The movie is so poorly staged that it manages to conceal the supposedly important hero/kid bonding elements, while telegraphing early on where the rest of the story is going.

Look Both Ways has nothing meaningful to say about any of the subjects it’s supposedly addressing. Even when the filmmakers get little details right (Natalie’s animation references are spot-on and very convincing), the movie is playing the supportive friend to its audience, patting viewers on the back and talking about how everything happens for a reason, and it’ll all turn out great.

It’s no better than it needs to be, and it’s not bad enough to be consistently laughable, either.

The sequel to Aquaman is a total bummer for those of us who enjoyed Aquaman.

The Invitation never manages to be scary, and it hides its vampires behind a lifeless love story.

A movie that feels like it’s been machine-learned and reverse-engineered from YouTube fanfic, rather than rooted in any kind of recognizable human experience, behavior, or psychology.

There’s no sign of sincerity anywhere in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and no hint of relatable feeling. The entire movie is an echo chamber crammed with incident.

Demonic is a frustrating movie, because in spite of all the problems, the world Blomkamp sets up is exciting and original.

In a movie that feels constricted in close-ups and boxed-in set pieces, the group’s music gives Moana 2 a much-needed epic quality. There are… devastating clunkers.

On film, this story’s foundation of cynical button-pushing is laid bare.

At best, it’s basically a heavy-handed, inelegant Twilight Zone episode that was ultimately rejected by the religious organization that commissioned it.

Flanagan’s sister piece ensures that its underlying meaning is as close to the surface as the shallow grave discovered in the second act. Flanagan chose to make Doctor Sleep utterly banal. Through means straightforward and blunt, he’s turned a surreal simulation of succumbing to insanity into a plainly stated reminder to always be true to yourself.

Nothing comes of anything either man says. It’s all noise — all passionless anger going in circles, captured by a camera that seems averse to lingering on the tremendous talents of Hopkins and Goode, who try their best to rescue Freud’s Last Session from itself.

I Got a Story to Tell is a movie without a clear audience. It’s too thin for fans who’ve heard every beat of this story told over and over again, and too narrow to be a good introduction to anyone who’s less familiar with Biggie’s work and his role in New York City hip-hop history.

In the process of stripping the series down to essentials, Green and co-writer Peter Sattler have made the most boring, uninspired version of The Exorcist imaginable: a regular old exorcism movie.

While it isn’t the worst film the franchise has to offer, that’s only because the competition is so weak.

To some extent, each shot is a little more neatly composed. But they’re all strung together with the barest visual and narrative connective tissue, resulting in a baffling film that feels strange not only for a modern blockbuster, but for a Transformers movie as well.

2014’s Goodnight Mommy is one of the best horror films of the last decade, but nearly every element that contributed to that quality has been ignored or reversed in this disappointment of a remake. Not all remakes are unequivocal failures, but this one is.

It’s the rare romantic comedy that doesn’t underline viewers’ needy true-love fantasies by saying “This couple was destined to get together,” so much as it says “Eh, this could happen, I guess. Whatever.”

Throughout its slim but slow 83 minutes, Umma piles up missed-opportunity scenes that cry out for a ghoulish sense of humor or an audience-rattling jump.

It’s frankly galling that a princess movie is this utterly lacking in grandeur. All Cannon has delivered is a cringe-worthy eyesore that’s deadly dull and intellectually shallow.

Smurfs is garbage. It’s a randomized assortment of Stuff That Happens in Kids’ Animated Movies. . . It’s mostly meaningless, or occasionally mildly offensive, if you stop to think about it. It’s also blandly drawn, stiffly animated, and maddeningly inconsistent in its visual design.

This kind of aggrieved posturing isn’t a good look in 2023. Geek culture won. Mardenborough’s story is real, and has a much more significant dimension than victory in some imagined gaming culture war.

Unfortunately, the film’s most compelling questions don’t ever get answered.

This film, unfortunately, fails to live up to the quality of its influences. Filomarino’s Beckett lacks urgency, wit, and a lead actor capable of pulling together its underwritten themes.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is so overwhelmingly suffused with corporate propaganda that it seems like the filmmakers are seeking exactly that sort of praise: not satisfying cinema, not a worthwhile story, not a fun time at the movies, but “a great product.”

Schweighöfer’s prequel fails to offer the same level of excitement or gore as Snyder’s film. The heists are all snoozing affairs, and ultimately, the film succumbs to the script’s franchise ambitions.

Tyranny of tone and language aren’t the movie’s only problems. Its story is similarly half-baked, with allusions galore to overcoming demons and finding inner strength that are only ever lip-service, rather than being dramatically or even comedically expressed.