It’s just not very fun or engaging.

At its core, Star Trek: Section 31 suffers from a kind of existential emptiness. It appropriates some of the surface-level iconography of “Trek” but fails to uphold its spirit. It nods to continuity, but the dense lore feels like a gatekeeping exercise and the breezy tone undermines the gravitas of its own premise.

Back in Action is no comedy classic, but it’s a better than average excuse for getting back on the Cameron Diaz train.

Jerome and Lopez build an undeniable chemistry that powers the movie, and it wouldn’t work at all unless Jerome wasn’t excellent as well. He is.

Wolf Man does not fully compel until it becomes ridiculous, employing a wolf-cam perspective that shows what a werewolf sees when he encounters people: glowing-eyed figures who look like AI-hallucinuted Teletubbies.

Well, there’s one way for a biopic about a self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying and self-involved music star seem different: Make him an ape.

The suffering artist story is as old as time. Yet “The Brutalist” tells it with such specificity and visceral conviction, it feels entirely fresh. Modern, even.

Oh, Canada is about not so much Fife’s artistic growth as his journey to hermetically sealed narcissism.

Hard Truths lacks subplots, or, come to think of it, a plot. Good thing, then, that it features one of the best lead performances of the movie awards season. Pansy might remain a bit of a mystery, but Jean-Baptiste is clearly a revelation.

Clocking in at a mere 79 minutes, featuring plenty of laughs and climaxing with a rousing chase, “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” is an impressive feat of clay, a winning choice in a competitive animated holiday season.

Babygirl likely will divide viewers, but no matter what side one takes — and despite a bit of a shaky denouement — it is more than just a provocative talker.

Nickel Boys offers a different way to understand horrors based on true events not that far in the past by plunging viewers into its characters’ humanity.

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever goes a long way toward humanizing the Venmo multimillionaire best known for pumping his teenage son’s blood plasma into his own veins.

Backed by a feral, driving score from Ukrainian folkloric quartet DakhaBrakha, “Porcelain War” makes the case for art as another protective weapon against imperialism. Like Ukraine, the film concludes, the delicate but resilient sculptures may break easily — but are very hard to destroy.

Aided by sumptuous cinematography (Eduard Grau), a haunting score (Alberto Iglesias) and eye-popping production design (Inbal Weinberg) – there’s always a font of interior decorating ideas in an Almodóvar film – Martha’s journey toward the great unknown has everything but a light at the end of the tunnel.

Part of what made the prior two “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies work was their playful, controlled scope that still provided engaging, serious storylines. By contrast, the third and latest installation overwhelms with so many explosions and colorful sky beams that instead of pulling the audience in, it has the opposite effect.

Women’s sports owes a debt to Shields. She finally has a movie that gives her deserved flowers.

If you know the Dracula legend, you know what comes next. “Nosferatu,” which also was remade by Werner Herzog in 1979, is therefore somewhat predictable. But the images and performances are so riveting that it doesn't matter.

Working from a script by Jeff Nathanson, Jenkins, who got his filmmaking start in San Francisco and directed the best picture-winning “Moonlight” (2016), efficiently tells a simple story very well, although his style isn’t that much different from that of Jon Favreau, who directed the first computer-animated film.

Kraven the Hunter will sate fans with Taylor-Johnson’s action bona fides and its fine cast. But those same fans may be less-than enthusiastic about the idea that, with no Spider-Man and no franchise to move forward, this one essentially has nowhere to go.

Tolkien’s fantasy world is always worth revisiting, and that makes “The War of the Rohirrim” worthy of watching even if it ultimately doesn’t amount to much once you look past the obvious visual panache.

Pitt’s all-in performance and an impressive supporting cast supply enough roughhouse wit and Brooklyn grit to hold up scenes that might have otherwise gone down for the count.

Still, as Dylan biopics go, this is probably the best imaginable.

Mary is a fictionalized and heavily dramatized account of the life of the Virgin Mary, but the movie’s great and only pleasure is in watching Anthony Hopkins play King Herod as a homicidal maniac.

Pigossi, star of the Brazilian Netflix series “Invisible City,” neatly avoids wallowing in Lourenço’s misery and instead finds a humanity one can root for. It’s a powerfully emotional performance that lifts all boats in this picturesque drama.

Grading on the Tyler Perry curve, though, “The Six Triple Eight” respects its noteworthy topic — and its audience — as much as it possibly could.

If you’re a millennial, odds are you’ll find “Y2K” amusing. But older and younger age groups will want to stick to their vinyl LPs and Tik Tok videos.

The Order, directed by Justin Kurzel, has less interest in sermonizing about the evergreen cycles of racism in this country than in tracking a series of explosive events as a well-crafted thriller.

September 5 succeeds as a tense and involving film, at least partly because it makes the case that the tragedy, despite all its other consequences and ramifications, marked a signal moment in news broadcasting. It was the first time that a hostage drama played out on live television.

Moana 2 is finally here, ready to assault audiences this holiday season with one of the most ill-conceived sequels in Disney history. It took three directors to sink this movie — Dana Ledoux Miller, Jason Hand and David Derrick Jr. — and it’s so bad it feels like they did it on purpose.

Guadagnino’s filmmaking has never been more vivid.

Maria, despite being occasionally slow, is a weird, good movie.

Despite any weaknesses, the movie still does what Morris does best. It digs deep into the details of how some terrible idea was mismanaged in execution.

Gladiator II coasts: never good, never terrible, always a little disappointing, with speeches that fall flat and gladiator battles that are like watching the World Series when your team isn’t in it.

Fueled by exquisite performances from Tony winner Erivo (“The Color Purple”), as Elphaba, or the Wicked Witch of the West, and Grammy winner Grande as Glinda the Good Witch, “Wicked” is the best movie musical in years, representing a rare instance when performances, visuals and songs are of equally high quality.

Either “Nightbitch” shouldn’t have been made or its premise should have been transformed and built upon.

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg has invented a new genre we can call “the Kieran Culkin movie.”

A mini-masterpiece, with lean filmmaking and lots of surprises.

Standard issue and sluggish as it sometimes is, “Elevation” maintains engagement.

The landscape against which a mother and her son try to find each other is stunningly realized.

The film is a showcase for a talented ensemble of Black actors, not the least of whom is Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Doaker, an older, mellow wise man.

You’d have to be passionately interested in the details of an Irish small town not to find “Small Things Like These” something of a slog.

Juror #2 is very much the work of an engaged, sensitive director — a series of tight, focused scenes informed by strong performances. There’s something classical about it, old-fashioned in the best way, like a 1974 Coupe de Ville or a 1962 Buick Electra. It’s a smooth, solid ride.

Stewart’s impact is evident within the first hour of “Martha.” That’s a good thing, because the younger audience this film might be targeting lacks the patience for another hour of Cutler’s photo parade, no matter how extraordinary his subject.

The movie tries to make up for its lack of propulsion through various means, with mixed results.

In “My Name is Alfred Hitchcock,” Cousins gives us a new way of looking at Hitchcock, as a filmmaker with an evocative visual world, and a case could be made that it would be easier for viewers to appreciate that aspect of Hitchcock on a second or third viewing.

Conclave is a fascinating drama about the personal and political machinations involved in the selection of a new pope. If a bunch of cardinals filling out multiple ballots over the course of several days doesn’t exactly sound riveting to you, prepare for a surprise.

If you’re talking about “Venom: The Last Dance,” you know you’re talking about something unimportant. If you’re writing about it, you know you’re doing something embarrassing. But what about the people who made this movie? What level of awareness do they have?

Baker is concerned with people who are broke and on the outside (“The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket”), and while there are aspects of “Anora” that make us aware of the distance between people born with everything and those born with nothing, he doesn’t let politics or economics dwarf his characters.

From moment to moment, Rumours is almost entertaining. But for it to work, you pretty much have to root for it. The movie invites you not to enjoy it so much as to appreciate the effort.

Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s tense, insightful directing debut, re-centers the narrative on Alcala’s victims and the rampant misogyny that suffused the 1970s.

Smile 2, filmmaker Parker Finn’s audacious follow-up to his 2022 breakout hit, “Smile,” delivers all the jump scares, gore and supernaturally plastered-on grins a horror fan can take while also commenting, thoughtfully yet also disgustingly, on the perils of fame.

I can’t imagine who would want to make a movie like this, much less who would want to watch this. It says nothing real about life or death, and it’s not as though it’s telling us something we don’t already know.

Laura Dern is not a wizard. She cannot make the dumb and formulaic elements of her romance/travelogue movie “Lonely Planet” disappear. But Dern brings such authenticity to Katherine, her confident, matter-of-fact successful author character, that her performance often outweighs this Netflix movie’s flaws.

The Apprentice is an anti-Trump movie, depicting his early career as a real estate developer in New York City, but it treats Donald Trump with a modicum of sympathy.

Reitman handles the ensemble cast with Robert Altman-esque assurance. “Saturday Night” is bursting with talent and ideas, is sometimes funny, sometimes groan-worthy, sometimes full of it — and even, at times, inspired. In other words, much like a typical episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Ultimately, it is Ronan who transcends the material and almost wills “The Outrun” into something more than the sum of its parts. Her Rona is tempestuous and passionate, and soon discovers that to master herself she must surrender to nature.

House of Spoils suffers most from genre hybridization. The more explicit horror moments feel grafted on to what is essentially a character study with mystery elements. But as “Speak No Evil” recently demonstrated, Blumhouse no longer signifies low-budget, terrifying horror. The brand has become shorthand for movies lacking clear identities.

The body-swap movie “It’s What’s Inside” dazzles up to the moment its plot gets going.

How can you screw up a movie that has Lady Gaga? Here’s how: Make it claustrophobic, with the first half a brutal prison picture and the second half an excruciatingly dull courtroom drama.

Naturally, laws protecting LGBTQ+ rights are quite different in the United States, especially in California and the Bay Area. Nonetheless, “All Shall Be Well,” in addition to being a skillful, absorbing story, serves as a gentle reminder. After dabbing your tears as the credits roll, your next move should be to send an email to the family lawyer.

Sanders likes to mention Monet’s colorful influence, but the realistic, primeval wilderness of “The Wild Robot” is what stirs the soul.

Think of all the ways “Apartment 7A” could have slyly addressed these times, or, conversely, more fully explored the practices of the Castavets’ cult. Instead, it's just a retread, and that’s why it’s bad. The devil is in the details.

Still, “Lee,” based on Antony Penrose’s biography of his mother, “The Lives of Lee Miller,” is an interesting look at an artist whose true importance, unfortunately, became apparent only many years after her death.

Yes, it’s a familiar formula, though instead of buddy cops, it’s buddy cleaners. What these “Wolfs” do is shades darker than the gentleman thievery of the “Ocean’s” larks, and the character comedy comes from a deeper place.

One can’t but admire the resilience of the film’s subjects, and when the story turns to the dedicated army of teachers in programs such as the Children’s Literacy Project (teachakidtoread.com), it becomes downright positive.

If you want to see great acting that’s unadorned, not fancy, and very much in the style of 2024, see Plaza in the climactic scene from “My Old Ass.” You will walk out of this film different than when you walked in, and a little bit better for the experience.

The Substance gets more wonderfully appalling as it goes along, but it’s impressive from its first moments, and it never lets up.

Directed by Livermore-raised Josh Cooley, an Oscar-winner for “Toy Story 4,” “Transformers One” is for the inner child, and unapologetically so. And for the adults in the room, you can read it as a pro-union tale as worker bots unite.

Don’t expect surprises or something to ideologically critique. This is kooky carnage. You came for Dave Bautista stomping a motorcycle into submission, and damn it, that’s what you’re gonna get.

Will & Harper works best when the serious issues that confront trans people are openly discussed, from acceptance to mental health issues and the simple problems of daily living.

See No Evil directed by James Watkins (“The Woman in Black”), is not that interesting. Nor is it much of a horror movie or psychological thriller, despite carrying the Blumhouse imprimatur. For more than half of its nearly two-hour length, it plays more like the James McAvoy variety hour — which can be highly enjoyable if you do not mind one actor being the entire show.

The Front Room becomes an exercise in psychological torture porn; it’s a movie you endure rather than enjoy.

It’s a pretty good movie that automatically goes up one full notch because of a single great scene, which is one more than most movies have.

Even without containing a modern frame of film, “Apollo 13: Survival” seems current, even without the coincidence of Americans stranded in space.

It lacks the more sublimely simple fun of another recent three-decades-plus comedy-horror sequel, “Hocus Pocus 2.” It’s just so much busier. But Burton does recapture a bit of his youthful verve. So do Keaton and Ryder, both experiencing recent career renaissances.

Whatever one might think of these flourishes, Peterson’s movie accomplishes an important objective: getting the question of Lincoln’s complicated male relationships more out into the open. It’s a commentary in and of itself that it took so many years for this fascinating topic to get to the screen.

It’s tougher than it looks to sidestep revenge movie shortcuts and formulaic payoffs while keeping matters engaging. But Saulnier does it. Off-kilter and fresh, Rebel Ridge may frustrate crude expectations, but its satisfactions are many.

War Game is one of the more timely and disturbing movies of recent months.

It’s a somber, serious experience that won’t appeal to everybody, but it’s quite smart and will keep you guessing until its last seconds.

Daniels has the talent to make a genuinely complex horror film. What was “Precious,” if not a horror movie made all the more chilling by its lack of supernatural elements? But for “The Deliverance,” Daniels simply dusts off the same crab-walking, veins-a-popping demon moves we have seen a million times.

What we’re left with is a movie that has good moments for all the actors, but which, through a series of tonal imprecisions, ends up seeming sour and pointless.

All in all, in a time when so many movies evaporate from memory as soon as the credits roll, “Strange Darling” — love it or loathe it — is the kind of film that engenders conversation.

As it speeds toward conclusion, “Supremes” also stops subverting its more maudlin aspects, allowing a descent into soap operatic moments.

They can’t make “The Union” better than a genre movie, but they can make it better than a decent genre movie. Also, considering the fact that Berry is one of the most misused and underused major stars of the last two decades, any role that shows her screen personality to good advantage is probably worth a look.

My Penguin Friend is what you’d expect from an animal picture, except that it’s better — lifted by a smart script, sensitive direction and a truly beautiful performance by Jean Reno.

The genius of “Skincare” is how it uses Los Angeles and its image- and celebrity-driven culture as a metaphor for empty lives.

Co-directed by Emily Kassie, “Sugarcane” – which won a directing prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January and won the Golden Gate documentary award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April – contains stunning natural beauty and painful revelations.

The foundational mistake came when someone said, “Hey, let’s make another ‘Alien’ movie.” Newsflash: The alien concept is dead. Leave it alone, and leave poor Ian Holm out of it.

Jackpot! involves a fight to the finish between the abundant charisma and likability of leads Awkwafina and John Cena and the impossible material they were given. The actors lose, because nobody could survive so many jokes based on groin kicks and bathroom humor or a movie premise as lacking in context as it is sky-high in concept.

There are stretches when this true story can be a clunky inspirational piece about a young man who overcomes class and racial barriers to excel at science, business and helping his community. At regular intervals, though, it shifts to darker crime drama with dire themes of injustice and manipulation. The two moods don’t always transition smoothly, but each complements the other as they unfold.

Though “It Ends With Us” ultimately lands in the zone of social commentary, the experience is mainly one of witnessing life as experienced by one woman over the course of years. And it’s worth the journey because of Lively and her simultaneous and contradictory mix of pleasantness and cold discernment.

It’s a line that all horror movies must walk. The characters must be stupid enough to get themselves into trouble, but not so stupid that we don’t start thinking of them in Darwinian terms. Somehow, “Cuckoo” stays on the right side of that line, but barely.

Sadly, fun is a rare element on Pandora, as “Borderlands” trudges through its treasure hunt scenario and endless ripoffs of better franchises from “Lethal Weapon” to “Star Wars.” It makes you want to go home and blow up your Playstation.

The new movie splits the difference between the horrible and the hilarious, with predictably lukewarm results. Still, the story is delicious enough to survive an earnest treatment.

While the end result, now directed by Soi Cheang (“Mad Fate,” “Limbo”), may not be quite as deliriously over the top as that version might have been, it’s nevertheless a solid entry in the ledger of Hong Kong crime sagas and was a huge hit when released in China earlier this year.

The Instigators is unremarkable but consistently amusing, and makes you feel like everyone showed up at the set expecting a party.

[Scorsese's] latest, “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger,” is a personal guide to the work of a one-of-a-kind directing duo who continues to influence filmmakers today.