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

It’s a shame Maggie Q was so busy carrying The Protégé on her back that she couldn’t make time to kick the film’s embarrassing script into shape, too.

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.

It’s too pretty for a midnight showing, but far too gross and skin-crawling for when the sun’s up. It could have either been a wonderful gourmet action-movie meal, or a greasy joyful mess that cult audiences love more than they should. Instead, it’s somewhere in the middle — a pretty good meal that doesn’t measure up to its individual ingredients.

Whatever its intentions, Annette is remarkable. It’s an exhilarating collision of cinema, live concerts, stage shows, and celebrity culture, shaken up and let loose with abandon. Its message might be lost, but the emotions still hit hard, particularly in a finale that strips away the flash and artifice to concentrate on something pure, painful, and unforgettable.

Gunn, for a time, was uniquely aware of how expendable he was. And The Suicide Squad is thoroughly focused on notions of expendability. It’s also violent, perversely comedic, and despite pacing issues, an impressive effects-driven spectacle.

When the movie leans into the music and the love story at its core, it shines, evoking poignant emotions. But when the filmmakers try to smoosh in wildlife hijinks, it falls into the all-too-familiar trappings of the most cliché animated kids movies.

Naked Singularity isn’t a typical courtroom drama. It’s a heist flick, a sci-fi romp, and a message film all rolled into one. And it’s a pretty terrible example of all three genres.

The level of craft John and the Hole brings to its ideas makes it worthy of chewing on.

Calling it the best video game film to date feels like hyperbole, but it certainly has more heart and humor than its contemporaries.

It’s bold, dazzling, introspective, and occasionally disturbing, which makes it a fitting capper to not only the new film series, but to the Evangelion story as a whole.

Jungle Cruise packs in everything satisfying about an adventure movie, with some of its own twists.

Lowery more than catches an attentive audience’s attention with this film. His dazzling visuals, brilliant spectacle, and petrifying sequences are enrapturing. Likewise, Patel finally lays claim to the leading-man mantle so often bequeathed to him, yet so rarely earned.

Rockefeller only repeats other science fiction, rather than inventing big ideas of his own.

A B-movie designed by people who knew exactly what kind of enjoyable trash they were making, Jolt is unabashedly silly, sloppily written, and overly reliant on the likability of Beckinsale and fellow cast members Stanley Tucci and Jai Courtney. But it’s also a breezily entertaining reminder of how delightful it is to watch Beckinsale get pissed off.

Old is a pretty lousy horror film about adults, but a pretty good one about children.

Its battles are conceptually interesting — one rainy, neon-drenched fight across the alleys and rooftops of a city slum is a highlight — but an excessive reliance on shaky camerawork and jarring cuts makes the action unreadable. Rhythmically, Snake Eyes never really finds its footing, as fights end abruptly, and character stakes rarely align with the scale of a confrontation.

All that character development goes out the window when everyone’s just focused on surviving the grueling ordeal ahead, but the creators never find a way to vary the action enough to keep it from being grueling for the audience, as well.

Fear Street: 1666 is a campy, grisly offering, and it’s also a satisfying conclusion to Deena and Sam’s arc, even though it alludes to the possibility of future explorations of Shadyside and Sunnyvale.

The sequel abandons clever mysteries in favor of more straightforward action-horror, losing some of what made the original special in the process.

The film’s intermittent delights are momentarily satisfying, but then numbness sets in, like the brain freeze that blooms after you slurp on the film’s titular ice-cream treat.

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.”

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.

The gratifications of Fear Street: 1978 are not in its few surprises, but in its continued exploration of the history and dynamics of two social-stratified communities separated along the fault lines of unexplained affluence and inexplicable horror.

It starts as a crime caper, makes a pit stop among the sitdowns and power-jockeying of gangster films, and somehow manages to tie its many disparate threads together in a period drama about the destruction of an American city. It’s all the more dazzling that it does all this while being slickly entertaining and assured

It’s unclear yet whether this attempt at the MCU-nification of young-adult horror will come together in a satisfying way, but at the very least, Fear Street: 1994 lays a solid foundation. It’s a spooky, pulse-pounding horror romp with likable characters and terrific scares.

An overwhelming chunk of The Forever Purge’s brisk 103 minutes is devoted to the film’s Mexican immigrants saving the Tuckers’ lives, helping them survive, and furthering their moral development. It is, frankly, an insulting running thread that sours an otherwise deft horror-thriller.

Any goodwill provided by the concept or cast is utterly squandered by a film that packs in endless references without having anything whatsoever to say.