There are some moments early on when there are still shots of nature, or slow Ghibli-esque pans across landscapes. But these isolated shots don’t connect to a larger overall mood, characterization, or thematic idea. They feel like pale imitations from a director who knows what Ghibli films do, but not why.

In the hands of Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure), it’s just a shark movie, and a kind of inert one at that.

Justice League suffers from a mediocre, mismatched script that undercuts its characters. But Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller make it work for them.

It’s both a blindingly predictable pastiche of an action movie — absolutely nothing happens here that you haven’t seen in a movie before, with the possible exception of some crass sign-language humor from a giant gorilla — and weirdly charming.

Just like the first movie, the film’s politics are all over the place in a way that should be fun but ends up feeling distracting. Yet it’s hard to hate this movie too much. It has a weird generosity toward its audience. It keeps giving and giving and giving, until you’re overstuffed. It’s a Thanksgiving feast movie, where you’re vaguely impressed at all of the effort, even if the individual elements leave something to be desired.

What’s most interesting about Pacific Rim: Uprising isn’t the movie itself — it’s how the cause of the impending apocalypse has evolved from the first to the second film, and how that maps onto apocalyptic stories more generally.

Mortal Engines is visually spectacular, if a bit derivative. It’s a social allegory that goes for broke. And while it’s hardly a groundbreaking movie, it’s still pretty fun.

With all of its missteps and murky intentions, Back to Black might just be the tipping point in a prevalent conversation about the function of musical biopics and what we should demand from them.

It’s the worst of the bunch, a continuation of the franchise’s swan dive into joyless mediocrity, while managing to destroy any affection one might have for Marvel’s merry mutants.

It’s a movie ostensibly interested in how comic book stories work, but it has the same problems as a lot of the comic book movies hitting the big screen these days. The big twist: Shyamalan seems to have not learned very much at all from his own movies.

It’s hard to overstate just how bad Netflix’s Persuasion is, and in how many ways.

A Bad Moms Christmas is thin and silly, like an overlong Christmas episode of a sitcom you pair with some reheated lo mein when you can’t figure out what else to do on a stray weeknight.

It makes a run at cleverness, trying to be a dark screwball commentary on America’s race problem. But instead it’s just a spectacular flop.

It does just what it sets out to do: Give us a bit of fantasy, and then let us remember the joy of reality.

I think I’d rather re-read The Goldfinch than watch it again. Straughan’s screenplay strips out most of the novel’s heart in favor of plot fidelity, albeit with the pieces told out of order. No longer does it feel like we’re on a journey with Theo. Instead, we’re just observing what happened to him during his life, and there’s no reason to care about any of it.

Welcome to Marwen is a disastrously misconceived movie, but in such a boring way that it’s hard to imagine its target audience. Most of the time, big-screen disasters are hugely ambitious tales that completely miss the mark. This one hits the mark, but it’s probably not a target anybody should have been aiming at.

The new third entry in the series isn’t interested in character development or logical storylines or anything resembling innovation. It’s lazy and limp and profoundly weird, and not in any meaningful way a “good movie.”

As a film, it’s at best serviceable, stronger in its world-building than in its climactic exorcism and nowhere near as unnerving as the original. Yet Believer is a fascinating artifact of 2023. It highlights in myriad ways how much the world has changed since the original’s release. Hollywood isn’t the same, and neither is American religious culture.

Dead Men Tell No Tales tries to serve far too many masters with its story.

Gemini Man is a demo reel for some fancy new movie technology, an EPCOT attraction dressed up as an action flick.

Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth’s chemistry and rookie/vet dynamic is almost enough to make you forget about the missed opportunity and just relish in all the alien tomfoolery.

It’s not that Tulip Fever is incompetently made or unpleasant to look at or offensive in any way. It’s just that it is very, very boring.

Murder Mystery does feel like a very specific sort of direct-to-Netflix offering, designed to ape other movies you’ve already seen and enjoyed without straying too far from the formula or doing anything particularly innovative. But it does so cleverly enough to make watching it a pleasure.

Whatever your opinion of the book, the movie is a different animal, and a startlingly terrible one.

The Cloverfield Paradox has a great cast and an interesting setup, but it feels extremely — almost painfully — derivative of other science fiction films. It’s not nearly as good as its predecessors.

To be fair, it’s not all unpleasant. The joyride through the Warner Bros. IP universe is not quite as soul-busting as the trailer led me to believe it would be, though I suspect it benefited only in comparison to my expectations.

Lucy in the Sky, distracted by its own flashy filmmaking, can’t center its gaze on one goal long enough to convey any of its interests well.

With a lack of humor and deadly exposition, Morbius propels itself into an absolutely wild third act, perhaps the unintentionally silliest finish I’ve seen this year.