Unfortunately, The Love Birds just isn’t that funny. Don’t get me wrong – Nanjiani and Rae are funny, and they try really hard to make this material pop. But the jokes fall flat more often than not, and the direction from Michael Showalter (who also directed Nanjiani in The Big Sick) is oddly lax, with scene after scene embracing the unstylish “point and shoot” approach.

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.

It’s all overly theatrical, and not at all concerned with being grounded in reality. And there’s something refreshing about seeing a gangster movie filtered through this sort of lens.

CRSHD has some promising ideas and visually inventive ways of presenting them, but it still feels like a rough draft of a film. The humor lands, and the character dynamics offer a charming backbone for CRSHD, but this coming-of-age comedy could do with some workshopping.

The film toys with a lot of weighty ideas about faith and soulmates, which it never is quite able to form a coherent message about, but its unexpected ode to platonic soulmates and its thoughtful depiction of immigrant life in smalltown America is a sweet, refreshing addition to the coming-of-age genre.

Blood Quantum makes some important points, gives us stuff to care about and then drenches it all in audacious gore. And isn’t that exactly what we want from our zombie movies?

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?

A kitchen sink drama, a pulpy crime movie, and a bloody revenge tale all held together by one hell of a performance.

Butt Boy is an exceptionally entertaining and weird film that defies every expectation. Everyone should see this tragic and thrilling story of a man who becomes addicted to shoving things up his butt.

It’s a love letter, full of scribbles and crossed out words, and parts of which are more eloquent than others. And while Tigertail is a messy and somewhat incoherent love letter, it’s one filled to the brim with that a sincere love and emotion nonetheless.

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.

This is an intimate film with grand ideas, a small boat floating on a giant ocean, and the extraordinary discovery at the heart of the narrative is outweighed by the sense as a filmgoer that we’re seeing a talented director coming to the surface, sticking her tendrils in, and reshaping our expectations as we’re taken along for the journey.

Alexandra Daddario and Maddie Hasson are the Hammett and Hetfield of Marc Meyers’ eyeliner ensemble, with looks that kill and attitudes doubly deadly. For that, this critic can downgrade other complaints. It’s full of amplified unhallowed fun and fiendish shocks in the name of rock n’ roll…or maybe that’s just what “The Man” wants you to think.

As told through Szumowska’s highly symbolic aesthetic, The Other Lamb makes for a chilling glance at the strange pull that cults exert on their members and how their values imprint themselves on their members in irrevocable ways.

Just Mercy ends up being a fairly bland crowd pleaser that doesn’t pick up the momentum it should until the final act.

With comprehensive access and a vital narrative, Welcome to Chechnya is an important work of journalism.

Feels Good Man is, in some sense, a horror movie about the legacy of images, the ownership of images by their creators, and the lives they take on outside of the artists who make them. In particular, it’s a horror story about the life of one particular image: Pepe.

Dick Johnson is Dead is both a poetic act of defiance and a portrait of love at the end of a life.

Stargirl is a slight, but cute teen dramedy.

Amy Seimetz plays by her own rules like this is the last film she’ll ever make (it won’t be, no shot). She Dies Tomorrow ponders self-fulfillment with agency and riveting execution. Seimetz’s fearlessness is what sells every ounce of this uncontrollable narrative’s every zig and zag. From tone to philosophy to composition, this is Seimetz’s soul on celluloid.

Drunk Bus straps you in for a semi-wild, uplifting ride out of somber darkness and into speedy reclamation.

Gaztelu-Urrutia’s camerawork is inventive enough – his pacing tidy enough, his tone clever enough, his performances engaging enough – that we never get tired of seeing the same four walls and few faces throughout The Platform’s running time. For being so deeply dark, the film is surprisingly funny and thoughtful, and it’s got a wonderful, sly energy to it.

It’s a film that feels like it was designed to rile everyone up, but it ultimately has nothing to say about anything.

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.

Tabsch and Constantini’s documentary is a reminder to thank the people in our lives who believe in us.

The Banker is like a shell of a movie, with a desperate lack of personality. The ingredients are there, down to the inevitable moment in the end credits when photos of the real people are placed alongside the actors playing them. Yet just as Apple TV+’s original series are lacking the element of dramatic excitement, so too is The Banker.

Despite its formulaic nature and its somewhat predictable beats, The Way Back extends beyond the typical sports drama by acknowledging the fantasy of it all: that one basketball game triumph becomes the easy solution to his problems that Jack is dreaming of. The road to recovery is hard work, and as The Way Back reveals, the work is never over.

By grounding her intellectual explorations in intimately observed human drama, Reichardt delivers another nuanced behavioral portrait as well as an incisive historical tome.