13 years later, the X-Men are bigger, and the effects used to bring their powers to life are even more convincing. But what’s missing at this point is that sense of awe and wonder from those early days. For all the fighting and blasting and bamfing, we’ve seen it all before — sometimes literally.

This sort of ultra-dark crime picture is commonly described as “hard boiled,” but that adjective feels insufficient for Triple 9, which burns away any sense of hope until only misery and suffering remain.

This isn’t just a film you need to “turn off your brain” to enjoy; nothing less than surgically removing your brain from your body would do the trick.

Stoller cooked up a solid premise, assembled a funny cast, gave them some good scenes to play and lines to deliver, and let them do their thing.

Set to an electrifying score by frequent Refn collaborator Cliff Martinez (which may be his best yet), The Neon Demon is as deceptive as shattered glass, with a brilliant beauty so mesmerizing that you don’t notice its murderously sharp edges until you’re bleeding all over the floor.

The slasher-style kills are effective, and a couple of the tossed-off quips are good for some chuckles. (I liked when Leoni informed her guests that her butler was “making my famous moussaka” for dinner.) But a lot of the film lives up to its title. It’s just lifeless.

How to Be Single isn’t particularly hilarious, but it’s not particularly unpleasant either. The characters are likable. Their lives are fun to wander through for 100 minutes. Their small, daily battles are relatable, even to a 35-year-old dude.

The latest from the French filmmaker is a dazzling feast of spectacular visuals and exhilarating set pieces. It’s Besson’s most ambitious film to date, and the most original big-budget adventure you’ll see on screen this season. But such ambition doesn’t always come without flaws.

A solid, workmanlike melodrama with an attractive ensemble cast. What it lacks is the flair and substance that marked Paolo Virzi’s 2013 version of the same material.

While the leads mostly coast along on sheer charisma, Fishback makes the biggest impression.

Skyscraper downplays one of the main reasons we go to see an action movie starring The Rock. As a result, our beloved pro wrestler turned movie star feels a little miscast, even as he gets to once again assume his favorite role as the ultimate superdad.

Dumbo’s great skill, flying around a tent in a circle, becomes a little old after it’s repeated ad naseam over the course of two full hours. Adorable though he may be, Dumbo’s kind of a one-trick pony, in a matter of speaking.

Forget about three branches from one tree; this is the first branch presented for the third time. They might as well have called it Karate Kid: Déjà Vu.

The world-building is engrossing. The premise is refreshingly peculiar. The action grabs your attention. As long as the movie keeps a lid on what precisely is going on, it works.

Whether its unique release strategy makes it a historical footnote or an important turning point in the history of an industry will only be clear in hindsight. For now, it’s just a colorful kids movie.

If you're looking for something lean and unpretentious, you should be pretty satisfied.

What remains is the seed of a very good idea — the clashing personalities of fangirl Ms. Marvel and battle-hardened loner Captain Marvel — and a very talented, very charismatic cast trapped in an exhausting and gimmicky tale that involves the heroes gradually coming together as a team while they constantly swap places due to their entangled powers.

Beyond a few flashes of visual ingenuity, though, there really isn’t much to recommend about this movie.

When the world of a movie is so palpably fake, it’s hard for the people or the stakes to feel real.

McGrath and screenwriter Michael McCullers are too preoccupied piling on chase and action scenes to exploit their title’s potential to its fullest.

I don’t know if Legacy is Jody Hill’s first real misfire or his first earnest attempt at making a “normal,” relatable family movie.

I’m not sure The Gray Man fully qualifies as a “good” movie, but I will admit I wasn’t bored by it. It has a knowing sense of its own absurdity and a really fun Chris Evans performance. As long as the action remains at a smaller scale, it’s satisfying.

Although Malek looks the part, and has Freddie’s dance moves down, his performance is all stiff British accent and overbite (Mercury was born with four extra teeth). Singer never gets beyond the superficial to tell us anything profound or meaningful about Queen or Freddie Mercury or the perils of rock stardom.

The screenplay, written by director Peter Landesman and based on books by Felt and John D. O’Connor, does a fine job of condensing a sprawling conspiracy into a digestible feature, although it sometimes favors clarity over nuance and winds up enunciating important plot points in glaringly unnatural dialogue.

Fundamentally, its creators course corrected from the first movie a bit too drastically. Where Venom was a grim body horror movie with a very broad and sometimes extremely silly comic performance at its center, Let There Be Carnage is practically a romantic comedy between Eddie Brock and Venom.

Live by Night is a very mixed bag: Earnest, handsome, even passionate — and also slow, digressive, and a little bland.

In a world where it will be available right alongside the original film — both at a click of the exact same button for the same monthly price — I’m not entirely sure why it exists, beyond refreshing this particular IP, reminding customers about the original movie, and slightly padding out Disney+’s lineup of “original” offerings. It is harmless, and pointless.

The Predator gets off to a promising start, and there are a couple of memorable flashes Black’s verbal wit. Then the action kicks in and the film gets worse and worse.