Masterminds is kinder to its characters than most comedies about the bumbling and under-educated, and that’s Hess’s strength.

Even with all the teen angst and temporal alterations, the film stays fleet, funny and fast, especially as our leads figure out, through trial and error, how they can take advantage of their new abilities in ways large and small.

Some high-concept set pieces rise above shoddy execution and creative mismanagement, particularly any wire stunts involving helicopters, byplanes, or rocket-powered jet packs.

The screenplay reflects actual effort, and Jim Carrey gets to be unfettered in his performance, leading a surprisingly satisfying follow-up.

Wirkola is more comfortable engaging with gunfire than people.

The problem with describing a movie like The Nun II is that its many inane moments sound entertaining when you list them all on one page, but they’re so spread out through this movie that the entertainment is usually quite scarce.

It’s no small compliment to say that 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire' is expertly crafted drivel.

The sandbox of “The Seven Faces of Jane” might have been fun for these filmmakers to play in for a while, but the results are drab and uninteresting. If there’s a winner in this particular exquisite corpse game, it’s certainly not the audience.

Even if you agree with the film’s political lean, it’s hard to overlook the unorthodoxy. Common Ground smacks of propaganda masquerading as documentary. If such can qualify as documentary, then so should reality TV.

Wallace smartly leaves room for skeptics of Burpo's account to maintain their doubt; what matters most is that audiences understand the film character's reasons for choosing to believe his son's vision/dream/delirium.

The Giver is an anti-totalitarian allegory so farcically hyperbolic it feels like only a teenager could have come up with it.

Ver Linden never goes the commercial route here with her high-concept idea. Like Palmer, she stays true to her goal but does give the audience several satisfying moments that call for applause.

So let me be absolutely, 100% clear: “The Alto Knights” is indeed a bad movie, but not the good kind. It doesn’t make you feel alive, it makes you feel dead. It’s a tedious, directionless, bumbling chore of a gangster picture, incoherently written and edited, featuring two of the limpest performances of Robert De Niro’s career.

Blair Witch does manage to generate occasional moments of tension, particularly when it strays from the first film’s narrative and peeks into some new dark corners.

Overall, the whole project feels weirdly empty and off-puttingly self-congratulatory, as though the very idea of turning women into action heroes is revolutionary.

This kiddie horror comedy will bring a bracing dollop of creepiness to your Halloween.

It’s a film in search of a character whose sole saving grace may be that it leads its audience to read Sapienza’s work for themselves — because the movie doesn’t do her or her legacy justice.

When Shazam! Fury of the Gods tries to look like a big blockbuster action movie it comes across as perfunctory and soulless. The fury signifies nothing. The heart is where this movie’s home is.

If you can’t think of a better way to spend your time, 'Until Dawn' is a thing that exists.

Hamm, an extraordinarily subtle actor whose quiet craft often gets overlooked, is perfectly cast for the tone Pellington wants to strike, and he’s able to emote convincingly in the narrow elegiac range in which Nostalgia tries to operate.

This wildly uneven mix of nasty and nervy...is primarily a time-waster, trotting out clichéd misadventure tropes and predictable zigzags in a manner neither terribly funny nor suspenseful.

Allen is too self-aware and cold a creative personality to create a genuine tragedy in Wonder Wheel. Instead, he makes a gesture towards a tragic situation.

Director Jon M. Chu has a lighter touch than “Now You See Me” director Louis Leterrier. The latter’s “Transporter” pedigree made sure there was plenty of rugged action, but Chu’s résumé boasts “Jem and the Holograms,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” and more than one film in the “Step Up” franchise. The man knows his cartoons, and that’s a good thing.

Medieval struggles as a work of historical fiction, but when the action mounts, it’s immersive and exciting.

The documentary is so outwardly focused, so intended for Western audiences, that it barely transcends the nature of a Wikipedia page, afraid to push back or to show anything that might complicate the notion of what a female leader has to do either to get work done or to be respected (or ideally both).

In addition to creating a brilliantly engaging narrative, Berger’s sense of cinematic style is enhanced all the way from his production and costume design to the extreme close ups that have assisted in defining his cinematic style.

I am not religious, nor have I ever claimed to be, but I enjoy a good inspirational tale. And I do believe that miracles can occur and that those stories absolutely serve a purpose in mainstream films. But in “Breakthrough,” I found myself being dismissed as a viewer, being directed to put my confidence in a story that was layered in the superficial aspects of faith — to trust without question, and just to believe that prayer conquers all, even as the film provides no foundation as to why I should.

For the Christmas romcom devotee, it will provide a breath of fresh air in its competency of craft, though for those looking to dip a toe into the genre, Something From Tiffany’s is almost too grounded and complacent in its lack of drama.