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.

Twisters can't quite recapture the magic of its predecessor, but setting aside the Herculean task of clearing that high bar, it is nonetheless an entertaining and heartfelt attempt, if not to proudly step out of its forebear's shadow, then to charmingly poke its head out to smile and wave politely.

The more this origin story refrains from winking and nodding at the future direction of this characters, the better it is. That it can't entirely keep itself away from this impulse is why it isn't the smooth introduction for a new generation of potential fans it could have been.

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.

The problem is it can't find nearly enough to say to justify its 148 minute runtime, exhausting interest and failing to build its intriguing big ideas into a compelling story.

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.

The film is not exactly exemplary or paradigm shifting, but it is entertaining, heartfelt, earnest, and largely unashamed of its comic book origins.

The co-writer-slash-director's proximity to its real-life subjects means he can't put too much of an over-the-top Hollywood twist on the tale, but any intent to do justice to the reality of the story just left me wondering why he would want to tell it again if he weren't going to lean into the gloriously preposterous traits one would expect from the classic disaster movie.

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.

While "Romulus" is a bit overstuffed, it's also never boring, and at its best it's one of the scariest rides you can take at the movies this summer.

It's a great time at the movies for slasher fans, '80s pop culture fans, and Mia Goth fans alike, and even with a few stumbles in mind, it manages to stand as one of the summer's must-see films.

Rental Family is a clear crowdpleaser with a sense of humor and charm that will make audiences fall in love with it — if they're willing to accept its unvarnished sentimentality, that is.

With Paul Mescal taking on leading man duties, Gladiator II capitalizes on all the visual delights and heroic battles that make this genre — when done well — so enjoyable to watch.

If nothing else, Kinds of Kindness features three show-stopping performances from Jesse Plemons, giving Lanthimos a new muse to champion.

It's the incomparable Strong who steals the show as Cohn, the Pygmalion who carves Trump out of spray tan and ill-fitting suits to make him into the monster he becomes.

On Swift Horses finally achieves the emotional resonance it's been aiming for just a few minutes before the credits.

The film as a whole may be too sedate and ploddingly paced for some — a piano being moved back and forth, over and over again, across an elegant but lonely Parisian apartment, both literally and figuratively. But it's impossible to deny the raw emotional power of Jolie in the lead role.

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

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."

There's enough here to win over audiences who loved the original film, particularly in its depiction of the endless bureaucracy of the Afterlife.

Yes, it's still rare for a horror film to be longer than two hours, but it's especially rare for a horror film of that length to feel rushed. Terrifier 3 progresses to its climactic living nightmare too fast to be properly processed; this is likely to mirror Sienna's mental state in that moment, but it is still in dire need of an extra couple of beats to build tension before all hell breaks loose.

The cinematography is gorgeous, and the audacity of the twists can be darkly funny. But thinking about "Cuckoo" afterwards, I feel like I'm missing the key to making sense of and really connecting with it.

Violent, laugh-out-loud funny, and often cartoonishly macabre, The Monkey is everything "Longlegs" is not, and yet it fits perfectly in Perkins' larger body of work. And like "Longlegs," it's a horror experience that should not be missed.

It's a nice enough movie, and honestly it might just be the best possible version of a live-action adaptation of its source material. But if you're expecting anything more than an almost exact shot-for-shot remake, you may be disappointed.

The majority of the movie is great. Funny and zesty, but still with something to say, Good Fortune is a good time even if the ending leaves something to be desired.

The armies of visual effects teams at James Cameron's disposal struggle to hide the fact he's now on autopilot, expanding the world of Pandora without offering anything that feels particularly fresh. Even the set pieces failed to arouse much excitement.

Black Phone 2 hits, it hits – and that's the case pretty much as soon as they make it up into the mountains. With clever set pieces that utilize Ethan Hawke to his best advantage as an even more disturbing Freddy Krueger, Black Phone 2 ups the creepiness factor.

As a frenetic, chaotic glimpse at the making of a doomed-to-fail sketch comedy series that has somehow lasted for 50 years, Saturday Night is a blast.