Avnet likely means well, just as Rokeach meant well. Three Christs needs more than a deep focus on the Christs themselves, and on the system that so utterly failed them. It needs to focus on Stone, and on the collision between ego and benevolence that led to The Three Christs of Ypsilanti’s birth. That should be the story.

Ritchie’s film is less infatuated with displays of All-American bodily sacrifice than movies like Lone Survivor and 13 Hours, but it still keys into a kind of performative, manly anguish.

Chances are that if you’re a big fan of the book series, you’ll be satisfied with this halfway competent but way overlong resolution to the saga.

This approach fundamentally misunderstands Eno’s entire creative ethos, which relies on technology to elevate—not replace—the unique human ability to create art, a quality that is sorely remiss here.

Jharrel Jerome gives his all, but without a screenplay to stand on, balance is impossible.

Director Chris Robinson’s go at Shooting Stars doesn’t reach the heights of its genre’s potential, but it’s not a completely blank slate either. It sits somewhere right in the middle of both worlds: You can feel the inspired approach to the material at a basic craft level, but it’s also never particularly surprising that it went straight to streaming on Peacock.

Fool’s Paradise doesn’t come close to clearing the self-imposed hurdle of matching a Chaplin classic or an Ashby satire. But it does sometimes work as a breezy comedy and a satire-lite of vacuous Hollywood, articulated tenfold by the modern Superhero Franchise Industrial Complex.

The dead air in the movie’s opening section is intentional, yet there are moments where Final Cut, the movie you’re actually watching, feels off – not through outright incompetence, but the eerie, imitative quality of a too-soon-too-little remake. Call it undead air.

While the Netflix Original film manages to sneak in a few genuinely funny moments, it’s not nearly as action-packed, suspenseful or humorous as it aims to be.

More giggle-inducing than terrifying, The Meg throws enough incidents at you that it simulates the feeling of being entertaining.

Dark Phoenix was always destined to fail. Limiting the sprawling story to one main arc severely debilitates the original’s emotional resonance, but avoiding Apocalypse’s swollen plot and stakes-less character narratives means reigning in an essentially big saga and cutting all of its awe down to some rote CGI. To make this work in one movie is to deny the essence of the source text.

Twisters is, at best, pretty fun—a decidedly breezy two hours. It has thrills, and chills, and Glen Powell doing his darndest to bring the concept of “movie star” back into the year 2024.

Complete with MGMT tracks and low-rise jeans, Saltburn is a stylized take on the early 2000s, capturing the hollow aspirations of a generation raised on the grit and glamor of early reality TV.

Vortex, while visually captivating, only functions as a window through which to look at death detached from the beauty of life.

Perhaps what was once haunting and unsettling on the book page has not, in more overt staging, translated well to the screen.

With an incredibly deep and frankly excessive wealth of archival footage at its disposal, Perry examines filmic versions of the video store experience, drawing conclusions about what they meant to us, how filmmakers used them, and how we processed the end of the video store era.

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.

The movie’s real joy, if there is any, lies with Carrey fully embracing his ’90s rubberface days. Director Jeff Fowler makes the right decision by letting Carrey’s signature madness loose on such a vanilla scoop of family entertainment.

Exploring the mechanics of this epochal event is a great idea, led by a memorable performance from Domingo, that somehow still manages to render the protest march as flat and lifeless as any obligatory TV-movie checklist.

Ultimately, The Trouble with Jessica runs out of gas and limps in the direction of a contrived conclusion, lacking the mercurial spark that all its characters attribute to Jessica at one point or another. If only the experience of watching the film could be as engaging as the implied experience of knowing her.

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

Theoretically, it’s a solid generator of comic tension, with a clear timeline taking the production through rehearsals, tech, dress, opening night, and beyond. But Peretti dices these segments into so many blackout sketches that the whole thing feels as weirdly protracted and repetitive as the frequent slow-mo shots Peretti inserts for reasons beyond my understanding.

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.

Theron wrings this so-so material for all its comedic potential. But she gets little help from her running mate.

What should be one of the most adrenaline-pinching films of the year has about as much tension as a K-Mart commercial.

The movie is exhausting, but when we’re talking about the DCEU, we have been the victims of far worse. The movie bores you but, perhaps newest for this universe, it does not drain your will to live. One takes progress where one can find it.

I can imagine and understand it receiving all kinds of passionate feedback, from intensely negative to downright infuriated, but I doubt anyone will claim it is boring.

Films like these can hew toward positivity without scrubbing the script of risk, but Glitter & Doom risks next to nothing, except perhaps the Indigo Girls’ dignity.