It’s probably better to have a mixed-bag remake with real thought put into it than a superficial thriller retread of tired yuppie phobias. 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' may not rock, but hey, let’s give it a hand anyway.

What makes Eternals feel special is that, for once, the director genuinely cares as much about the character within that spectacle, as the spectacle itself.

It’s lean and mean, focused and direct, and the jolts are both effective and well earned

The United States vs. Billie Holiday never completely works as a drama, but it does ultimately succeed in two important ways: The film provides a launchpad for Andra Day’s exceptional acting talents as well as her gifts as a singer, and enriches the public understanding of Holiday’s persecution, funded by taxpayer dollars, for daring to speak truth to power through her art.

It’s impossible not to root for President Viola Davis as she takes down incompetent, mediocre white guys who want to crash the world economy. She stares down this generic production and walks away with another victory under her belt.

A zombie movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger sounds like it should be campy fun, but first-time director Henry Hobson’s Maggie is grimly one-note, a small mood piece and character study that relies heavily on its three main actors: Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin and Joely Richardson.

The overly simplistic nature of the script becomes both pragmatic and detrimental, never allowing any character the depth they are owed while providing just enough of a formulaic plot, one that asks nothing more than for you to enjoy the ensemble.

Ultimately, Murder on the Orient Express isn’t necessarily awful; it’s just inert, a prestige pic that’s too busy looking handsome and respectable to evoke any real intrigue or emotional involvement.

Unrepentant, uneven and unique, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus proves that Lee can still make a film worthy of the arguments it will most certainly start.

These women wear what they want, love who they want, find fulfillment in their power, and support each other unconditionally. They’re not undermined by a script that highlights their flaws or insecurities, or a camera that reflexively leers at them. They get to just be, with all the freedoms and potential of any other fictional heroes.

Its baseline competence is perfectly watchable. It’s just hard to imagine anyone signing onto this project with the explicitly stated goal of only making it watchable.

There’s no getting around how enjoyable it is to watch Coogan effortlessly play an entitled bastard, whether giving it or getting it. He’s so expert at the darkly witty, cringe-while-laughing insult, it’s like watching a pro athlete in flight; it’s a shame Winterbottom’s ambitions for Greed weren’t greater as a rollicking, truly scary picture of unrepentant gluttony.

Sure, young star Trevor Jackson (“Grown-ish,” “American Crime”) can’t fill O’Neal’s effortlessly dapper, achingly world-weary shoes, and few movie soundtracks can rival Curtis Mayfield’s legendary album for the first “Super Fly.” But this is a remake worthy of its original.

At the very least, it’s not Shakespeare. It’s not even “10 Things I Hate About You.”

Ghost in the Shall is a technical knockout, a here-and-now valentine to what design wizardry Hollywood can pull off in 2017. At the same time, it does so in service of a tired tale full of repurposed visual tricks, storytelling clichés and big-studio concessions.

Why Magic Mike’s Last Dance chooses to teach viewers about love, consent, and having it all, then, is a mystery. The Galentine’s Day crowd will probably be too drunk to notice.

Central Intelligence doesn’t feel like the birth of a great comic duo — more like a blind date that goes a little better than expected. The chemistry’s not there yet, but let’s give it another shot.

Griffin juggles her many characters well, and she’s very smart about weaponizing the coziness of Christmas movies to make uncomfortable points. Silent Night may wind up being a successful calling card for her (as a director if not as a screenwriter), but for all the beautiful wrapping, it’s mostly an empty box.

Overall, there’s just nothing about this interpretation of the character that makes him stand out as Count…Dracula versus just another standard vampire, a fact that only becomes more troubling since it’s doubtful most people will equate the Demeter with Stoker’s novel at all.

Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”) takes some considerable risks in her direction to make The Sun Is Also a Star look different from the typical romantic drama. But not all of these creative decisions pay off.

Watching Madame Bovary, you find yourself wishing that Barthes had done something, anything with Flaubert’s novel other than slap it up on the screen as yet another tale of woe from long ago.

The gendered themes at play here do little to boost the quality of Buck and Schlingmann’s storytelling, which is too tangled to follow at times.

This stodgy adaptation creaks with solemnity — not to mention reactionary casting choices — and apart from some nifty frog and locust infestations, even the special effects pale next to a wind-blown Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea.

Though the first act of The Contractor is its lengthiest, the lazy pace does nothing to enrich the lives of the characters who we know are at stake. The action that follows is quick and cramped; sequences that should feel heart-pounding are, instead, dark and erratic.

The Crimes of Grindelwald probably had enough plot to drive a four-hour mini-series, but even so, what we get is often absorbing and grand. The sense that this magical world is actually, well, fantastic is finally back in the series.

80 For Brady is undeniably a shiny piece of NFL propaganda, a film so in love with its own money-making apparatus that it’s hard not to find it at least somewhat evil. But the performances land and are often endearing, with all four women in particularly strong form.

It’s a story ripped from at least a few years of headlines, and a subject about which there has been much debate. It may or may not come as a surprise, then, that a single two-hour film fails to sufficiently capture its complexities, even working from a compelling premise with a gifted cast.

Not every eccentric tweak of hers lands, but it’s a wonderful feeling knowing McKinnon sees potential for humor every time the camera’s on her, even for a reaction shot shoved into an action sequence.

It’s nothing short of a miracle that Every Day doesn’t collapse into the junk pile of its own refrigerator logic. Sucsy keeps the movie balanced nimbly between complex questions and earnest sentiment, and the need to constantly introduce new characters and circumstances keeps Every Day brisk and engaging.

X-Men: Apocalypse provides a hint at what might one day take down the ubiquitous superhero genre: utter dullness. For all its bangs, the movie is ultimately a whimper.

At too many points, the script from Kay Oyegun (adapting the novel by Angie Thomas) is uneven: Some story beats move too fast, while others pass too slowly, and there are narrative holes. Still, even with its flaws, On the Come Up — like 2018’s The Hate U Give — offers Black teen girls a voice in cinema that they have rarely had before. Lathan mines that gold, making her debut shine.

A howlingly inane movie that somehow managed to collect an impressively A-list cast on its way toward becoming a cop movie that’s not just dumb, it’s disastrous.

The lead actors are attractive and charismatic and give nuanced performances. Unfortunately, the dialogue they are given to speak is often trite and too many plot strands are unconvincing.

If the film had simply been the man talking about his cultural influences, that would have been enough, a survey in beauty from a man who knows how to translate that ineffable idea into a shoe that sprouts feathers.

Ultimately, the overstuffed, under-dramatized film fails to fully develop the stakes at hand, but it features more thoughtful world-building than most faith-based films, as well as a bracing honesty about the difficulty of reconciling idealistic credos with a harsh and unforgiving world.

Though the film is at best confusing in its narrative, Bilal is still a showcase for the capabilities of animated cinema on the Arabian Peninsula.

Since Håfström and his crew stick their landing, those who particularly enjoy second-hand claustrophobia may find it worth the long journey. Everyone else, however, will be better served by more engaging enterprises here on Earth.

While The Interview never slacks in its mission to tell jokes, it's such a messy and meandering movie that it never quite lands as a satire of politics or the media or anything else.

Ironically, then, a designer renowned for his brilliantly precise lines and proportions — enough to make a dress out of a Mondrian painting — is paid tribute by a work with disappointingly sloppy structure. Saint Laurent might glitter like the real thing, but a careful look at the construction shows it’s really just a knockoff.

The Main Event is an easy enough ride for kids who are stuck at home and like to see people bash each other. Will parents want to stick it out, too? That’s a tougher question for a movie about magic that doesn’t really have too much magic of its own.

The film is big, brutal and beautiful — over the top at times and stirring at others.

The Internship delivers what it promises, no more and no less, and faulting it for not being a rougher, tougher, smarter film about how much we all seem to live our lives through our work today would be like yelling at a spoon for not being a knife.

The Age of Adaline begins with such a wackadoo premise that you wish the filmmakers would commit to the nuttiness, or at least explore and explain how its weird world works. Instead, Adaline’s forever-29 status just sprinkles some cheese on a timid and unimaginative, if stylishly framed, romance.

Final Cut is silly and excessive and completely over-the-top, but it also brings out the lightness and deftness of Hazanavicus’ touch with comedy; the director somehow manages to fling body parts and bodily excretions at the audience for almost two hours, and yet you leave feeling as if you’ve seen a feel-good movie.

Across the eras, wardrobe changes, short-lived smiles and bitter tears, and eventually the addiction and scandals, Ackie’s portrayal of Houston stands out not only for lip-synching so precisely and convincingly it makes one wonder if she is in fact singing, but because rather than imitate she seems to simply be trying to channel the cornerstones of her personality.

If you think man-crack is the apex of hilarity, A Walk in the Woods just might be the movie for you. It’s all right there in the trailers: slapstick, womp-womp one-liners, the premise of old buddies going on an adventure.

The major problem with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — the fifth installment in this dinosaur series, and the second of a prospective trilogy — is that the makers treat the action and suspense sequences in the way most of us go to the dentist.

While Stoller’s script does boast a few solid laughs, everyone involved deserves and can do better.

The polished assuredness under which Refn operates is considerable, and even appealing, and yet there’s always one element in any given scene — a music cue, a banal sound choice, a shot held until it screams “look at me” — that breaks the mood.

At its core, The Last Full Measure is a poignant reevaluation of gallantry and of how survivor’s guilt impacts those veterans whose lives were spared. It’s not without its flaws, and Robinson’s wobbly narrative bears much of the blame, but its emotional resonance will stay with you long afterward.

The film’s breakneck zaniness sometimes gets into the way of the labyrinthine story, and you’ll be forgiven if you completely lose track of what’s going on (or at least why), but this is a remarkably entertaining and unusual Agatha Christie adaptation, and Randall’s take on the character is, surprisingly, one of the best.

Doin’ It' isn’t a great sex comedy. I don’t think I’d even call it a good one, so I won’t. But it sure as hell isn’t lazy. Noble intentions are splattered all over the walls, and the overall message isn’t in dispute.

There is a tension that comes from the humor clashing with the tragedy, but it’s a worthwhile one. Life is full of sudden loss and then also ridiculously funny moments. Capturing that authentically is no small feat, but Duplass does so with delicate care.

The script offers enough laughs to keep the movie from feeling completely disposable...and it outshines many of its genre peers through little touches like not punishing its female characters for enjoying sex and casting Damon Wayans Jr. (as a romantic interest for Alice) in a role in which his race is thoroughly irrelevant.

Each empty bump in the night lands with a dull thud. Even a terrifying dog that becomes crucial to the film has a bark that’s worse than its bite.

The Kid simultaneously wants to humanize and mythologize its cowboys — and neither effort works.

Love feels deeply, but not complexly. Both Murphy and Noé’s sustained sex scenes understand want and need, but there’s little to invest in emotionally.

Surge captures the protagonist’s collapse but shies away from catharsis, judgment, or context. Karia’s film lives in the moment and no matter how overwhelming it may seem, the moment is fleeting.

Even Downs, so appealing on Nickelodeon’s “Henry Danger,” can’t fight the forces of this soulless script (which was based on a potentially promising story idea by Wenonah Wilms).

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets might well represent the apotheosis of Besson’s singularly loony brand of filmmaking. It’s bonkers and gorgeous and confusing and thrilling and tiring and overflowing with ideas.

Cuarón’s tale of a madman Minuteman is well-shot and sharply paced, but too simplistic.

Bullock’s performance is brilliant — she takes all these internalized fears and crafts a character who has already disconnected from emotion. Throughout the films, she challenges what “maternal” means in circumstances this dire.

It’s almost a romantic melodrama, but it’s emotionally inert. It’s almost a biting statement about cultural appropriation, but it barely shows its fangs. It’s almost a murder mystery, but it abandons the plot for vast periods of time. It’s almost a good film except, no, that’s really stretching it. At its best it’s an unfocused plod.

An imaginative, garish, occasionally corny and generally entertaining riff on the superhero genre.

Skyscraper doesn’t change the action-movie game the way “Die Hard” did, but it’s a solidly entertaining summer diversion best enjoyed on the biggest theater — or even better, drive-in — screen you can find. And if you’re afraid of heights, make sure there’s an armrest — or even better, an arm — that you can grab.

What’s most disingenuous about Trial by Fire is that it knowingly simplifies the institutionalized and ingrained biases that foster the very matter it’s trying to address.

These characters and their dilemmas could be the stuff of great, or at least good, drama, but Slattery's insistence on accentuating their sorrows with clinically depressed art direction wears thin rather quickly.

Unlike the first half, which felt like a fresh look at Biblical events from an unfamiliar POV, the latter section simply recreates the end of the Gospel of Matthew with little of the urgency or humanity that fueled it before.

There’s ultimately too much strained seriousness in The Song of Names' dramatically flimsy and symbolically heavy episodic narrative, making Girard and Caine’s already dated feel-good historical drama seem especially tacky.

If Boyd’s perspective is limited, his focus is sharp.

The most frightening part of Umma is not the ghostly apparition of Amanda’s mother, but Amanda herself. Under Shim’s direction, Oh’s Amanda is haunted and taut, an unpredictable force of nature.

Purists may balk about revisiting this tale, but The Grinch earns its laughter and its sentiment, both of which are plentiful. It’s a full-throated Fah-Who-Foraze.

While Dell’Anna’s performance will captivate you as you follow Cabrini’s path to success, the film’s inconsistent pacing makes it a biopic for a single viewing.

Neither poignant nor eccentric, this just feels like a lesser 1970s Disney live-action comedy smothered in digital effects.

A sloppy, untossed salad of a comedy, Rough Night survives on funny bits and a game cast.

I’ve spent over two paragraphs now talking about the various movie trivia Cleaner reminded me of, since Cleaner doesn’t provide much other food for thought.

Peter Rabbit feels obligated to point out all of the clichés that it’s rehashing, in the mistaken belief that doing so absolves itself from coming up with anything better to replace them.

Those who arrive without any preconceptions — or are willing to stray from the novel’s style — will appreciate the assets of a modestly engaging and gently touching dramedy.

Ritchie has always been a performative director, so maybe Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is right in line with his jocular acts of gutter criminality and Hollywood imitations, existing in a kind of touristy netherworld of entertainment – more a handsomely mounted “ruse” of an action comedy than one itself.

Forster’s haphazard direction is so checked-out it’s painful – he shows no interest in giving anyone a scene that isn’t wholly about snapping something into place, and his comedy mise-en-scène and timing in even the simplest moments of humor is flat. And the less said about Thomas Newman’s phoned-in score, the better.

Forget art, or even craft: This is the kind of movie that can’t even get its shameless audience-pandering in order.

It still manages to arrive at a fairly charming albeit unsteady picture that should win over a new generation of younger viewers. But for older members of the audience, the second half of Karate Kid: Legends feels like an insecure fighter changing his approach halfway through a match.

The self-serious meditations on fate and responsibility — as well as the uneven but ever-charged flare-ups between Izzy and whoever she’s talking to — recall exercises in an acting class. By the end, we understand her motivations and recent biography, but precious little about who she is as a person.

The choreography is expectedly graceful and thrilling. It’s the elements in between the carnage, from underdeveloped characters to a confusing plot, that could have used a few more practice sessions to refine.

Audiences willing to just go with the movie’s outlandish lead character will find laughs and thrills along the way, as well as that rarest of studio properties: a tentpole that actually leaves you enthusiastic about the prospect of a sequel.

At times the humor feels elementary (and at others a little flat), but the story really finds itself when it weaves musical history into this road-trip tale in a captivating and entertaining manner.

The film largely squanders Woodley's considerable talents by having her talking about (but never showing us) the numb but open wound that is Kat's relationship with her mother. More disappointingly, the film never figures out how to translate Kat's lack of emotion into something that makes us feel anything other than distant pity.

What makes this film go astray are the problems that plague so many screen biographies: too much narration, too much telling and not enough showing, and presenting an artist's accomplishments in lieu of exploring his perspective.

Neeson]’s trapped once again in tired tough guy material, bringing gravity to a film that’s already dragging him — and the audience — down.

It never quite kicks into high gear, and plays a lot more like a TV movie from the 1990s — a very good decade for historical TV movies — than a major feature in the 2020s.

While Netflix’s The Christmas Chronicles 2 hits pretty much every note you’d expect, it throws in enough surprises, and deep dives into Yuletide lore, to keep it from being mere tinsel.

Even a weirdo drug comedy needs some clarity. And there’s not much to be found here, either in the muddy visuals, familiar special effects, or pursuit of psychotropic faux-wisdom.

Ritchie may not be exploring uncharted territory, but you can bet it was more fun to make The Gentlemen than it was to make “Aladdin” or “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.” It’s more fun to watch “The Gentleman” than those films, too.

It’s a letdown for a movie that has its heart in the right place to resort to so many clichés.

As an actor, Serkis may be the industry’ mo-cap master, but storytelling through performance is a different skill than writing or directing.

Built on a shaky comic premise based on a real Craigslist ad posted by a pair of party animals — and smacked to life with relentlessly feeble, dopey improvisation and unoriginal crudity — “Mike and Dave” is more likely to tarnish its cast’s comedy-chops goodwill than to foster a desire to see any more raunch-till-you-drop yukfests.

This switching-places comedy warmly and trenchantly sends up the telenovela genre’s swooning melodrama and oversexed-but-prudish contradictions.