While space travel has always required idols, Return to Space would benefit from a more nuanced portrayal of the controversial figure accused of hoarding money and upsetting the stock markets with his tweets—even if said figure might eventually put us all on Mars.

Although it’s clearly tailored for kids to enjoy as its first priority, A New Age leans into the physical comedy and, for lack of a better phrase, crude humor of its predecessor with success, creating a lighthearted, low-ambition romp that kids will love and adults will enjoy.

If you like fight scenes, fast cars and great actresses appearing for brief periods to give exposition, do I have a movie for you. Fast X asks you to shift your brain into low gear, power over a bumpy road of uneven dialogue, and hang on for some tight turns and incredible leaps—in the air and in logic.

Rather than embracing its premise’s unique potential, Boss Level mires it in tropes and convention.

It’s a sluggishly slow murder-mystery without much tension, one holding a candle to Poe’s work Nevermore.

Wright’s flair for freakazoids remains undeniable, but his focus on rebellion obscures the cruel machinery that incites it. That reluctance to linger too long in the muck of this world—to give perceptible shape to the apathy that creates this level of soulless greed—leaves Ben fighting an abstraction. It’s a devil we’re familiar with, just not one this film is willing to face head-on.

Arterton’s at a peak in her career here, repurposing bits and pieces of her work in Their Finest for a film with much more intentional sentiment.

Despite Sandler’s powerful sincerity, Spaceman misses the joke.

Despite doubling as a plausibility-straining endorsement for the battery life of Apple’s iPhone, Dickerson’s claustrophobic survival thriller proves itself a technically proficient, expertly paced affair.

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.

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

After fits and stops, this sequel finds its nostalgic sweet spot midway through and lands an ending that feels earned and honors the spirit of Shepherd and the characters of A Christmas Story.

Schroeder’s eye is right on the money for Ultrasound, spotlighting the best bits of a lackluster script with heightened visual play. If only the other, crucial parts of the film lived up to the vision in his head.

The movie’s lack of a clearly defined villain might alienate some genre fans; so might the lack of an easily trackable metaphor. Others will find it a relief. Never Let Go is a horror movie more interested in what it can evoke than what it can state or even imply.

Beast Beast is made with integrity and its narrative leverages violence in a way that simultaneously critiques and perpetuates said violence. The issue is not that the story doesn’t build to that place, but that it—like us—seems uncertain how to react to this fire once it’s been undeniably lit.

Old is not Shyamalan’s best film, nor is it the best film so far this summer, but it’s both a chilling summer escape and an empathetic reminder that other people are working against us as just as quickly as time, when all we have in our time left is each other.

Tina Mabry’s new film The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat plays like a Golden Corral that’s begun to tarnish with an overstuffed menu of narrative choices, none of which arrive fully cooked.

Daddario’s work is a ferocious joy to watch, particularly in light of how well We Summon the Darkness holds back on secrets.

This is a showy exercise, Ponciroli purposefully hamstringing one dimension of his film and then expecting to be praised for rising above the very adversity he created, and not even the bloodthirsty action can salvage it from pretentiousness.

Though an ensemble of Angelenos fills out the film as it barrels to pretty much the only conclusion it could have, Ambulance is about as tidy as a Michael Bay film can get.

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.

Even when you might want more from its plot, and even when it’s sticking to quiet character drama over all-out monster assaults, The Boogeyman thrives on the implied thing that’s lurking in every corner, which makes it a very effective, intimate creepshow.

The charm of the living memorial comes across quite earnestly, magnified by the sweet performances of Phillips and Dexter Fletcher as her husband, Val.

While Megalopolis might appear gift-wrapped for the cynic, then, if you meet it with any kind of goodwill, you may see in its unabashed rejection of nihilism, defiant unorthodoxy, and complete lack of artistic insecurity exactly the kind of challenge cinema needs right now.

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.

Violent Night isn’t a great action movie, or even a very good one, but George Costanza’s old assessment of Home Alone rings true: “The old man got to me!”

Those unfortunate enough to populate Mr. Harrigan’s Phone must be as dumb as the movie thinks we are. This low opinion of its audience is apparent in every step of its narrative and in some of its stranger creative choices.

It benefits from a strong central protagonist’s performance, but is simultaneously let down by a screenplay that collapses under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Clown in a Cornfield simply isn’t as smart as it needs to be in order to prove that it’s more than its title.

You can feel The Flash wishing it could steal a glimpse into the audience and revise itself on the fly accordingly; no wonder early screenings apparently hedged on an ending until the last possible minute.

Spirited, with its message of redemption, changing our behavior and doing a little good, arrives at the perfect time. Who better to tell us to start being nice than a singing and dancing Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell?

The sequel feels compromised, lumped with easy lessons about family and community, piecemeal and cobbled together from bigger ideas and the ever-nagging intuition that the sell-by date on the franchise has long expired.

Despite the documentary’s scattered approach, it’s not exactly a chore to take interest in the backstory of such an iconic moment in American cultural history.

Don’t Die offers an engrossing window into the mania of a unique individual, one with the outlandish resources to do something that no normal person would even be able to dream about attempting.

Regrettably, a gross number of missteps overshadow the Hawkes’ good intentions with this film. Even without Maya Hawke’s frumpy hag drag as O’Connor, complete with too-large dentures and an unfortunate wig, the lack of creative risk taken by the filmmakers, as well as the lack of research done by the team, sinks Wildcat before it gets started.

Ninjago seems emotionally interesting during, and immediately boring afterward. There are plenty of parts to this movie that work and moved me, but they’re mired in a whole that doesn’t seem to recognize what’s really working.

This is a universally powerful story, with terrific songs and countless funny and fascinating supporting characters. It’s a classic of performance and sensation. This version, seemingly by design—like that was the damned plan all along—drains every bit of life from it … in order to make it more “realistic.”

It’s a sullen, trauma-driven approach to horror that’s far less traditional and reliant on human monsters amidst magical mysteries—not a killshot. This prolonged approach lacks decadent suspense or encompassing dread.

The lessons are sweet, the kid actors are cute, and the kid audience will probably enjoy it accordingly. Whether it sticks in their memory for 20 years or even a few months, though, is another question entirely.

Godard Mon Amour captures the complications and the controversy, but Hazanavicius struggles to drum up meaningful insights into what makes Godard Godard.

If you want to make a slasher-level action-mayhem movie, make the damn movie; don’t pretend your excuses for ultraviolence come from a humanist core. Mayhem! yearns to be taken seriously in all the wrong places.

The weary and plodding story putters along the redemption arc’s curve, losing faith even in itself along the way.

A deeply moving cinematic experience that entangles threads of Mexican history with one man’s surreal odyssey through life, death, success and grief.

As with Free Guy, Reynolds and Levy have made a movie aimed at the dead center of mainstream geek culture, designed to be described as having so much heart—even though it’s as smooth and featureless as a Funko Pop.

Honestly, though, Along for the Ride is perfectly cozy, in part due to its formulaic nature. It might not be the most visually stunning work—at times, certain shots feel amateurishly disorienting—but it possesses an undeniable artistic heart.

Entertaining and surprisingly gory, though not particularly ingenious, The Sacrifice Game is a fairly enjoyable and under 100-minute caper about incompetent demon-worshippers led by Disney’s own Prince Aladdin, Mena Massoud, and the power of friendship between women.

One point in favor of Bruckner’s new Hellraiser is that it takes some time before it feels truly lost.

Even some of its rawest emotional moments feel studiously cribbed from other movies, which is probably why not a single thing any character does throughout Don’t Make Me Go is genuinely surprising or even slightly unexpected. It’s a movie about the unpredictability and inherent dangers of a life well-lived, and you can set a watch to its screenwriting beats.

Don’t Move’s protagonist may be rendered inert, but the film retains just enough energy and menace to spare.

Even Bahadur’s stupid voiceover writing becomes funnier over time as we realize the clichés and groaners only serve to show what an ultimately lame writer Bahadur was—that it was his bravery, stubbornness, hope, inquisitiveness and stupidity that made him great.

Yet in spite of this promising narrative foundation, the film’s gruesome effects and the compelling performance from Blumm, Son seriously suffers from assorted perils of predictability and protractedness.

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 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.

Most of Best Sellers’ problems have to do with structure instead of performance, so there’s not much that Plaza and Caine can do. They’re stymied by the writing and constricted by the direction.

Miguel Wants to Fight is a flyweight comedy with the misfortune of coming out the same year as the similarly style-forward, action-spoofing teen reckoning Polite Society.

Ultimately, Zack Snyder’s Justice League feels like just another name for a Special Edition Blu-ray that contains all the scenes.

It will entertain children, and it will inspire another sequel. Call it DreamWorks zen.

Those who choose to embrace the uncertainty get an enjoyable exercise in suspending rationality. Tucked away in the film’s charmingly light and plucky script is a profound challenge for Fodor, and for us: To hold logic and antilogic in our minds at once.

While its larger ideas never fully find their feet, The Queen of Black Magic lights a fire beneath the soles thanks to its continuous flow of gags—eventually developing into an almost Hellraiser-esque carnival of punishment.

The movie has its moments. But Thor wrestling with the Hulk is more realistic and, frankly, more relevant to the current facts on the ground.

Power does get points for keeping No Exit’s runtime to a brisk and lean 90 minutes, but he doesn’t have as deft a handle on all the other various working parts of the story.

A frequently heartstring-tugging inspirational dog movie that does little to excel beyond acceptability yet manages to not be a complete drag to watch.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a genuine crowd-pleaser, just undeniably captivating, funny and raging, neon-pink copaganda.

Where Josh Ruben’s Scare Me soars thanks to tension delivered through imaginative monologues, LaBute’s latest is mostly benign chatter that rambles its way to an unimpressively expected conclusion.

Strays is bad, but it’s not offensively so—and it’s certainly better and more watchable than something like Cocaine Bear (a low bar to cross, albeit).

It’s directed and edited in totally competent fashion. But none of that justifies taking the time to watch an often tedious reworking of a story you’ve already seen so many times before.

At its best The First Purge functions like a much-reduced Purge movie retread. It’s not that it’s bad, really. It’s that we’ve seen this before.

This may not be Assayas operating at the peak of his powers, but there’s no use in denying the thrilling efficiency that propels the overstuffed yet nimble two hours of Wasp Network.

Unfortunately, even False Positive’s shortcomings are uncharacteristically boring, generic and empty.

It’s a little too pre-programmed and self-conscious to be truly witty, yet the tone it strikes and the genre space it carves out feels undeniably itself: part comedy, part sci-fi mayhem, with remnant notes of shlocky horror.

It’s a shame that its studio didn’t more heavily market Captive State. Smart, layered, tense, well-executed sci-fi like this should be nurtured in movie theaters.

Psycho Therapy’s screenplay derails it in its closing minutes with genuinely whiplash-inducing abruptness, running out of gas when it’s still seemingly far from its natural finish line.

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.

Golja and Gossett’s joint appeal—his rascally charm, her coltish earnestness—gives The Cuban soul, shining light through the gloom of brain decline and the horrors of an ambivalent healthcare system. Who needs validation when you have heart?

While Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between boasts a solid premise (Who doesn’t want to see two charismatic teens embark on a breakup date?) there is no way in hell anyone could sit down and not predict how the thing is going to play out.

I’m not sure White ever cracks his own film’s code, but you can tell he’s passionate about whatever Outlaw Johnny Black becomes. That conveyance elevates what could have been an even messier modern Western with throwback appeal.

There’s a natural tendency to want to like Greta so that you don’t feel like a killjoy or a snob. But as much as I appreciated Jordan and his actors’ balance of high and low, I rarely treasured its trashiness.

Despite the intriguing subject matter, this documentary can’t stay in the air.

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.

Don’t confuse Becky for a smart movie. It won’t teach audiences anything valuable, or even new, about the disease of white supremacist ideology. It won’t leave folks holding hands in solidarity against racism and prejudice at a time when solidarity is like oxygen. It will, however, provide a brief burst of catharsis through the brutal slaughter of white supremacist ideologues, for whatever that catharsis is worth.

Once again, Bekmambetov has delved into new possibilities of digital filmmaking, capturing the complexities and anxieties that have become inextricably linked to our reliance on technology.

I don’t love every storytelling element, but I do adore all that involves the star of the show, an aggro bear on obscene amounts of blow. You’ll get what you pay for, and can we ask much more from Cocaine Bear?

There’s a worthwhile story in here about the long-term effects of trauma, how society disregards and casts aside adolescent girls, how quick we are to blame the victim, how bullying can lead to terror—but all these messages gets lost in translation.

Good on Paper wasn’t that good as a stand-up segment; as a movie, it should be permanently erased from the memories of anyone unlucky enough to have seen it.

While most of the story takes place in a constrained setting and it wastes no time in introducing us to the dangers of being trapped in a metal box with a delirious Nicolas Cage performance, Sympathy for the Devil’s inability to paint its characters in anything but the broadest strokes makes it difficult to see past the artifice of it all, dulling its attempts at dangling these people’s fates over the precipice.

Even with its last act problems, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an effective return to the cautionary tale that is Panem.

If it’s hard to shake the feeling that The Little Things strives to be Se7en or Zodiac, it still manages to satisfy in a meat-and-potatoes sort of way, delivering its twists and turns effectively while having the confidence to not wrap things up too neatly by the end of its runtime.

Together, McCoy and Williams make The Owners stand out. Newness is a big ask for movies visiting territory this familiar. Two outstanding central performances, however, make a much more reasonable expectation.

While this suspension of narrative convention is a welcome deviation from the cut-and-dry formula of many coming-of-age films, Giants Being Lonely stops just short of actually saying something salient.

It’s in-joke heavy, tailoring an experience that tears iconic dialogue from classic predecessors and slathers on the meta-overload like popcorn swimming in clarified butter.

Keaton seems to take another hitman part as an opportunity for contemplation, a decision that leaves Knox Goes Away feeling like someone hollowed out a DTV thriller in hopes of finding existential despair in the empty spaces.

Everything’s Going to Be Great just has characters and ideas waiting in the wings to rush in nonsensically.

It doesn’t necessarily matter—nothing matters, really—but Dark Fate is so self-serious, so expositionally overwhelming, that its tendency to tell rather than show bleeds into its every aspect.

It’s a pulse-pounding, tightly wound thriller that sticks its predictable but nevertheless effective ending in order to provide a satisfying genre retread.

By the end of Light, Mendes has taken his message a little too literally.

The movie doesn’t drag, but it’s a major drag all the same.

In a field full of would-be auteurs flailing against cliche and artistic malaise, Powell somehow manages to take a deeply familiar outline and breathe enough life and verve into it to truly stand out.

It’s not a stretch to expect that a film about the infamous Munich Conference to be a ripe bundle of nerves and apprehension. But the film ends up being as suspenseful as a 1990s rom-com.

There are movies that fail because they are misguided, or because their heart isn’t in the right place. This movie wants to be special, which makes the fact it is such a lumpy, clumsy mess all the more frustrating. You root for this movie, and the movie tries to go a long way on that good will. It doesn’t make it far.