AI-loving Marvel hitmakers Joe and Anthony Russo join forces again with Netflix to deliver a $300-million sci-fi epic you can safely half-watch while doing the dishes or making dinner.

Drop is a tightly plotted and unpretentious thrill ride.

Tim Robinson’s first movie-star role is like an extended I Think You Should Leave sketch with fancier camera work and a guest appearance by Paul Rudd.

In The Accountant 2, Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal return for a sentimental, politically charged, and surprisingly funny action sequel about brothers trying their best to connect.

Another Simple Favor takes its tongue-in-cheek momcore satire to new visual heights by moving the action to coastal Italy. All the best parts of the original are also present here, including Lively and Kendrick’s sparkling chemistry and killer costume design. Not every attempt to expand on the concept is successful, but as a piece of escapist entertainment it’s more clever than most.

Novocaine offers more depth than its gimmicky “man who feels no pain” premise may lead you to believe. This movie breathes new life into old ideas, with an original hero buoyed by the charm of Jack Quaid and a heroine who ably beats the damsel-in-distress allegations. Novocaine is smart, but not so self-aware that it’s likely to alienate anybody; sharp, but not without feeling.

Its story of three couples working at the same British agency turns all the right screws with impeccable timing, forcing its characters to examine the flaws in their relationships as its tale of state secrets gradually unravels.

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.

There’s no snap to the dialogue, no thrill to a majority of the action, and the other characters played by Cooper Hoffman and Lucy Liu (and their relationships to Dolinski) make no lasting impression.

Set during a single, legendary evening, Richard Linklater’s Broadway biopic unveils the life and anxieties of songwriter Lorenz Hart through rapid-fire conversations, led by an incredible Ethan Hawke.

I Heart Willie is an overcomplicated, underdelivered, and all-around disappointing public domain slasher that can’t even get rudimentary filmmaking techniques right.

In spite of all of its nail-biting close calls and harrowing footage from the actual rescue, it’s actually a lot of fun.

Jackie Chan has some fun playing himself in Panda Plan, but this family action movie falls flat.

A deeply depressing comedic experience (thanks at least in part to accidental political timing), Bong’s remix of Edward Ashton’s novel presents a Trump-like villain and no worthy heroes, resulting in a farcical sci-fi adventure whose symbolism makes up for its misshapen character drama.

Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro) offers some reliably, well, clean hand-to-hand combat without showing us anything we haven’t seen before. Only a mid-film twist and the oddly sympathetic motives of the bad guys distinguish Cleaner from a thousand other movies with basically the same sturdy premise.

What Beat Takeshi’s mob comedy lacks in explosions, it more than makes up for in jokes that bomb.

While the movie's points are clear, they're also cliché – as is the movie's horror. The director's ambition exceeds his grasp, telling a story about characters who are not well-drawn enough to feel either universal or specific. The result is a fraught romance that should be nerve-wracking but instead is mostly dull.

Even when The Gorge disappears into generic run-and-shoot action, it benefits from the colorful confidence of Derrickson’s staging and a ’50s-inflected sci-fi score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. At its worst, this solid genre exercise still looks worthy of the theatrical release Apple didn’t grant it.

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

Crackling comedy, a sizzling age-gap romance and a new kind of sincerity make Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy second-best only to the original.

Doug Cockle’s return as Geralt of Rivia is a casting coup worth celebrating. Too bad the movie he stars in is so boilerplate.

But as a comedy, Love Hurts is pretty stale; when not trotting out dopey crime-flick caricatures, it’s simply leaning on the supposed hilarity of a sunny house hunter with a secret talent for breaking bones. You’ve seen many versions of this premise, and better ones, too.

An obvious codependency metaphor becomes a body-horror blast in Michael Shanks’ Together.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives it his all in The Thing with Feathers, but the horror movie lives up to neither his performance, nor its own heavy-handed metaphor of a bullying crow-creature representing grief.

The Monkey is one of the best horror-comedies (and Stephen King adaptations) in recent memory, exploding off the screen with both gory kills and big laughs.

OBEX is a lo-fi stunner of a video game movie, merging a deeper understanding of the way games work with playful and creative sequences that also pack a deeply emotional punch.

From the sincerity of the lead performances to the cartoonish gore offered by Werewolves Within director Josh Rubenn. There are much worse ways to spend Valentine’s Day than a genre cocktail for saps and gorehounds alike.

Isaiah Saxon’s adventure fairytale ends up unique and beautiful, much like the adorable animatronic foundling of its title.

Grafted makes a patchwork of its ideas but manages to be an entertaining, mindful, gore-saturated charge through social hell.

Drew Hancock’s Companion is a funny and clever thriller, carefully balancing dark moments of violence and unsetting reveals with a disarming sense of humor.

Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon can’t quite salvage You're Cordially Invited, a comedy that's as overcrowded as the dueling nuptials it depicts.

It has a wacky premise involving a woman swapping places with a chair, but the uncompromising consumerist satire By Design is more performance art than camp classic.

The Ugly Stepsister’s torture-porn take on a classic fairy tale is told from a teenager’s point of view, but the grotesque elements are appropriate for gorehounds of all ages.

Mel Gibson’s Flight Risk manages to entertain despite goofy dialogue and the equally goofy concept of a U.S. Marshal and the prisoner she’s transporting finding themselves onboard a tiny plane with a killer. The character types are familiar and the story is simple, but there’s enough panache to keep it in the air right up until its explosive ending.

The Michelle Yeoh fronted spin-off movie Section 31 is 100 minutes of generic schlock containing only trace elements of Star Trek.

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is a bleak, mean-spirited take on a childhood classic that trades Peter’s sparkle-bright magic for overbearing seriousness and disappointingly straightforward thrills.

Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx do their jobs in Back in Action, assuring that it remains mostly watchable. But it’s ultimately a bummer to watch two well-established stars and versatile actors returning to big-budget filmmaking just to make another spies-versus-real-life action-comedy.

Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man is impeccably made, with a unique take on werewolf lore. But the emphasis is on craft over storytelling.

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is neither better nor worse than the sleeper-hit crime caper that preceded it. Like the original, it’s too long and threatens to become overwhelmed by its own web of underworld intricacies. Nonetheless, with appealing chemistry between stars Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr., and a suitably tense third-act heist sequence, it rewards the goodwill the original has built up since its 2018 release.

The bold risk of transforming Robbie Williams into an enjoyable CGI chimp pays off both emotionally and visually. Turning his back catalogue into epic musical numbers with stunning choreography and heart-wrenching storytelling, Better Man comes out swinging and winning.

Like the imposing, unadorned structures of brutalism (think: Boston City Hall, the blocky public housing of the Soviet Union, modern additions to any university campus), it can feel at times intentionally ugly or rudimentary. But it’s also a breathtaking work that’s simultaneously maximalist and minimalist – a searing movie that’s poetic on a formal, storytelling, and thematic level.

Better jokes, better imagery, and two (!) inspired comic performances by Jim Carrey give this Sonic sequel an edge on its predecessors.

Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa is a strong, uncomplicated effort that should charm kids. The Moonlight directors involvement in a CGI-heavey Disney prequel caused serious film lovers to wring their hands, but the results speak for themselves: This is simply a lovely movie.

A good cast and Collet-Serra’s energetic staging elevate the kind of straight-down-the-middle entertainment Hollywood has mostly, sadly stopped bankrolling. It’s not quite Die Hard, but close enough.

Ford v Ferrari's James Mangold takes his hands off the steering wheel for A Complete Unknown, resulting in a Bob Dylan biopic that takes unpredictable turns. Rather than connecting the dots between how the world influenced him (and how he influenced it in turn), the film frames his enormous musical sea changes as personal drama for his peers. It’s formally straightforward, but its focus on the characters in Dylan’s life – rather than the musician himself, played by Timothée Chalamet – turn him into an enigma, for better or worse.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is a fascinating idea with a lackluster execution, more interesting as a concept than an actual retelling of one of Middle-earth’s famous legends.

Despite its ferocious source material and lead Amy Adams, Nightbitch is a bloodless tale of maternal doldrums with little payoff.

Nosferatu is Robert Eggers' finest work, given how it both boldly stands on its own as a gothic vampire drama and astutely taps into the original texts — F.W. Murnau's silent classic and Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

The finest adaptation of one of the most important comic book stories ever told gets the ending it deserves.

Jack Black will be enough to lure both kids and parents to the holiday comedy Dear Santa. But Black can’t carry the whole thing himself, and he’s eventually subdued by some deeply questionable story choices.

This sequel doesn’t merit a sing-along and does little to expand on what we already knew about Moana and her friends.

Too sweet to be sordid and too gross to be taken seriously, Ryan Kruger’s Street Trash makes a mess of its anti-capitalist message.

Wicked is a well-oiled machine in the hands of Jon M. Chu. This film adaptation epitomizes what modern movie musicals can and should be, embracing its source material while cleverly translating it to screen. Tear-jerking performances by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo make the movie, playing to their individual strengths to bring to life the rapport between Glinda and Elphaba, who’ll go on to become the good and wicked witches of Wizard of Oz fame. If as many people love this film as much as I did, Wicked will undoubtedly immortalize the Grande and Erivo in movie musical history.

Frothy, self-aware, and straining for laughs, Hot Frosty is a cup of whipped cream with no hot chocolate.

The movie surrounds its mismatched stars with a whole lot of shockingly inconsistent special effects, preaching a sentimental yuletide message even as it looks like the height of soulless commercialization.

Gladiator II finds strength and honor in the well-worn armor of its predecessor. Paul Mescal is adept in the belabored-hero role, going toe-to-toe with not only the delightfully deranged Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, but also with Denzel Washington, whose mercurial Macrinus practically screams “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED” at the audience every second he’s onscreen.

Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom disappoints by stuffing its long runtime with dull and monotonous chatter, and not enough of the grandiose moments that inspire the newest character in the series.

A modest French sci-fi fable whose messages about letting go aren’t half as moving as the images surrounding them.

It’s not as delicious as its practically perfect predecessors, but Paddington in Peru preserves the series’ sweet-natured fun.

Using familiar characters to tell a new story with fresh gags and supreme animation, Vengeance Most Fowl stands shoulder to shoulder with some of Aardman’s best work.

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

A Real Pain is a hilarious and tender drama that shows us that truly living is the only way to honor those we've lost.

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.

Blitz's piercing sound design can't make up for its bloodless depiction of World War II, its scattered sense of place, and its saccharine approach to overcoming racial hostility. Saoirse Ronan is captivating in the role of a single white mother to a defiant Black son trying to make his way back home, but the movie can't seem to balance her talents with its own timeline.

Smile 2 doesn’t quite match its sadistically effective predecessor in the scare department, because once you’ve seen one phantom doppelganger grinning like the Cheshire Cat, you’ve seen them all. But the movie works as a nasty portrait of the downside of music-biz fame, and it builds to an ending deserving of every crooked smile it earns.

Although it has some delightfully grotesque monsters, Mr. Crocket is a kids’-show horror spoof that isn’t ready for primetime.

While the bones of the story itself may not be particularly groundbreaking, what’s brilliant about We Live in Time is that it encourages us to find wonder in the everyday.

Despite its ultra-low-budget trappings, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a fun, competent adaptation that offers up a healthy dose of Evil Dead-style supernatural action.

V/H/S/Beyond is the most cohesive, best arranged, and most creatively complementary V/H/S yet. Here’s hoping we get a bundle of found-footage mayhem like this one every Halloween for the foreseeable future.

With a cast that takes wildly different approaches to characters we already know from film and TV, and a camera that never slows down, Saturday Night is chaotic in wildly enjoyable ways. The lead-up to the historic premiere of SNL plays like an extended 90-minute climax.

Like a human turned into a creature of the night, Salem’s Lot kicks off with a strong sense of identity that slowly gives way to mindless vampire nonsense.

Terrifier 3 is a bounty of practical effects riches that cannot be denied, but its storytelling is scattershot in ways that hold the sequel back.

Although Apartment 7A's chills are mild, this decades-late Rosemary’s Baby prequel gets by on atmosphere and strong performances.

While its flaws are rooted in what it avoids, its marriage of topic and form yields a blast of positivity in a way that perfectly suits its withholding subject, granting his interviews the kind of depth and creativity embodied by his music. While it avoids all thorny entanglements, it looks good and feels great, like any LEGO movie should.

Transformers One’s strong central friendship – and a great Brian Tyree Henry performance – aside, this animated origin story could have used some major transforming before rolling out.

You can admire the ambition of The Life of Chuck while still wondering if such a lightly philosophical story needed to make the leap to the screen – or if turning all of its prose into Nick Offerman voice-over was the best move. It’s less an adaptation, ultimately, than a glorified book on tape from a talented King superfan.

The American remake of Speak No Evil mostly recaptures the squirmy dread of its shocking Danish inspiration… until it doesn’t.

A deeply human film with no human characters, The Wild Robot is a tear-jerking and unpredictable animated adventure.

Heretic’s slow-simmering first half is much better than its second, but the movie keeps you on your toes throughout. Most of its deranged charge comes from Grant, finding darkness under the pleasant hallmarks of his aging-star persona.

Subtle and intuitive, this documentary about NYC psychics asks all the right questions.

Though it features delightfully weird visuals and a stellar turn by Kathryn Hunter, The Front Room can’t find its identity, both on-screen and in its own marketing.

The worst thing about Joker: Folie à Deux is its unfulfilled potential. It begins with the promise of a novel approach to the Joker and Harley Quinn, placing them in a world where the opposite of cruelty is musical romance. Unfortunately, the DC sequel gets bogged down by a lengthy courtroom saga, which not only keeps the dazzling Lady Gaga away from the spotlight, but centers the movie entirely around its own predecessor, without doing or saying anything new.

Saulnier savages the legal loopholes that allow police to exploit their community, all while offering the year’s most breathlessly suspenseful standoffs. It’s what a modern crowd-pleaser should be: smart, gripping, and about something.

It doesn't always work; it loses its way midway through, as though in desperate search of purpose. But when it finds that purpose, it makes a powerful emotional impression: Visually splendid, emotionally arresting, and features some of the finest filmmaking of Guadagnino's already-accomplished career.

The premise may be intriguing, but the repetitive approach and nearly identical lead characters renders the Ocean's duo without their signature chemistry and strands them in a distractingly underpopulated criminal underworld.

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.

The stars are about the only reason to boot up this preposterous thriller, which ends up playing less like a critique of AI technology than another daydream about its power.

Tim Burton allows the cast of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to have fun, even if they're all off in separate movies that barely overlap. Its story is intentionally robbed of dramatic weight, but this makes way for the goofy, imaginative practical effects of Burton's early days, resulting in a small-scale legacy sequel that doesn't take itself too seriously (because it doesn’t need to).

It has no soul or style, and creates no sense of chemistry between lead actors Omar Sy and Nathalie Emmanuel. They try their best to fill the movie's dead air with charm and anguish. Unfortunately, their best isn't enough.

Blink Twice confirms that director Zoë Kravitz has an artful eye and ear: Her debut feature is full of creative compositions, heightened sound design, and clever editing. However, where she excels in creating atmosphere and mood, she falls very short as a screenwriter.

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.

The love story between Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry works, or at least meagerly satisfies, on only surface levels, as does most of the movie.

With impressive animation and a faithful script, Watchmen Chapter 1 is clearly a labor of love. But while it avoids some of the pitfalls of prior adaptations, it also reveals a few of its own.

Though Skincare’s script lacks bite or balance, Elizabeth Banks gives a riveting lead performance with assistance from Lewis Pullman as her sketchy sidekick.

Alien: Romulus’s back-to-basics approach to blockbuster horror boils everything fans love about the tonally-fluid franchise into one brutal, nerve-wracking experience.

While it sometimes leans too heavily on its ickier aspects, Cuckoo has just enough sense of its own absurdity to remain disgustingly fun.

This buddy comedy lives or dies on your affection for its stars, offering complementary shades of good-natured Bostonian ineptitude.

Borderlands is an abysmal waste of a beloved franchise that takes a kooky band of murderous misfits and drains the life out of their first adventure together. Eli Roth is no James Gunn, and this film has none of the lovable lunatics, awe-striking sci-fi visuals, and out-of-this-world storytelling of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy.