The ticking clock makes The Midnight Sky a post-apocalyptic survivalist space film whose narrative is so overloaded that the emotional weight offers zero gravity.

Unfortunately, The Rental unravels. Rather than building on the characters’ moralistic inequities, and relating them to their unknown voyeurist, Franco lets the final act wither under the weight of facile jump scares and an unimaginative killer who apes one of horror’s iconic maniacs.

The Expendables movies had one trick, and that trick has been played out. Director Scott Waugh has to resort to something else with Expend4bles: finally trying to turn one of these projects into a good action movie.

The movie’s mock-jaundiced attitude toward social media is itself satirical, and there’s a germ of a funny idea about how principled liberals can get entangled in pointless social media battles and infighting. But it’s eclipsed by an unavoidably moneyed perspective that presumes privileged people are inherently liberal, rather than attacking the hypocrisy of rich liberals in particular.

Shepherd is more of a bandwagon-jumping exercise in arthouse horror films about grief than a truly bone-chilling example of one.

This is neither a uniquely marvelous film nor a teeth-gnashing pain. It’s OK in the moment, and it evaporates as soon as the end credits roll.

The well-placed message and the imaginative animation will win over the film’s intended audience: young children. But the moves Where is Anne Frank uses to deliver that message may do as much harm as they bring help.

Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money is neither dumb enough to capture the bonkers nature of the story nor smart enough to turn it into an entertaining or even informative tale.

Borderlands is the one kind of movie that’s the hardest to get excited about: the kind that lands in the middle space between a project with its own strong identity, and a compromised adaptation trying to play to the masses. It’s tough to live in the borderlands.

Realism isn’t necessarily the problem here; dissonance is. The Gray Man is a story about assassins who are, we’re told, the very best in the world. And yet over and over again, they are shown to be shitty at their jobs. They incite international incidents. They wage small wars in town squares. And they have a very hard time holding a small girl hostage.

As filmmakers try to figure out how to lasso the internet and tame it for the screen, Cat Person is mostly useful as a lesson in what not to do.

The result is admirable for how grim it is in its multifaceted way, but as a whole, Warning is too disjointed and underdeveloped to really make an impact with its dystopian cautions.

It’s mostly a movie with designs on over-the-top action that are undercut by the actual action.

Thor: Love and Thunder isn’t just a misfire, it’s a scam. Its characters only move forward in the most artificial ways. Their status at the end of the film is no more intriguing than it was at the beginning. It’s the worst thing a film in this mode can be: inconsequential.

Wish is all about the twinkling star in the night sky, the one many a Disney hero has wished upon. Perfectly calibrated for that Disney magic! Except this movie is a little too perfectly calibrated.

Uglies winds up being yet another uninspired, forgettable entry in the deluge of YA dystopian movies that make my passionate defense of the genre such an uphill climb.

Its unusual structure makes it both novel and ungainly.

What’s supposed to resemble a smart, unnerving sci-fi movie looks more like a lecture about male dominance and deception that keeps foregrounding its least interesting characters.

Disney Plus’ Lady and the Tramp flattens the original movie’s dreamy love story by trading genuine emotion for artificiality and a past that never existed.

It offers the bittersweet spectacle of a pretty loony movie trying its best to become a more conventional one. Maybe an outright boondoggle would have been more memorable.

The first two movies are packed with “I can’t believe that just happened!” moments. The third one instead chains together a series of “Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before” scenes.

Maybe the most baffling thing about Scream 7 is that it’s not an off-the-rails franchise-ending disaster. It’s entertaining enough, with a few fun side performances and the easy prickliness of Sidney and Gale’s friendship. But it’s missing the giddy carnival-ride audience-movie thrills and clever meta-humor of previous entries, and the more serious material simply isn’t insightful enough to take its place (or distract from its craven origins as a corporate patch-job).

Janky anachronisms and grating narration aside, the film is aggressively OK, though the dynamic side characters do most of the heavy lifting.

A lot about this Chainsaw is under-realized and messy — perhaps because of the project’s convoluted shoot, which saw the original directors axed one week into production in Bulgaria. The final version of the film, directed by Garcia, packs a lot of characters, subplots, and backstory into its 83 minutes, and very few are essential.

[Rob Jabbaz] can’t find the proper measure of finesse and shamelessness to marry his grotesque gore and violence to, given the moral lessons he seems to think he’s obligated to offer.

Thunder Force is only occasionally insightful, and almost never surprising. It’s arriving in a world where people generally expect more from its genre than light, enjoyable performances and a handful of overstretched gags, and that’s all it has to offer.

Deep Water is more like the movie plenty of people probably assumed Deep Blue Sea would be like in the first place: watchable, forgettable shlock.

Black Adam is overstuffed with underdeveloped concepts and characters that have been done better in other shows and films.

The end result for Netflix is a missed opportunity to redefine a generational star as a bona fide action hero.

There are no surprises in The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Just about everything in the story plays out exactly how the average horror fan might assume it would, exactly how they know it will, because the movie begins with the end of the story, then does little to play up the dread that comes with that knowledge. And most of us, unfortunately, know too much about this story already.

Given how unnecessary Rise Of the Damned is, Leyden’s choice to pare down the original RIPD’s summer-movie bombast into an agreeable, swiftly paced supernatural Western qualifies as a rousing success. On the other hand, anyone working in the RIPD universe should also understand the value of just staying dead.

It would be easier to be less cynical if No Time to Die convincingly delivered on its commitments to Bond’s humanity, rather than nudging it into a handful of scattered scenes, around a lumbering, half-baked drama spiked with explosions and car chases.

If Pearce weren’t so heavy-handed, if were just self-aware enough to know how to connect character with metaphor, then Encounter, a flawed sci-fi flick with a simple premise, could be a great adventure fit for the stars.

Venom: The Last Dance is so buried under its moving parts that it can’t do justice to any of them, in spite of Marcel’s efforts.

Ride or Die, the joys of Smith and Lawrence’s characters getting on each other’s nerves during improbably explosive shootouts is constantly derailed, as the script workshops or retcons every previous element from prior movies into the grand scheme of this one.

Arcadian does a few things remarkably well for a sci-fi/horror movie, but it needed a lot more to really spark: more commitment to its vaguely realized setting, more energy between the two very different brothers at its center, and above all, more Nicolas Cage — either version of him.

It’s worth remembering this era of cinema, and everything it says about specifically male fantasies and male rage. But it isn’t necessarily worth remembering Memory itself.

Chalamet and Fanning do okay in Rainy Day, but Selena Gomez is the one who shows surprising facility with tart-tongued romance.

The ways Zone 414 lifts from its predecessors, borrowing elements from character development to costuming to questions about the utilitarianism of our physical bodies, denies it identifiable or entertaining qualities of its own.

Despite a deep ensemble led by a transformative Bullock, Unforgivable moves at a turgid pace, lacking the urgency and pathos required in a redemption narrative with any hopes that the audience will pull for its damaged protagonist.

While Let Us In has a promising horror sci-fi premise, it squanders its potential by never finding any depth, nuance, or resonance in a legend kids actually find authentically creepy.

Whether strictly factual or broadly truthful in a poetic sense, its approach to queer history as coded, long-buried document is its most exacting facet. But as a story of science, hidden desire, and sparks re-igniting the soul, it’s a languid affair.

The defanged action sequences don’t leave an impact, and what was once an engaging story about Greek myths and destiny has been downgraded into a cliched “battle” between technology and faith/magic.

Even as a low-key Netflix time-waster, Fearless isn’t that much fun, except for people who really, really like the idea of super-babies.

Rubikon’s plot crash-lands while its sincere intentions are left spinning fruitlessly in space, looking for a way back down.

New Mutants doesn’t feel like a movie made for teens. It barely even feels like a movie that was made about teens.

If the story was clunky but the look of the movie was confident, assured, and engaging, there would be something to write home about. But in trying to do everything with Quantumania’s story, screen effects, and setting, Reed doesn’t create much of anything.

Regardless of what mode filmmakers lean into for a shark movie, they need to bring something worthwhile to that mode. Under Paris gets about halfway there on every front — drama, thrills, terror, character conflict, humanity-versus-nature messaging — and not much further than that.

The movie is a tepid botch on pretty much every level.

As the film stands — it’s a fun but halfhearted execution of a killer concept, relying more on sentiment than suspense — it’s just a mild bummer to find out so soon.

Until Dawn’s movie adaptation doesn’t fail because it’s not faithful to the game. It fails because it’s boring, in a way the game never was.

The movie represents months and months of sustained labor from hundreds of people, including many of the most talented and recognizable names in their field, in the service of a story that possesses no satirical edge, nor any human connection. It takes whatever pleasure that can be derived from a Pop-Tart, and chokes on it.

It’s hard to buy this movie as a love letter to anything but Marvel Studios’ corporate conquests. Deadpool & Wolverine has made its hero the worst kind of comic-book character: one who doesn’t stand for anything.

Between the confusing plot elements, the middling horror, and the dodgy acting, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is a step backward from the first movie. It’s a disappointment: While there are moments in the movie that fans may enjoy, and plenty of robots causing chaos, the story is a mess if you don't already know the ins and outs of the series.

In The Whale, Aronofsky posits his sadism as an intellectual experiment, challenging viewers to find the humanity buried under Charlie’s thick layers of fat. That’s not as benevolent of a premise as he seems to think it is. It proceeds from the assumption that a 600-pound man is inherently unlovable.

It’s a disappointing facsimile of the much better Indiana Jones films that preceded it. It’s all competently put together, with entertaining enough sequences to capture an audience for its lengthy two-and-a-half-hour run time. But it plays the game so safely that there are few memorable moments at all. Ultimately, the film is just a painful reminder of how good we used to have it.

This cut isn’t going to win anyone over — it’s a self-serious sermon to the converted that isn’t terribly concerned with getting the audience to like its characters — but it all goes down much smoother than the theatrical cut, which feels garish and jagged by comparison.

Pixar has been alternating between playing things safe with sequels to its hits and taking bigger swings with emotional human stories. Hoppers sits awkwardly between these impulses, recycling emotional moments and plots from other films while eschewing any clear moral or big moments of character growth.

In short, it’s the “Imagine” video of movies.

Nothing in the movie seems to matter, from its internal lore to the extraneous sequel setups that appear out of nowhere to the characters’ own ethoses. Audiences have not cared much about Sony’s non-Spider-Man Spider-world movies. That’s no surprise when the filmmakers seem to be this indifferent as well.

The movie is so twisted up in its own metaphor that it can’t muster up a single ounce of terror for the one thing we all came to see: a werewolf.

Humor is subjective, but giving an example of Don’t Look Up’s specific jokes feels like a spoiler, depriving you of one of the three times you’ll likely experience a genuine laugh.

Snow White is supposed to be a story about how inner beauty is more important than outer beauty, but honestly, this movie has neither.

One Gets Out Alive is a desperate attempt to explore the immigration crisis through a horror lens, à la Remi Weekes’ stunning film His House. But Menghini’s film is an underwritten hodgepodge of hollow scares.

Even without the burden of introducing so many characters, the choices propelling Uncharted still lack stakes, genuine peril, fascinating twists on history, or adrenaline-pumping adventure.

The creators’ quest for deeper meaning feels strained and overreaching, and it overwhelms the adventurous spirit of the film’s first half. If anything, this is at least a great jumping-off point for Evans, who never wavers, even when everything around her does.

The film is missing out on a cohesive vision, to the point where the audience will spend the entire film waiting for the flashbacks and summaries to end, and for DaCosta’s movie to finally begin. But by the end, she’s only offered a visually stunning homage to the original film. For a director of her talent, that isn’t enough.

Mark Wahlberg should never be in a science fiction movie ever again. While the Paramount Plus exclusive streaming movie Infinite isn’t entirely his bad — the direction, script, and overall absence of creative vision also range from nonsensical to embarrassing — it suffers profoundly from his bland, phoned-in, looking-for-the-craft-table performance.

By zeroing in on the eldest Addams child, the new Addams Family 2 exposes just how clunky and wrongheaded its take on Wednesday is — and what the animated movies get wrong about the family in general.

The whole story hinges on a twist that’s superficially clever on paper but wildly farfetched in practice. Once that hinge has swung, Stone ratchets up the supposed tension with attempted murders, scuffles, chases, and confrontations. Yet as these attempts at excitement emerge, the movie itself flattens out.

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.