It’s easy to admire Green’s decision to tell a personal story that came from the heart, but the end result is, unfortunately, something a little flat, unremarkable and it’s only Ethan Hawke’s terrifically empathetic performance that makes this long and listless journey feel like it’s a road worth taking.

Though entertaining, the funky flourishes offered in plotting, visuals, and voiceover ultimately become a superficial rebellion, draped over a disappointingly stale form. Basically, it’s like sticking safety pins on a t-shirt pre-torn at The Gap.

Despite its strong performances, notably from Reid, Pine, and Witherspoon, its wide collection of marvels and it’s joyful sense of self, A Wrinkle in Time crumbles under expectations. But it’s not so much a failure as it’s a flawed do-gooder that could make our world better. It doesn’t dazzle like the stars and it doesn’t transport us away, but it still offers hope.

The picture’s biggest flaw is that it’s so mellow it occasionally veers into inertia.

To see Daniel Day-Lewis reemerge under his son’s daring direction is more than a comeback; it’s a cinematic conflagration, a collision of legacy and reinvention that feels historic.

It’s not very good except sometimes when it’s fantastic.

Gray and his leads ably demonstrate how quotidian encounters and minute actions speak volumes. What’s missing is space for those little details to fully speak.

A couple of exhilarating cycling scenes, and a pretty solid lead performance, does not a good movie make.

As sweet, corny, and comforting as your grandma’s creamed corn, Dumplin’ may not be a balanced meal of a movie, but it’s an enjoyably carb-y binge.

Lacking any thematic direction or narrative momentum, the film wanders around like so many Muscovite strays on the streets of Russia: aimless yet not exactly lost. A tough sit on top of all this, and lacking anything resembling a coherent point, this one should be shot into space without a return trajectory.

As the title suggests, Swallowed gives you something to chew on, but apart from a few shining and delicious morsels, it’s less of a feast and more of an underwhelming meal.

Alita lays out her empathetic groundwork early and rarely diverges from it. How wonderful to have a hero that always follows through with what she fights for. How wonderful to have a blockbuster that aspires for so much and mostly delivers on those ambitions.

The Book Thief covers a large span of time, but the film's episodic nature, often moving from one incident to the next with little time to pause or reflect, often obscures that fact and hinders an evocation of the cumulative effect the war has on the psyche of not just the Hubermanns, but their neighbors, too.

This is a terrific cast, appearing in scenes that have been beautifully framed and lit. Why weren’t they given anything memorable to do and say?

Eventually, the comedy coalesces enough to chalk up a small win. Mind you, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F isn’t reinventing the wheel, and low expectations might help. But it does make a remarkable transition from something that initially feels dire to something that eventually lights up, pleases, and produces some foul-mouthed ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ energy to feel familiar in the best sense.

Formally, it is even more abstract than previous Malick efforts, with on-camera dialogue kept to the barest minimum and the cast instead contributing poetic, banal or philosophical voiceover to the soundtrack, lines which overlap, fade up and fade down into music and silence, contributing to the sense of the film as a philosophical fugue state.

It's not funny enough to be a comedy, not well plotted enough to be a thriller but it's also not smart enough to be an actual exploration of all or even any of the many philosophies it, and Abe Lucas, espouses.

Simmons is naturally charming, but that only goes so far in a film strung together by half-baked characters and a gimmick.

If nothing else, Once Upon a Deadpool is an experiment that’s interesting in theory, but it doesn’t prove fruitful in terms of execution.

It’s perhaps not a huge step-up to those already well-versed in recent Korean action cinema, but sturdy direction by helmer Jung Byung-gil, restrained hat-tips to genre films past and the well-paired male leads keep The Merciless from feeling like the summation of more famous films.

The wretched allure of this process makes “Inside” worth the investment even when Katsoupis proves unable to resist the charming hands of cliché, bloating the script to serve the idea of an unconventional heist movie, when in his hands lie a much more interesting proposition.

There is enough in 6 Years from Farmiga and Rosenfield’s performances to warrant a watch, and Fidell’s ideas and subtle developments around such a challenging story are heartfelt and mostly well-rendered.

The Rise of Skywalker; is as much metafiction as Johnson’s film was. Rather than asking questions about what we really want from a series like “Star Wars,” and whether we’re ready to allow our childhood fictions to grow with us, J.J. Abrams and crew decide to lean on the emotional warmth of reunions, friendships, redemptions, and goodbyes. There is some heartfelt value here, or at least, some of it does admittedly produce some anthemic feels, but it doesn’t hold much weight.

The Art of the Steal won’t trick audiences into thinking they’ve seen anything new, but it’s just clever enough to keep them distracted from realizing that they haven’t.

Somewhere within these two hours is a lean-90-minute action film that is only interested in violence and gore. Project Wolf Hunting may occasionally get bogged down in its own mythology-building, but once the kills start piling up, it’s easy to get lost in the mayhem.

With its tongue placed firmly in cheek (it is, after all, called Big Ass Spider), it delivers on a whole bunch of laughs and thrills, in a way that some big budget spectaculars can't even muster.

Jeunet occasionally reminds you why he was once considered one of the most exciting names in world cinema. But for the most part, it’s another visually interesting, somewhat hollow misfire.

This horror film lacks the freshness of its predecessor, but its bleak view on humanity and technology, as well as some truly unsettling ideas and visuals, still set it apart from most of its fellow studio genre fare.

Unfortunately, while Husson clearly has talent to burn, her film is something of a case of all talk and no trousers.

The film succeeds as a fun, late-night moviegoing experience, though those looking for something more substantial or memorable, may want to just wait for the next ‘Conjuring’ film and hope it overcomes the hex of the series’ increasingly conventional routine.

A stunning, often flooring masterwork about desperation, writer/director Tim Sutton’s, “Donnybrook” is a brutal elegy for those living on the forgotten fringes of America.

A Castle for Christmas delights in a stuffed-stocking of tropes and still offers a few surprises.

In the end, The Mauritanian is an efficient procedural that condemns the Bush-era treatment of detainees more effectively than any other recent narrative film. It’s an affecting, but nevertheless tragic, watch.

Broken simply can't get it together on any level, delivering a tedious drama, that for all the characters and over-emoting, doesn't have much to say.

Aladdin is at its best when it ventures out to form its own interpretation and while not all of the choices necessarily work, it is refreshing to see Ritchie and the ensemble attempt a genuine reimagining.

Gout’s entry should be a victory lap for this relatively often dumb and dirty treatise on all that’s wrong with America, especially one that has become so powerful with multiple box office hits. Instead, it displays all that makes these movies a failed experiment in blockbuster exploitation.

Taylor’s film only really works if you turn off the rational part of your brain, which isn’t fully developed until you’re in your 20s anyway. If you can ignore the plot holes and gaps in logic, Ma is a fun, dumb time at the movies.

A confidently crafted, well-acted three-hander ... But some viewers will find the hamster-wheel nature of “Jungleland” monotonous, and it’s hard to blame them.

Because this is a packed ensemble and a joke-driven movie, the characterizations are fairly thin. We don’t know much about Lori, just that she isn’t ready for marriage. Though the casting of Cash opposite Harper makes sense, and the performances make us believe in the pair, we aren’t given any reason to believe they were once a happy couple.

We Have a Ghost tries to add too many elements to the mix–the horror, the comedy, the drama, and the message about how we need to leave our dead behind. Without committing to a tone, it all feels a bit mangled. It’s a movie that wants to be a mix of everything but, in the end, winds up being nothing.

She Came to Me lacks the palpable chemistry of a rom-com and the sobering relatability of a Nicole Holofcener dramedy, but it does find moments of inspiration thanks to its A-lister cast.

The Penn father-daughter duo undoubtedly brings an air of authenticity to the Vogels’ relationship, which is wonderful at its best and tragic at its worst. Yet the film as a whole is somewhat of a mixed bag: both a paean for a lost America and an indictment of a modern American reality.

Despite a few too many storylines and Wilson’s comedic indulgence, the musical numbers are often inspired and pack a punch. Wilson proves she can direct the musical aspect of the movie, at least. And, boy, these Aussie kids, er, legal age twentysomething adults can sing.

It's an audaciously broad topic, and at less than eighty minutes, you wonder what exactly Split gives us that we haven't received from countless other political documentaries.

There’s a curious shortage of honest-to-goodness laughs in Finley’s script; the humor is strained, and it doesn’t really land as science-fiction either. ... “Landscape with Invisible Hand” is, at best, an ambitious failure.

In zany set piece after zany set piece, the movie sets itself apart as willing to try anything, do anything for laugh, and it succeeds more often than it fails, even when falling back on some creaky wordplay and the occasional over-emphasis on both fart gags and pop culture references.

While Fatherhood could have been an interesting pivot in his career, the script is too standard-issue and unimaginative to inspire a great dramatic performance from Hart.

The film, like the original, feels very haphazardly structured, a hotchpotch collection of scenes rather than a unified whole. There's also no tonal consistency, with Webb lurching awkwardly from quippy comedy to brooding drama to high tragedy in short spaces of time, undercutting all three modes as a result.

For filmmakers Angus Macqueen and Guillermo Galdos, they've undoubtedly chosen a great subject for a compelling documentary. Unfortunately, they squander the opportunity with Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty, and it's due to the common problem of contemporary documentaries, where the directors get so far in the way of their own story, that any context or objectivity is lost.

Takes the standard gangster movie template and blasts it out of the water.

Even if we don’t overly connect with the personal growth stories of either Renfield or Rebecca, thanks to Cage, “Renfield” is the rare horror-comedy to find the balance between respect and playful irreverence.

Everyone here means well and wants to make an epic war film, but it lacks a narrative strong enough to make it essential viewing for those beyond the genre’s fans.

Dunham has not lost her habit of exploring taboo and shocking scenarios. But just like this new film’s fluid, low key visual style and bright, poppy production design, the coming-of-age story it presents feels so organically conceived that what would surely be completely unacceptable in another context appears to obey the film’s own perverse set of rules with warmth and a refreshing lack of judgment.

Hampered by a character growth problem, tonal inconsistencies, shoddy mime work, and a collective French accent trainwreck, the film fumbles the few opportunities it does have at something better.

The film is borderline installation-worthy, and would probably work just as well if the scenes were drastically re-arranged.

It is a shame that The Tender Bar never truly capitalizes on the quality of its few moments of comedic inspiration, leaning instead towards a melodrama doomed to be forever trapped in afternoon reruns.

With so many elements already in place there may still be a great comedy in there somewhere. With a little more finesse, Bachelorette could be the raucous female-led comedy it strives to be.

What 69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez accidentally confirms is that life would be so much better for all of us if everyone chose to collectively ignore its central subject.

Even within Schrader’s own back catalogue, Dog Eat Dog feels like a lukewarm retread of elements he has achieved, as a writer and director, much better before. It’s just that here they’re mashed together gracelessly, with a kind of bullying undercurrent, as though designed to get a rise out of you, just so it can deliver two for flinching.

Fun acting, playful imagery, and a catalog of great ‘80s songs should be the winning recipe for a delightful musical. Alas, the Valley Girl remake doesn’t have the musical chops to separate itself from being compared to an overly long episode of “Glee” and definitely doesn’t bring anything new to the film world that will influence movies for years to come, as the original did four decades ago.

Rather than make the more interesting movie, Chaves and Johnson-McGoldrick kick the can down the road toward the next money-making sequel. Which would be totally welcomed if the The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It weren’t so artistically inert, and oh so boring.

Hypnotic features a well-crafted suspense sequence or two, a couple of clever twists – but also some wildly stupid ones, and a bone-headed over-explainer ending that treats the entire audience like dopes. [Work in Progress SXSW 2023]

While it’s not a complete home run – it is a wee bit too long and certainly not as funny overall as it should be – in the end, it delivers. Because, love it or hate it, this film will linger with you. You certainly won’t forget Aitchison’s stirring performance.

A genuinely sweet, charming and funny tale of identity lost and found.

On paper, Five Feet Apart has all of the components to fit squarely into the sub-genre of films that have come before it. In execution, the teen romance never packs the emotional wallop it so obviously, self-satisfyingly, believes it does.

Deep Water contains some earnestly committed performances, a ridiculous car chase, a snail emporium, and a sparkling teaser for Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.” The dynamic between her and Affleck is fascinating: not ridiculous enough to be camp, but not far off.

Detective Pikachu is a fun, occasionally-funny, and almost always-beautiful to look at kids adventure film that doesn’t insult the intelligence of its audience and offers them great, positive lessons that are earned.

Trying to clarify the fog of war is a patently paradoxical task, Gates successfully argues – and she can prove the assertion within the grand satirical framework of the script or in a wry comic detail derived from the immediacy of a scene.

Its leads deliver, individually and especially together, and Teems somehow manages to sound a note of reserved hope at the picture’s conclusion, without sacrificing the inherent nihilism of the genre.

A sinister dread pulses through Bridgend, one that is engrossing and terrifying.

While the non-linear structure of Guest of Honour makes for a more thrilling watch than if it had played out chronologically, the story can be uneven and unsatisfying in places.

All in all, Earth to Echo is passable family entertainment, neither unforgettable nor particularly bad.

A welcome change of pace and a truly hilarious, heartfelt experience.

Big Game comes away with the distinction of being watchably terrible. There is a certain ridiculousness that is engaging, but this shouldn't be confused for merit.

It’s a love story set in a contemporary world brimming with immigration issues, but it manages to be neither political drama, nor bubbly romance, somehow getting away with being labeled as a comedy.

This blistering film about addiction doesn’t judge the abusers, instead offering an intimate view into a world of hurting people lost in a maze of peer pressure, letting us see how a nice guy like Henry can turn to hard drugs.

Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie is a purposely self-absorbed meta-narrative about a navel-gazing director at odds with his muse—an enticing premise on paper—that too often obscures its heart in lieu of tedious diatribes.

Billy Lynn has its moments, but its critical and unexpected folly is that the cutting-edge technology diminishes the picture emotionally, its ungainly look trivializes the drama and indulges it with an undesirable air of superficiality.

Has more than its share of flaws, but it also gets its balance of tones right, proving spooky, involving and occasionally resonant, while still managing to bring something new to a well-worn tale, and providing a terrific lead part for one of the most promising actresses of her generation.

A chaotic mishmash of ideas searching for a movie, Black as Night suffers significantly from truly awkwardly amateurish dialogue and performances.

There is just enough on the film’s surface to keep the journey entertaining.

While it’s Lawrence’s most mature and relatively subtle effort to date, it’s also, unfortunately, a slog. The director’s well-intentioned patience ultimately means nothing when its interminable pacing makes the movie feel twice as protracted as its longwinded, two-hour-plus running time.

When the end comes, and the suggestion of a sequel is left faintly lingering (though not in the way you’re expecting), weariness descends on just how unimaginative Carrie is and how easily it settles for the expected, rather than striving to be excitingly refreshing.

With his arresting debut, Balagov seems to be on the cusp of greatness, all the more effective for the way he draws upon his personal history to craft unforgettable images.

Along the way, audiences are treated to the standard Sandler shenanigans, but more inspired and less lazy than usual.

It has all the makings for Green to find that sweet-spot between drama and comedy, and make something special. Instead, we're left with something exasperatingly bland and almost claustrophobically generic.

It is a credit to Snowman's Land that it's plot twists are, for the most part, not entirely predictable, nor do they ever come across as far-fetched.

Much more of an adolescent male fantasy than a relatable, genuine film about love or relationships, “5 To 7” is deeply naïve and has very few, if any real insights to the heart or human condition.

It’s tempting to take it easy on Alone Together, because harsh criticism feels somewhat cruel – it’s just such a gosh-darned nice movie, about two nice people who meet up and are nice to each other. But this is one tepid piece of work, a story of bland people doing and saying bland things as the world burns around them.

Perhaps it worked better as a theatrical endeavor, but the result is a film that feels like a collection of familiar hospital set storylines thrown together without a true compelling throughline.

White House Down wants to riff on the stirring action crowd-pleasers of old. But instead of playing on those motifs, White House Down becomes a slave to them, turning into the very kind of rote, brainless, poorly choreographed and leaden action movie it wants to lighten up.

Exceptionally gorgeous and exceptionally silly.

Unfortunately, Halle Berry’s Bruised is a grueling hybrid of your weak, everyday Sundance debut and TV sports movie.

A Mouthful of Air is a Lifetime Channel take on a delicate subject.

By bringing in a strong screenwriter, hungry filmmakers with a vision, and a cast and crew who care deeply for the work... you get the recipe for a delightful and deranged modern-day exploitation film that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but somehow, asks you to take it more seriously than you might have otherwise.

As a filmmaker, Yeung has a keen eye for the quiet spaces where two people can learn more about each other than if they were holding a wordy conversation. If the director could just find a way to balance against his ho-hum dialogue and plotting, Front Cover would make more of an impression, instead of being the sweet but ultimately forgettable film that it is.

2073 might sacrifice some eloquence to make its creative points, but the sincerity shines poignantly and powerfully. Let it be a galvanizing call to action.

Though Horovitz's directing is workmanlike solid, and while the movie has a certain charm that makes it easy to walk in the door, it gives you little reason to stay.