As an exercise in suspense and genre mimesis, Burial is exceptional. But Parker slacks on the details that function as musculature for the film’s core entertainment.

Kasdan isn’t known for pulling off big budget action properties. He does his best here to create a kinetic pace, but the execution is always flat and dull.

Unfortunately, even though Moonshot aims high, its misfire falls all the way back down to humble terra firma.

As Wildling’s center, Powley keeps our attention in her orbit, and Böhm constructs a universe around her that’s worthy of her talent (if at times too murkily filmed for its own good). But the movie loses its thread 15 minutes or so into its running time.

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

All in all, Get Away becomes surprisingly effective by the time all is said and done, bleakly satirical, bloody and a far cry better than the trite parody of director Steffen Haars other 2024 collaboration with Nick Frost, Krazy House.

That’s the true power of Affleck and Bernthal’s collective charm offensive: They can make a junky story about a computer-brained savior of human-trafficking victims resemble a whimsical hangout session.

After one of the toughest years that many people will ever experience and with debates raging on about how much the pandemic has ruined any progress for women in the workplace, it’s still nice to spend roughly ninety minutes watching how a tiny woman from Brooklyn helped break down obstacles for us bit by bit.

When you turn those kids into adults, they lose not just most of their wonder, they lose most of their interest. They’re just some people in a horror movie trying not to get killed. And we have seen that many, many times before.

Ambiguous, open-ended storytelling is by no means a defect in its own right, but Spin Me Round becomes increasingly frustrating in its tendency to introduce narrative tangents without any intention to elaborate or connect them.

It’s not a great standalone entry into the Fast canon, but as the franchise speeds towards its finish line, it’s still satisfying to know that it’s in the hands of someone well-versed in the series’ strengths and still willing to imagine new ways to crash its toys into each other.

Would all this be better if Flamin’ Hot weren’t based on one guy’s well-documented self-mythologizing? Sure. But like the exaggerated yarns Montañez weaves throughout the movie, the truth is much less interesting. The legend, on the other hand, is colorful, heartwarming and surprisingly fun, and Flamin’ Hot is far from the only movie of its kind to tell a tall tale disguised as an account of actual events.

Ruskin’s examination of the social and political elements that enabled the Strangler, and which held people like McLaughlin in contempt for attempting to serve the public good, is bold. In his next film, he should apply that same boldness toward an aesthetic purpose, too.

The most galling, offensive thing about Brainwashed is how poorly it demonstrates a point that should have been so very easy to prove.

Together, these intersecting storylines yield more than enough funny, gross and surprisingly sweet moments to keep Freaky Tales chugging merrily along, even though it feels quite clearly calculated for the midnight festival crowd in particular.

Gilroy isn’t a drudge, of course, and Washington is Washington. If nothing else, the film rides on his mesmerizing performance and on Gilroy’s talent for character study. But after Nightcrawler, seeing Roman J. Israel, Esq. coast on craft rather than on transgression is nothing short of a letdown.

The film’s cute, zingy, candy-coated tone is seductive enough, and both Hildebrand and Shipp are compelling in their roles. You will, in short, be entertained. But if Tragedy Girls’ subject matter is odious, its tacit, but perhaps accidental, endorsement of the very thing it means to send up is jaw-dropping.

Rise of the Guardians is definitely fun, and definitely worthy of a holiday outing to the theater.

Although it has its share of cliches, it remains a gripping, chilling story throughout—one that strikes a little too close to home in the context of 2020.

First-time feature helmer Grabinski firmly steers his script away from sticking in one mode or another: It’s neither purely scary, nor purely tense, nor purely hilarious, but instead most or all of these at once, producing a uniquely unnerving tone where shortness of breath in one moment instantaneously gives way to cackles in the next.

Waititi infuses a level of humanity into WWII without blindly forgiving those responsible, nor hiding behind the guise of good guys in bad situations, or allowing even a 10-year-old boy to get away with hate without swift retribution and thorough self-examination.

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.

Eastwood’s been riding off into the sunset for decades now, and Cry Macho’s creaky, lackadaisical hat-wave is a feature-length parody of a golden oldie.

Sweeney may have taken this role with Oscar statuette dreams and “legitimate actress” intent, but thanks to its sketchy screenplay and languid boxing bonafides, the result tends to be as dull and thudding as gloves striking a heavy bag.

Ostensibly, this is a movie about best friends and the exorcism that comes between them. Only the second part of the title lands.

The movie’s messages about not treating women as second-class citizens and the power of female solidarity are all delivered with convincing sincerity, yet they are also as dated as the 1920s setting—it feels like Wicked Little Letters is fighting a battle that was won decades ago.

Light, fluffy and sugarcoated, The High Note feels like a throwback to another time when studios produced movies with the sole purpose of putting a little spring in viewer’s step.

The Galápagos affair has been shrouded in mystery for 90 years, but Eden doesn’t offer us convincing insight. It’s film built from obvious assumptions about what happened there, gained from a frustrating distance.

Just like with Welcome to the Jungle, the action is serviceable, but lacks genuine thrills.

The missing ingredient here is no doubt Lin-Manuel Miranda, who lent his now iconic style to the first film (fret not, you can hear his work in the upcoming Disney film Mufasa: The Lion King).

It is hard to capture the utter joy of watching a live musical on the screen, but it’s here that Mean Girls falters.

Life for today’s young’uns is frankly terrifying, even if they aren’t literally living inside a horror film, with overarching threats to their future dotted by day-to-day micro-threats. In its unassuming way as real-world fantasy, Weston Razooli’s Riddle of Fire is sensitive to these plights, and casually rejects didactic allegory about them.

Ultimately, Borderline’s various threads threaten to unravel, but it succeeds in making a point about delusion and both unrealistic expectations and the lies we tell ourselves to make it through the day.

Despite the ingredients at hand, Pearce and company never really pull it together in a manner that realizes the potential. The result is a pulp buffet that feels like it should have been a gourmet meal—a Golden Corral of genre conventions (that leaves the audience feeling about as satisfied).

The premise itself might seem like one set up for failure, but Monday manages to stray away from the petty voyeurism of blow-out fights in order to convey something deeper about love and relationships.

The result is a ’70s vampire flick that has distinctly gothic imagery—the immortal temptress leering out from a century-old portrait, creeping up on the unwary in the form of a waterlogged corpse, surrounded by her leering thralls—even as it uses psychological horror techniques and roots its terror in the gaslighting of a vulnerable woman.

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.

Elemental may not rise to the heights that Up soared to, but the ingredients of Elemental combine in ways that are both satisfying and even moving.

Andrew Bujalski, the filmmaker behind “mumblecore” touchstone Funny Ha Ha and tender workplace comedy Support the Girls, tackles unexpectedly embittered subject matter alongside unique pandemic challenges with There There.

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.

Despite or maybe because of its unusual, constant-reset rhythms, large swaths of the movie actually work. It helps that Derrickson has two genuine stars on his side in the form of Teller and Taylor-Joy who both, lacking an infrastructure for proper romantic comedies, channel that energy into an unusually convincing version of a romance that would normally be obligatory at best.

Destined to be divisive, it’s a piece of modestly indulgent arthouse horror that is equal parts bewitching and belabored, but at least it has the good instinct to trim itself to a short runtime that doesn’t allow it to become genuinely grating.

There was no good reason to resurrect this property. To quote Jud, “Sometimes, dead is better.”

Lacking the whip-smarts of previous works, The Second Act only winds up feeling as self-important—and as insecure—as the very characters it caricatures.

Beyond a handful of vaguely contemporary references – podcasts; crypto; Stormy Daniels – there’s little sense of the present in Spinal Tap II, not even of the band being particularly out of touch with it. It’s been four decades since the first film! Shouldn’t their resentments be pettier, their epic reconvening more desperate?

It might not be a broadly relatable piece of cinema, but its commitment to one family’s healing across matriarchal lines is wholesome and inspiring—though overwhelmingly one-note.

Antlers is a film that, not unlike most of its ilk, wants to be an overstuffed analogy for hot-button issues first, and a horror film second. Unfortunately, it can’t seem to get either right.

Even though the films feel tonally different, this new Road House is exactly what you’d hope for from a new iteration of an ‘80s classic: A lot of fun and excitement without any real consequences.

The Italy-set farce can boast 96 minutes of smooth comedic chemistry, but struggles to organically integrate its believable characters with the madcap situation it’s building around them, ultimately feeling like it’s missing some final push into more subversive territory.

Snyder is trying to do so much here that the whole thing practically collapses under its own weight, a victim of its own attempt at bombast and visual iconoclasm.

Arcadian isn’t a time-waster, but its execution is too rote and unimaginative to warrant its existence as another addition to our post-apocalypse glut.

This is one of those rare occasions in which a movie uses the dusty trope of turning a group of oddball misfits into a “family” and actually pulls it off in an emotionally satisfying way.

If Extraction 2 isn’t necessarily smarter than its predecessor, maybe it’s somewhat less stupid. Its self-conscious action craft puts a little bit of brain behind all that performative brawn.

Land of Bad is middle-of-the-road war movie gobbledygook.

Happy Death Day 2U makes deliberate moves away from horror, adding both science fiction and comedy to muddle the original mixture for better and also worse. For better: The film is even more of a gas than its predecessor. For worse: It’s not as much of a horror movie.

As a character study, it repeatedly points out contradictions in Chisholm that it refuses to interrogate for fear it will come off as critical. The result is a hagiography with some obvious holes, something that a better film might try to balance.

What Jan Komasa’s film gets right is how so much right-wing radicalization, especially in upper classes, stems from status-based grievances.

The result is a movie significantly more flawed than its franchise predecessor yet more fun than anything we’ve seen in Phase 4 thus far.

As is, the film balances its talkative side with its gory side nicely. Wanting more isn’t the worst feeling a film can leave you with.

I’m torn on Barbarians, because while the film displays sharpened technical filmmaking chops, it’s an unbalanced invasion thriller caught between its subgenre intentions.

Whatever it’s trying to say, France rewards those who are willing to take the journey without a promise of clear resolution.

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.

It’s arguably led astray by an imperative to swing in the direction of pulpier (and sellable) revenge story, backloading its genre goods so deeply that when they finally arrive late in the game, they derail the more contemplative mood that has been established. Tornado is left stranded between tones, set adrift without a rudder.

A forgettable sci-fi with standout elements—making the most of what he’s got left, even if it’s not enough.

The problem dogging the film from the start is the absence of insight. Nothing that Wein and Lister-Jones have to say about facing the past, making peace with yourself and with the people who psychologically and emotionally scarred you over the course of your life, or even their most central concern, death, turns out to be worth hearing.

It’s not every day that you see a by-the-books rom-com squeezing in a semi-twist ending, and Franco does so in an admirably sneaky, cheeky, subtle way. Similarly, Somebody’s moments of genuine, heartfelt drama are bound to pull on your heartstrings.

If Hell of a Summer is supposed to spoof the horror movies it resembles, it never settles on a satirical point of view from which to approach them. If it’s supposed to actually imitate them, well, even worse; the original Friday the 13th is no classic, but it’s got a damn sight more atmosphere than this.

Berk and Olsen take a big swing by overtly hailing far-flung influences—Spielberg, Aster, Kaufman—without overstuffing their film with incessant references. But they don’t quite follow through on their initial ambition, and the movie feels frustratingly restrained.

Sting is sweet, silly and savage in sectioned bursts, but fails to pull everything into an intricately woven web of creepy-crawly terrors.

The film is better at punching the clock than punching the bad guys. To that end, it’s an honest day’s work from Ritchie and Statham, but not an especially entertaining one.

Apart from some stray moments of youthful exuberance, the film version of 13 has been scrubbed as clean as any high school musical, so that it resembles any number of sitcomy streaming programming—erasing the very novelty that made it sing on stage.

The Strange Ones is a solid movie on first watch that becomes a seriously good movie on second watch. Maybe that’s a poor framework for an endorsement, but the film is more than the shock of its climax.

Havoc doesn’t lack for recognizable faces for the American market, not with Tom Hardy, Timothy Olyphant and Forest Whitaker front and center. But it’s also not really interested in giving those performers real roles to chew on. Rather, Havoc is primarily a canvas for Evans to paint in bullet holes and viscera, delivering wave after wave of hilariously over-the-top, comic overkill, at least in its back half.

At the end of the day, Sweethearts just feels wan and inconsequential as a result of its lack of focus.

Jenkins brings a little more color and variety to the proceedings, and even a smidgen of royal-family bitchiness in the early dynamics of Mufasa’s adopted family – though the lion who would be Scar, through no fault of Harrison’s, doesn’t exactly give us access to the fullness of his emotional journey.

While a lot of this stuff is undeniably enjoyable, it also resembles a frenzied fever dream.

The Commuter isn’t a tough puzzle to solve, and it veers closely to being obvious at times. But easy, unsubtle, unabashedly masculine action films don’t need nuance as long as they’re this much of a goofy pleasure to watch.

Antebi sets his own tone and masters it. The movie has the rush and the desperation of a fresh start.

If knowing Stigwood’s name unlocks a particular chapter of film and music history, then the documentary is a fun and often funny reminder that they’ve frequently been one and the same.

Who we really are versus who we hope we are is a source of phenomenal dramatic tension in any genre. Throw in some horror concepts and some scary atmosphere and you’ve got what’s (hopefully) a compelling concoction about the fear of facing your true self, and the fear of learning those closest to you aren’t who you thought they were.

The obsession of Alpha’s mother with her daughter’s health is never played for shock, but presented with conflict both internal and external, a trial encountered as a result of genuine love.

Tag is a bit of a mess, the well-paced runtime not allowing gag-based physical comedy and dramedy to exist equally on the same plain, just barely fun enough to keep an otherwise one-joke premise elevated.

Unfortunately, despite all this talent, Bubble never amounts to something wholly unique—falling into predictable tropes and a narrative that ends up being a little too self-serious for a parkour adventure with bubbles.

Anyone nostalgic for their grandmother’s cooking will no doubt feel its inexorable pull toward the kitchen.

To its credit, After Blue is very easy on the eyes, reminiscent of the kitschy, saturated pulp mags Mandico is clearly borrowing from. But its illusory schtick is better suited for a short film, rather than being taffy-pulled into a feature with so many sugary gaps in logic and feeling. You’re better off taking an edible and pressing play on Hounds of Love.

The Glass Castle is a two-hour fight between a messy, sad, angry real-life family story and a Hollywood movie that keeps trying to soften all the edges and turn the tale into something “inspirational.”

Life, death, science, mysticism, love and hate blend together to reveal depths of an internationally renowned genius. Deeply personal, sometimes tipping into the experimental, Radioactive is like no biographical feature I’ve ever seen.

McKee’s darker genre touches in titles like The Woman and All Cheerleaders Die are sorely missed in Old Man, which is too reliant on performances that outshine a story seen coming like an asteroid the size of Mars.

Half high-concept enlightenment satire, half exhausting family dramedy, Bad Behaviour is as tedious as its leads’ search for inner peace.

Those who’ve had Knights of Badassdom on their radar all this time are likely to get some mild amusement and satisfaction out of seeing the LARPing community depicted as something other than viral video fodder. Everyone else will find it a frustrating exercise of missed opportunities, as rough around the edges as the fake Frank Frazetta painting on your cousin’s van.

Perhaps the film works better as a run-of-the-mill horror comedy about a woman who regrets sacrificing her career to start a family, but as a so-called revolutionary take on motherhood, Nightbitch is stagnant and spends too much time chasing its own tail to an unsatisfying conclusion.

Deadpool & Wolverine is another mind-numbingly corporatized CGI fest, divorced from any true emotional stakes. It’s a picture that would rather tell you how to feel than make you feel.

The good news is if you liked Hocus Pocus, you will definitely like Hocus Pocus 2...because it’s basically the exact same movie except with cell phones, better special effects and a cameo from Hannah Waddingham. Imitation remains the sincerest form of flattery. The bad news is…it’s the exact same movie.

A visceral expression of fear and longing, 1BR could be a new cult classic. With incredible performances, a solid twist and the possibility of a franchise sequel, 1BR aims high. The good news is the film hits most of its targets.

The most emotionally captivating moments focus the film’s themes about the relationships people form with their pets, and the senses of duty we feel to the ones we love, all of which gives DC League of Super-Pets a big heart.

With Drive-Away Dolls, Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen channel their influences and experiences into a tight, satisfying, humorous road movie. A knowing and humorous tone never loses its flair, with an artistic touch and commitment that makes you buy into the jokes in the first place. It is a refreshing comical experience threading together the absurd and the authentic.

Mosquito State is a profoundly annoying film. Believe it or not, this is meant as the highest compliment.

Satanic Hispanics, a horror anthology from a quintet of Latino filmmakers and an energetic ensemble cast of actors, embraces the versatility and sense of diversity that can work so well in this format.