[A] bland stab at genre hybridization, whose sole accomplishment is falling flat at everything it tries.

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.

A film whose tension (and inventiveness) waxes and wanes, although courtesy of Hawke’s unforgettable masked fiend, it continues to boast an iconic horror movie visage destined to ruin viewers’ sleep.

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.

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

Arguably the most derivative offering the tired genre has yet to offer, borrowing elements from so many forebearers that it plays like a conventional pastiche.

This sixth chapter boasts not a single genuinely unnerving jolt—a consequence of tepid writing as well as the familiarity of Ghostface’s tactics, which have long since become their own genre clichés.

A boldly demented science fiction saga (executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh) that melds the unsettling body horror of David Cronenberg and the seductive surrealism of David Lynch with a menacing video game-inflected spirit of its own.

Never more than skin-deep and ultimately overstays its welcome but which comes alive when—especially in its latter half—it indulges in its most wildly deviant impulses.

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.

Neither as scary nor as funny as its premise might be, The Pod Generation instead coasts along on a placid, self-satisfied wavelength.

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

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

It repeats the same joke over and over (and over again). And just when you think Wolfs might be interested in moving onto fresh new material, it attempts the same punchline again, in its 400th variation.

With no twists or clues to keep things lively and volatile, one’s mind instinctively begins to ponder how things are being precisely timed, where the other actors are moving to in the background, and the many other behind-the-scenes logistical challenges inherent to such an endeavor.

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.

By cleverly setting its timeline between the series’ first two installments, Saw X is both an invigorating thrill ride on par with the franchise’s best entries and a trenchant, timely charge against industrial systems set in place to keep humans sick.

[Gudegast] infuses his inspired-by-real-events tale with the muscularity of its metal-titan namesake, all while pivoting everything around the grungy, rugged charisma of his star.

Justice is more of a stinging, straightforward recap than a formally daring non-fiction work, but its direct approach allows its speakers to make their case with precision and passion.

AUM: The Cult at the End of the World affords a detailed analysis of the causes of Asahara’s popularity, and the deeply rooted hang-ups that drove him to order the infamous assault—as well as numerous other crimes.

Despite a premise that begets one of the strangest lovemaking scenes in recent memory—a quasi-incestuous gender-bending head-spinner—the film is too frequently the epitome of pretentiousness.

A raucous mélange of the demented and the degrading, indulging in the very garish, grotesque, X-rated madness it condemns.

Unfortunately the film is both overlong and underdeveloped.

Pulling on the heartstrings with tug-of-war-grade might, it’s a carpe diem fable that elicits more exasperated eye rolls than tears or laughs.

A rousing elegy to an underworld saga par excellence and, in particular, to a ruthless and tormented gangster whom, in Murphy’s expert hands, stands as an undisputed crime-fiction icon.

Exhibits a superficial interest in ribald revelry and yet, in most respects, neuters its wilder impulses.

Amusing, energetic, and just clever enough to sustain its brief runtime, it serves up a boisterous and bruising brand of B-movie bedlam.

On a comedic level, The Gutter is too quiet to be slapstick but too random to actually have an intelligent sense of humor.

Plays like a torturous tone-deaf joke that won’t end.

The amusing thrills intermittently appear, but the novelty is gone.

A rollicking tale of the inextricable bonds between life and art, and the value of ensuring that the latter remains preserved for future generations.

Capturing the pulse-pounding emotional whirlwind of its source material (and its characters), it’s a florid reimagining that’s at once bold, beautiful, and, at its peak, brilliant.

With very rare exceptions, it’s less entertaining than a year’s worth of marriage counseling.

Thanks to a host of colorful performances and an emphasis on over-the-top violence, they mostly pull off their double-dip trick.

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.

A brutal buddy film pairing Affleck’s killer with his equally murderous brother, it locates the humor in its mayhem and, for it, proves a superior sequel in every respect.

It has one thing to say, and it says it over and over again with a dismal lack of nuance.

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.

Snappy, sweet, and moving, this crowd-pleasing winner starring Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner continues the genre’s much-needed revitalization.

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.

A no-frills survival thriller that’s as rugged as its wilderness setting.

A deep dive into a pool of pretentiousness whose absurdity mounts with each new quasi-supernatural—and heavily symbolic—development.

So rote that even an A.I. wouldn’t dare try to pass it off as original.

Were it not for the participation of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, it would be an insufferable groaner rather than merely an inoffensive one.

[Its] staginess is offset by their blistering investigation of morality, manipulation, individual and social responsibility, and masculine power.

Never dull if also only intermittently surprising, it’s another of the director’s sturdy star-studded genre efforts.

The Mean Girls movie-musical barely differentiates itself from its predecessor.

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

Although it doesn’t come close to reaching Nemo’s heights (very few films, animated or otherwise, can), Elemental neither needs nor tries to, mostly to its own benefit.

A globetrotting action comedy whose primary selling point is the chemistry of headliners (and The Suicide Squad castmates) Idris Elba and John Cena.

With leads Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller generating considerable sparks, and violent set pieces that up the supernatural ante one out-there revelation at a time, the director’s latest proves a bonkers B-movie on a big-studio budget.

Nothing—including a game performance by Dev Patel—can prevent it from tumbling down a bottomless hole from which it can’t escape.

A winningly weird comedy—premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—about isolation and community.

An uninspired cover song in desperate need of its forerunner’s fire and flair.

I Don’t Understand You stays one step ahead of its audience at every turn, armed and ready with unexpected gags and memorably biting dialogue that repeatedly quell suspicions about whether or not it can pull off its big narrative swings.

At its deadliest, it’s a feat of breathtaking cinematic showmanship on par with recent standouts The Villainess, Carter and John Wick 4—even if its tale is as threadbare as its carnage is copious.

Headlined by a serviceable Liam Hemsworth and a fantastic Russell Crowe in all his hammy scene-stealing glory, it’s the bro-iest bro-fest that ever bro’d—and I say that with far more affection than condescension.

Invigorates its well-worn formula through meticulous stewardship and an excellent performance from headliner Gustav Dyekjær Giese as a boxer who attempts to realize his dreams of glory in the most daringly illicit manner imaginable.

The movie has a tighter, more out-there scope than its contemporaries, but its ideas about aging and companionship are universal. Bolstered by a terrific core cast of older actors, Jules is a warm film that proves senior cinema doesn’t have to be the same fluff, repackaged several times over.

Even in a genre that’s long indulged in excessiveness, this is the ruthless over-the-top carnage aficionados covet.

Though Immaculate won’t raise any hairs, it should boost Sweeney’s career. She transcends all of the triteness, proving herself to be the megawatt actress with virtuoso potential that she’s already demonstrated herself to be.

Cares far less about scares than thrills, and it generates plenty of giddy ones as it mires its characters in a predicament of head-spinning proportions.

Come for the healthy servings of capuzzelle, zeppole, and scungilli, but prepare to choke on the stale and squishy platitudes about family and tradition.

Strives to scrutinize mother-daughter relations through a darkly comedic lens and only comes up with grating incoherence.

Resembling a bonkers marriage of “Young Tully” and “Teen Wolf,” and led by a ferociously naked and unafraid performance by its star, it’s an amusingly incisive howl of maternal pain, frustration, disappointment, resentment, and feral strength.

As with its predecessors, those who can’t stand Deadpool or aren’t educated in Marvel movie lore won’t tolerate a second of it. The rest will be in bleeping heaven.

A prototypical example of talking, ceaselessly and crudely, at the audience.

Aiming for ribald and risqué and coming up with only ruinous humorlessness, it may be the longest 84 minutes anyone will spend in a theater this year.

Eliciting exasperated laughs at its every manipulation, it may be the most ridiculously corny movie of all time.

We Strangers constantly tries to hold onto something that was never there in the first place. It’s a movie that’s sort of about community, sort of about racial assimilation, and sort of about the lies we tell ourselves and others to wrestle with life’s mundanity.

There’s plenty of preposterousness to be found in this sequel, which barely revs to life when indulging in automotive mayhem and outright stalls every time its human characters open their mouths.

A sly, sinister film about self-loathing, sacrifice, and the things people will do to survive—with a great tormented performance from Dakota Fanning at its center.

Largely faithful but unwilling to pick a funny or nasty lane, it’s the most impersonal film of its writer/director’s career, and a revolutionary thriller that too often falls back on establishment conventions.

Strives for stratospheric emotional heights and yet proves so self-seriously somber and saccharine that it plays like a leaden parody.

A successful experiment that’s highly attuned to the digital immediacy of our modern condition.

A fleetingly recognizable tale of love, desire, obsession, regret, bitterness, and ire that, at every turn, plays as florid, horny, juvenile fanfiction.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare would seem to be an almost ideal project for Ritchie—which is why its lethargy comes as such a dispiriting surprise.

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.

Aside from a couple of vicious set pieces, however, this genre effort’s gimmickry results in derivative cornball melodrama. It would have benefited greatly from speaking louder while carrying a big stick.

Rob Savage’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1973 short story is as stereotypical as they come, so devoid of originality that the most pressing emotion it elicits is pity for its leads, Sophie Thatcher and Chris Messina, who deserve better than to be put through this paint-by-numbers ringer.

A daring saga that boasts far more moments that stumble than soar. It’s a mess that can be admired—but a mess, nonetheless.

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.

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.

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

A Frankenstein-ian cine-monster that both reinvents and pays homage with all the clumsiness and unsightliness of its fabled creature.

A movie manufactured to tug at the heartstrings. That it does so this gracefully and movingly is a testament to Winslet’s understated stewardship and a script by her son, Joe Anders, whose manipulations are as gentle as they are affecting.

Only receiving a multiplex release because Warner Bros had to do so in order to maintain the franchise’s theatrical rights, it’s inconsequential and hackneyed to the point of being forgettable.

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

Any grown-up’s desire for such material will be swiftly neutered by [the film], which despite boasting the participation of genuinely funny people like Will Ferrell, Jaime Foxx, Isla Fisher, and Randall Park is a mirthless mutt of a movie.

Switching genres in a futile effort to justify the series’ continued existence, this misbegotten creation is a leaden and aimless bit of cinematic malware—not to mention the most convoluted 2025 theatrical release to date.

A tale whose creative inspiration seems to be Three’s Company—and that’s not a compliment.

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.

To call the proceedings one-note is to oversell their depth; the sheer dearth of ideas in this fiasco is almost impressively profound.

This rote affair would deserve the designation “for fans only,” if not for the sneaking suspicion that even they won’t be wowed by this return trip to Panem.

Knox Goes Away isn’t the first (or fifth) genre effort to play with memory, although it might be the flattest.

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

Devoid of plausible characterizations, decision-making, and plotting, it’s a dud of epic proportions—literally, as its 130-minute runtime makes it feel like it’ll never end.