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anticipated (or has any right to be), thanks in large part to Murphy recapturing some of the wisecracking magic that originally made Axel a sensation.

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

It’s jovial, zany, and sweet, and it recreates its adorable title alien via CGI (and a Sanders voice performance) with pitch-perfect accuracy.

Less than halfway into its already brief runtime, Landscape starts to fall apart at the seams. The film bungles its promise with a confused mixture of half-baked ideas that miss their mark entirely, all while it struggles to probe the concept of humor with a cold, alien touch.

[Cage] is the prince of pretentious darkness, and the saving grace of this otherwise slapdash variation on the Bram Stoker legend.

Fortuitously timed, providing an insider’s view of this most tabloid-y of political tales and the woman at the center of it all.

A B-movie with a C+ premise and D-minus execution, the last of which largely falls at the feet of director Robert Rodriguez.

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

A pedestrian thriller that never generates a modicum of suspense.

Aiming for the stars, it proves a laborious affair that rarely gets off the ground.

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.

Arguably the least inspired film in the actor’s canon, if not all of movie history.

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

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

As a pulpy game of cat-and-mouse, however, it provides enough thrills to compensate for its illogicalities, and in Josh Harnett, it boasts a star adept at locating the fiendishness in fatherhood.

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.

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

Unsurprising from start to finish and yet proficiently executed thanks to its impressive cast, it’s the definition of serviceable.

It’s a satisfying return to the genre from Gluck, a promising feature-length script debut from Wolpert, and an intriguing first outing from Sweeney and Powell. The two stars have the stuff; it just needs some more refining before round two.

Delivering the male-entertainment goods while radiating a newfound degree of tender romanticism, it’s a fairy-tale coda that’s at once sensual, lyrical, and liberating.

Whether hewing to the letter of Stoker’s source material or branching off in novel directions, this B-movie distends itself without purpose.

Affords Julia Roberts with her best part in years as a professor whose role in a burgeoning scandal threatens to expose her deep, dark (related) secrets. She’s not enough, however, to make this wannabe-conversation starter coherent, much less insightful.

A macho fantasy about a dad acting out his daughter-saving fantasy by rescuing a surrogate child, with Statham talking tough and acting tougher in typically forthright fashion.

Kids will undoubtedly chuckle at their familiar exploits; the rest will view the film as an excuse to take a nice air-conditioned nap.

Weaving confirms that she has the nerve to be a horror icon, delivering a wicked and gritty performance, and rising to the demands of a film where she must believably convey the nuances of fright and rage, without any words to do so.

Courtesy of charming and goofy performances by Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon as strangers who find themselves at war over their loved ones’ weddings, it’s amusing enough to do just fine on a screen of any size.

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

Rife with symbolic weight, the action is thematically jumbled, and worse, it takes so long establishing its scenario that it never develops a sense of urgency and madness.

Cabrini is a respectful biopic designed to shed light on a forgotten woman whose charitable acts deserve recognition. It’s also so stultifyingly dutiful you may find yourself missing Sound of Freedom’s tawdry watchability.

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

Even at a brisk 85 minutes, it’s a bigger slog than a day spent mowing the grass.

It isn’t a debacle, but it also won’t have genre aficionados howling for more.

Its most impressive feat, however, is finding a way to somehow be even duller than its predecessors.

An irrelevant B-team affair which further suggests that the MCU can’t survive, short- or long-term, without the active participation of its most famous characters.

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

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.

No Magic Mirror is needed to identify it as the lamest Mouse House re-do of them all.

Hot Frosty is absolutely absurd and awful, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Offsetting its naughtier impulses with feel-good schmaltz, it employs a tired formula to losing results.

A socially conscious romantic comedy, and if those two modes don’t sound compatible, [writer/director] Libii does nothing to alter that impression.

Benson’s film is a crafty yet subtle inversion of a stale genre. It moves the viewer and gets out while it’s ahead, aiming for maximum emotional impact over any flashy, absurd striving.

What ensues is the exact same thing that happened to Mia Farrow’s wife, except minus the creepy surprise and, thus, any reason to pay attention.

An attempt at comedy that’s a genuine disaster.

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

Surrealist absurdity of the highest (or is that lowest?) order, a comedy that’s so unabashedly out there that it practically dares audiences to reject it.

A sturdy continuation of this cataclysmic big-screen series, whose large-scale set pieces are rooted in the fear, anguish, and compassion of its appealing main characters.

So expansive and incomplete that it resembles a modern television series awkwardly edited into feature form.

The sole thing it instigates is frustration over its lethargic unoriginality.

In an age of bland, unimaginative cookie-cutter blockbusters, there’s something refreshing about a movie that puts a premium on looking and sounding badass.

[Depp] proves that he remains one of cinema’s most magnetic presences—even if his latest project doesn’t do terribly much with him.

An irredeemably obvious and one-note affair that says everything in its first 10 minutes and spends the remainder of its time vainly trying to drum up humor from a wan Weekend at Bernie’s-esque scenario.

An excruciatingly literal affair, not to mention a repetitive one, spinning in circles to dizzying, and ever-diminishing, ends.

Great racing sequences aside, it’s so clichéd and unadventurous that it makes its source material seem deep by comparison.

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

Just as readers will likely get lost in its gobbledygook subtitle, so too does Rudd get swallowed up by the consuming CGI insanity of his latest comic book extravaganza.

Just as busy, corny, and predictable as its 2003 iteration—as well as destined to swiftly pass into the cinematic afterlife that is both convenience store bargain bins and cluttered streaming platform libraries.

Destined to be passionately adored and despised, it’s a provocation, a stunt, a dare, and an experiment—as well as a bold one-of-a-kind experience that...shouldn’t be missed.

This movie is nice to gawk at, though the character models of Disney films are starting to get a little too interchangeable, a little too… well, on model. But as a piece of storytelling, Wish is as flimsy as a star decal stuck to a wall.

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

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

A high-octane action extravaganza sure to satiate genre fans’ delirious bloodlust.

An ignominious tour-de-force for the esteemed headliner, who gets to indulge in just about every caricatured mannerism and colloquialism in the stale La Cosa Nostra cookbook.

Messy and mirthless, it resounds as the death knell for this interconnected cinematic enterprise’s current iteration.

Lacks any sense of internal logic and is even lighter on surprising scares, dispensing only clichés that are as moldy as the haunted house in which his characters are confined.

Stylized to the hilt but empty inside, it faithfully echoes the harried shallowness of its protagonist, whose desperate search for one big score to reverse his fortunes is all surface, no substance—the cinematic equivalent of a knock-off Rolex.

Silly and slipshod, it’s not the role that will catapult the acclaimed actor back into the types of projects he deserves.

Heed its title’s advice and just don’t.

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.

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.

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

So determined to avoid satisfying fans that it’s borderline antagonistic, as actively hostile to genre conventions as its protagonist is to the world at large.

Irish Wish is bland, woefully flat, and entirely devoid of laughs, and is a vacuum of charisma when its star isn’t in the frame.

Diaz and Foxx still got it, the film constantly screams. The evidence on display, however, suggests otherwise.

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.

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.

It’s as big a swing as any in Besson’s career, and consequently, when it wholly and embarrassingly misses, the blow back is borderline overpowering.

Block-headed from start to finish, it’s cinema in service of nothing more than IP exploitation.

In a genre overly taken as of late with “elevated” trauma scares, its gritty, skillful menace is a breath of fresh air.

Fails to locate a humorous rhythm or coherently develop its collection of characters. It’s the skeleton of a promising idea rather than a full-fledged movie.

Russell Crowe continues to prove that he’s better than the B-grade projects he’s now offered, but his convincing performance isn’t enough to elevate this surprise-free mystery.

A dismal misfire that strains to meld Meet the Parents-style comedy with The Exorcist-grade horror.

Its characters may be desperate to remember the things they’ve willfully suppressed, but as this dud confirms, some things are best left forgotten.

Heart of Stone plays like reheated leftovers, its flavor familiar but diluted.

Dismally lazy nonsense whose only redeeming element is that its credits roll a good 10 minutes before the conclusion of its stated runtime.

In a streaming landscape already saturated with takedowns of Big Pharma and its pill-popping perfidy, it’s a generic version of far more powerful originals.

A sci-fi story that spirals about in circles on its way to a predictable and underwhelming twist and an even less satisfying conclusion.

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.

The best one can say about it is that it at least doesn’t feature a lovably cartoonish genocidal dictator.

Just a pale imitation of scarier bloodsuckers gone by.