Despite the film’s best efforts to melt its characters into the vast sludge of superhero cinema, the union between Eddie and Venom is simply too pure to be diluted down to nothing. Thanks to Hardy, even the least of the movies in this franchise is definitely something, and it’s something that its genre may not be able to survive without.

An imperfect hidden gem worth ticking off for genre completionists, it’s also a suitable pick for Mother’s Day 2025 — one that will remind true horror myrmidons why the best springtime releases so often lurk in mess.

While Olive’s apparent desire to layer together Lacy’s tragic story with historical stories of lynching and the way they impact current culture is understandable (and admirable), the trio of stories that make up Always in Season never fit together.

The Deb may not be the most memorable movie musical of the year, but its heart and funny bone are in the right place.

It’s charming enough, although flashes of flinty humor hint at something edgier underneath. Henry, capable of bringing deep emotion to even small parts (“If Beale Street Could Talk”), often finds unexpected grace notes.

A somewhat funny, perversely family-friendly musical-comedy about all of the ways that modern parents are making their children insane with anxiety.

An undeniably entertaining watch, Suburbicon stumbles when it tries to recycle effective old ingredients into something new.

The film makes a great case for Quaid as action hero, Midthunder as romantic charmer, and Berk and Olson as being ready to step out of their horror-centric background.

It’s a testament to Stone’s sensibilities — and to Barden’s performance — that you want to see these characters stretched out over the course of a 10-episode season, but it’s to the movie’s detriment that they feel so condensed here, various scenes just sloshing into each other without a clear sense of flow.

Love plays out like the fragmented outline for a more engaging movie. But the one found here lacks substance both on the level of story and graphic reveals.

Yes, the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has long been more compelling than any of the stories told in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and — in the process of reconciling those two stories as only Marvel Jesus could — Deadpool makes a very persuasive case that this should be the last superhero movie ever made. It won’t be. It already isn’t. The best we can probably hope for is that “Deadpool 4” is similarly willing to die for all of the sins that its genre will commit between now and then.

Fly is divided between thinking all of this is extremely cool and realizing how morbid it all seems, but it ultimately lands on the side of: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. That’s a disorienting feeling for a viewer.

Late Shift is carried on Benesch’s shoulders, and she impresses. It’s just a shame she isn’t given more of a movie to act in.

While the film attempts to thread a tricky needle between absolute drama and wacky comedy — dramedy! — Harris’ script is actually at its best when leaning more into the story’s tougher stuff.

That problem: Does it feel real? Not yet, and not even movie star turns and rapping birds and the very best of intentions can bridge that divide. For now, “The Little Mermaid” exists outside of the very world it so wants to be a part of, one already so lovingly rendered in its predecessor, “real” or not.

A mouth-watering but utterly flavorless documentary about one of the most acclaimed sushi chefs in the world (and arguably the most famous), Matt Tyrnauer’s “Nobu” is such a fawning portrait of Nobu Matsuhisa that it feels like it should only be available to watch on a DVD sold at the gift shops in the restaurateur’s hotels.

There’s a raw honesty here that could have benefited from a surer hand, and yet it almost doesn’t matter that Hall lacks the tools to mend the rotted bridges that isolate veterans from their home country, because at least he understands the sheer depth of those gaps, and how desperately our soldiers need us to meet them half way.

For a film that explores how the way that we’re looked at can inform how we see — a film capable of knotting the beautiful and toxic aspects of that process together in a way that makes room for them both — Clementine is too prone to navel-gazing to leave a strong impression.

It’s frustrating that West often scores with his few modest attempts to stamp his own imprint on the genre, as those flashes of fun hint at what this movie could have been.

The movie arrives at an eye-roll inducing final twist, and hints at an inevitable sequel. But this app isn't exactly begging for an upgrade.

In aiming for a piece of atmospheric sensuality, she instead lands in an erotic no man’s land, where the dramatic but obvious filmmaking — like an orbital shot when Emmanuelle finally reaches orgasm — isn’t surprising or evocative enough to make up for the silly monologues and empty characterizations.

While not without its touching moments, "Mister and Pete" is inevitably defeated by its own good intentions.

Yakusho never misses a beat; fittingly enough, even this movie’s greatest weaknesses are an opportunity for him to prove his strength.

The home stretch of We Broke Up is so knowing that the forced smile of the movie’s first hour achieves a certain poignancy in hindsight.

A harsh and largely unwelcome change of pace from Japan’s greatest living humanist filmmaker, The Third Murder finds Hirokazu Kore-eda abandoning the warmth of his recent family dramas (“Still Walking,” “After the Storm”) in favor of an ice-cold legal thriller that pedagogically dismantles the death penalty.

A wish fulfillment in feature-film-shaped form and little else, “You, Me & Tuscany” isn’t especially memorable or surprising, but there’s a soothing, smoothed-over quality to this film — which was shot on-location in Tuscany, so points for that — that makes it a suitable candidate for your next airplane viewing.

Cole clearly deserves as many posthumous tributes as the culture can afford, especially since he received so little in his lifetime, but reverence, particularly as a way of combatting decades of indifference, isn’t necessarily the best solution

Unfortunately, Framing Agnes gets too wrapped up in the questions surrounding storytelling to do any actual storytelling.

Your Lucky Day moves along at an engaging pace throughout, although it doesn’t reach its brutal potential as a thriller until two-thirds of the way through. Up to that point, it’s burdened by clumsy repetition of its central theme.

Despite a handful of headline-worthy moments and a generally blasphemous — or perhaps just humanistic? — attitude toward the dogmas of the Catholic Church, Benedetta can’t help but feel like one of Verhoeven’s tamer efforts.

Popov is meditating on relevant themes, but what she diagnoses about the superficiality of the self-serving media and fashion worlds is already received wisdom, rather than the lethal satire she’s aiming for.

Esteban is a black hole that sucks out all the air from the space around anyone in his midst; Bardem’s perpetually alpha aura makes for a great match to the material. His performance is terrific and internalized as ever, bringing vulnerability and edge to a stereotype.

Justin Chon’s overcranked but achingly heartfelt “Blue Bayou” is a case-study in how issue-driven melodramas are a double-edged sword.

It’s fantastically unrealistic stuff from the first minute to the last (and there are far too many minutes between them), but Idris Elba and Kate Winslet generate enough heat to keep the frostbite at bay, and Mandy Walker’s stunning location cinematography ensures that the film looks considerably more authentic than it feels.

Sargent shows talent at constructing a down-to-Earth, largely observational character study that admirably doesn’t lean too hard on inspirational pathos or turgid trauma porn to generate drama or emotion. It makes for a very promising first feature, one that unfortunately undercuts itself with an underwhelming, emotionally vapid fantasy of a conclusion.

Despite the apparent care and respect that went into Keough and Gammell’s film, “War Pony” also makes clear how very far there is still left to go when telling “authentic” stories.

Age of Rage is much more potent when questioning its own purpose than it is when giving fancy racists yet another platform to espouse their bullshit.

It’s a wrenching look at the perils of prohibition, and who wins when all is said and done.

The most frustrating thing about Kiran’s choice is the gradual realization that “Land of Gold” would have been a richer and more powerful film if Khurmi hadn’t pressured its everyday tragedies into an over-plotted melodrama.

For a story that takes place in such a tactile and cohesive fantasy world, it’s frustrating that the archness of its telling keeps the viewer at a distance rather than pulling them closer to the heart of the matter.

The problem with Outside Satan is that the filmmaker has remained faithful to expectations without enlivening them. It's a curious exercise unworthy of his expertise, but then he may realize as much.

This thing should be light on its feet, fleet and fast and fun. Instead, it drags down the court, taking plenty of shots, but never quite sinking any of them.

As “The Cow” sinks deeper into increasingly limp twists, turns, and choices, Ryder keeps hold of Kath, offering the film’s most genuine surprise: a real, lived-in, fully fleshed out performance. No one else can match her, but who could even try?

After the implosive force of those first 30 minutes, the rest of the movie can’t help but feel like a self-defeating scavenger hunt through the rubble.

"Skywalkers” also seems to gloss over too much. It never fully probes the mental state that drives someone to do this kind of thing in the first place, instead dealing with the squabbles that nearly wreck their union.

There aren’t that many minutes to mess up, but the film manages to make it feel much longer. At just 86 minutes, Brahms: The Boy II should fly by, but the film lurches forward with its momentum punctuated by bad jump scares and odd flashback sequences.

A Capra-esque moral comedy that unfolds with all the subtlety of sky writing and none of the same panache, “Irresistible” is a perverse bid for clarity that feels like it was left behind like a relic from some long-distant past.

The Wraith is hardly more than it’s surface. The synopsis says it all and there’s very little character development outside of gang leader Packard (Nick Cassavetes, making his parents so proud) being motivated to pound on or murder other guys because they talk, let alone make love, to a girl he likes (Sherilyn Fenn).

While Glob took exception with the assessment that Apolonia’s personality was more interesting than her work, her surface level portrait of her as both an artist and as person ironically upholds that very statement.

Together may not be the best pandemic movie about a poison-tongued couple stuck in lockdown together, but it’s the first to recognize that rage is a necessary part of grieving what the pandemic has taken from us.

Apple's first narrative film is a breezy historical biopic that plays like BlackKklansman for math nerds, but it's too stodgy to add up.

There’s a perplexing choice at the heart of Little Death, directed by Jack Begert, best known for his work in music videos. That choice is essentially to make two very different movies and smash them together.

Alas, all the darkness in the world doesn’t make “Day of Soldado” feel real, and errant mentions of a weak-stomached POTUS violently return us to the atrocities happening beyond the frame.

This immaculately furnished film sacrifices too much drama in order to expound upon its characters’ ideals, and sacrifices too much exploration of those ideals in order to accommodate for a healthy degree of drama.

Inevitably, Tape will inspire conversations — its woefully conceived final sequence literally begs for them — but perhaps not the ones Kampmeier anticipated when crafting a film that, for all its missteps, is built on necessary storytelling.

Pitt’s stardom has never been more obvious, and it shines bright enough here for everything else to get lost in the glare.

This creatively unbound tale about imaginary friends is so determined to spirit you away that it soon loses any meaningful grip on reality.

Harrison is the brightest point in Together Together, which plods through a gimmicky premise without finding much levity along the way.

The Son is too suffocated by the severity of its writing and the sterility of its environments for the film’s characters to grow beyond the scenarios they represent.

You might as well be watching the last 15 minutes with your eyes closed, which is a shame, as the first half of Carnage Park makes a strong case that Keating is someone whose stuff is worth seeing.

There’s nothing scarier than things that go bump in the night, but the terror is easily dispelled once we turn on the light and see what’s really there. That’s the lesson of King’s story, but Savage’s adaptation fails to understand that there’s nothing more frightening than the unknown.

A fun premise can get a horror film far, and “When Evil Lurks” has one that could be taken to interesting, terrifying places. But rather than lean into what makes its world of demonic diseases intriguing, the film squanders its own potential by leaning into its worst qualities and instincts.

Half-sketched as its drama can be, Alfred’s feature-length fiction debut is sustained by a complete lack of poser energy and a few new tweaks on some classic tricks; come for Vince Vaughn downshifting into his indie dad phase, stay for the woozy retro vibe that evokes a timeless sense of starry-eyed youth by layering mid-century Doo-wop from the likes of Arthur Lee Maye and The Chiffons over modern skate footage.

By the time the movie arrives at its broadly sweet but emotionally hollow final scene, it seems clear that the Zucheros want the audience to feel everything, but all I felt was nothing.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls is at its best when it foregrounds the adults and gives Black and Blanchett ample time to bicker with one another.

Gladiator II” wouldn’t be the first sequel to become bogged down in its resemblance to its forebear, but the various superficial modifications made to characterizations and action sequences operate under faulty bigger-is-better sequel logic.

A murky, vaguely sinister, but ultimately dreary coming-of-age film about a young woman’s blossoming sexuality under the spell of her mother’s old flame.

The reality is that Passion Play has a few good ideas that simply don't hold together. More of a miscalculation than an outright dud, it takes the form of a wildly surreal western fantasy, something that Chilean madman Alejandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo") could have executed with more rigorous invention.

Neither goofy enough for camp status nor lackluster enough for extreme derision, Son of No One is just mediocre enough to be an easy target.

It made me cry at the end, but my tears were as canned and untrustworthy as the sound of a sitcom laugh track. I could barely remember what I had just watched, only that it was often honest enough to make me want to be with my family but never specific enough to justify the fact that I wasn’t.

In spite of its demented enthusiasm (as well as this independently financed, Sam Raimi-produced film’s welcome rejection of anything that might resemble a studio note), Mohr’s frenetic and exhausting video game of a movie doesn’t know where to focus its energy.

It’s certainly hard to imagine a cruder way of connecting the dots between the series’ fractured mythology.

It’s enough to make you long for the days when blockbusters of this scale weren’t afraid to make strong choices, especially the ones about how we’re all going to die if we don’t.

For an homage boasting a far more fatal outlook than Varda’s original, it’s frustrating and kind of perverse that Blue Night should be so gentle.

The way it reaches to find the humanity in a place devoid of hope shows admirable attempt at a singular vision. But Paltrow overestimates the timeless nature of the story.

This version of Speak No Evil, despite an effectively creepy performance from James McAvoy, grinds the unsettling contours of the original into gory, “Straw Dogs”-lite, home-invasion comeuppance pulp in a last act that’s exactly the sort of dragged-out predictable material Tafdrup sought to avoid.

The Banishing ends with such a walloping undertow of “wait, that’s it?” that it earns little more than the backhanded compliment of realizing you expected a lot more from it.

Disney’s latest attraction just isn’t rousing enough to sustain the fun of a 20-minute ride for more than two hours, and the rewards are few and far between for a movie that taps so many resources to reach them.

A sensitive but almost fatally self-absorbed death drama that has much to say and little to feel.

47 Meters Down sinks rather than swims, even if there are a few buoyant moments along the way.

You’ll get little more than a refresher course in the art of gaming from this documentary.

A beautiful wisp of an idea that is seldom compelling and almost never coherent, Planetarium squanders an irresistibly alluring premise.

The overall arc of this “Justice League” coheres throughout, providing occasional dashes of intrigue and inspired visual conceits, and sometimes it’s even fun. Re-centering the drama around ostracized actor Ray Fisher as Cyborg, and drawing out some of the ostentatious fight sequences to their breaking point, Zack Snyder’s Justice League displays genuine effort to make this impossible gamble click.

Clover is at its best when it leans into its more silly side, playing up the ludicrousness of many of its twists alongside a cast that’s not interested in winking at them or going for the easiest of laughs.

Holiday movies don’t have to be good, they just have to be comfortable, and by that regrettable standard “Daddy’s Home 2” mostly gets the job done.

Ingrid Goes West is colorful and flippant enough that it can survive a lot of its more senseless developments, but the movie never digs beneath the most obvious layers of its L.A. stereotypes.

For their part, the Garrity family is asked to carry more weight with less substance, and their non-characters struggle to support the emotional burden of an intimate life-or-death journey, the destination of which is a lot sillier than it was the last time around.

The result is a portrait that’s equally sullen and playful, clever and confused; for all its pleasures, All Is True never amounts to the sum of all the many parts that Shakespeare may have played in his time or thereafter.

The Boys in the Boat would be the most old-fashioned movie of the year even if the year were 1994. For at least the first half of Clooney’s latest movie, the comfort food of it all proves to be part of its gently stirring charm, stale as it might be.

Useless narrative threads and too many wasted elements give away M3GAN 2.0 as an amateur effort made by a talented horror filmmaker who has not yet mastered action’s specific visual language or skill set.

Frustratingly, despite being jam-packed with facts, there is not much insight into what makes Bird tick, what makes her a great player, or what her legacy actually means to the sport.

What we’re left with is a staid little movie that races around the court and rallies itself to exhaustion, a historical drama that enshrines the narrative underpinnings of all great sports stories without doing anything to upend them.

Neither wacky enough to work as pure punchline, nor smart enough to bend its looniness into something more substantial, Storks views the world with the same confused outlook of its wide-eyed infants.

The attempts at spectacle never quite land, as Maggio’s ambitious car chase sequences and shootouts seem to stretch his resources and give the impression of a filmmaker biting off more than he can chew.

The film is undone by the wobbly dynamic between its romantic leads.

Kendrick makes the case for why she belongs in more dramatic roles that allow her to shed her normally peppy usually cheery onscreen persona. We know how good she is, and we’d only love to see more.

The movie is every bit as bloated as his last few, but its charms remind us of his great potential (and potential greatness).

Style has always been the vehicle for his substance, and while it’s easy to imagine why an overdone misstep like “Parthenope” might inspire Sorrentino to rein things in a bit for his next feature, it’s funny that said feature turned out to be the story of a man who threatens to unravel from self-doubt at the height of his power.