There might not be anything in Deep Water that hasn’t been done better in other movies, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t done well here. And there’s something to be said for its efficiency: The conspicuous acts of homage often make it like you’re watching three or four different movies at the same time.

The more Frankel and McKenna acknowledge that their fresh-out-of-college heroine is now a seasoned editor in her 40s, the better The Devil Wears Prada 2 gets, not least because it doesn’t have to jettison the upscale fantasies and juicy machinations of Miranda's world entirely. Like Miranda herself at one point in the movie, it’s healthy to spend a little time flying in coach.

The words these characters say to each other are mostly boring and obscure, and it’s a mad scramble to figure out what’s making them so agitated. Keeping up with the film becomes as hard as it is to care.

Without spoiling Normal’s central twist, suffice it to say that it leads to a lot of gunplay that allows Wheatley to off one character after another in violent, sometimes explosive fashion. It’s more wearying than shocking, but not fatally so thanks to a brisk pace, a willingness to shift gears with little warning, and, again, Odenkirk’s humane performance.

The Mummy takes its silliness far too seriously.

It’s a piece of escapism that can’t escape from itself.

It’s not badly executed, but there’s nothing scary or clever enough to set it apart from similar films beyond the Faces of Death connection, a throwback meta cloak wrapped around a merely good-enough modern horror movie.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is, like its predecessor, solidly put together and even elicits a chuckle here and there (most of them, as before, courtesy of Black). But it’s also pretty much as impenetrable as Finnegan’s Wake for those not locked into its hermetic, mushroom-and-brick-filled world.

It’s a testament to the beauty of Chomet’s visual style that the picture book images of Paris and Marseille in the mid-20th century are transporting enough to make A Magnificent Life a comfortable sit. But Pagnol deserves better than this limp eulogy.

The satirical promise of Ready or Not 2 leads to few comic payoffs—or even much resembling a joke, despite the film’s irreverent tone—and the snippiness between Grace and Faith seems forced after they’ve been taking fire together for so much of the film. Here’s hoping that Ready or Not 3: Olly Olly Oxen Free better meets the moment.

Reminders of Him is a disciplined mediocrity, sticking to picture postcard images and a happy ending that’s so much easier to achieve than the story allows. Next time, please have the courtesy to be crazier.

Chong seems to intend for an escalating series of comic events that get more giddily absurd as it approaches the climax, but the film loses its soul in the process. Hoppers longs for the quiet beatitude of nature, but it’s just another noisemaker.

Drunk on its own ambitions and the permission to go as big as possible, The Bride! is seldom cohesive (and occasionally incoherent) but it’s also rarely boring, the sort of noble failure that’s more compelling to watch and discuss than a lesser success.

Aside from a lively stretch toward the end of the film where Jennifer and Fernando wrestle on equal footing, literally as well as figuratively, Dreams is blunt in its intentions and programmatic in its plotting.

In the tradition of the opening scene, let’s bring it all full circle with the question that kicked off this series: Do you like scary movies? If so, there are plenty of other ones you could watch.

As satire, it’s toothless. (The rich are awful. We know.) That might be forgivable if the film was at all funny or could decide if Becket was a victim or a psychopath, a problem not aided by Powell’s noncommittal performance. He’s doing too little.

“Wuthering Heights” looks great and it’s fun to wander around in it for a while, but it’s hard to shake the thought that Fennell’s film has been thrown together without much consideration for how all the rooms might fit together. It’s the cinematic equivalent of The House on the Rock.

What begins as an attempt to send up pop star self-indulgence finds its way to self-indulgence by another route.

Besson seems more at home making pop art than gothic tragedy, but the neither-here-nor-there quality of Dracula makes it chintzy and unsatisfying on both fronts. In a word, it sucks.

To want Statham to appear like he cares about any of it is to ask too much.

Only a scene where Helen defends her hunting trips with Mabel as “an honest encounter with death” suggests the tougher, more provocative movie that might have been. This one is mostly a genteel therapy arc.

Roberts skillfully stages some memorable kills but, despite the unusual antagonist, Primate too often feels like a by-the-numbers slasher that expects the novelty of a bloodthirsty chimp will carry it.

Dead Man’s Wire is a curious shrug of a movie, especially from a director like Gus Van Sant, who has picked up some ho-hum work-for-hire assignments in the past, such as Finding Forrester or Promised Land, but usually puts some more spin on the ball.

Played by Foster with flinty persistence, Lillian is part of the long, great tradition of memorably screwed-up sleuths and A Private Life makes it easy to wish we’d see her again in a sequel in which she pursues a case that’s worth her time and ours.

It evens out to an engaging-enough biopic, but if Song Sung Blue had found a way to interpret their bittersweet love story with a Lightning & Thunder-like intensity, it could have been even more.

For long stretches, Is This Thing On? works better on a scene-by-scene basis than as a cohesive film. Arnett and Dern believably summon the off-kilter chemistry of a couple going through a rough patch in their scenes together and the lost-at-sea fogginess of the newly separated in their scenes apart.

The performances, particularly Seyfried’s, keep the film popping, along with some energetic rug-pulling from Feig, who treats the material like a deadly telenovela. But at an exhausting 131 minutes, it’s an indulgent feast on empty calories.

It’s as if everyone seemed to think that all the film needed was to assemble the right pieces and the rest would take care of itself. And with pros like these, they almost do.

Though he still doles out kills in a thin broth, Nelson puts enough craft and spin on the material to make it better than it has any right to be. Making the best Silent Night, Deadly Night is the very definition of a modest achievement.

Ella McCay has some fine moments but getting to those little gold nuggets requires a lot of tedious sifting through the sand.

It doesn’t feel as fresh as the winning original, but it also never plays like a desperate cash-in, which immediately makes it better than a lot of Disney’s recent output. But is it worth seeing? Sure. Why not?

Sweeney’s transformation is more than just physical. She’s convincing as both the scrappy kid no one expected to go anywhere and the swaggering superstar who began throwing verbal blows at opponents.

The sturdiness of Elphaba and Glinda’s bond throughout these tragic miscues—and Erivo and Grande’s fine dramatic and vocal performances—give this rickety enterprise a solid foundation.

One of the film’s greatest strengths is its refusal to oversimplify the matter and a script that allows Turner, Teller, and Olsen to make their characters more than mere type

Predator: Badlands may be formulaic and a little cutesy, but its relentless crowd-pleasing instincts wear down your defenses. You feel like the Dek to its Thia.

It’s fitfully inspired in stretches, as Jude runs various creative scenarios through a mirthless AI generator, but as a viewer, being inundated with crap still hurts, even when there’s a satirical purpose.

Cooper leans toward a chronicle of Springsteen’s depression, which makes sense given his emotional state at the time, but too much of the film is explained when it’s better dramatized. The act of turning angst into music is more dynamic than finding every source for it.

Derrickson’s instinct to lean on a low-res, Super 8-style camerawork in the film’s frequent dream sequences is fitfully effective, rendering nightmares like spools of home movies that have been decaying in the attic. But here, he’s having to reanimate a dead property.

Through it all, Reznor and Ross keep the music pulsing in time to the action and for some thrilling, surprisingly long stretches, that’s all the movie needs.

While Luna and Tonatiuh play characters transported by movies, the film in which they appear never quite summons the same power.

The cast does well to make the button-pushing read like complexity—Stuhlbarg, the secret MVP of Call Me By Your Name, acquits himself best here, too— but it all looks a bit like Guadagnino is pleading for mercy for adults who should know better. No, thanks.

It’s the work of someone who didn’t take the time to realize he had nothing to say, then decided to say something anyway.

The best scenes in Spinal Tap II are either solid improvisational sessions between the three leads as the band tries to recover its long chemistry or sidebars with Nigel.

As a love story, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey doesn’t really work. And given that much of the movie—scripted by Seth Reiss (The Menu) and directed by Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang)—is concerned with telling a love story, that's a pretty big problem.

The film indulges in the Speed-like fantasy that a skilled and intrepid bus driver can blow through the inferno, but that’s Hollywood. The Lost Bus is convincing enough to expose its own nonsense.

Adhering to Kerr’s real-life story allows Safdie to skirt clichés, but it’s really only Johnson’s memorable characterization that suggests Kerr’s story had to be told.