While certainly the most dazzling Superman movie to hit the big screen, the 143-minute Man of Steel is also the longest, and it only justifies that heft because it leaves room to keep the effects coming.

Unlike so many comedies, Sausage Party only gets funnier as it goes along — there are dozens of duffed jokes along the way...but the script mines its demented premise for its full potential, and the plot crescendos to an ending so good that you’re likely to forgive many of the dull moments that came before it.

The film’s predictable plotting is delivered via a nearly lethal combination of obvious twists and a series of face-offs that would be compelling, if not for the exposition-heavy conversations that take place in between the physical brutality.

The expectations of the genre provide a framework for Work It that both delights (so many dancing montages! all of them fun!) and confounds (a chemistry-less romance). When it dares to break those boxes, however, things get miles more interesting.

There’s enough go-for-broke and whiplash-inducing shifts in tone on display to suggest this filmmaking duo has a future, even when their characters don’t seem to have a past.

The problem is that, while Johnson crafted a good script that balances multiple tones, his directing isn’t as confident in that tightrope.

There’s a deeper, more serious film at the heart of I Want You Back, but a bent toward offering up off-kilter comedic set pieces instead keeps it from hitting any harder truths.

As knowing and perceptive as Howell’s script can be, it fails to galvanize its most sensitive ideas into compelling drama, and Meyer doesn’t recognize where a spark might be necessary.

Handsomely made but tediously plotted, Kirby is more than deserving of this kind of meaty, she’s-in-every-frame role, but Night Always Comes sunsets long before we get there.

Despite the focus on such a fertile period, it suffers from a meandering narrative and a jarring pace, particularly as it pushes on into his later years without bothering to age star Nicholas Hoult in the slightest.

R#J certainly looks new, but flashy graphics can’t detract from the problems that lurk inside its structure and its script

Evans and Grace are exceedingly appealing together, and their charming chemistry keeps the film afloat even when it doesn’t seem to know which direction to move in.

A stylish but ultimately stiff collection of old tropes about writers and their audience, fiction vs. reality, and the Other that becomes you.

Despite its title, this Rebecca is decidedly modeled after the second Mrs. de Winter instead of the first. Soapy where Hitchcock’s interpretation was stiff, the film is beautiful and hurried and eager to be liked by everyone in a way that will only lead to trouble. It dutifully respects Manderley’s past, while at the same time revitalizing that drafty mausoleum with an Instagram-ready sheen.

The film presents a contemplative elegy for a hotel whose history is (still) being eroded, but by focusing on the literal walls (and how they, of course, can’t actually talk) only further removes the voices of the very people who live (and dream) inside of them

There’s almost nothing about “Emilia Pérez” that’s conventional — until the movie unravels into a third-act bit involving a hijacking, guns, and a live human body in a trunk. Which is just a reminder of where Audiard’s head really rests all along.

Like any Mamet endeavor, the real star is the language. Major plot events happen almost entirely offscreen, with its ensemble of characters using them as jumping off points to soliloquize about everything from the value of therapy to Snow White’s vagina. Everyone has preconceived opinions about his writing style, but Mamet puts it to use, with more substance than recent misfires.

It might seem a bit showy and cheesy in its final moments, but that kind of over-the-top shock is missing from most of the rest of the film. It’s a thriller missing the thrills, and we’ll take them where we can get them.

Weitz and Orton mean to question the individual’s role in a mass atrocity, but the abstract nature of their ideas never squares with the rigidity of their storytelling. As a result, Operation Finale doesn’t feel ambiguous so much as it feels like it lacks a point of view.

While the script is far too spotty and unfocused for the film to be anything more than the sum of its parts, the setting — and the set-pieces that Daly creates from it — is enough to prevent this unlikely genre mash from being a blight of its own.

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.