It’s solid, and at its best it’s an impishly entertaining little thriller. But all the talent in the world can’t overcome the feeling that there is more here to be mined, if only Humane had dug just a little deeper.

It’s the central performance by Oyelowo, who allows us to laugh at Harold’s naiveté and tomfoolery with some well-placed broad comedy choices while never dropping the ball on the character’s relatability, that makes Gringo a worthy watch for genre fans.

There’s little here for the casual horror fan, but genre completionists will likely find something that sticks with them.

More studio comedies should take chances on their principal cast members the way I Want You Back does. Even if little else here worked, at least Day and Slate do.

Mostly, though, the movie’s cartoonishness feels pitched just right, a heightened silliness that the characters’ circumstances keep bringing back to earth.

It’s worth watching at least once for the spectacle of the vibrant colors and great performances, and to be introduced to real historical characters, even if audiences must look far from the film to figure out what they were actually like.

An occasionally inscrutable and tonally unpredictable look at family, (lack of) empathy, self-centeredness and societal (and generational) rot, the film veers wildly between the genuinely disturbing and cynically comedic as it indicts Japanese society’s particular ennui toward happiness, satisfaction and aging.

A documentary that can struggle to tie its young politicos to the outside world, but thrives when tying them to each other.

Blood for Dust is a satisfactory interpretation of American hardships and making ends meet, one that’s been done plenty better and worse elsewhere.

In addition to a story about a found family and the potential for a life-saving vaccine, there are more than four other stories unfolding. It’s a shame too because there’s nothing inherently bad about The Deer King—it’s simply trying to do too much.

DuVernay has already documented history with projects like Selma and 13th, but Origin is her most daring feat yet.

There’s something rattling around, somewhere in Heretic, dealing with the power and limitations of belief, a movie that aspires to the deviousness of something like Barbarian, to which its setting bears the mildest of superficial resemblance. At some point, it escapes into the night without much trace.

Gray plays to the simplest pleasures of heist cinema and wins us over because sometimes it’s alright to simply be dependable and straightforward.

Writer/director Chandler Levack finds uncommon honesty in this Canadian video store employee and those he chafes against, even if the coming-of-age story eventually falls into some of the more palatable pitfalls its strident star would rail against.

It is less a rich, twisty drama than a journey through a historical figure’s greatest hits, punctuated by more engrossing moments of vulnerability and intimacy that only leave you wishing there were more.

The Thing with Feathers can be a rich and somewhat bizarre experience about processing trauma, accepting death, and moving on.

The Prosecutor is often at odds with itself, but is saved by the sheer, bravura intensity of its superior action thriller side.

Revealer aims for a seedy, late-night Cinemax vibe and successfully tells a story about the horrors of oppressing individual expression, but never meets the fullest potential of its premise.

It’s a lightweight film befitting its premise’s “good vibes only” origins—and its uninspiring construction makes its solid performances a pleasant surprise rather than a compliment to an already good movie—but you could do a lot worse than say “Yes” to Yes Day.

This isn’t a movie in search of a greater meaning. It just needs to be entertaining. But it does both, and better still, it bothers to be creative.

For Ritchie, though, the stolidness is an experiment and, in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare at least, a reasonably effective one.

It never quite rises to pedigree of Your Name, but it certainly asserts its place in Shinkai’s oeuvre as his most challenging film to date.

The Shrouds might not be Cronenberg’s most accessible or cohesive film, but it’s just as muddled as the process of coping with mortality in a world where we are pulled steadily further from what makes us human.

Orphan: First Kill isn’t an especially scary movie, nor is its class-war commentary especially subtle or insightful. Through sheer force of personality, though, these elements are rendered immaterial. Like Esther, the movie has a keen sense of how to weaponize its own audacity.

Lee’s making finely tuned action here; organizing history lessons isn’t his job. But the ferocity of Hunt’s combined action and momentum let him bristle over past atrocities even if those atrocities aren’t his focal point.

People don’t always want Goldilocks movies, but amid the melodramas and rom-coms, the IP blockbusters and action movies, Fremont’s easy flow and small scope provide the same reassurance (and opportunity for projection) as a small, optimistic piece of paper.

Harboring inventive visuals and a heartrending message, Wish has enough heart going for it. What a shame, then, that it wasn’t confident enough in itself to try for success without these clichés.

At its best, Suzume is a film that imagines modern Japan as a post-apocalyptic setting, evoking the animated beauty and “mono no aware” of pastoral iyashikei like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.

This time around, Murder Mystery 2 isn’t much of an actual murder mystery at all, less interested in the deductive skills of the Spitzes than in their indefatigable charm.

Like a lot of Coen movies, it’s not exactly an outright spoof, but it takes place in its own little stylized pocket universe. Unlike a lot of Coen movies, Honey Don’t! doesn’t quite come together as a mystery.

Bone-dry yet filled with yearning, Aki Kaurismäki’s Finnish rom-com is a charming tale of persistence amid chaos.

Well-known for penning the scripts for Adam Wingard films like You’re Next and The Guest among other recent horror-thrillers, Barrett retains the essence of his previous writing collaborations in his directorial debut while paying constant homage to the films that inspire this specific project.

Thanks to its two young stars, At Midnight shines just bright enough to keep us watching, and sometimes that’s all we really want.

As ruthless as some of the deaths can be, and tongue-in-cheek as the movie’s heightened reality becomes, Y2K remains affectionate toward its characters; it has a surprising amount of warmth and sweetness for what’s essentially a comedy about teens trying to get laid that pivots to a comedy about teens getting hacked to death by robots.

Falling for Christmas feels less like a genuine chance to give Lohan a due shot at a re-return to acting as it does like some executive’s opportunity to capitalize on millennial nostalgia.

Judged purely on the promises made by the title, it’s hard to see Godzilla vs. Kong as anything but a success. As a film, on the other hand, Wingard’s G v. K often still feels like it’s held together with copious amounts of cinematic duct tape.

Writer/director Nicholas Colia builds out Griffin’s world slowly, and winds up with a quietly formidable ensemble.

Virus: 32 is another entry into an overdone niche that gets the job done through competent storytelling with an emphasis on trauma, monster terrors and hasty pacing that sprints ahead with berserker fierceness. It’s too familiar to be outstanding, but fulfilling enough as a reliable treat.

There’s something of an it-factor that Saloum possesses, though it doesn’t have the steadiest handling of entertaining distractions that relieve major plotlines along the way. Still, the way of the gun wins out for Herbulot, putting Senegalese horror hybrids on the map.

This film is occasionally funny. But not super-funny. It’s occasionally poignant. But not a heavyweight on the drama side, either.

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project does an admirable job capturing the aesthetic of Nikki Giovanni’s life and poetry. It offers windows into certain parts of history, and glimpses into her ongoing evolution as an artist. Unfortunately, those glimpses don’t offer enough to be memorable.

By the time the title credits for Babes slide in on the hospital elevator doors, Dawn has left a steady, hilarious stream of screams and fluids in her wake.

Ridremont succeeds in crunching bones and raising hell, all with a seasonal waft of cloves and corpses from behind a wishgiver’s crooked smile. It’s chilling, teeters between moral stances and is a hellish-jolly greeting that should please horror fans in the mood for merriness gone malevolent.

Most of the movie is colorfully antic; another fearsome villain is a dead fish voiced by Ricky Gervais (too easy), and at one point a bunch of buildings come to life and rampage like meta-kaiju. There is, however, surprisingly psychological depth afforded to Petey’s clone, Li’l Petey (Lucas Hopkins).

Alien takes the long way around the barn to get from its creator’s fundamental psychic “stuff” to the genre classic it is today; Memory: The Origins of Alien, dissects the journey from concept to conception in microscopic detail, and w

Still, House of Gucci would not be what it is without the sheer weight of Lady Gaga’s portrayal of Patrizia, a woman who wants to “have it all” and then some.

Its predictability is pleasingly colored by countless icky-fun, yokai-inspired curse-monsters.

As delightful as relentless CGI monster mayhem is—and there’s plenty to go round as The House with a Clock in Its Walls rolls through its final act—it’s the lovely character work that makes the story memorable. Roth and his cast pack a surplus of exuberance into a children’s fantasy mold that’s by now grown musty.

At its best, Folktales paints a grounded, nuanced picture of what it means to be a young person.

There may be bolder DC superhero movies, but despite that body-horrific transformation, Blue Beetle sure is the nicest one in a while.

Joel Coen’s Macbeth lacks risk, ingenuity and, most importantly, reward. For those who seek a safely satisfying rendition of the lean Shakespearean tragedy, this latest execution will surely suffice.

The film, where two broken yet kindly individuals find within each other acts that elevate their emotional mood, is surprisingly effective and truthful. Much of this is due to the strong performances, especially by the two leads that never succumb to being maudlin or obvious even when the situation edges towards the farcical.

Villains is a workmanlike thriller with a pair of memorable performances and a simplistic premise.

After 55 years of different directions, this is far from the most exciting Planet of the Apes has been, but it’s also far from the worst, and I’m open to seeing wherever this leads.

We’ve seen a lot of this before, though the ’90s setting is a nice twist and provides a soundtrack that will prove consistently pleasing to any aging Gen Xer. But it’s Larsen who gives this weight and emotional depth.

Given its limited cast, location and budget, Glorious is an impressive feat. It never drags or feels more claustrophobic than intended. Thanks to strong performances and mostly tight writing, it’s a tense little chamber film, with deities and grand ideas, but without pants.

The sexual politics are good, and the film is competently made, but aside from McKenna-Bruce’s performance, it’s a standard, morally direct tale about the dangers of toxic party culture.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny may be the least of the Indy films, but it’s still a worthy chapter that does more to expand than to stultify.

The natural chemistry between the four leads is what gives this material the energy it needs. They all bring their A-game here.

The third release from Studio Ponoc, a Japanese animation studio formed by former Studio Ghibli staffers, The Imaginary is a little twinklier and more straightforward than its Ghibli cousins, with some dreamscapes that look suspiciously Lisa Frank-y. But it has more legitimate imagination than the sweaty whimsy of IF.

Feig and company’s extension of the material gleefully indulges in the same silly B-movie theatrics, including but not limited to: murder, extortion, opulent wardrobes, twin confusion, and incestuous relationships. On one level, its self-awareness and love for its own convoluted nature make it seductively enjoyable. On another, it feels like a familiar, less effective retread of ground already well-tread by its predecessor.

In its fusion of Edwards’ craft with characters who aren’t thunderously stupid or unlikable, this is the best Jurassic movie in ages – in part because it works so comfortably as an ooh/ahh/run/scream monster movie.

Irish Wish reaffirms that Lohan still has command over her acting talents.

The problem isn’t that the film is as shallow as its subject, but that its efforts to find substance beyond the style are handicapped by its broad format.

For the most part, the DCEU just can’t square its admittedly exciting set pieces with solid storytelling. In turn, whenever Aquaman pops a squat to unload exposition, it grinds to an interminable halt. Those action scenes, though. Revolutionary at best, innovative at worst.

If The Hero works at all, it’s because Elliott brings a measure of emotional truth to even the most sentimental of plot developments, and because Haley exudes such warm patience for his lead actor’s rhythms and cadences.

While the first third establishes the premise with a lot of promise and a compelling backstory, the rest of the film can’t rise above perfunctory cat-and-mouse dynamics that lack urgency and emotional stakes.

In Search of Fellini isn’t a sophisticated movie. Instead, it’s a joyful movie, and the lack of refinement, whether embodied by the overuse of Fellini clips or the lack of juicy material for Bello and Rajskub to sink their teeth into, shows without stymying the movie’s intentions as a love note to its namesake.

The Beach House plays an adept slow burn game. Brown fleshes his characters out nicely, giving them all ballast without worrying about whether we’d want to sit down for shellfish with them.

In her recent roles, like Lamb and the imminent You Will Not Be Alone, Rapace has expressed boundless terror and awe in the pursuit of existential questions about being human. In Black Crab, she reminds us with steely resolve that she’s incredibly capable at performing toughness, too.

As-is, Scarlet is a beautiful loll, content with its self-made magic.

Small Town Crime doesn’t give us much to hang onto apart from its casting, and from its experiential beer-stained, cigarette-tainted atmosphere.

Despite effectively crafting character conflicts and jokes around the messy business of moving life to the stage and then moving it from the stage to the screen, See How They Run feels like it’s missing some punch. It’s certainly clever, but almost too much so.

So, then, what makes it the “best” entry? The more severe Rings-tone that Jackson has been attempting to graft on top of the (mostly) whimsical original source makes the most sense here. Also—and at the risk of coming off as pedantic—it’s because, technically, it’s the shortest of the three.

This movie is all about sensation, about grooving on the very specific but unquestionably catchy hook Wright has laid down for you.

Marshall, Higgins and Herlihy are funny and likable; I’d love to see them in a more deserving comedic vehicle. Instead, this is an SNL movie that will get belly laughs from some and be largely forgotten by others.

Unlike Bliss, which has a cogent intention pushing it forward, VFW plays slapdash, which admittedly fits the film’s grimy aesthetic, a delirious theme park ride. Maybe that’s all a horror movie needs to be to be worth watching, but Begos can do more than douse a set with viscera, even if VFW doesn’t need “more” to justify itself.

Is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves a fun watch? Sure. The spectacle is impressive at times, with better CG than most peers in its class. It works best as a romp and a primer for kids with parents itching to open their minds to D&D play. In terms of its cinematic impact, though, there’s too much that’s too familiar, which makes it slight and forgettable.

Apples’ metaphorical backbone feels malnourished, its focus ever-inclined toward careful imagery as opposed to unraveling its inherent mythos. Nonetheless, Nikou’s debut offers interesting insight into the human psyche as it relates to memory and personhood while hinting at the fractured national identity of Greece itself.

Lovers of classical opera will no doubt find it to be a sumptuous treat.

Waugh’s action set pieces don’t surprise so much as operate with impressive efficiency

For all of its lackluster holy leanings, Demonic still achieves an air of abject horror, aided in no small part by Ola Strandh’s electro-exorcism score. The demon’s design is also consistently terrifying, whether it is enveloped in a neon-soaked backlight or morphing into unpredictable and increasingly abominable versions of itself.

As is, The Dry’s condensed yet unfocused, by-the-numbers drama might be fine enough, but those looking for a truly great telling of this story may feel that justice wasn’t served.

It’s easy to see why studio execs at Paramount were unsure of how to market this movie, as it seemingly attempts to check so many boxes at once that nearly any description is going to fail to accurately convey the experience of watching it. Ultimately, it’s that unstable, unpredictable nature that is simultaneously its most entertaining and most problematic aspect.

Adulthood makes the occasional odd choice, setting up elements that seem like Chekhov’s gun-type instances that never get around to paying off, and it’s never quite as tense as Winter probably envisioned it would be, even when it builds up a head of steam. But there are enough moments of either well-calculated gallows humor or generational commentary to keep things moving briskly along, and both Gad and Scodelario find room to have a new definition of maturity thrust upon them.

You Hurt My Feelings, which confronts middle-aged neuroses and creative anxieties with all the subtlety of a bestselling author with a new Twitter account, still finds warmth amid its middling dramedy.

Spaceship Earth provides us with a keepsake of a moment forgotten by collective memory after the project it depicts was coopted by others to become a resource for climate denial.

While none of Viral’s segments manage to equal any of the better sequences from either previous V/H/S installments, what’s left is a solid group of vignettes that—while not reinventing the wheel—will surely put a smile on the right (albeit, twisted) viewers’ faces.

Die My Love is a powerful primal scream, only undercut by the question of whether it’s in love with the sound it’s making.

Together doesn’t succumb to the dreaded “metaphorror” effect, where every plot point and character serves a clearly coded metaphorical purpose. It’s often grimly funny, with the actors (and their talented physical doubles) throwing themselves into their roles.

The strong results of segments like “Stork,” “Live and Let Dive” and “Stowaway” buy the series a brief reprieve for now, but the yearly releases feel increasingly like a beast that will never be satiated.

While its plotting can’t quite keep up with its fantastical flourishes, My Oni Girl still proves a pleasant, albeit slight production with just enough going for it to appeal to 2D animation enthusiasts.

In the moment, what it does do well is tease the increasingly metaphysical conclusion that is swiftly approaching, which looks to shed some of the “slasher movie” trappings and embrace the idea of a supernatural evil that resonates and repeats across centuries and generations of lives. Here’s hoping that the Fear Street trilogy can stick the landing.

Even at their breeziest, Crano’s punchlines cost exorbitant amounts of discomfort.

Juxtaposing human-sized drama against classic Toho iconography and one jaw-dropping silhouette after another, King of the Monsters is often more magnificently overwhelming than not.

Samuel’s The Book Clarence is a grab bag of ideas and genres that sometimes hit their mark, but in general don’t land a believable arc for the title character.

A sequel of rare sincerity, Bill & Ted Face the Music avoids feeling like a craven reviving of a hollowed-out IP or a cynical reboot, mostly because its ambition is the stuff of affection—for what the filmmakers are doing, made with sympathy for their audience and a genuine desire to explore these characters in a new context. Maybe that’s the despair talking. Or maybe it’s just the relief of for once confronting the past and finding that it’s aged considerably well.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts keeps it simple enough, which is smart, because franchise creep is going to hit like a ton of bricks within a sequel or two, especially given its ending. Rise of the Beasts isn’t quite as intimate or grounded as Bumblebee, but neither is it as cumbersome or dull as the other Transformers movies.