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.

Sadly, some only listen when the quiet part is said out loud — Sissy blares its concerns and horrors like neon demons in front of the brightest ring lights.

With lush, fun cinematography, creative staging, and some true powerhouse music and dance numbers, the strengths of "Matilda" more than make up for its weaknesses. Here's to the children of the revolution.

It's in favor of observing an artist, busy with her projects and her family life, like slowly sipping a warm cup of tea. In doing so, it strikes a — not quite steady but a work-in-progress — equilibrium of the personal life and the artistic priorities.

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.

It's a type of slow-burn, psychological horror. The type of thrills and chills that don't register at first, but come creeping back when you're in bed, awake at night, unable to sleep, and the darkness starts to creep in.

Bright, colorful, and truly nuts, this movie is a breath of fresh air for those who are a little over the sameness of American blockbuster filmmaking.

Hellraiser was in bad shape, and what Bruckner has done here is lift the series out of the gutter to give it a touch of old-school charm. But I know he can do better, and I just wish this revival was more of an icky, gooey success rather than a moderately okay horror pic.

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.

What a baffling, misguided film.

Once you overlook the commercialism of it all, this premise is fine, and has potential. But writer Billie Bates and director David Poag fail to explore it to its full potential.

There's real skill and artistry smiling out at us here. Too bad it's buried under so many secondhand scenarios.

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.

Alternating between exuberant and exhilarating, heart-warming and horrific, "The Swimmers" is an ambitious picture that tells an almost unbelievable tale of struggle, perseverance, and triumph.

Even if Master Gardener can feel like a bit of a potboiler moral drama, the heat generated is proof that Schrader can still bring the fire. The filmmaker grapples thornily and thoughtfully with difficult issues and destructive people, finding new ways to approach the questions that still haunt him.

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.

J.D. Dillard's Sweetheart is fierce aquatic horror without any frills.

Devotion is far more interested in what's happening on earth rather than in the sky. It's a character drama with occasional bursts of action, and while there's certainly nothing wrong with that, the film ends up rather muddled. You can see the bones of something greater here, and Dillard remains a filmmaker worth paying attention to.

Butcher's Crossing makes a lot of little, stretching its small budget to the extreme to create a nightmarish saga of violent men who seem convinced of their own superiority over everything, especially the land.

Rather than portray its characters as glorious heroes bravely fighting for their country, or even ending the film on an optimistic note, "All Quiet on the Western Front" is tragic from beginning to end, and is relentlessly, almost unbearably, bleak. That's the point. It's the ultimate anti-war war film.

Moments of levity and joy twinkle throughout the crackling, tense narrative, endearing the characters to us viewers. It's a fierce message against the oppressors, unapologetically feminist in reckoning against the patriarchy.

The Good Nurse is strangely flat.

Wendell & Wild is a triumph — in terms of animation, of representation, and of being very, very fun to watch.

This is one of those movies where the soundtrack is far and wide the best element. 

Sadly, as creative as The Silent Twins is, and as much homework as the filmmakers clearly did in replicating the details of the story and the works of the twins, the film never fully says anything meaningful. Not about the real Gibbons sisters, not about race, not about mental health and its treatment in the U.K.

With its deliberate (or sloowwwwwww, as some might call it) pacing and inherent lack of action, The Eternal Daughter might frustrate some looking for a more traditional ghost story. But The Eternal Daughter is plenty haunting. The ghosts here aren't the traditional specters returned from the grave. They're the type of ghosts that haunt us all — memories, both good and bad.

Confess, Fletch, based on Mcdonald's second novel in the series, entirely misjudges the comedic appeal of its predecessor, transforming a setup of one sardonic man at the center of a hardboiled mystery into a barrage of eccentricities and bits that just sit dead on the screen.

The set-up is sound, and the film is gloriously twisted. But The Menu also lags — once we're clued into what's happening, some of the fun is gone.