I want to see more from Jessica M. Thompson, who has an eye for atmospheric creepiness that would be better served with stronger material. And I want Nathalie Emmanuel to land a lead role worthy of her talents. As for The Invitation, there's not much to sink your fangs into.

When there is no actual conflict, the film's already low stakes start to feel meaningless, and the characters' bumbling hijinks around town start to feel tiresome. Conflict is necessary to inject urgency into a film, and as a result, Hocus Pocus 2 starts to really flag halfway through, once the shine of nostalgia starts to fade and Midler, Parker, and Najimy start to run out of musical numbers to perform.

If you're looking for a feel-bad movie with some absolutely stunning cinematography and an appreciation for the tenacity of the human spirit, then Against the Ice was made for you. 

On the positive side, Cailey Fleming makes for a compelling young lead with a touching performance.

After an opening kill sequence that bucks convention and suggests a much better movie, Scream 6 grows tedious as it attempts to catch us up with the returning characters and introduce new ones.

While horror fans might not get much out of The Deliverance, it might be worth watching for the performances alone. At the very least, several of the acting choices Glenn Close makes here will burn themselves into your brain and make you forget all about her turn in "Hillbilly Elegy."

While there's enough action (murky action, but action all the same) to keep you at least half-engaged with the material, you might want to spend Mother's Day weekend doing something else instead.

Beast is no great shakes, but it's also a rare enough summer movie, in that it knows its limits, it delivers on its specific promises, and it doesn't belabor the point.

The intentions of the movie are clear and admirable, but the execution of A Good Person, in the end, misses the mark.

The Croods: A New Age is going through the motions, accomplishing the basic level of work required in pulling off a computer-animated feature. It’s a strange way to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, even in a strange year like this.

If you've stuck with the "Hell House LLC" franchise this long, you might be interested in the answers "Lineage" provides. Whatever the flaws in his design, Cognetti deserves credit for trying to expand on such a simple idea with such a modest budget. And there are some moments here — mostly involving those damn clowns — that invoke the right amount of dread.

There's plenty of room for silly fluff to momentarily distract us from the nightmares of the real world. But is it really so much to ask for just a little bit more? Must we continually be served flavorless gruel and pretend it's nourishing? "Deadpool & Wolverine" will probably break box office records. The Marvel Cinematic Universe will continue onward, and "Deadpool & Wolverine" just might revitalize it in the eyes of fans. But it shouldn't be unreasonable to ask for something better.

The Gray Man exists "in the gray" of Hollywood action movies — not jaw-droppingly incredibly, not astoundingly bad, just there. It's a movie that's made to be half-watched on Netflix while scrolling on your phone. Its greatest disappointment is that it knows what it has — Gosling, a great cast, a lot of money — and it still ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

The action and the scenes with Grant's sleazeball arms dealer are the only situations where "Operation Fortune" feels genuinely alive and not like a collection of tired jokes and so-so set pieces.

The problem with "Persuasion" is it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a bold, revisionist take on Austen with progressive colorblind casting and cutesy contemporary slang? Or is it a sentimental period romance that wants to get its audience's hearts fluttering as they sigh over the pining glances shared between Johnson's Anne and Cosmo Jarvis' (an endearingly awkward bright spot in the film) Wentworth? The result is a half-assed attempt at both, which only makes it all the more insulting.

A maniacal whirlwind of cinematic insanity, it feels equally likely that Prisoners of the Ghostland could become a cult classic or disappear into the fog. Whether its overall inscrutability is a bug or a feature remains to be seen.

Eventually, Salem's Lot finds some life in its climax, gleefully unleashing monster mayhem that feels ported over from a much more enjoyable B-movie.

She Said is not as economical in its filmmaking as "Spotlight" nor as robust as "Shattered Glass." Instead, as a journalism movie, it just feels rote. As a biographical drama, it feels too early. And as a Me Too movie, it feels too quiet.

It’s pop art made into a feature film, which is a swell idea — if there’s an emotional core that can carry the audience through the staid surrealism. But Audley and the rest of the cast choose to play their characters like stoic ciphers, barely formed archetypes who glide through the film as if in some kind of permanent dream state themselves, making Strawberry Mansion feel even less anchored to reality.

The title says it all: Safety hits recognizable beats and never really challenges its setup, making for a maddeningly, mystifyingly safe crowd-pleaser.

As far as disposable action flicks go, Extraction makes good on its promise of seeing Chris Hemsworth kill a lot of people. Maybe that’s good enough for a direct-to-Netflix release, but wouldn’t it be nice if all of this mayhem actually added up to something in the end?

The King of Staten Island wants to balance sweetness with humor, but it never quite figures out the formula. Many of Davidson’s quips are pretty funny, but there’s nothing here that’s going to stick with you – the next great quotable comedy this is not. The pathos fairs a bit better, but here the problems of Davidson’s range become apparent.

In the end, Emilia Pérez can't help but feel like a half-completed thought experiment, anchored by the performances of a trio of women all but willing this past the finish line.

The Strangers didn't need these horror tropes to become a sensation, so it's very odd to see them shoehorned into this new trilogy.

At a bloated 156 minutes, audiences will have too ample time to ponder the film's many weaknesses. The racing will be exciting — very exciting, in fact — and Pitt is certainly a movie star, but quite frankly, I can have my own midlife crisis, thank you. I don't need to watch Pitt's.

While Snook and LaTorre give it their all, Run Rabbit Run is just another example of a movie not working unless it knows what it wants to be.

Goodnight Mommy isn't a downright horrible movie, but it certainly won't stick with you. Well, maybe the ending will, but that's not a good thing.

"Believer" is not the worst "Exorcist" film by any stretch, but it's certainly the least intriguing. It's a rote, choppy thriller that forgets to scare us.

All of this is emblematic of a film that suffers from self-inflicted wounds at practically every turn. Lacking the cleverness of the original, the undeniable flair of the best of Wes Craven's sequels, and the crowd-pleasing thrills of the recent revivals, "Scream 7" is more or less dead on arrival. Maybe it should stay that way.

The stakes aren't very high in this film, and there are a few cardinal cinema sins at work here, but overall, Your Place Or Mine ends up being a decent time by coasting on its merits. When it's strong, it's pretty strong—and when it's not, it shows.

It's not that big, it's hardly bold, and it's only beautiful on its surface. It could have been a journey.

Whenever The Unholy wants to scare you, it simply enters internet screamer territory, complete with ghoul faces rushing directly into the camera as loud noises boom from somewhere. Outside of these admittedly startling moments, The Unholy unfolds sedately, and sometimes incoherently.

Spiral blunders through its central mystery without grace or style, or even much thought. Even the death traps are weirdly uninspired.

Shotgun Wedding could've worked, even with the script as is, if the cast was a little sharper, a little less prone to yelling half of their dialogue, and a little more willing to get weirder and more unexpected. But only one of the ensemble got that memo.

The Woman in the Window is so silly and broad that it begins to border on camp, and I have a feeling this could become the type of cheesy dreck that people get a hoot out of if they follow Anna’s lead and down one or two or ten bottles of wine. By the time the film climaxes with multiple predictable but utterly preposterous twists, you’ll probably be reaching for a bottle yourself.

Ryder is honestly the only shining light here. ... But she deserves better than the murky slog that is "The Cow."

I came out of "Let There Be Carnage" wanting more Venom and Eddie. I came out of "The Last Dance" content to never see them again. If this really is "The Last Dance," it comes not a moment too soon.

The 355 is the cinematic equivalent of Hydrox. It's a bland and generic retread of something that's well-liked, if not beloved, something that feels vaguely like the real thing.

It fails to be either funny or dramatic.

While Red Notice may not be unwatchable, by the time the film ends with a deliberate sequel set-up, I was so turned off by the mercenary nature of it all that I was left with a bad taste in my mouth.

Ultimately, writer-director Sigal's issue lies within his script more so than his directorial eye.

If you're looking for the gothic thrills and chills that make "Pet Sematary" so special, stick to the novel, or the '89 film, or even the 2019 remake, and leave "Bloodlines" dead and buried where it belongs. 

Despite a villain that does everything possible to elevate The Amazing Maurice, this is a forgettable movie. I think kids will have a decent time with it. Adults won't be as fortunate, and it'll take a lot of restraint to not stare at their watches.

The new trilogy ends frail whimper rather than a T-rex-worthy roar.

A painfully slow slog, this horror film from Romola Garai has plenty of good ideas and a few neat creature effects, but that’s not enough to salvage things.

Snyder once again displays his usual knack for crafting the occasional breathtaking visual and colorful splash page — a kiss silhouetted by the Veldt equivalent of magic hour, a spaceship foregrounded by an eclipsing star, and a stunning tableau of lasers crisscrossing in the heat of battle are memorable highlights — but his insistence on serving as his own director of photography continues to hold him back at every turn.

Whatever the flaws of the previous "Resident Evil" series, those films were never as dull as "Raccoon City." Roberts doesn't seem to know how to milk anything resembling genuine horror out of the material here.

This is a movie that very much wants to call back to the original — and in doing so, it inadvertently reminds us of how much better the original was, and how bad this is.

Jared Leto also proves to be a less-than-stellar leading man.

I'm sure Lakewood had its heart in the right place, and Watts, gosh love her, is really trying, since she's pretty much the only person on screen for most of the movie. But every step Amy takes towards the school is another misstep the movie makes, and by the time she gets to her destination, we've already mentally checked out.

I don't fault Meg 2: The Trench for being silly. I do fault it for being boring. 

It’s a film completely devoid of energy, or atmosphere. It’s so boring at times that it’s almost impressive.

Kendrick and Timberlake are…fine, as they were in the first film. What holds Trolls World Tour back is what holds back so many films from DreamWorks Animation: they thrive on pop-culture references, loud humor, and little else.

Giving a movie marks for not being as bad as possible is the same as giving someone a participation award. Could this have been worse? Of course, which also means it could have been a hell of a lot better. Maybe with a different director. Maybe with faster pacing.

There's a difference between intentionally misleading the audience and cleverly setting up, then subverting, expectations. Ultimately, "Monstrous" does the former, leaning far too heavily on expository dialogue that fundamentally contradicts everything the audience is seeing.

As a movie, It Ends With Us is an infuriating, emotionally manipulative watch and a disservice to the talents of every actor involved.

Blitz Bazawule and a cast of talented performers do their best, but the end result just doesn't gel.

In its desperate attempt to satisfy everyone, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" neglects to tell a meaningful tale worth anyone's time. Instead of the pulpy, thrill-a-minute adventure that was promised, "Star Wars" has never felt duller or more mundane. This ain't the way, folks.

A movie like Elf, as its opening credits suggest, seemingly sprung to life out of a children's book. Spirited evokes the sense that it sprung to life out of a series of focus-group sessions among corporate executives.

Maybe if there wound up being a second animated film featuring Scooby and Shaggy, it might actually tell a story where they solve a supernatural mystery with their friends in the Mystery Machine. For now, all we have is this forgettable, lazy, pandering superhero film.

Everything about Dolittle seems hastily put together — from the whiplash-inducing tonal shifts, to the potty humor, to the poor use of a star-studded cast.

Thunder Force has too good of a core idea to be left so unexplored. Melissa McCarty can’t be stopped, but she continues to be content making films that leave her talent frustratingly untapped.

Worst of all, these final moments of the film make it abundantly clear that as a storyteller and a filmmaker, McKay has absolutely nothing to say about the topics he's skewering, and he shouldn't have even bothered to try. This is a hollow waste of time and talent; a comedy whose idea of humor is simply pointing a finger at something and chuckling obnoxiously. We, as a society, don't just deserve better leaders. We deserve better satire, too.

No one will ever accuse Vin Diesel of having range, but he seems particularly lost here. There’s nothing remotely interesting about Ray, before and after he gets his robo-blood.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie brings together the many recognizable characters of the franchise, the musical flourishes, the colorful design, and even some replication of familiar gameplay, into a brisk 90-minute package that is as critic-proof as it is largely uninspiring.

Hidden somewhere in Immaculate is a stirring and topical drama about the way male-driven religious institutions claim ownership over women's bodies.

Nothing takes flight here. Bird Box Barcelona might be the first of its kind, but it certainly will not be the last Netflix sequel or spinoff whose primary audience is a boardroom rather than a living room.

The Lie probably could’ve worked in a shorter form – a half-hour episode of a TV show, perhaps.

Amsterdam indeed has a number of charming scenes, a stunningly top-tier cast, and flawless cinematography. At the same time, it also fails to balance its wildly fluctuating tones, it rests its central narrative on plot contrivances, and the sum total of these shortcomings impedes the ability of its excellent performers to land the film. As a whole, Amsterdam is a movie that finds itself decidedly less than the sum of its parts.

The film is so humourless that it becomes tiresome. That might be forgivable if the movie managed to be scary, but not even one or two jump scares are enough to get your heart rate up.

Despite the mostly younger cast, Without Remorse is a bland throwback to the late 1980s and early 1990s, hearkening to an era of such simplistic notions of good and bad that its script could have been unearthed from a time capsule. Sollima’s direction is journeyman-like, which wouldn’t be a demerit if the film he was directing didn’t feel so lifeless.

Morbius is the type of movie that fails to justify its own existence.

Evil Eye deserves acknowledgment for taking a supernatural approach that involves cultures beyond Western trappings (there are countless horror movies that use American-centric Catholicism as their guide, for instance), but that’s about the only positive thing I can say here.

Worst of all, the film is loooong. It's not just low-energy. It drags. One could listen to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" three and a half times in the same 161 minutes. And perhaps one should. It would be a more edifying musical experience.

The worst sin a martial arts movie can commit is not properly showing its action. The second sin is casting martial arts superstars and not letting them fight. On both counts, the extraordinarily limp G.I. Joe reboot Snake Eyes is guilty.

After the original "Fear Street" trilogy, I was itching to return to Shadyside. It was not worth the wait.

Other than a few inventive sequences around the film’s central conceit of “the Noise,” Chaos Walking is a grim retread of the YA dystopian story that offers nothing else but a misguided attempt to elevate the genre through a darker, more “adult” tone. It ends up being little more than a joyless exercise with bad wigs.

In the end, Gran Turismo can't escape the feeling of being actively held back at every turn — by the confines of video game conventions, by a painfully trope-laden script, or simply by the fact that everything this video game movie wants to achieve has already been done better before.

Most of what Disney+ has released among its live-action fare is the kind of mid-budget movie that served as the Disney studio’s bread and butter in the 1990s. Godmothered, even with its connection to the Disney fairy-tale universe, is very much in line with those watchable, wholly unremarkable films. It helps that Jillian Bell and Isla Fisher do their best in predictable roles, but the roles being so predictable is hard to look past.

It's a shame that Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is such a bloated mess, because it has all of the elements to be a truly special gateway horror film franchise. The new animatronics are genuinely jaw-dropping, Megan Fox voicing Chica is a real delight, the jump scares are effective, the Easter eggs are well-placed, and for a brief moment, when we finally get Mike in the security office (essentially bringing the video game into beat-by-beat live action), the movie absolutely soars. But Cawthon's script is a disaster, and it's one that I cannot in good conscience defend, even as someone who shockingly could make sense of it, having consumed hours of fan theories over the years.

The problem is that Eurovision Song Contest can’t dream of capturing the real-life weirdness of Eurovision. And while there’s some chuckles that can be drawn out of McAdams and Ferrell lip syncing a surprisingly catchy song while running through a hamster wheel, there’s only so much fun that can be made of a televised singing contest where weirder things have happened.

It wastes the potential silver screen magic you could have by casting Hawke and McGregor as once-close brothers who are forced together by a death that they both have difficulty grieving.

The movie never arrives at a place where all of its conversations and provocations feel like they coalesce into a clear thesis, and its frustrating ending leans toward emotional resonance but doesn’t land with the punch the filmmakers were hoping.

Borderlands makes a point of not being different enough to upset the fanbase, but it's also not unique enough to win over new audiences, either. It's a movie for everyone and no one, a film so unwilling to make a splash that it barely makes a peep.

The stage is set for all sorts of misadventures, and sure enough, Grant’s film leans into them, heavily, resulting in a film populated by repulsively stupid characters who keep making dumb decisions. The film’s premise has tons of potential, but you won’t find any of that here.

This is a major misfire that will have you scratching your head and wondering how it all came to be.

Produced by horror legend Sam Raimi and a remake of the Argentinian film "4x4," your mileage may vary with "Locked," an intimate piece with dedicated performances and a weirdly relatable thematic core, but thrills leaving much to be desired.

The romantic comedy is painfully self-aware but rarely clever, instead falling back on rom-com tropes that were creaky back in the modern Shakespeare adaptation heyday of the '90s.

Full of loud, shrieking, hateful characters and shaky camera work designed to hide anything interesting, only extremely hardcore fans of the series should apply for V/H/S/99. I couldn't even find one story to grasp onto here, and that's a problem.

I suppose the best thing to say about Apartment 7A is that once it's over, you'll probably immediately want watch the much better Rosemary's Baby and wash the dull memory of this movie away.

A Glitch in the Matrix is more than just a conspiracy theory movie: it’s about how we function in a societal system, how we interact with other people, and what happens when we embrace a worldview which seemingly offers answers to things in life that don’t make sense to us. But the movie stumbles over its muddled execution of some of those ideas, and as a result, can’t help but feel like a letdown.

In the end, Affleck is the film's only real draw. His funny, uncouth, working-class schlub performance breathes much-needed oxygen into the film's lungs, but at the end of the day, this isn't his story, and it really should've been.

Ultimately, "Rebel Moon" resembles little more than a grab-bag collection of world-building influences, mythology, and epic storytelling that we've seen done better many times before.

On its own, DC League of Super-Pets is a tolerable, painless, sometimes mildly clever summertime experience, but comparing it to other DC animated fare only highlights its more meager aims.

There’s a lot of flash and style, and all in service of an empty story with unmemorable gunplay.

When "Final Cut" works, it's mostly because it just repeats what "One Cut of the Dead" did, and as ill-conceived as this film is, the jokes still land. Of course, that only says more about the success of the original film than this one. The problem is that, outside of the French market, it is hard to recommend this movie to anyone.

It's an improvement simply because this trilogy started off pretty badly, but nevertheless an uninspiring survival horror with repetitive set pieces, baffling character choices, and a mythology that feels like it's erasing the very reason his franchise exists in the first place.

Though this film is well-intentioned, fleetly paced, and boasts a unique blend of animation, it's a desperate and sweaty attempt to revive the past glories of the studio.