It’d be nice to think that the forgettable nature of Memory was a deliberate irony. Then we could grant it bonus points for cleverness, rather than an average grade for just being bland.

The​​ disparate elements of a self-serious, straightforward plot and maximalist creature design keep Spellbound feeling kiddywampus, teetering between cloyingly obvious sincerity and confusing complexity.

Even for a movie obsessed from the outset with its destination, Don’t Make Me Go mostly takes a road to nowhere.

Prior and Zagorodnii have a fair amount of chemistry, although both are so Fashion Week gorgeous that it edges Firebird near soft-core territory.

It’s not just that more timely humor would do better; it’s that most comedy fans would probably rather be watching MacGruber again. Instead of sitting down for Me Time, do that, and hope that Hart and Wahlberg figure out a proper story next time that gives their chemistry somewhere to go.

Three Thousand Years Of Longing unfortunately undercuts its own effectiveness as a singular piece, presenting less as a unified vision of an auteur director than a scattershot assemblage of motifs, philosophies, and themes in search of a spine to hold them together.

Fans of Chainani’s books may relish seeing his inventiveness and heartfelt storytelling on a (green) screen. If only Feig had the latitude to prioritize his actors, rather than his VFX team, as those storytellers.

A second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor.

Despite its thrilling central performances and its sleek production design, The Immaculate Room has more ideas than it can hold together, and emerges, quite ironically it must be said, as quite a muddled mess.

Director Daryl Wein makes a commendable, if ultimately flawed, attempt at making a memorable holiday romance from Tamara Chestna’s anemic screenplay, adapted from the novel by Melissa Hill. Though it bears the appearance of a winter confection, it has about as much substance as an over-yeasted loaf of bread.

While moments indicate that not everybody working on the project was asleep at the switch, Quest For Camelot is strictly for bored toddlers and those breathlessly anticipating the completion of the Ferngully trilogy.

Playing like an amalgam of Monsters, Inc. and Inception, this family-friendly fantasy thankfully doesn’t put audiences to sleep, but neither does it draw us into its dreamy sensation.

Ultimately, Hill performs his duties like a man for hire in Dead For A Dollar, much like Max Borland is a man for hire down in Mexico.

This is a case of one movie with two endings, and neither of them totally satisfy.

The Whale’s raison d’etre seems to be about being the engine driving Fraser’s long-awaited resurgence. Beyond that there’s nothing much to see.

One could even make the argument that Jenkins has made a fundamentally better film than Favreau while working with inferior, less elemental material. But that doesn’t change the fact that Mufasa is, ultimately, compromised by its studio formulas in terms of both story and style.

But as that film approaches 90 years old, Disney made a remake that looks 100 times worse—and, necessarily, has been updated in an attempt to tell a more human tale. Aside from coating the story in a sickly “live-action remake” sheen, like dipping a juicy red apple in a vat of poison, Snow White also pads out its plot so that the character at the center actually has a character, that her love interest is more than a randy stranger in the woods, and that her foe’s villainy is more political than mythic. But the extra half-hour is just as muddled as the misguided classic elements, all of which forge a tarnished tiara to which Rachel Zegler is the single crown jewel.

A drama that aches to connect with the George Floyd era is more like amped-up misery porn, a Will Smith vanity project that pales next to more accomplished films about Black suffering that better remind us of our nation’s ongoing shame.

It’s silly, sitcom-y, and impossible to call “good,” but Falling For Christmas is the kind of bad that feels almost appealing.

Unlike Jack Nicholson or Bill Murray, whose smile can be either charming or sinister, Hanks always lets us know the character is headed towards redemption. A Man Called Otto would have been a more authentic emotional journey if he didn’t.

To say that Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey delivers everything a slasher movie should is higher praise than it used to be. Marketing alone would have guaranteed this movie a certain percentage of curious eyeballs, but Frake-Waterfield made sure that what genre fans see is everything they expected.

The Drop isn’t really about dropping a baby. But it’s not about much else, either.

The movie attempts to serve multiple narrative masters, but ends up coming across as vague and indistinct.

The film is by no means distinctive, hilarious, or memorable in any way, but, for as cloying as this attempt at Brady brand rehabilitation could have been, it’s a testament to the magnetic appeal of ageless stars who know how to carry a film to the end zone.

Closure is inevitably attained, of course, but at a cheapened cost that dramatically lessens the impact of its main characters’ journeys. And that’s truly dispiriting.

It’s a set-up too contrived to feel real, yet not quite over-the-top enough to be hilarious.

One can’t help but feel as though the whole movie were periodically bellowing the original’s most famous line: “Are you not entertained!?” The answer is no, not really, and no amount of digital gladiatorial carnage or bug-eyed overacting can mask the prevailing air of exhausted, decadent imperial decline.

The remake of WMCJ, also set in the Black communities of greater Los Angeles, fancies itself as having more on its mind than the original flick, but the ball rarely makes it through the hoop.

While it’s wildly entertaining to watch a performer walk such a tightrope, at some point you lament that the opioid crisis has been reduced to a circus sideshow.

Hamill, however, is the MVP, continuing to deliver some of his best work as an older man. When he leaves the action for a spell, the energy leaves the movie.

The melancholy absurdity—dragged out over two-and-a-half hours—doesn’t revel in its ironic condemnation. It’s a long sigh, an off-key parody song performed before humanity’s curtain call.

It’s impossible to take any of this remotely seriously, or find it particularly frightening. But it is its own sort of fun, at least for a while.

Gran Turismo lacks the concentration to feel like it’s really going anywhere. Instead, there’s the nagging feeling it’s just spinning its wheels.

The screenplay fails to bring any ingenuity in structure or dialogue, thus diminishing the power of Aïnouz’s characteristically operatic filmmaking.

Like its predecessors, Venom: The Last Dance has a little fun in the meantime. But in the end, it’s just a writhing symbiote waiting for a host that never shows up.

It may well be plenty for a fun enough ride at the theaters, but ultimately this is an exhausting trip into this increasingly unwieldy franchise.

While the dialogue, world-building, and characters may be lackluster, there’s one thing that Boy Kills World can always be relied upon to deliver, and that’s violence.

This is the definition of a B movie; competent, easy to follow, and almost instantly forgettable.

There’s candor and insight here. But, much like Girlie and Clark, Daddio remains stuck despite the appearance of movement.

Chapter 2 delivers the same type of creaky but not uncharming Western melodrama as the first installment, but talks and walks like a film that doesn’t understand what’s at stake.

As an homage to biblical epics of yesteryear, The Book Of Clarence doesn’t have enough grand drama or thrilling set pieces. As a spoof of such films, it loses its nerve and never goes for the full joke. And as a straightforward story of belief, it relies too much on familiar tropes. Thus it ends up being too little of this and that and not enough of its own.

A fatal lack of consequence for the film’s world or characters prevents it from ever deepening its initial premise, or unifying the sum of its disparate parts.

While others may find in this visually arresting outer space drama a probing meditation on grief and marriage (not to mention human alienation writ-large), I never did warm up to this Colby Day-penned character study, finding it much too caught up in its own ambitions to make its emotional beats pay off.

It isn’t just Harley Quinn fans who will be annoyed and possibly insulted by the filmmaker’s sour whims. The degree to which Phillips undermines fan expectations would be admirable if Joker: Folie À Deux wasn’t also something of a slog—and if its every creative decision didn’t feel strangely affectionless.

For all these films’ paeans to grime and sleaze, they’re controlled imitations rather than the uninhibited real thing.

Oh, Canada feels less a deep rumination at the last moments of an artist’s life, and more the confused ramblings of an irascible, self-important character surrounded by sycophants unable to stand up to his unreasonable demands.

Though its bold genre gamble and strong lead turn from Maisy Stella keep My Old Ass from the YA slush pile, its feint towards being a more cerebral movie about hope and regret, two opposing forces separated only by time, infects the mediocrity of its more traditional story with disappointment.

It doesn’t have much entertainment value. A by-the-book actioner that’s sunk by indifferent performances, muddled storylines, and stilted dialogue.

Crowe is quite capable of being compelling even when doing banal stuff—the highlight here is a variation on the “falling off the wagon” trope, as he captures the sheer delight of a guy who has literally forgotten how much he loves whiskey. The end point, like the movie’s, feels inevitable, but the journey there contains small joys.

There’s no intentionality behind Ungentlemanly Warfare, no perspective or passion to drive what should be a gleefully schadenfreude-filled time at the movies. With the exception of a scene-stealing Danny Sapani, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a forgettable action vehicle ferrying a gaggle of uninspired rascals.

This Pop-Tart material has legs. Unfrosted is by no means a failure. But it’s also about as satisfying as a soggy bowl of cereal. Loaded with his famous friends, Unfrosted is fitfully funny, depending on who’s on screen.

Despite reuniting them, Back In Action has nothing new to give its movie stars. It’s not enough that they’re “back” in more of the same material seen in Charlie’s Angels, Knight And Day, or White House Down. They deserve material that considers all that has come before and builds upon it.

Even with the script’s problems, the film is kinetic, and as in Dinner In America, Rehmeier gets terrific performances from his cast.

Egoyan’s film is at once stylish and slipshod, a film that is both gorgeously shot—haunting shadows, deep colors—and inelegant in its themes of sexual trauma and assault.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie doesn’t really have the patience for character-based conflict, or plotting more complicated (or motivated) than groups of characters showing up to different planets on cue.

In fitful moments, Omni Loop touches upon this truth in beguiling fashion. Mainly, though, it is a softly mumbled affirmation of immutable truths: that not all mysteries can be solved, and not all problems fixed.

Unless you can put aside everything you know about the space program, government, advertising, and television broadcasting, you may spend a good deal of the film’s two-hour runtime frustrated by its plot holes and contrivances.

If this Speak No Evil remake possesses any merit whatsoever, it is entirely owed to the thespian talent involved. McAvoy is perfectly cast, his uneasy grin akin to a mangy dog baring its teeth to signify its alpha status.

On its own, Cora Bora doesn’t offer anything new. But as an audition tape for Stalter’s future, it’s one of the more exciting things to come out of the comedy world this year.

Despite the actors’ best efforts, they can never quite overcome a script that simply doesn’t have anything new to add to the conversation.

Over-writing doesn’t delay Flight Risk’s pace or tension; Wahlberg does. The actor ended up apologizing for his boneheaded 9/11 remarks not long after making them. Maybe one day he’ll apologize for Flight Risk, too.

Rather than blazing a new trail for Lego cartoons, this may be the first one to feel like it’s adhering too closely to its instruction booklet.

For all of its ambitions, Here is ultimately too simplistic to work as either a domestic drama or a deconstruction of the same—an experiment in storytelling that turns out to be an object lesson in undercooked ambition.

Though crafted with wry care and a captivatingly scuzzy aesthetic, the bittersweet biography is so miserable that the “sweet” ends up as a cloying chaser to old escargot.

When this nearly two-hour movie enters its intentionally laughless final stretch, Freakier Friday feels more and more like the extended encore of a reunion concert—not least because that’s essentially where it takes place.

The problem is that 40 Acres simply sprinkles its few unique ideas atop a shambling post-apocalyptic template.

As this somewhat overlong film continues on, it becomes increasingly shapeless, finally succumbing to the sort of soupy sentimentality it’s trying to critique.

The intimate highlights are too few and far between in this distended adaptation.

While the performances are rooted in comedic tact, the film’s thematic interests are completely scattershot, leading to an overwhelmingly uneven tone.

True to its inspirations, Ash offers up a formal mix between traditional sci-fi filmmaking and frequent first-person segments (either through pseudo-body cam footage or more explicitly video game-like bouts of point-of-view panic) that gives the familiarity a bit more energy than your average knock-off.

Throughout, one is continually reminded of other, better movies—not least of all, the kind of eminently watchable genre films Anderson was producing at his peak.

It’s kind of fun in just how predictable and boilerplate it all is, and The Gorge is never boring. But, frustratingly, it’s obvious that there is a better movie hidden somewhere within it.

Apart from some slapstick abuse of her fake baby bump (sometimes funny) and the Mrs. Doubtfire-style hustle and bustle of needing to don or repair a pregnancy get-up (less funny), the actual story of Kinda Pregnant winds up feeling like a holding pattern, right down to the predictable punctuation of R-rated raunch talk and gags that gesture toward satire (gender reveal parties! So ridiculous!) without actually scoring any real points.

This one’s The Irishman for anyone in dire need of new glasses.

If Opus has anything to say about celebrity, fandom, and the state of arts criticism, it’s both not much and not new, so vague and so unrealized that it’s difficult to even parse exactly what it is.

It ends up like every other three-person romantic dramedy ends up, but at least Love, Brooklyn boasts competent players going through its motions.

Magic Farm muddles the self-probing spirit of its predecessor, developing a reliance on cringe-inducing ketamine jokes and Brooklynite strawmen in lieu of engaging with the political misdeeds it casually refers to.

For those who haven’t really thought about the filmmaking behind the glut of true-crime clogging up the streamer carousels, there are some revelatory moments of media criticism in here. But for those more aware of how the sausage is made, it’s simply a light and dry bit of jabbing at a dominant kind of media.

Though it aspires to be a thought-provoking take on the coming-of-age story, Grady and Ewing’s doc never overcomes its uninspiring filmmaking to meet the profundity of the experience it represents.

The trouble is that The Life List too often struggles to reconfigure its well-known tropes into something that feels alive and human, which is what one comes to romantic melodramas for.

Filmmaker Amber Fares assembles a ton of footage into a thorough portrait of a disillusioned activist-comedian, though that portrait and the one-woman show it revolves around are themselves limited messengers of a worthwhile call to action.

Though the punches maintain their force in Nobody 2, the sole punchline they support has become a grating dad joke, one that you’ve heard so many times that it’s lost all meaning.

Though it’s still thrilling to hear actors fire out Mamet’s heated arguments, when the dust clears from the film’s dense conversations, what remains is hollow.

Safdie splits the difference, striving to replicate the gritty, in-the-moment documentary feel of the source movie he clearly admires, and coat it in the triple-A Hollywood sheen befitting this kind of serious star vehicle.

As the final moments of Him unfold, there’s an attempt to drastically course-correct. . . But it’s a desperate Hail Mary after a poorly played game, without a hope of bailing out the team behind it.

Dan Trachtenberg's latest Predator movie is a safe, frictionless, lore-centric franchise expansion.

Stewart applies an admirably experimental vision to her adaptation, but she can’t translate whatever power she may have found in Yuknavitch’s text to the screen.

From its opening moments, The History Of Sound feels like it’s going to be something grand. It’s this feeling that makes the warbling result that much more disappointing, a song soon to be forgotten.

The central conceit quickly feels like window dressing for a film that wants to be in a particular genre but hasn’t put in any real effort to fit there.

Every moment of Jay Kelly lives between the textual (the internal conflict of the fictional actor) and the metatextual (what the story tells us about the real creative forces behind the film).

The truth is that crummy, un-scary horror movies are nothing new, and are more the norm than the exception. And while The Home doesn’t distinguish itself in terms of style or subtext (one can argue that it doesn’t have any of the latter), it at least throws out just enough gross-out imagery to keep a viewer awake.

The film’s intermittent charms come thanks to some of the voice actors.

In telling a story that’s only being put to film in the first place because of how much schadenfreude online lookie-loos gained from it when it was happening live, the doc doesn’t say anything beyond the obvious.

The fourth theatrical feature film in the SpongeBob SquarePants oeuvre—The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants—doesn’t give audiences a memorable outing, much less a best day ever. It’s a big downgrade, and a huge disappointment for long-time fans of the subversive and unapologetically silly character.

Prolific TV director Benjamin Caron‘s self-serious movie keeps digging itself into a hole, first with its narrative, then with its heroine’s increasingly lurid backstory, until, like that heroine, it can’t claw its way out.

Berger’s skill with middlebrow crowdpleasers succumbs to empty spectacle; he can still frame a bluntly powerful shot, and he knocks off a few nice Ocean’s Eleven images, but most are just blunt.

The Pickup is entertaining on that most basic of slack-jawed levels: It has likable stars doing movie stuff (car chases, elaborate deceptions) that the movie seems to bank on blurring into memories of other, better capers.

While The Map That Leads To You looks great—much of it clearly shot on location in Spain during golden hour—it’s too staid and calm to reflect the throw-caution-to-the-wind passion of its two young protagonists. Rather than getting swept up in Heather and Jack’s courtship, the film keeps them at a distance, like a slow-motion car crash you can’t look away from.