A somewhat slight homage with a strong voice and gentle twist rather than a wholly original work of terror.

Despite winning the Best Actress (for its female ensemble) and Jury Prize awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s a bold gamble that doesn’t quite pay off.

It’s espionage executed with cheeky flair and playful sexiness, and it’s enlivened by Aubrey Plaza, who runs away with the show.

No matter its hopeful closing notes, it’s a downer of epic proportions, its action encased in a shroud of loss, loneliness, and depression that’s at once bracing and taxing.

Far better than anticipated (or has any right to be), thanks in large part to Murphy recapturing some of the wisecracking magic that originally made Axel a sensation.

Prescient about the dangers posed by AI and, more pressingly, the cutthroat, avaricious, and egotistical madmen who wield it, the film is an incisive portrait of 21st-century villainy, if ultimately a satire that can’t quite locate the funny in the horror.”

A film about a police culture that doesn’t seem to take rape charges seriously—or, at the very least, doesn’t think that thoroughly examining accusations is worth the hassle when intimidation and humiliation will facilitate their jobs.

A reasonably faithful and effective thriller, light on legitimate frights but polished and unnerving.

Though its real-life story ultimately proves a little too one-note, it makes up for its thinness with a powerhouse lead turn from Sydney Sweeney as a woman caught in a nerve-wracking mess of her own making.

It’s a film that could easily veer into manipulative territory in lesser hands, but Hausmann Stokes transforms this personal and devastating story into something deeper, sweeter, and funnier than it may initially seem.

Threads the needle between appealing to those viewers well-versed in all things internet and those who know 4chan best as the birthplace of QAnon.

If this truly is the pair’s big-screen goodbye, at least it ends on a fittingly wacko note of pure, unadulterated sentimentality.

A misguided wannabe-uplifting saga about grief, forgiveness, and keeping important memories alive.

Maybe if the film were willing to tackle the anxieties of modern womanhood in a more specific, less superficial way, it would at least give viewers the opportunity to be surprised.

Includes enough critical voices and material to complicate Johnson’s view about his actions and ethos—in the process undercutting the material’s superficial optimism.

The film is moment-to-moment lively, sharp, and funny. Too bad that, like a dream, its pleasures are all over the place, and dissipate almost as quickly as they arrive.

Infused with bounding energy but little meaningful invention, it climbs to only modest heights, weighed down by its inability to add much to the iconic legend.

Flails in trying to cast itself as a heartening story about seizing happiness, but as a snapshot of the foolhardy acts that amour can drive sane individuals to commit, it plays as an eye-opening cautionary tale.

As self-contained as any episode of the television show upon which it’s based. It’s also as efficient and straightforward as that predecessor, if not quite as disposable, thanks to its peerless star.

It’s no novel reinvention, but it’s cute enough to at least partially overcome its strained and uneven structure and performances.

Its lack of originality is at least partially offset by its gripping depiction of intolerance and exclusion as impediments to survival.

This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is gleefully messy, just like love so often is. Whether that frenetic chaos is intentional or not doesn’t matter when it feels so apt for the story.

Fine performances abound, including from Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow, but the film is ultimately at odds with itself, its handsome appearance and severe attitude clashing with its pulpy impulses.

[An] overly dramatic and revelation-lite feature-length documentary, whose main purpose seems to be rehashing that which has already been exhaustively covered by the media and, also, underscoring the sociopathic dishonesty of Joran van der Sloot.

If its fondness for stock formulas and scares means that it’s not shocking, it also knows how to play the hits—and, of course, to deliver on its promise of killer clowns in cornfields.

Too often rehashing its myriad predecessors’ ideas, conflicts, and images, it’s a competent if unexceptional blockbuster game of monkey see, monkey do.

It may be messy, but then, what child’s story isn’t?

What [Waugh] delivers is precisely what fans are likely looking for, albeit in a package that’s more politically muddled than is necessary.

It might not deliver hilariously fatal blows, but it’s smart and spikey enough to leave a pleasurably painful mark.

Love You Forever isn’t gripping or poignant enough to stick the landing. You can only watch a grotesque man commit atrocities for a short period of time before the shtick becomes too upsetting to continue.

If its melodrama is unabashedly manipulative, it’s not altogether ineffective at eliciting waterworks.

What’s conspicuously missing from this non-fiction inquiry—much to its detriment—is an attendant discussion of what came next, and how McVeigh’s actions directly and indirectly led us to our precarious present moment.

Cares less about saying something significant than about imparting quirky vibes.

Thanks to a couple of novel twists, it manages to outpace its predecessor in tension and originality—if not quite reinvigorate the franchise.

A Nice Indian Boy is filled with enough novel truth to transcend its predictable elements, leaving viewers with a film that feels like a genuine love story, instead of an idealistic imitation.

For all its avenues of inquiry, however, it never quite gels into more than a collection of tantalizing but unfounded theories.

A stately affair that’s never particularly intellectually incisive or revealing, and its stolid execution fails to transcend the material’s inherent staginess.

Set to Tom Holkenborg’s bombastic score, Gregorian chanting, and endless pew-pew-pews, Rebel Moon—Part Two: The Scargiver roars and rampages, yet its drama can’t match its aesthetic pomposity.

Hits many of the right feel-good notes. Unfortunately, it also strikes a lot of discordant ones, neutering most of its attempts at rousing inspiration.

The cautionary tale is a familiar one. But it’s told with enough flashy verve and humor, along with a gossipy bombshell audio recording, to play as a breezy non-fiction look back at a phenom that had its 15 minutes—or, at least, enough time to get through an evening’s worth of quiz questions—in the smartphone spotlight.

It builds to revelations that speak emphatically to social shallowness, pressures and prejudices—even if, in the end, its bombshells resonate as less surprising than inevitable.

Rehashing clichés with formal polish but little novelty, this oater is a dour affair made all the grimmer by the fact that there isn’t a second of its 139 minutes that isn’t colored, in some way, by the on-set shooting that made it notable, and notorious, in the first place.

Never coherently articulates (or draws connections between) its various concerns, proving a handsomely horrific vampire bloodbath that, ahem, bites off more than it can chew.

The underwhelming result is similar to its signature beasts: a handsome clone that serves no purpose except to line its creators’ pockets.

The Devil on Trial still allows David and others to argue that demonic possession did take place, but given the evidence on display, many will likely find that up for considerable debate.

A cautionary tale about…making “a pact with the devil.” However, Milli Vanilli doesn’t have much to reveal that isn’t by now well-known pop lore.

Overwhelms via length and monotony, employing a challenging form that’s both its greatest strength and, ultimately, its most frustrating weakness.

A rehash that—in the interest of staving off franchise death for a little while longer—could stand to learn a few new tricks.

An aggressively fine intergalactic adventure whose earnest optimism and sweetness flirts—faithfully and dully—with hokiness.

A narratively and emotionally disjointed journey, its fine lead performances, moving details, and racial commentary never cohering into an affecting spectacular.

Such tension ultimately unravels during a latter half that rushes through too many underwhelming revelations, but that’s not enough to completely offset the film’s beguiling air of despondency.

It won’t revolutionize the genre, and in fact would have benefited from considerable additional polish, but it’s just cute enough to warrant two hours of Netflix subscribers’ time.

A beat-‘em-up whose competent fight sequences are ultimately overshadowed by its unintentional humor.

A pleasant and well-acted curio, and little more.

When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees.

Goes heavy on convincing musical performances to make up for the fact that it has nothing astute to say about its subject—in large part because it doesn’t seem to really know him.

Too much of Realm of Satan comes off as unreasonably poe-faced, which not only neuters the proceedings’ sense of giddy transgression but feels at odds with these characters’ comical bizarreness.

Little more than a creaky lark that fails to generate consistent laughs, even if it proves that John Cena is a charming goof-off who’s game for anything.

Boasts the idiosyncratic anxiety, depression, and angst of its author’s work and the bouncy tone and matching visual style of every other recent cinematic kid’s fable—two flavors that, it turns out, don’t really go well together.

Has its heart in the right place but little else, starting out competently and then slowly falling apart with each clumsy step along its "Game of Thrones"-lite path.

A surface-level portrait about a scientific advancement that could change the world for the better or the worse, and a man who knows how to wield it but can’t necessarily be trusted to do so.

Though stirringly headlined by Kate Winslet, it’s a by-the-books affair in almost every respect.

While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t quite capture the irresistible magic of the original, it’s full of stylistic wonder and fun characters.

Despite attractive aesthetics, its fights grow wearisome, especially as the material crosses the two-hour mark and, in the process, zooms past multiple potential endings.

No matter a committed performance (two, actually) from Robert Pattinson, it’s an original that plays like a rehash—and an underwhelmingly unfunny one at that.

You can cut-and-paste all your adolescent obsessions into a giant collage (and recruit Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn to participate in the madness), but that doesn’t mean it’ll amount to more than a messy, insubstantial grab bag of your favorite things.

A rather obvious and pedestrian lesson, if one that’s embellished with a few memorably macabre sights.

Telegraphs its bombshells from the outset and dutifully shuffles toward a conclusion that tethers this saga to Donner’s The Omen.

Rental Family, directed by Hikari, displays an almost admirable amount of restraint in its tear jerking, opting for quieter moments of grace rather than overdone emotion. In fact, it’s so restrained that Fraser’s Phillip Vandarpleog is not much of a character at all, and you leave itching for more of his inner life.

Blame for this sports drama’s shallow leadenness can’t be similarly pinned on the supernatural; instead, its shortcomings are attributable to a one-dimensional script and resultant performances that are far less nuanced than its headliners’ ripped bodies.

By minimizing its predecessor’s goofiness in favor of vacuous character drama, winds up only sporadically kicking into gale-force gear.

Follows the same basic pattern as the work of her dad M. Night Shyamalan—namely, it starts strong and then slowly falls apart under the weight of its obligations to clarify its baffling scenario.

By weighing everything so heavily, and obviously, in one direction, it eventually comes off as a thinly disguised sermon about ugly oppression and noble suffering and defiance.

The Animal Kingdom is what an X-Men movie would look like if it doubled-down on its tolerance-for-outsiders metaphor and did away with any exciting superpowered spectacle.

May have things to say, but doesn’t have a clue how to say them.

A mediocre remix that, for all its familiar elements, fails to improve upon a single aspect of its trailblazing predecessor.

To say that it’s a fourth-generation knock-off of myriad similar YA sagas that have come before it would be an understatement.

As an authorized project primarily designed to celebrate rather than investigate, that hatred goes largely unexamined in this non-fiction affair.

As sumptuous and vapid as a commercial for Dior or Chanel’s latest fragrance.

A typical provincial British tale about everyday Englishmen and women banding together to accomplish a controversial task against long odds, it’s akin to a warm glass of milk.

A work that proves hopelessly at odds with itself all the way to a conclusion that fizzles at the moment it should explode.

It takes its time—quite frankly, too long—to deliver the gruesome goods/

What’s missing, however, is a payoff worthy of his set-up, resulting in a diverting thriller that drags its way to an underwhelming finale.

As a showcase for the inimitable Dafoe it has its minor freaky-deaky pleasures. Ultimately, though, it goes nowhere—literally and figuratively.

There’s nothing very unsettling about its eventual horrors, in large part because the film is too infatuated with its sleek style to get its hands dirty.

Just as there’s no reference to the many falsehoods Diana has apparently told about her past, there’s zero overt mention of the controversy surrounding her signature triumph—thereby proving that the film cares more about rah-rah uplift than thorny inquiry or messy reality.

It all resembles a lot of cosplaying, although its central failing is foregrounding cacophonous mayhem and middling melodrama over the drollness that defined the first two Ghostbusters movies.

A hot-blooded crime story whose affectations outweigh its subversions.

Part Die Hard, part wish-fulfillment saga for a post-2024 present that didn’t come to pass, it’s a fantasy of feminist and U.S. might that’s chockablock with implausibilities.

It's content to be childishly silly rather than legitimately weird, veering between gags concerning age-old products and Jan. 6 with a mildness that keeps things pleasantly pedestrian.

Its formal showmanship unconvincing and off-putting, the film is a case study in the hazards of prizing style over substance.

There’s not much to latch onto here except the faint flickers of the better film this one, with more care and attention to detail, might have been.

Unlike its unique and fantastical title creature, it’s a commonplace monster mash which serves up only frenzied commotion and tired social commentary.

Undone by storytelling that, however well-intentioned, coats its real-life tale in a corny Hollywood sheen.

While its humor often sticks, its mayhem fails to land.

Love Machina’s scattershot structure does its subjects no favors, with the film taking a variety of meandering detours until its overarching purpose grows hazy.

In trying to have it both ways, it succeeds in neither, in the process stranding its charming leading man in a saga that needed to be either goofier or more gruesome.

Without greater context, though, Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case comes across as slight, and that notion is reinforced by a finale that draws no meaningful lessons from its tragic saga.