The question remains whether a "Mortal Kombat" movie could ever be expected to be better than this, considering the limitations of the source material. That this sequel translates the simple beat-em-up thrills of the video game into something narratively functional is about as triumphant as it could possibly get for this franchise.

We didn't need The Devil Wears Prada 2 ... and unfortunately, it shows. This might be a legacy sequel, but it feels like a bad knockoff; the "Channel" to the original's "Chanel."

The Drama is a very well-crafted, never-boring dark comedy that is unfortunately completely broken at its core, handling a loaded premise in ways that are unbelievable at best and offensively tacky at worst.

If we're not poking fun at the inherent silliness of this, like a good "Scream" movie should, then all we're left with is a slasher too afraid to twist the knife.

Director Renny Harlin does his best to maintain the same level of slow-burning dread as he pulled off in the prior film, but it ends up feeling like a mundane, fly on the wall account of the average day at the office for the two surviving killers.

What remains in question is how much this story constructed through hints, however well they can be understood, actually evokes feeling. To me, Carousel felt like it was missing something that could have made its quiet slice-of-life scenes a real emotional experience.

Shelter aims higher than typical Statham fare by taking itself more seriously, but in doing so, it misses the mark on what makes his best work so enjoyable in the first place.

It's perfectly serviceable, never less than watchable, but lacking in anything special that could live up to its twisty potential.

Yes, Gen Z absolutely deserves better than People We Meet on Vacation as their equivalent to When Harry Met Sally — but until a worthy successor comes along, this will make for a charming substitute.

Whatever happened in bringing this story to the big screen, 100 Nights of Hero starts off enjoyable enough in the moment, but by the time it ends, it's easy to feel underwhelmed.

To put it simply: it's just another Christmas flick with an artificial heart — if it even has one at all.

Now You See Me: Now You Don't is pretty to look at, pretty dumb, and pretty freakin' fun.

Maybe there's something I'm not getting here, but as far as I'm concerned, Die My Love comes alive in individual scenes yet feels stultifying as a whole.

. The fact it all adds up to an enjoyable romp, albeit one that never feels as bold as its parts, is likely an encouraging sign that Dan Trachtenberg has attained a similar status to Phil Lord and Chris Miller a decade ago, taking pitches that sound disastrous and turning them into non-compromised crowd-pleasers against all the odds.

Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, and especially Stephen Graham do their level best, but they're let down by a bafflingly inept script and unimaginative filmmaking from Scott Cooper.

As its clichéd and underwritten story progresses, however, it goes from mildly interesting to underwhelming to actively bad in the end. By the standards of a major release in competition for Halloween season screens with some of the best horror movies of 2025, it's a failure.

It's intelligent without being profound, amusing without being hilarious, empathetic without being gut-wrenching. "Cute" is the word I'd use to describe it overall. By nature it's nothing special, but it's not bad either.

It speeds through the plot beats so fast, in fact, that it never properly allows you to take part in the murder mystery guessing game for yourself, barely developing its characters beyond the one note they're introduced on, so the question of a motive becomes an irrelevance to anybody watching.

Though it may sound like a fascinating sci-fi rumination on the intersection of technology and human life, "Ares" works best as a rollicking action picture with some strong visuals and incredible soundscapes. It lacks the acting acumen and depth of writing to achieve much more. 

While DDL's acting genius gives the film some spark, those sparks are sapped by lethargic pacing and serious pretentiousness.

While it doesn't offer anything you haven't seen in a slasher movie before, the pivot to survival thriller mode feels like a breath of fresh air after a tiresome prior installment with no unique ideas, and no suggestion of any impending change to the worn out formula.

Him is a decent time at the movies and possesses an impressive sense of execution. It's just that the vision its putting forth feels like one we've seen a lot of in recent years, and some pretty pictures and scene stealing moments from the performers can't overcome the sense we've been here before.

The meta-narrative of where The Smashing Machine fits into Johnson's career is more interesting than the film itself, which I found a bit of a bore. Johnson's performance is good enough, and Emily Blunt is truly transformative as Kerr's unstable wife Dawn Staples, but neither get that much to do beyond repeat the same sort of fights (physical or verbal) over the course of two hours in a film that fails to justify why we should be so interested.

It's not a terrible film, to be sure. At times it's even deeply entertaining, because Coen and Cooke clearly still have a certain sense of magic and charm in everything they do. But this dark crime comedy starring Margaret Qualley as a determined private eye is still lacking in a sense of real direction.

This is the only genre where you can paper over the flaws with a handful of well-staged set pieces, and thanks to Timo Tjahjanto, it manages to upstage the original on that front.

The vastly overqualified cast stubbornly refuses to phone it in, with their high-wattage charisma acting as the ultimate special effect; their banter is entertaining enough to help distract from just how cheap everything else onscreen looks.

It's not a good movie, but it's not that bad for a streaming flick either. If you liked the first one, give this one a try. It won't give you the same warm and fuzzy feeling as the original, but you could do worse.

Eddington is a fascinating film whose high points are sure to grow in the public estimation with the distance of time, but whose murky themes and punishing runtime have more in common with advanced torture tactics than with traditional cinematic expression.