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.