitted from a leaner, more measured approach.

If you're a fan of revenge fantasies, The Wraith will likely whet your appetite even if it isn't the smartest or best film out there.

The Darkest Minds is a wholly rote YA sci-fi adventure that continues a genre that is pretty much dying out. Despite this, the film is capable and enjoyable and features a great lead actress in Amandla Stenberg.

Working from a script written by original helmer Romero based on a trilogy of lesser works by King, Creepshow 2 is a satisfying little anthology of terror that won't scare you so much as entertain you.

Please Don’t Feed the Children has a few things going for it – namely capable lead performers Michelle Dockery and Zoe Colletti – but Destry Allyn Spielberg’s boring, predictable first feature definitely doesn’t feel like it comes from a descendant of filmmaking royalty.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales manages to be less bloated, dreary, and meandering than the last three entries have been, but it still suffers from many of the same wearisome, dredged-up villains and ho-hum action and comedy that have bedeviled the franchise since its second installment.

Though Chbosky’s staging is uninspired, the songs — both old and new — are nonetheless powerful, which might be enough of a lure for fans of the show or musicals in general. Sadly, Platt’s calamitous casting dooms this adaptation to cringe-worthy awkwardness.

Michael, or Bohemian Jacksody, is a film of listlessness and inhumanity that can’t help but suck the energy out of the room. No matter where you come down on Jackson as a person, this film is entirely the opposite of what he was, both as an iconic performer and a controversial tabloid figure. Who would have thought that such a carefully controlled, estate-permitted biopic might actually do more damage to an artist’s legacy by making him so uninteresting?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is yet another disappointing attempt by Hollywood to deliver an adaptation worthy of its source material.

Netflix’s The Dirt won’t win any awards nor will it inspire any would-be musicians, but it is entertaining and offers up a compelling story about Mötley Crüe. And while it isn’t a completely accurate depiction of the band’s tumultuous career, the film itself is insightful.

Aside from an unexpected ending, director Robert Zemeckis is basically doing a paint-by-numbers version of the studio’s much better original, just with modern animation and Tom Hanks. And while Tom always tries his best, even he can’t make this redo memorable on its own merits.

Justin Tipping’s flimsy football horror movie Him is papered over with colorful lighting but underscored by bland ideas. Despite Marlon Wayans’ bravura performance, it makes very little visceral impact while en route to one of the most confounding third acts of any horror movie this year.

Mile 22 is a straight-to-video action movie that got the big budget treatment, and not in the good, cheesy, fun way. It’s an undercooked story with characters who don’t know how to express themselves without yelling, and it’s full of laughable plot points.

Uneven but ambitious, Ang Lee's return to the action genre isn't as good as it should be but Will Smith, Benedict Wong, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead make this weird flick an entertaining watch even with an uninspired script.

MiB: International tries to invoke the original, but fails to match its key achievements: it isn’t funny or exciting.