The doughy Damon and aristocratic Blunt don't match up physically, and they never get any Hepburn-Tracy rhythms going that might create some current.

This new Scream is so determined to be a Scream movie that it forgets the primary, unstated rule established by the original Scream: You can sell anything to us, so long as you make it scary.

While the movie feels empty and pointless overall, it’s not without its scattered interesting elements.

Despite the heavy context and historical precedent, there’s not a whole lot on Overlord’s mind, and a gestured-at “defeating the monsters makes us monstrous” philosophical thread ends symmetrically but pointlessly.

Some might want to leave the theater and file a lawsuit. I stayed and laughed. It’s funny because it’s abominable.

Juicy, revved-up, semi-satisfying biopic.

Once everything finally collides in The Whale, something shattering and beautiful and honest emerges.

For all of R’s allegedly humorous observations about the wasteland of the undead through which he walks, they feel tacked on — like somebody decided to turn this thing into a comedy at the last second.

Crawl is a great example of a simple story exceedingly well-told. It’s a bloody adventure full of teeth-gnawing turns of fortune, mordant wit, vicious gator kills, and surprising tenderness — that clocks in at a blessedly fleet 87 minutes. It’s a perfect horror film for the summer, as much an ode to the cataclysmic, humbling aspects of Mother Nature as it is a love letter to father-daughter relationships.

I walked away from this picture both moved and confused. Because it’s got Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz in top form, The Mercy nails the emotion, but comes up somewhat short as a narrative.

From the script to the music to the unfinished-feeling sound edit — nothing about Sierra Burgess feels like it got past a first draft.

It comes by its emotions honestly and wins you over.

Stillwater is the new movie from director Tom McCarthy, and it feels like one he’s spent his career preparing for — an enthralling, exasperating, and, above all else, ambitious affair that doesn’t soften or demand sympathy for its difficult main character but does insist on according him his full humanity.

It’s a pleasant movie -- very pleasant, in fact -- but soft as a down quilt.

It is one of the more sadistic family films I have ever seen, a picture of the residents of a neglected childhood reckoning with the abandonment of their beloved, now grown-up human leader.

Sadly, all that glittered in the franchise’s first outing is gone in Wonder Woman 1984. The disappointing sequel highlights not only the dire state of the live-action superhero genre in film, but the dire state of Hollywood filmmaking as a whole.

This is the ultimate female take-back-the-narrative movie, and frankly a lot of it is silly and sophomoric. But it’s also juicy and fun.

The American Meme can be fun, even informative, but there’s a bigger story here, and Marcus mostly fails to tell it.

The Heat is kind of a mess, but it’s a funny mess.

Bad Times at the El Royale isn’t an event. But I was never too bored.

When superb craftsmanship, discipline, and risk-taking (toning down Diaz and MacLaine; treating Collette as a desirous leading lady) are applied to accessible, even frivolous material, the results can be deeply pleasurable. In Her Shoes isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s the best Saturday-night movie millions of people are going to go to.

It’s so smart, so winsome, so utterly rejuvenating that you’ll have to wait until your eyes have dried and your buzz has worn off before you can begin to argue with it. And you should argue with it — even if you had a blast, as I did, and want to see it again with the kids, as I do — because it’s a major pop-culture statement with all sorts of implications, both vital and nutty.

Not every sight gag works, and there's a brief stretch in the middle where the action becomes landlocked. But once we're out to sea the movie goes swimmingly--its three protagonists fighting, flailing, and often on the verge of drowning as their tiny skiff surges toward the land of the Inuit.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is indeed a cautionary tale, but it’s a complex, beautiful one, suggesting that love, longing, and loss are all parts of a vast, wondrous life.

The cluttered story and the shifts in form might lose you from time to time, but the film conjures some genuinely powerful emotions.

Sea Fever teases out elemental anxieties that have been given fresh life by unfortunate reality, but the movie is worth seeing because, when all’s said and done, it gives us characters and circumstances we can care about.

The movie version of Goosebumps replicates that balancing act. It’s a cheerful, nasty delight.

Watching Big Nick get a little lost in a boozy dream of abandon, an ocean away from his troubles, we understand him better than we understand most of today’s movie heroes.