The film leans hard into dark comedy rather than outright horror, which saves it from seeming like technophobic scaremongering or a “kids these days” moral panic. If you’re the kind of person who can laugh at slapstick murder vignettes, a lot of Spree works very well.

It’s the visual language of video games, but video games pull it off because that distanced voyeurism also comes with something additive: interactivity. Eventually, you will become involved. That is not something a film can offer.

It’s just determined to deliver as many answers and as much plot momentum as possible, even when slowing down or holding back would give its revelations far more weight.

At times, Double Tap does recapture the original film’s tossed-off delights. It’s been revived with so many of the original actors and filmmakers for that express purpose. But this particular sequel suggests that in another 10 years, there won’t be much left to reanimate.

It would be easier to buy Jexi’s more intentional absurdities if its reality wasn’t so elastic, stretching to accommodate poorly staged large-scale slapstick.

Unfortunately, The Addams Family is so bland, unfunny, and poorly structured that even the best intentions can’t elevate it.

Lee sometimes gives the impression of a virtuoso guitarist, needlessly gussying up his act with double-necked axes and pyrotechnics. When a filmmaker has skills like Lee’s, all the bells and whistles just seem to get in the way. God willing, his acoustic days aren’t totally behind him.

The movie focuses so intently on technical craft that it sometimes zones right out. Hawley is still stretching boundaries, often literally, while disregarding the human experiences they’re supposed to contain.

In the early going, though, Waititi manages to keep the tone light and the humor surreal enough to avoid too much association with the real world. But as his story devolves into melodrama, the comedy curdles.

While The Coming Race might not sell the need for this absurd series to continue, it at least provides a reason to go back and watch the original, and help its creators get the money they need to try to recapture their uniquely bizarre form of movie magic.

While it’s a near shot-for-shot remake of the original, this version of The Lion King lacks much of the emotion and expressiveness that keeps people coming back to the first. ... Someone who’s never seen the original version could probably enjoy this strictly inferior clone. But why should they?

The film spends more time dramatizing the scandal’s worst-case scenario than examining the facts — producing compelling personal narratives at the cost of valuable context and perspective.

Kinberg goes darker and scarier, emphasizing the tragic elements of Jean’s story by recasting her origin as a story of betrayal and deception and her possession as a condition fueled by justifiable rage. The only problem: it all works better in concept than in execution.

Watching Ma, it’s hard not to wish it either gave Spencer more space to work through some of the character’s contradictions over the course of a more thoughtful drama (with some killing thrown in for good measure, of course), or that it went all-in on being a trashy exploitation film that let the blood and social commentary flow freely.

The filmmakers aren’t much interested in developing these characters out of their original two dimensions, or leaning into the character dynamics that make Ritchie movies distinctive. As a result, the whole endeavor feels unfinished and unresolved.

Yesterday is a breezy, moderately funny romantic comedy with an excellent soundtrack — but one that never commits to its characters, themes, or clever premise.

Over the course of two hours, the mania becomes exhausting and numbing.

The world, the movie seems to be saying, expends a lot of energy on blithely incoherent messages to women, based on half-baked ideas rather than their actual experiences. As it turns out, Unicorn Store does the same thing.

Trailers that highlighted circus performance and relied heavily on the magic of the flying elephant and the colorful world of Dreamland made Dumbo seem like it was meant as a memorable spectacle. If that was Burton’s intention, he failed. Dumbo quickly becomes the Panda Express of films — technically a full meal, but not satisfying or substantial.

It’s both a calculated attempt to recapture some of the emotional magic of his successes, and a clinical analysis of how exactly humanistic but effects-driven filmmaking is supposed to work. These qualities make it fascinating, but ineffectual as a narrative — or even as a demo reel. Zemeckis seems to think he’s showing heart. Instead, he’s messily dissecting it.

It’s frustrating that a movie that seems so improbable actually got made, only to fall so incredibly short.

It’s a train wreck of a movie, mixing and matching wildly dissonant tones, bizarre plot contrivances, and a truly unique lead performance.

The book is a charmingly quaint, deeply eerie supernatural mystery about grief, necromancy, and the apocalypse. The movie version is a shrieking CGI carnival full of poop jokes and barfing pumpkins.

Do You Trust This Computer? is defensible in some ways. It’s engaging, imaginative, and easy to watch, and it brings attention to a subject that’s going to have real and important effects on all our lives. But it sacrifices too much complexity and detail to achieve this, and it’s more misleading than informative.

Normally, the creatures lend this series a built-in sense of awe and wonder. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom strips that majesty away and turns the focus on the human characters, who are markedly unengaging.

The action sequences are electric; they’re grimy, choppy, and strange. But when the characters talk, the film stretches and slows to a banal cautionary tale, almost as if Whannell was making the movie as a homework assignment, having a ton of fun with the aesthetics and the fight scenes, then suddenly remembering he was supposed to incorporate some “themes.”

Unfriended: Dark Web has enough snark, shock, and disregard for anyone’s emotional comfort to briefly confuse viewers into thinking it’s pulled off something worthwhile. But when it’s done, it’s easy to walk outside feeling like you’ve spent 90 minutes doing nothing at all.

Vikander doesn’t do much with a character whose chief attribute is earnestness, but Tomb Raider improves once it gets to the island and lets the derring-do take over.