The movie is too long, too violent, too silly—too everything. Yet for those who enjoyed the original Kingsman, it is a more than adequate second act. To put it another way: first time satire, second time farce.

Once Pacific Rim Uprising reveals the means by which the kaiju might return, I was briefly delighted; there’s one strange twist that’s perfectly executed. But quickly enough it was time for 30 minutes of competent, clanging CGI action, and my brain turned right off again.

The result is a tasteless endeavor that transforms the prescription-drug crisis into a flashy cartoon—a purported dissection of a broken system that takes too lighthearted a tone.

It’s undeniably the worst film Waititi has ever produced, a hash of lazy jokes and “random” humor centered on one of the most uncomfortable lead performances I’ve ever seen in a comedy.

It loads up on visceral scares and disturbing imagery in service of a shallow film that feels like a gory theme-park ride showcasing the horrors of slavery.

Rest assured, in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Lisbeth Salander saves the day, and she looks cool doing it. But this is a story so slick that she’d be rolling her eyes if she watched it.

This is a movie chock-full of heady imagery that it can’t get a handle on, and so the allegories at work don’t quite connect.

If the film leaned all the way into its melodrama, it could have been something different: the rare mainstream, studio-produced summer romance made for female audiences, with rich imagery worthy of the big screen. But its source material’s blemishes were always going to be hard to avoid.

The script, by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, conveys little beyond the fact that Stephen and Rachael are both sad, nice to each other, and very attractive.

Neeson himself has done admirable work making mid-budget throwbacks with a little extra grit and gravitas. But it might be time for him to retire that very particular set of skills.

The overqualified cast do their best to inject some passion into the proceedings—Fassbender, in particular, is incapable of phoning it in—but the momentum drained out of these X-Men movies long ago. Dark Phoenix should serve as a fittingly perfunctory farewell.

It’s a film that sometimes plays more as a rambling TED Talk than as a straightforward thriller. But, in this case, I admired Shyamalan’s overreach, even as the auteur laid meta-textual twist atop twist in the movie’s giddily loopy ending.

If you’re looking for a throwback to simpler, sillier times (with a dash of self-awareness about the state of toxic masculinity in 2019), it should just about satisfy.

While Locked Down is an undoubtedly fascinating pop-culture curio, it’s also sloppy and cringe-inducing, and feels like it was made in a hurry.

Any subversive edges have been sanded off this script, which is credited to five people. It doesn’t explore the racial underpinnings of Wilson’s budding relationship with the government, despite its mistreatment of the prior Black Captain America, nor does it reckon with the president’s desire to use him as a patriotic prop.

Persuasion at times seems embarrassed by its source material, or at least overeager to spruce it up for audiences that might not be able to handle a gentler pace. The result is harried and forgettable—the complete opposite of Austen’s quietest, noblest heroine.

Had Suburbicon committed to its primary crime-caper plot, it might have been just another forgettable, uninspired film. But its attempt to haphazardly take on a weightier tale makes Suburbicon a much rarer, and more mesmerizing, kind of catastrophe.

Johnson once excelled at playing anti-heroes you could root for and boo cheerfully all in one breath, but now he’s just another silent grump who’s never allowed to lose a fight.

Everything in Cinderella, admirable as its message may be, is soulless—and that robs it of any joy.

For all its cheesiness, the film is still entertaining—my entire row at the theater had fun cackling at clunky dialogue and absurd lunar lore. If you’re looking for a nice, empty-brained evening at the movies, Moonfall is the ticket to buy right now.

While it's hardly a cohesive experience, individual scenes are brought to life with striking power.

The film suffers from both an excessive faithfulness to its source and a general failure to translate that material into anything close to a gripping onscreen narrative.

The Exorcist: Believer brushes up against an interesting notion—this time, the Catholic Church refuses to approve an official exorcism, citing concerns over the safety of the procedure. But the end result is not much different; it’s still a bunch of adults standing in a room yelling prayers and exhortations at possessed girls.

It’s that stealthy sense of guilt that turns Ella McCay into a rich, if often bewildering, document for me. Yes, it’s the kind of movie Hollywood doesn’t make much of anymore, but honestly, even back in the day, the industry rarely ever pushed out something this delightfully weird.

Almost everything imaginable has gone wrong on the journey from stage to screen, and the result is a film that isn’t even “so bad it’s good,” like some other recent musical movies; mostly, it’s just painful to watch.

Zemeckis certainly remains good at running a production that uses expensive-looking CGI. The actual narrative behind those visuals, however, seems to have vanished.

Lee is innovating and looking backwards at the same time, and the viewing experience is as bewildering as that sounds.

This sequel-slash-spinoff comes across as a lifeless piece of content, bearing a brand name and a glossy look but little else to remember it by.