While the off-kilter film is a fine showcase for the personalities of two of our best emerging comedic stars, Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”) and Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”), the humor falls short of being very funny.

Finally, on the series’ supposedly last outing, one of its films lives up to the ever-deepening talent of its leading man. Equalizer 3 adds nothing new to the thriller genre, true, but it wisely acknowledges what’s worked well before.

Directed by Guy Nattiv, the sluggish film caves to the worst tendencies of forgettable biopics. Mirren is ensconced in prosthetics and a gray wig in hopes that a lookalike transformation can distract from bad writing and a total lack of insight.

Most of DC Comics’ dreadful movies deserve to be violently squished, but not Blue Beetle, a refreshingly spry new film featuring the lesser-loved, bug-shaped superhero who’s been crawling around in some form since 1939.

As always, Dracula sucks blood. But his latest movie simply sucks.

The fight scenes are remarkably exhilarating and spontaneous for being, well, animated. And all of the jokes — written by Rowe, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, among others — are truly very funny and witty while still making sense for this vision of the five boroughs. They’re spoken by a genuine, young cast, who sound like they’re having a party after school instead of the usual stiff, one-day-in-the-studio delivery.

Waffling Disney can’t decide if it wants this thing to be a quirky and fun but unsettling movie like “Beetlejuice,” with some real guts and creativity, or another schlocky ad for a Disney World FastPass. At times Simien’s film is surprisingly dark and emotionally honest, while at others it’s kitschier than “The Country Bear Jamboree.”

Director Christopher Nolan’s seismic Oppenheimer is that rarest of things: a sophisticated and bracing movie that’s made for adults and makes nobody say, “I’ll wait till it’s on streaming.”

The packaging of “Barbie” is a lot more fun than the tedious toy inside the box.

The will to live is missing from Netflix’s not-quite-sequel Bird Box Barcelona, and so is our will to watch.

Seven movies and 26 years on, Ethan Hunt’s mission is more satisfying than ever.

Like in "Crystal Skull,” director James Mangold’s movie aims to merge Indy’s earthy supernatural framework with science fiction, to mixed results. The love-it-or-loathe-it ending is a real doozy.

A solidly entertaining if predictable time-travel film that boasts something most DC movies sorely lack: a strong lead performance.

The love story is nice, but Ember and Wade’s relationship also goes from zero to 60 awfully fast. There have been many a romance told inside of two hours, but these guys’ instant gushiness is awkward and doesn’t ring true — even for CGI blobs.

The seventh movie in the franchise, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, is a predictable return to rock-em-sock-em stupidity with nothing to add except Michelle Yeoh as a talking aluminum falcon.

Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson and writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham web-swing to such high heights by treating Miles Morales, our Spidey, as a complicated and hormonal New York teen who love-hates his parents and not just another cog in a franchise.

Really, though, it is just another tiresome and impenetrably brooding Gerard Butler movie in which no event seems to matter any more than the next one — and grimaces are mistaken for drama.

Despite real actors, CGI and brand-new material, “Mermaid” is the studio’s latest flesh-and-blood cash grab that’s more lifeless than far better two-dimensional painted drawings.

Miraculously, this clunker is worse than the original in every respect, but zero is as low as we can go. Like the original, “Spring Awakening” easily ranks among the worst movies of the year.

Don’t expect a single novel element here — everything is recycled from the junkyard.

It’s a “Dumb and Glummer” of a sequel that confuses the worst punchlines ever for Prosecco fizz, when the groaner jokes go down like lukewarm vodka.

Although lacking the gravitas and moral conundrums of Facebook-centric “The Social Network,” Johnson’s dweebish film turns every one of these tech breakthroughs into a stirring victory worthy of “We Are The Champions.”

The utopia-via-laboratory aspects of “Vol. 3” resemble “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” — only it’s the Wrath of Gunn. This chilling paperweight clocks in at 2 hours and 30 minutes, making it the fourth longest Marvel film so far. And it’s wildly self-indulgent.

The gory-as-hell movie is as campy and fun as any chapter in producer Sam Raimi’s four-decade-old horror series. But trapping kids in an apartment — as opposed to college-age friends in a cabin — raises the stakes and brings on legitimate scares. And some hearty laughs, too.

The duo’s journey is gripping, but long stretches elsewhere in the film drag and it feels much longer than two hours.

Crowe — knowingly, I think — clowns around from start to finish. Even if the horror doesn’t have you screaming, his Italian accent will.

Cage is amusing though, and exemplifies the old stage wisdom “if you’re having fun, they’re having fun.” However, that’s the biggest problem for Renfield: Whenever Cage leaves the frame, which is often, we immediately stop having fun — as if Dracula commanded us to.

For all its detailed worlds, like the Mushroom Kingdom and Jungle Kingdom, the Nintendo film is just another soulless ploy to sell us merchandise that doesn’t bother to disguise its creativity-starved greed. Mostly the movie comes off like a video game we’re unable to play.

Be you a fan of basketball or basket weaving, Air will snugly fit the tastes of just about anybody.

Netflix has padded its catalog of cinematic background noise some more with Murder Mystery 2, the instantly forgettable sequel to its rancid whodunit comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler as married crime solvers.

Honor Among Thieves is a useful reminder of something that’s been forgotten in the age of dense film universes and ultra-violent action films: Light-hearted adventure movies like “The Princess Bride” remain the perfect vehicle for humor, romance, fights and special effects. When done properly, as Dungeons & Dragons is, they give audiences a full-bodied experience that’s hard not to like.

Four tremendous films and nine years into the adrenaline-fueled, Reeves-led action series, director Chad Stahelski has yet to let his franchise noticeably dip in quality.

With sub-par material, Levi pretending to be a kid and naively shouting and pouting has turned grating.

That’s the worst thing about these new Scream films — they couldn’t spook a kitten. They’re much more concerned with so-so jokes and overly geeky observations about the horror genre. Yes, Scream always commented on other scary movies, but never so obnoxiously and repetitively as now.

Lazily bopping around to exotic locales in France, Turkey and Qatar, it’s a generic collage of mega-yachts, luxe hotels, fancy parties, disguised identities and tame fights that add up to a big nothing.

Brilliant star Michael B. Jordan does double-duty in “III,” returning to play Adonis Creed and directing a film for the first time — the man is a champ at both athletics and aesthetics.

Impressively, however, director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.

There are some surprisingly attractive shots in director Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s low-budget film — honey drips from Winnie’s mouth in a sadistic “Silence of the Lambs” way — and the acting is committed rather than arch (even if the dialogue is lousy-to-inaudible). Yet it is impossible to recommend to the average horror fan in search of a good movie.

Sorry to Raid on your parade, “Ant-Man” fans, but the third chapter is a pile of dirt.

Donna Summer’s disco classic “Last Dance” does a good job of summing up Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Magic Mike’s Last Dance: When it’s bad it’s so, so bad.

80 for Brady would be close to worthless were it not for the prodigious talents and chemistry of its marvelous cast.

Knock at the Cabin, the “Sixth Sense” director’s latest anvil, is less “Old” and more Old Testament. No fun here! Yeah, there’s much more competent filmmaking and acting on display, however it’s all wasted on a strained and ponderous story with stratospheric delusions of grandeur.

A movie needs more than a smart idea and an impressively visualized concept of the future to run smoothly. Two-thirds of the way through, “The Pod Generation’s” battery is already at 1%.

The well-known story beats are also given renewed vitality by the young actors, whom director Christopher Zalla expertly steers away from being typical overemoting movie kids.

This comedy soars squarely on small moments and big jokes.

Director William Oldroyd’s mouthwatering drama, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, misleads and misdirects all the way to the shocker ending.

Even without the laughable new material, the addictive quality of the short story is lost in adaptation from the get-go.

Director Oliver Hermanus has as much restraint as his star (and for a modestly sized movie, impressively manages a visually believable 1950s Britain), and the viewer never feels emotionally manipulated.

I wanna feel the HEAT … but I don’t. On the contrary, the animatronic new Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” left me shivering from a gust of arctic air as it so clinically and lazily examines the tragic life of the famous singer.

A useful aspect of watching the movie on streaming rather than onstage is you can turn on the subtitles to catch all of Minchin’s clever lyrics. Many of the quirky phrases, coming fast and furious, were muffled on Broadway and the score improved when I listened to the album later.

Yes, it’s your typical Macguffin, with everybody chasing down a trinket, but a fairly creative one with a lot of good jokes. The comic-book-style action sequences also set co-directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado’s movie apart from the litter. The No. 1 reason to watch, though, is Banderas’ top-notch voice performance. If only more A-listers treated their animated film roles as more than a pet project.

The movie is a good 40 minutes too long and momentum ceases to build a while before it finally ends. Still, when the director’s party is raging, you’ll wish you had an invite.

Spending more than a decade pining for Pandora was worth it. Cameron has delivered the grandest movie since, well, “Avatar,” and with an over-three-hour runtime that never sags. What better way for struggling cinemas to regain their footing than with a gargantuan film that so celebrates the glory of the big screen?

As he did so ingeniously with “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the Spanish Civil War, del Toro explores fantasy, myth and childhood in a time of oppressive fascism; the specks of light that escape the darkness.

Emancipation, which is an otherwise well-tread period drama about the horrors of slavery, features more of Smith’s rich emotionality and laser-focused intensity that he’s uncovered late in his career and that won him the Oscar for last year’s “King Richard.”

Bones and All is a surprisingly effective and affecting cannibal love story.

A sweet, science-fiction family film with a loud environmentalist message (speaking of “Avatar”) that’s good fun. It’s also nicely self-contained.

One sequence is amusing: a number called “Fairytale Life (After the Spell)” in which panini grills and espresso machines sing along like they live in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. You struggle to care about the rest.

Directed by Maria Schrader, the film that’s part of one of the most reliably galvanizing genres — newspaper reporters doggedly chasing down a tough story — is a disappointing, sleepy metronome with made-for-TV diminutiveness.

If Falling for Christmas simply fleshed out Sierra more, and made us believe she was in love with Jake, not just grinning at everybody, we’d have a movie. Instead, it’s a predictable stunt.

Every aspect — acting, writing, special effects, score — is a notch above its superhero peers. In the best possible sense, you forget you’re watching just another Marvel movie.

Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 World War I novel, the German film on Netflix is unsparing in its portrayal of the horrors of battle. It’s sensory-overload, tough-though-rewarding viewing.

The supremely talented Florence Pugh has rapidly rebounded from the “Don’t Worry Darling” debacle with The Wonder, a creepy new Netflix drama that’s unusually strong for the streaming service. For once, it’s the characters who endure hardship — not the audience.

Ticket to Paradise would be a better time if it was as campy as its lead actress’ frozen hair.

The Rock arrives with the power of a pebble in the new action movie “Black Adam,” in which the popular star plays the titular anti-hero in his first solo outing. It’s just as thoughtless and rancid as the rest of DC Comics’ crummy catalog.

What I love about Green’s style is he has both a sense of the grand — he gives Michael’s mask the cinematic weight of Moses’ Ten Commandments slabs — and the goofy.

The match of larger-than-life actress to larger-than-life role is perfection.

Amsterdam has every advantage imaginable. Doesn’t matter. It’s the worst movie of the year so far, and I will bow down to whatever comes along and tops it.

Hocus Pocus 2 is also awful to the core, but charmless and too low stakes to keep our interest.

There’s so much anguish, we eventually become numb to it over the nearly three-hour film. We come to know her only as a victim, not a fleshed-out person. Is that take enlightening? Meh. Entertaining? Not really. Long? Extremely.

Pugh, a sensational actress, keeps our interest as she grows increasingly suspicious and sees disturbing visions in mirrors and on windows. She brings class and gravitas to a movie that would otherwise be kinda trashy.

Fraser, so good, takes what could be a joke, a flat tragedy, or even a lecture about weight and imbues it with gorgeous humanity.

There’s nothing wrong with some silver screen sorrow, but not when it amounts to indecisive mush.

It’s gripping, visually mesmeric, boasts an exceptional, grounded script by Tony Kushner and is acted to the hilt.

Banshees, reuniting Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell from “In Bruges,” is a scream from start to finish-erin.

Zeller’s latest mental health movie is an exhaustingly tedious experience in which you check your watch several times a minute while taking breaks from giggling at the clumsy dialogue.

Dunham has made a really attractive and cohesive film, merging her modern, punky sensibilities with the dirt-and-stone drear of the time period.

Lathan, who has had a long and fruitful career as an actress in TV shows like “The Affair,” does well in her first go as a director. She has just enough visual flair so as to not overwhelm the rich characters and vibrant place.

Johnson still does whodunits better than Kenneth Branagh’s horrid Agatha Christie adaptations he keeps torturing audiences with. Yet despite the giggles and the beefier budget — explosions, an exotic locale, massive sets — “Glass Onion” comes off slight.

I can’t speak to Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel the film is based on, but the story’s climactic reveal is one of the most predictable in ages. It gets the award for Biggest Duh!

What a refreshing break from what usually constitutes an epic nowadays — mixing Ant-Man and the Hulk.

What Yankovic and director and co-writer Eric Appel have done, brilliantly in spots, is parody Yankovic’s own life while sending up the whole biopic genre. In a messed-up way, the maneuver is kinda poetic. And so very funny.

After some early thrills, director Baltasar Kormákur’s movie ceases to excite because the creature has no more surprises left. He just jumps through the window — again.

Lucky “Day Shift” has an Oscar winner in Foxx, who’s appealingly heroic, and gags about a burning sensation on characters’ privates.

Reijn’s film, which was written by Sarah DeLappe and Kristen Roupenian, succeeds in making a young basement horror movie for today. And, as least year’s “Scream” reboot showed us, it’s a genre that’s been stuck for far too long in 1996.

Bullet Train is a fun flick, to be sure, reminiscent of director Guy Ritchie’s better crime comedies such as “The Gentlemen” with Hugh Grant. But, as the title suggests, it’s louder and faster. And, a warning to the squeamish, there’s a swimming pool’s worth of blood.

Novak’s forever-skill as an actor is likability, and that approachable magnetism is on display here. What doesn’t work in this otherwise naturalistic movie are the punchlines he’s written for himself. Too planned and stilted, not terribly funny. The huge size of all the actors’ humor never matches the intimate way the film has been shot.

In attempting to dramatize their harrowing story in the film Thirteen Lives...the director doesn’t make quick, from-the-gut decisions the way that the intrepid team did. Instead, he takes a chill ride on the Lazy River.

You simply cannot believe you’re staring at megastars — so sapped of individuality and charisma they are. My barista could have been cast as the lead of this action-thriller, and the film would be absolutely no different.

The movie is a bit long, and the culmination overstays its welcome. That is the only section of the movie where the viewer is a step ahead — and therefore it doesn’t sizzle like what came before. Yet the visual splendor of the sequence also proves the director has a flair for the epic we didn’t know about before. And that makes me all the more excited for the next “Untitled Jordan Peele Project.

Providing a hint of redemption is Edgar-Jones, a naturally vulnerable actress who can turn the shallowest of material into something deep. We like Kya and are with her every step of the way, even though at over two hours there about 50 steps too many.

Love and Thunder is an urgent reminder that in order for the MCU to keep going, in an entertaining, soulful way, creativity and innovation is required. You can’t just say “multiverse” 1,000 times and call it a movie.

While a tad too light, as these films often are, nobody is making animated characters as funny or likable (or marketable) as the Minions.

A movie that runs on jet fuel and confetti, Elvis is a tribute to Presley’s innovative spirit, deep passion for fusing blues, country and gospel music and the intense connection he had with his audience

Dismiss “Cha Cha” as yet another heartwarming comedy at your peril because every single person in it has layers upon layers of complexity.

The movie is one of the better pieces of family entertainment released so far this year.

Nobody is good in this thing. You’d think it would be nostalgic to see Dern, Neill and Jeff Goldblum together again, but they all act like old fogies, and they’re written to sound like morons.

At Crimes, you gag a lot more than you giggle.