Intentional or not, this alleged thriller is more of a comedy, and maybe I’m just jaded, but to me, there isn’t a genuine thrill in sight.

Riveting, responsible and deeply unsettling, a first-rate film like Dark Waters is a rare and welcome chapter in the dramatic fabric of how one unlikely person can make a big dent in the world of social injustice.

Both the songs (once again written by two-time Oscar-winners Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) and the relationships between the characters — strong points of the original film — register with less energy and originality this time around.

Together, they redefine rapture.

Waves is a demanding and absorbing family drama that unfolds in two parts without lines of division, yet both parts are distinctively and stylistically different. The film is too long, but I was impressed and riveted throughout.

There’s nothing to make your hair stand on end in The Shed because it’s not convincing. Despite walk-ons by a pair of experienced professionals, Timothy Bottoms and Frank Whaley, the actors are unknown for a reason, and despite familiar weapons of self-defense such as fires, shotguns, hatchets and chainsaws, the plot is jokey and the action defies all logic.

You can’t fault the actors, who play the sadism for tough, two-fisted realism, but Crown Vic (a title that makes no sense; there’s nobody named Vic in it) is still a cheap copy of Training Day and a crash course in lock-jawed cynicism 101. Not to mention the worst P.R. the city of Los Angeles has had since the Rodney King scandal.

The divorce part fades in and out of focus while the marriage part unravels in flashbacks. Sometimes they drag on so long you can’t tell the difference. Still, it’s intelligent enough to like it a lot in retrospect.

Honey Boy is a dolorous example of an alarming trend in modern movies — the miraculous ability of an infinitesimal talent to raise money for an obnoxious, self-indulgent film about his own life designed to appeal to absolutely nobody except the arrogant subject himself. In this instance, the jerky centerpiece in love with himself to the detriment of everyone in the audience is Shia LaBeouf.

Recent complaints about action flicks with no action can be ameliorated by Primal, a white-knuckle thriller with a thrill a minute. Nicolas Cage delivers his best performance in years.

This is a movie where the characters utter the word “weird” enough times to fill an Advent calendar; in truth, the only thing that’s actually weird about it is how middle-of-the-road and mild it is.

Unfortunately, it turns to be duller and infinitely more stagnant than most Hollywood dreck. But it is partially saved by very good actors who struggle valiantly to make it less monotonous than it is.

With enough terror to satisfy modern audiences and enough underplayed plot movement to save it from conventional biopic trajectory, Harriet holds interest and invites respect. It is still not the great Civil War epic it could have been, but it’s solid enough to work, and Cynthia Erivo’s valiant and committed performance is a wonderful achievement.

Sensitively directed by the Israeli duo Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun, The Etruscan Smile is a perfect example of what can happen when a great, versatile and powerful actor raises familiar material above and beyond the level of mediocrity.

Motherless Brooklyn is so messy, confusing and pointless that you don’t know what’s going on half the time, and couldn’t care less.

The Great Alaskan Race is the vigorous, heartbreaking film about that true story that will leave you cheering.

By the Grace of God is still one of the best films of 2019.

Even a guest appearance by Jamie Lee Curtis couldn’t bring this celluloid zombie to life.

It’s a well-meaning idea that never quite succeeds on the levels of either comedy or drama. Call it a noble failure.

Indeed, considering its trippy visuals and leaden dialog, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil would work much better with the sound turned off (the music is as ubiquitous as it is unremarkable) and Dark Side of the Moon or a bootleg of a Dead show blasting on the stereo.

In a masterful bit of cinematic sleight of hand, Bong, the writer and director behind 2013’s "Snowpiercer" and 2017’s "Okja," harnesses the precise anxieties everyone of us is currently sharing — top of that list, the growing income gap and the crumbling planet — and uses them to make every scene in this blackhearted comic thriller crackle with energy and purpose.

The result is fascinating, informative, educational and totally entertaining.

At the movies, bad things happen to good people all the time. But it’s especially lamentable to see two sterling silver talents of the caliber of Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer trapped in a mindless trifle like Mary. It’s a watery tale of supernatural nonsense at sea as lost and immobile as a beached mackerel.

Directed by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) with an impressive cast that includes Will Smith and Clive Owen, the sci-fi action thriller Gemini Man should be better than the ossified bore it is. Instead, it substitutes the gimmicks technology-freaks might call “innovative” for anything that remotely resembles any element of plot, character development, or entertainment value.

A movie that borders on genius—repellant, dark, terrifying, disgusting, brilliant and unforgettable.

There is insufficient character development and insight, and the film has no ending, so the viewer just hangs in space, asking a million questions for which there are no answers. Low Tide wafts, and so does audience interest.

Painful for sure, but glorious too, Pain and Glory is Spanish wunderkind Pedro Almodóvar’s best and most moving film in years—a brave and wrenching self-portrait of an aging artist under the siege of age and the fear of death.

Portman’s delicate and damaged portrayal is mesmerizing.

Despite an avalanche of misguided raves, Renée Zellweger as the greatest entertainer of the 20th century in a film called simply Judy is nothing more than another gimmick. You won’t get the real deal here, no matter which gushing hysteric you read.

What it lacks in textual depth, it makes up for with the genuine sympathy it evinces for characters that most films would dismiss as stupid, depraved and undeserving of our empathy and concern. Like Freud, Scheinert seems to understand that even people who commit unspeakable acts deserve our understanding.

In Villains, an energetic combination of black comedy and lazy thriller that is more of an attention grabber than most of what passes for disorganized, empty-headed, juvenile horror in today’s sociopathic cinema, four very good actors give it all they’ve got for nearly 90 minutes. Considering most of what I’ve suffered through this year, that passes for praise.

Ho-hum. Running with the Devil is yet another generic drug trade thriller that defies coherence, embraces clichés, and wastes the time and talent of Nicolas Cage.

It’s good to have Demi Moore making a comeback after a prolonged absence from the screen, but not in a load of unmitigated crap called Corporate Animals. It’s never smart to make up lists of the worst movies ever made, because every time you do, something comes along that is even worse than what you saw before. But I think it’s safe to say that in the final top ten tally, this abysmal dreck will come in close to the top.

After awhile, Last Blood feels less like a new Rambo movie than the latest installment of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

So which side of the movie finally prevails — the lackluster conventionality of its text or the breathtaking singularity of its visuals and action? The latter does, if just by the nose on Brad Pitt’s perfectly imperfect face. Combined with the film’s lavish technical achievements, his classic movie star sturdiness makes Ad Astra a memorable filmgoing experience even as the story it tells slips off into the ether.

This works in her favor, since everything around her is trashy and forgettable. J-Lo is the only reason to see it. As a pop flick of no consequence, it’s inviting but forgettable an hour later — but the praise Lopez has received is well deserved. She’s developed nicely as an actress. Call it learning on the job.

The Goldfinch arrives as one of the year’s deadliest disappointments.

We end up spending way too much time running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fear.

Angel of Mine is a much better meld of psychodrama and soap opera than it appears on the surface.

It’s a disaster.

The story Hood’s film tells is a vital one to revisit, not just because the deceptions it illuminates inform so much of the political and international morass affecting our daily lives, but also shows the power of a single act of moral courage, and it does so while being blisteringly entertaining cinema.

It is a doom-invoking, cathartic and strangely satisfying head-trip that’s also a bit ridiculous.

It is the Oscar winner’s most affected performance to date, which is truly saying something when you consider that she has already played both Katherine Hepburn and Bob Dylan.

Like that dash across the freeway, the dirty jokes, bad language and bursts of violence end up being something that we have to grit our teeth to endure to get a glimpse of the inner lives of these boys, which are far richer than we typically see from a Hollywood comedy.

It’s far from subtle, more than a little sudsy, but also pleasingly direct and full of heart. Most significantly though, its timing is perfect.

The truth is, the film represents a troubling trend in films today, where production and marketing types think they can get by providing shallow examples of things that are popular in the social justice zeitgeist — women being tough-as-nails lead characters, for example — and act like that’s enough. It’s not. Give us real characters; give us good writing; give us a compelling story. Otherwise, don’t bother.

The value of sensitive, balanced acting to enhance a mediocre movie has never been more evident than in After the Wedding, a ruminative though pointless remake of Susanne Bier’s 2006 Danish melodrama of the same name. Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams are splendid bookends in a well directed yet clumsily written sudser by Moore’s husband, Bart Freundlich.

This one is too close for comfort to "The Road" to inspire much fresh or original thinking.

Øvredal also coaxes mostly strong performances from his young cast. This is especially true of Zoe Colletti (Showtime’s City on a Hill) as protagonist Stella.

If he weren’t voiced by a mellow and serene Kevin Costner, Enzo would sound like Martin Short’s old Ed Grimley character, only with Formula One replacing Pat Sajak and Wheel of Fortune as his object of obsession.

No one was expecting Midnight Run level repartee from Hobbs and Shaw, but is it too much to ask for a bit more than the who-has-a-bigger-penis stuff we get here?

The result is a well-intentioned but ultimately torpid film, one that feels much more concerned with saying something important than it is the far more noble task of conveying a compelling story worth telling.

Rancid, preposterous and hysterically over the top in ideas and execution, “once upon a time” perfectly describes writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is indeed another hopped-up fairy tale like every other Tarantino epic.

While the man in the title may have played a part in ushering us towards this unfortunate state, Mike Wallace Is Here is nonetheless a refreshing return to a more promising era when a swashbuckling, nicotine-huffing newsman made powerful people sweat for our collective edification.

The cinematography is beautiful (filming in the Virgin Islands, you’d have to be a moron to make a movie that looks ugly) and the four-member cast is easy to take. Not the worst way to spend 90 minutes on a hot day.

If you have a strong stomach it is well worth seeing for the lessons it teaches about the value of survival in the pursuit of redemption.

When violence does befall Clare and her family, it is far more devastating than anything she could possibly have imagined. It’s also as shocking and difficult to watch as any I have seen in a lifetime of watching violent movies.

Produced by Cameron Crowe, who interviewed Crosby as a young journalist for Rolling Stone in 1974, the film spins a powerful and enlightening fable about the ultimate cost of survival. It’s about what happens when the most reckless and bridge-burning among us ends up being rock’s Harry Potter — i.e. the boy who lives — and must sift through the guilt and wreckage of all the relationships left in his wake.

The sum of the parts in martial arts on view here do not add up to a fascinating, consistently intelligent whole. You can write the plot on the head of an ice pick.

The movie has moments, but clichés abound and it runs out of energy and steam early. In a memorably bad summer, count it as another dull indie-prod on its way to home video.

The best of what The Lion King offers is a somewhat technically up-to-date and generally well-voiced reworking of the familiar, but nothing surprising or vital. There is certainly nothing in the least bit urgent about director Jon Favreau’s new telling.

While Crawl never quite achieves the classic status of Jaws, it’s so convincing that you forget about the mechanics and become petrified by the gore.

Slogging along from one slaughter to the next, a benign narrative unfolds about a family of savages hell-bent on their own self-destruction, with no redeeming qualities.

Awkwafina’s true skill as a remarkably sensitive collaborator has only recently been revealed—last year doing broad comedy in "Crazy Rich Asians" and now here, where every scene requires a deft shading of sadness and guilt.

Bad movies are indigenous to summer, but rarely have I ever seen one as bad as Cold Blood.

Grim, grisly and downright sickening, Midsommar is a feel-bad horror film about suicide, mercy killings, insanity, graphic nudity, religious hysteria, and the kind of grotesque imagery that exists for no other reason than shock value.

The result is a limp and minor effort both in front of the camera and behind it.

The result is pretty to look at, with the misty lakes and foreboding forests of Denmark beautifully photographed and the costumes lavishly designed, but the sad (and boring) result has none of the bold thrust or festering passion originally created by the Bard.

A Swedish-German co-production in English, Euphoria should be called Dyspepsia. It lulls you into a disagreeable stupor clearly labeled “who cares?”

From Germany, the deeply disturbing domestic tragedy Three Peaks is another film of understated but driving intensity starring Alexander Fehling, a.k.a. the Paul Newman of German cinema.

If Spider-Man Far from Home is a triumph, as many will argue and its box office will undoubtedly confirm, it is a triumph of capitalism, not art. It is the film’s fervent hope that we, as consumers, are starting to lose our ability to tell the difference.

While Dauberman is still figuring out how to effectively build suspense (Daniela’s various forays into the Artifact Room seem to take as long as visits to the DMV), he does a good job of varying the types of scares he uses to shock his audience. He also leavens the tension with just the right amount of humor and does well with his recreation of the ’70s.

Like the metropolis that sprawls out far below the rooms she cleans, the film quietly pulses with life. And like Eve, we are left hoping she has a larger part to play in that world beyond smoothing blankets and folding toilet paper ends into perfect little triangles.

It’s just tired, desperate and preposterous.

Despite good performances from a first-rate cast, the problem here is that the movie was written and directed by Amanda Sthers, who adapted it from her own novel. The result is too literary, but not in a good way. It’s choppy like paragraphs from a book, instead of chapters.

Even when it occasionally falters, it is polished, heartbreaking, and worthy of attention.

A horror anthology consisting of five episodes by different directors with more imagination than skill, Nightmare Cinema will make you scratch your head more than your goosebumps. Each story is designed and determined to scare the living daylights out of you, but I promise you more yawns than screams.

Beautifully acted, sensitively written, carefully and economically directed, American Woman is the best film about the gradual but triumphant empowerment of an abused woman I have seen in this age of distaff political enlightenment.

Being Frank festers uncomfortably from start to finish.

Incurable romantics seeking a fresh look at love contemporary-style could do a lot worse than Plus One. This charming little independent film, by the first-time writing-directing team of Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer, also introduces two vibrant new stars in Jack Quaid and Maya Erskine as Ben and Alice.

What is the meaning of life? When that question is posited in a deeply moving post-credits scene, the answer is like the film you just watched: incredibly funny and devastatingly true.

Avoid it at all costs if you value your sanity.

The main issue is the script. The tale it tells is shopworn.

Dementedly written, and directed as though it was under the influence of something stronger than cough syrup.

A miserable hunk of depressing junk.

Papi Chulo eventually turns effectively…poignant.

Which points us to the real issue with this film and so many like it. These super heroic and super histrionic spectacles are multiplying so rapidly that they are recycling their own tropes at such a rate that it is almost impossible to be surprised anymore.

In a violent, stupid and nauseating creature feature called Ma, she (Spencer) plays a cruel, bloodthirsty monster who tortures and kills off half of a suburban town for fun. It’s a horrible disgrace, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Godzilla: King of Monsters is a film that seems to paint with sound — sometimes Pop Art, but more often large canvas Jackson Pollock splatter.

Nothing makes much sense here, including the title. There are no poison roses, although The Poison Rose would have been aided immensely by even one poison daffodil.

The movie has nary a thought in its red-hooded head, only a lot of blood.

The new film never lags and some of the sturdiest elements from the original — namely the catchy and descriptive tunes by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice — remain every bit as strong as they were in 1992.

If you cherish the rare opportunity to watch magnificent actors as perfect as Blythe Danner and John Lithgow giving it all they’ve got, in a film about grown-ups, then the line starts here.

As a result, The Souvenir, Hogg’s fourth film, is an extraordinary rumination on memory and privilege while also being one of the most incisive movies ever to directly address — in moral, philosophical and personal terms — what it means to be a filmmaker.

This is a movie that talks endlessly about emotion but displays none of it — and the same can be said for all that destiny chatter.

Never catches fire or fully engages the imagination in the nightmarish way it should.

Buried beneath its furious, catch-as-catch-can approach to humor (Wine Country never met a joke it didn’t like), the film is a moving and nuanced portrayal of how difficult it is to be open and vulnerable even to those who love us utterly and without apology.

It’s the witless script by Shane Atkinson and the petrified direction by Zara Hayes that lands everyone in traction.