2-Stars on Dan Heskett

Scary Movie

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

96 min | R | June 5, 2026 | Paramount Pictures

A reboot of a parody franchise mocking the age of reboots. The joke writes itself, and the film still cannot finish it. Funny in spurts, mean in others.

Backrooms

Fri, 29 May 2026 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | May 29, 2026 | A24

The kernel of a great idea, stretched past its breaking point. Kane Parsons has an eye for dread but not yet a feel for structure.

Obsession

Fri, 15 May 2026 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | R | May 15, 2026 | Focus Features

A sharp premise about male entitlement that never figures out what it wants to say. Strong performances and clean craft cannot save a confused thesis.

Solo Mio

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | PG | February 6, 2026 | Angel Studios

Kevin James does something unexpected. The movie buries it under everything else.

Greenland: Migration

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

98 min | PG-13 | January 9, 2026 | STX Entertainment

Big plot holes, small investment, performances that are unearned and characters barely worth knowing. But a few good shots and interesting plot devices make this “something.”

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | R | January 16, 2026 | Sony Pictures

Watched most of this through the cracks in my fingers. Strong world-building for the “28 Years” universe, but a gaping plot hole sinks whatever story they were trying to tell. Bonus points for releasing close enough to the first film that I didn’t need a refresher.

Die My Love

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

119 min | R | November 7, 2025 | Neon

Jennifer Lawrence descends into postpartum madness in rural Montana. The performances work but the jagged edges make it a tough sit.

Anniversary

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | October 29, 2025 | Lionsgate

A political thriller that forgot to include either politics or thrills. Strong cast wasted on a story that refuses to commit.

After the Hunt

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 19:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

139 min | R | October 10, 2025 | Searchlight Pictures

Luca Guadagnino makes a campus thriller about accusations and secrets. Julia Roberts anchors a film that gestures at important themes without committing to difficult truths.

The Home

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

97 min | R | July 25, 2025 | Lionsgate

James DeMonaco sends Pete Davidson to a haunted retirement home for mandatory community service. The premise is better than the execution.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 19:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | July 18, 2025 | Sony Pictures Releasing

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson reboots the slasher franchise with meta commentary and returning legacy characters. The film knows what it is and cannot transcend that knowledge.

Smurfs

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 18:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

92 min | PG | July 18, 2025 | Paramount Pictures

Chris Miller reboots the Smurfs with an all-star voice cast led by Rihanna. The film chooses chaos over charm and drowns in frantic energy that never coheres.

M3GAN 2.0

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

120 min | PG-13 | June 27, 2025 | Universal Pictures

Gerard Johnstone trades horror for action-comedy and the shift destroys what made M3GAN work. The killer doll becomes a superhero and the satire becomes noise.

Death of a Unicorn

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

107 min | R | March 28, 2025 | A24

Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega accidentally kill a unicorn and corporate greed ensues. A24 tries to make a satire about pharmaceutical exploitation. The tone never settles.

The Alto Knights

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

122 min | R | March 21, 2025 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Robert De Niro plays two 1950s mob bosses in a turf war. Barry Levinson directs. Neither of them finds anything new in the well-worn genre they helped define.

Opus

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 21:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | March 14, 2025 | A24

John Malkovich plays a reclusive pop star who invites journalists to his compound for a sinister plan. Ayo Edebiri tries to ground the chaos. The film can’t decide what it wants to be.

Love Hurts

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

83 min | R | February 7, 2025 | Universal Pictures

Ke Huy Quan plays a retired hitman whose brother wants him dead. Ariana DeBose shows up as the ex-partner. The film is eighty-three minutes and feels longer.

Valiant One

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 19:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

87 min | R | January 31, 2025 | Lionsgate

A military helicopter crashes in North Korea. The survivors must escape. You have seen this movie a dozen times and those versions were not good either.

Flight Risk

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 19:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | R | January 24, 2025 | Lionsgate

Mel Gibson directs Mark Wahlberg in a contained thriller that never finds a reason to exist. Ninety-one minutes feels long.

Red One

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

124 min | PG-13 | November 15, 2024 | Amazon MGM Studios

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans team up to save a kidnapped Santa Claus. The film cost $250 million. It looks like it cost $250 million. It feels like it cost nothing.

Venom: The Last Dance

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | PG-13 | October 25, 2024 | Sony Pictures

The Venom trilogy ends with a whimper disguised as a bang. Tom Hardy talks to himself for two hours while the plot happens around him.

Joker: Folie à Deux

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

138 min | R | October 4, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Todd Phillips makes a Joker sequel that nobody asked for and turns it into a jukebox musical that nobody wanted. The result is a film at war with itself and its audience.

The Crow

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | August 23, 2024 | Lionsgate

The Crow gets rebooted again. Bill Skarsgard replaces Brandon Lee. The gothic romance is gone. The visual style is gone. What remains is a generic revenge film wearing the wrong costume.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | PG | August 2, 2024 | Sony/Columbia Pictures

A beloved children’s book gets the live-action treatment nobody wanted. Zachary Levi draws things with a purple crayon. The magic of the source material evaporates on contact.

The Watchers

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | June 7, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Ishana Night Shyamalan makes her directorial debut with a forest horror film starring Dakota Fanning. The Shyamalan twist gene is hereditary. So is the inconsistency.

The Garfield Movie

Fri, 24 May 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

101 min | PG | May 24, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Chris Pratt voices Garfield in a heist movie about a cat reuniting with his deadbeat dad. The lasagna-loving indoor cat deserves better. So does the audience.

Imaginary

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | PG-13 | March 8, 2024 | Lionsgate

Blumhouse makes a horror movie about a haunted teddy bear. The bear is named Chauncey. The scares are named absent.

Argylle

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

139 min | PG-13 | February 2, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Matthew Vaughn makes a spy movie about a spy novelist caught up in a real spy plot. Two hours and nineteen minutes of that. With a cat.

Miller's Girl

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | January 26, 2024 | Lionsgate

A student-teacher boundary thriller that thinks it is smarter than it is. Martin Freeman deserves better material.

Night Swim

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 22:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

98 min | PG-13 | January 5, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Blumhouse turns a backyard pool into a horror villain. The pool is scarier than the movie.

The Boys in the Boat

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

123 min | PG-13 | December 25, 2023 | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

George Clooney adapts the story of the 1936 University of Washington rowing crew that beat the Ivy League elites and rowed its way to the Berlin Olympics. Joe Rantz is broke, abandoned, and living in a half-finished car when he tries out for the boat. The film knows every beat of this story, and so do you.

Anyone But You

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | December 22, 2023 | Columbia Pictures

Bea and Ben have one perfect night, then spend months hating each other. A destination wedding in Sydney throws them back together, so they fake a romance to shut everyone up. The leads are gorgeous and the movie around them is a screensaver.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

124 min | PG-13 | December 22, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Black Manta hunts Aquaman with a cursed trident and a grudge. Arthur springs his imprisoned brother to help him stop it. The team-up is the only idea here with a pulse.

Freud's Last Session

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | PG-13 | December 22, 2023 | Sony Pictures Classics

Sigmund Freud summons C. S. Lewis to his London study on the day Britain enters the war. The dying atheist and the converted believer argue about God for an afternoon. The debate is real. The movie around it is furniture.

Migration

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

83 min | PG | December 22, 2023 | Universal Pictures

A family of mallards lives safe and small on one pond because the father fears everything beyond it. One passing flock convinces them to fly to Jamaica. The animation soars and the story never leaves the ground.

Silent Night

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | R | December 1, 2023 | Lionsgate

A father loses his son and his voice to a gang’s stray bullet on Christmas Eve. He spends a year turning himself into a weapon and tracking the men who fired the shots. John Woo makes a revenge film that barely speaks a word, and the silence is the best idea in it.

Wish

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

95 min | PG | November 22, 2023 | Walt Disney Pictures

A young woman in the kingdom of Rosas discovers that the benevolent king who safeguards everyone’s wishes has no intention of granting most of them. She wishes on a star, and the star shows up. Disney throws itself a hundredth-birthday party and forgets to invite a story.

Next Goal Wins

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | PG-13 | November 17, 2023 | Searchlight Pictures

American Samoa loses a World Cup qualifier 31-0 and hires a washed-up coach to chase a single goal. Taika Waititi turns the real story into a comedy that keeps interrupting itself to be silly. The team deserved better than a director who cannot stop winking.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

157 min | PG-13 | November 17, 2023 | Lionsgate

Decades before he rules Panem, Coriolanus Snow is a broke aristocrat assigned to mentor a tribute in the tenth Hunger Games. Tom Blyth plays the future dictator as a young man discovering that love and power cannot share the same room. The film makes you watch a monster get built, and it mostly does the job.

Trolls Band Together

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | PG | November 17, 2023 | Universal Pictures

Branch has a secret. He used to be in a boy band with his four brothers, and now one of them needs rescuing from a pair of pop-star kidnappers. The plot is an excuse to cram a hundred songs into ninety minutes, and the movie knows it.

Manodrome

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

96 min | R | November 10, 2023 | Lionsgate

Jesse Eisenberg plays an expectant father who falls in with a cult of celibate men who call themselves a family. The deeper he goes, the more the rage underneath comes loose. The ideas are sharper than the film built around them.

The Marvels

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | PG-13 | November 10, 2023 | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Three heroes with light-based powers find themselves swapping places every time they use them. Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, and the teenage superfan Ms. Marvel have to learn to fight as a unit before a vengeful Kree warrior tears the universe apart. The team-up works better than the plot holding it together.

The Marsh King's Daughter

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | R | November 3, 2023 | Lionsgate

Daisy Ridley plays a woman raised in the wilderness by a father who kidnapped her mother. When he escapes a prison transport, the survival skills he drilled into her become the only thing that can stop him. The bones of a great thriller sit here. The movie never builds the body.

Dark Harvest

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

96 min | R | October 11, 2023 | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Every Halloween a small town arms its teenage boys and sends them into the cornfields to kill a scarecrow with a pumpkin head. The winner gets money, a car, and a ticket out. The monster is real, but the town is worse.

It Lives Inside

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | PG-13 | September 22, 2023 | Neon

A first-generation Indian-American teenager wants to be normal so badly that she shatters the jar holding her old friend’s demon. The thing she sets free feeds on isolation. She gave it a buffet.

Camp Hideout

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | PG | September 15, 2023 | Roadside Attractions

A trio of inner-city kids ships off to a Christian summer camp run by Christopher Lloyd. One of them stumbles onto a hidden fortune and the criminals who want it back. The camp is the only thing here with anywhere to hide.

The Nun II

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | September 8, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A demon named Valak possesses a man and starts murdering clergy across 1950s Europe. Sister Irene leaves her convent to hunt it down one more time. The hallways are scarier than the screenplay.

Golda

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | PG-13 | August 25, 2023 | Bleecker Street

Helen Mirren disappears under latex to play Golda Meir during the eighteen days of the Yom Kippur War. The film locks her in smoke-filled rooms and keeps the war offscreen. The makeup does more acting than the script.

Gran Turismo

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

135 min | PG-13 | August 25, 2023 | Columbia Pictures

A British teenager wins a video game and ends up strapped into a real race car. The pitch is a marketing executive’s fever dream made flesh. The surprise is that it mostly works on the track and stalls everywhere else.

Retribution

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | R | August 25, 2023 | Lionsgate

Liam Neeson is a wealthy financial executive driving his two kids to school. A voice on the phone tells him there is a bomb under the seats, and if anyone gets out, it detonates. The car keeps moving and the movie never does.

Landscape with Invisible Hand

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | R | August 18, 2023 | MGM

Aliens land, automate the economy, and leave teenagers selling their love lives as content. Adam and Chloe broadcast their courtship to paying alien subscribers because rent is due. The premise is the bleakest joke about capitalism anyone made this year.

Strays

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | August 18, 2023 | Universal Pictures

Reggie is a sweet, dim dog who reads his owner’s abuse as love. A foul-mouthed stray named Bug sets him straight and aims him at revenge. A dog cursing is funny exactly once, and the movie does it a hundred times.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

119 min | R | August 11, 2023 | Universal Pictures

A merchant ship leaves the Carpathian coast carrying crates of dirt and one passenger who only moves after dark. Every night at sea, the crew loses another man. The voyage is doomed before it leaves port, and the movie is in no hurry to get there.

Corner Office

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | August 4, 2023 | Lionsgate

A corporate drone discovers a hidden office that makes him brilliant, productive, and serene. His coworkers insist the office does not exist. The premise promises a sharp little nightmare and then forgets to be one.

Meg 2: The Trench

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

116 min | PG-13 | August 4, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Jonas Taylor dives back into the trench, where sharks the size of buildings have waited millions of years for a meal this stupid. The movie promises Jason Statham versus a megalodon. It spends an hour making you wait and forgets why you came.

Haunted Mansion

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

123 min | PG-13 | July 28, 2023 | Walt Disney Pictures

A grieving scientist who built a camera to photograph ghosts takes a job clearing spirits out of a New Orleans mansion. He brings a fake priest, a loud psychic, and a tipsy historian along for the haunting. The cast is stacked, the mansion is gorgeous, and the movie still cannot decide whether to scare you or hug you.

Cobweb

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

88 min | R | July 21, 2023 | Lionsgate

A boy hears a voice from inside the walls of his house. His parents tell him it is nothing and forbid him from leaving. The walls are right and the parents are lying.

Insidious: The Red Door

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

107 min | PG-13 | July 7, 2023 | Screen Gems

Josh and Dalton Lambert buried their memories of the astral plane years ago. Dalton heads off to art college and starts painting the things he was made to forget. Some doors stay shut for a reason, and this one creaks open on schedule.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | PG | June 30, 2023 | Universal Pictures

Ruby Gillman is a shy high schooler who learns she descends from a line of giant sea krakens sworn to guard the ocean. Becoming a hero means embracing the exact thing her mother told her to hide. You have seen this movie before, and you saw it done better.

The Flash

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

144 min | PG-13 | June 16, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Barry Allen runs back in time to save his mother and tears a hole in reality instead. The multiverse he breaks coughs up an aging Batman and a Supergirl nobody came to rescue. The premise is a mission statement. The movie is a clearance sale.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

127 min | PG-13 | June 9, 2023 | Paramount Pictures

Noah Diaz needs a job and a way to pay for his brother’s care. Optimus Prime needs a way home and a war he can win. The robots fight, the world stays small, and the movie settles for fine.

The Boogeyman

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | PG-13 | June 2, 2023 | 20th Century Studios

A family still raw from the mother’s death gets a visit from a stranger who insists a monster killed his children. The thing he carries does not leave when he does. Grief turns out to be the best door a monster ever found.

Kandahar

Fri, 26 May 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

119 min | R | May 26, 2023 | Open Road Films

A black-ops contractor blows up an Iranian nuclear site, gets exposed, and finds himself stranded in hostile territory with a translator he barely knows. The only way out is a long drive to Kandahar through every faction that wants him dead. The chase is real. The movie around it never catches up.

Fast X

Fri, 19 May 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

142 min | PG-13 | May 19, 2023 | Universal Pictures

A vengeful son spends years plotting to destroy Dominic Toretto and everyone he calls family. Jason Momoa arrives with a smile, a paintbrush, and a plan built on spite, and he is having a blast. The movie around him is running on fumes.

Book Club: The Next Chapter

Fri, 12 May 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

108 min | PG-13 | May 12, 2023 | Focus Features

Four friends take their book club to Italy for a bachelorette trip through Rome, Venice, and Tuscany. Keaton, Fonda, Bergen, and Steenburgen can still hold a screen with nothing but chemistry and good lighting. This time that is all they get.

Big George Foreman

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

129 min | PG-13 | April 28, 2023 | Sony Pictures Releasing

George Foreman beats the world, finds God, walks away, and climbs back into the ring at forty-five to do it again. The story is incredible. The movie never trusts you to notice without a push.

Mafia Mamma

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

101 min | R | April 14, 2023 | Bleecker Street

A widowed American mom flies to Italy for a funeral and inherits the family business. The family business is the Mafia. The movie thinks that sentence is the whole joke.

Rare Objects

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

123 min | R | April 14, 2023 | IFC Films

A young woman recovering from a trauma she won’t name takes a job at a Manhattan antiques shop and starts piecing herself back together among the broken treasures. Katie Holmes directs with obvious care and earnest sympathy. The patience reads as caution, and the film never stops being polite to its own pain.

Renfield

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | April 14, 2023 | Universal Pictures

Renfield has spent decades as Dracula’s familiar, hauling home victims and swallowing abuse from an immortal who treats him like furniture. He joins a support group for people in toxic relationships and starts plotting his exit. Quitting the prince of darkness turns out to be harder than quitting any other bad boss.

The Pope's Exorcist

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | April 14, 2023 | Screen Gems

Russell Crowe straps on a cassock and climbs onto a Vespa to play the Vatican’s chief exorcist, dispatched to a Spanish abbey where a demon has moved into a little boy. He fights the devil with one-liners and a heavy accent. The movie is a paycheck, and Crowe spends it right in front of you.

Paint

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

96 min | PG-13 | April 7, 2023 | IFC Films

Carl Nargle is the most famous public-access painter in Vermont, a Bob Ross clone in a perm and a leisure suit who has coasted on soft tones and softer ego for decades. Then the station hires a younger, better painter and his kingdom of one starts to crack. The premise wants to be a comedy. It forgot to be funny.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | PG | April 5, 2023 | Universal Pictures

Two Brooklyn plumbers fall down a warp pipe and land in the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario sets out to rescue his brother and stop Bowser from conquering every realm. The movie is a theme park ride that never pretends to be anything else.

A Good Person

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

128 min | R | March 24, 2023 | MGM

Florence Pugh causes a car crash, loses everything, and falls into opioid addiction. Morgan Freeman plays the grieving grandfather she cannot avoid. The two of them are worth watching, even when Zach Braff reaches for the Kleenex.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

130 min | PG-13 | March 17, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Billy Batson and his foster siblings share one superpower and a lot of teenage anxiety. The Daughters of Atlas arrive to take the magic back and wreck the city doing it. The kids are charming. The movie around them is a mess.

65

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

92 min | PG-13 | March 10, 2023 | Columbia Pictures

Sixty-five million years ago, a pilot crash-lands on an unknown planet that turns out to be prehistoric Earth. Adam Driver fights dinosaurs with a laser rifle and a terrified kid in tow. The pitch is the whole movie, and the movie knows it.

Champions

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

124 min | PG-13 | March 10, 2023 | Focus Features

A washed-up coach drives drunk into a cop car and a judge hands him a sentence. Ninety days coaching a team of players with intellectual disabilities. He needs them more than they need him, and the movie already knows it.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

114 min | R | March 3, 2023 | Lionsgate

A disgraced private operative gets pulled back in to stop a stolen weapon from hitting the black market. He needs a movie star to charm an arms dealer who collects celebrities. The plan is more fun than the execution.

Cocaine Bear

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

95 min | R | February 24, 2023 | Universal Pictures

A black bear in a Georgia forest eats a duffel bag of cocaine and decides the woods belong to it. Elizabeth Banks turns one tabloid headline into a creature feature with a high body count. The title is the whole pitch, and the movie never pretends otherwise.

God's Time

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

83 min | NR | February 24, 2023 | IFC Films

Dev gets out of a recovery meeting and decides the cure for his life is stopping his ex-girlfriend from committing murder. He tears across a locked-down New York to save her from a plan she may not even have. The cause is a fantasy, but the panic is real.

Jesus Revolution

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

120 min | PG-13 | February 24, 2023 | Lionsgate

Southern California, 1968. A burnt-out Calvary Chapel pastor opens his doors to barefoot hippies, a charismatic street preacher baptizes them by the hundreds in the Pacific, and a lost teenager finds Jesus instead of acid. The story is a genuine American earthquake. The movie treats it like a greeting card.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

125 min | PG-13 | February 17, 2023 | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Scott Lang and his family get sucked into the Quantum Realm, a subatomic world ruled by a conqueror who has been waiting for a way out. The franchise that once shrank a hero down to fight on a Thomas the Tank Engine track now blows itself up to universe-ending size. Bigger is not better.

Consecration

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | R | February 10, 2023 | IFC Films

A woman travels to a remote convent on the Scottish coast to learn how her priest brother died. The nuns insist it was suicide. The film insists on a dozen explanations and commits to none.

Magic Mike's Last Dance

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

112 min | R | February 10, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Mike Lane is broke and bartending in Miami when a wealthy divorcee hires him to put on a show in London. He says yes. The franchise that started in a Tampa strip club ends as a stage musical about a woman’s midlife reinvention, which is a strange place to land.

80 for Brady

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

98 min | PG-13 | February 3, 2023 | Paramount Pictures

Four screen legends fly to Houston to watch Tom Brady win a Super Bowl. They lie, they take edibles, they enter a hot wing eating contest. The movie loves them more than it trusts them.

Shotgun Wedding

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

101 min | R | January 27, 2023 | Prime Video

A destination wedding in the Philippines goes sideways when pirates storm the resort and take the guests hostage. The bride and groom, mid-breakup, have to save everyone while sorting out whether they still want to get married. The premise promises chaos and delivers a shrug.

The Wandering Earth II

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

174 min | NR | January 22, 2023 | Well Go USA

Earth’s scientists strap thousands of fusion engines to the planet to push it out of the solar system before the dying sun swallows it. This is the prequel, so it shows the men who built the engines and the men who wanted to upload humanity into the cloud instead. The future ends in a fistfight over which apocalypse to choose.

The Son

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

123 min | PG-13 | January 20, 2023 | Sony Pictures Classics

A successful lawyer takes in his depressed teenage son and decides that love and good intentions will be enough to save him. Florian Zeller stages a mental illness as a debate between two well-dressed adults. The result lectures where it means to devastate.

House Party

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | R | January 13, 2023 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Two broke friends throw a giant party in a celebrity’s mansion to get rich quick. The original is a scrappy cult classic with two leads and nothing to lose. This remake swaps the scrappiness for a parade of cameos and a soundtrack loud enough to drown out the jokes.

A Man Called Otto

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

126 min | PG-13 | December 30, 2022 | Columbia Pictures

Otto Anderson is a widower who has decided he is done living. A new family moves in across the street and keeps interrupting his suicide. Tom Hanks plays the most likable misanthrope alive, which is the whole problem.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

144 min | PG-13 | December 23, 2022 | TriStar Pictures

Whitney Houston has the voice of the century. Clive Davis turns it into a machine and the people around her fight over the parts. The film loves her too much to tell the whole truth.

Empire of Light

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

115 min | R | December 9, 2022 | Searchlight Pictures

A faded seaside cinema in early-1980s England. A lonely manager and a young usher build something fragile while the National Front marches outside. Sam Mendes wants to make four movies at once and finishes none of them.

Hunt

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

131 min | NR | December 2, 2022 | Magnet Releasing

A loyal North Korean mole has burrowed into the heart of South Korea’s spy agency. Two veteran officers must find him before he buries the country. They suspect each other, and the audience never finds out fast enough.

Violent Night

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

112 min | R | December 2, 2022 | Universal Pictures

A burned-out, hard-drinking Santa Claus stumbles into a hostage heist on Christmas Eve and decides to fight. Mercenaries have taken a rich family captive in their compound, and Saint Nick is the only one left to stop them. The premise is a loaded weapon, and the movie mostly fires blanks.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

159 min | R | November 4, 2022 | Netflix

A film director stands at the edge of death and the border between Mexico and the United States, and spends two and a half hours interrogating his own success. Alejandro G. Iñárritu builds a dream-logic confession out of memory, exile, and self-doubt. The trouble is that the man doing the confessing already thinks he is fascinating.

Black Adam

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

125 min | PG-13 | October 21, 2022 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A god wakes after five thousand years of imprisonment and finds his nation still occupied. He has the power of six deities and zero interest in being a hero. The premise asks what justice looks like with no mercy. The movie answers with slow-motion and a Rock who forgot to bring the charisma.

Detective Knight: Rogue

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | R | October 21, 2022 | Lionsgate

A detective hunts a crew of armored-car robbers dressed as cops while his own badge hangs by a thread. Bruce Willis squints, mutters, and stands in the background of his own franchise. The premise promises a hard-boiled thriller. The movie delivers a placeholder.

Ticket to Paradise

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | PG-13 | October 21, 2022 | Universal Pictures

Two divorced parents who can’t stand each other fly to Bali to stop their daughter from marrying a man she just met. The catch is they have to work together to do it. The scenery is gorgeous and the stars are charming and you will forget all of it by the time you reach the parking lot.

Halloween Ends

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | October 14, 2022 | Universal Pictures

Laurie Strode is writing her memoirs. Michael Myers has not been seen in four years. David Gordon Green ends his trilogy by handing the franchise to a man nobody asked for.

Amsterdam

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

134 min | R | October 7, 2022 | 20th Century Studios

Three friends make a pact in postwar Amsterdam and swear to look out for each other for life. Years later a senator dies, his daughter ends up dead, and the friends are framed for the murder. The conspiracy is real and the movie still cannot find its way to it.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

106 min | PG | October 7, 2022 | Columbia Pictures

A singing crocodile lives in the attic of a New York brownstone, and a lonely boy becomes his best friend. Javier Bardem hams it up while Shawn Mendes supplies the voice. The movie is a jukebox in a reptile costume.

Don't Worry Darling

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

123 min | R | September 23, 2022 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Alice and Jack have the perfect life in a perfect desert town where the men keep secrets and the women never ask. Then Alice starts asking. The premise is a loaded gun the movie forgets to fire.

Blonde

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

167 min | NC-17 | September 16, 2022 | Netflix

Andrew Dominik turns the life of Marilyn Monroe into a 167-minute gauntlet of abuse, told through the abandoned child she never stopped being. Ana de Armas commits to every second of it. The film mistakes suffering for insight.

Clerks III

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | R | September 13, 2022 | Lionsgate

Dante and Randal still run the Quick Stop, twenty-eight years older and no closer to peace. After a heart attack, Randal decides to make a movie about his life behind the counter. Kevin Smith puts his own near-death on screen and asks you to cry about it.

Gigi & Nate

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

114 min | PG-13 | September 2, 2022 | Roadside Attractions

A meningitis infection leaves a vibrant young man paralyzed from the neck down. His family brings home a capuchin monkey to give him back his independence and his will to fight. The monkey is the most honest performer on screen.

The Invitation

Fri, 26 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | PG-13 | August 26, 2022 | Screen Gems

Evie answers a DNA test and finds a family she never knew. The rich English relatives invite her to a wedding at a country estate. She should have read the guest list before saying yes.

Samaritan

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | August 25, 2022 | Amazon Studios

A kid in a decaying city is convinced his silent garbage-man neighbor is the superhero who vanished decades ago. Sylvester Stallone plays the neighbor. The premise writes a check the movie cannot cash.

Beast

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | August 19, 2022 | Universal Pictures

Idris Elba takes his daughters to a South African game reserve. A rogue lion turns the trip into a fight for survival. The lion is more developed than the people running from it.

Orphan: First Kill

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | R | August 19, 2022 | Paramount Pictures

Thirteen years before the events of the original, Leena Klammer escapes a psychiatric facility in Estonia and assumes the identity of a wealthy American family’s missing daughter. The con works until the family turns out to have secrets of its own. The twist is clever. The movie around it is not.

Summering

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

87 min | PG-13 | August 12, 2022 | Bleecker Street

Four girls find a dead body in the woods on the last weekend before middle school. They decide to handle it themselves rather than tell their parents. The dead man stays a prop, and so does everything else.

Bullet Train

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

126 min | R | August 5, 2022 | Columbia Pictures

An assassin with rotten luck boards a bullet train for a simple grab-and-go. The car is packed with rival killers, all circling the same briefcase. The only thing harder than the job is getting off the train alive.

Easter Sunday

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

96 min | PG-13 | August 5, 2022 | Universal Pictures

Joe Valencia is a Filipino-American comedian chasing a sitcom deal in Los Angeles when his mother guilts him into driving home to Daly City for Easter. One reunion, one dysfunctional family, one absurd debt subplot, and ninety minutes of warmed-over gags. The mother is funnier than the movie.

DC League of Super-Pets

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | PG | July 29, 2022 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Superman’s dog has powers. When the Justice League gets captured, the only ones left to save them are a shelter full of misfit animals led by a cynical Bat-Hound. It is a Saturday-morning cartoon dressed up in a hundred-million-dollar costume.

Paradise Highway

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

115 min | R | July 29, 2022 | Lionsgate

A female long-haul trucker discovers her latest cargo is not freight but a girl, and the network she works for has no intention of letting either of them walk away. Then a dead brother, a federal agent, and a retired cop all converge on the same lonely stretch of interstate. The road is the only honest thing in it.

1Up

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | R | July 15, 2022 | Amazon Studios

V is a college gamer who blows up her own career and lands on an all-female esports team chasing a tournament spot. The movie wants to take on the boys’ club of competitive gaming. It throws the punch in slow motion and pulls it before it connects.

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

94 min | PG | July 15, 2022 | Paramount Pictures

A dog named Hank wants to be a samurai in a village of cats who despise dogs. It is Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles redrawn as a kids cartoon, gags and all. The premise survives the journey. The jokes do not.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

126 min | PG-13 | July 15, 2022 | Columbia Pictures

A girl raised alone in the North Carolina marsh becomes a murder suspect when a local man turns up dead. The trial flashes back across her whole isolated life. The swamp is more convincing than anything that happens in it.

Minions: The Rise of Gru

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

87 min | PG | July 1, 2022 | Universal Pictures

A young Gru idolizes a supervillain crew called the Vicious 6 and schemes his way into their world. His Minions stumble after him in a 1970s San Francisco built out of disco and kung fu. The franchise has found its formula and refuses to do anything else with it.

Family Camp

Fri, 13 May 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | PG | May 13, 2022 | Roadside Attractions

Two suburban families pack up for a week at a Christian retreat called Camp Katokwah, where the cabins have no plumbing and the dads have something to prove. The Ackermans want connection. The Sanderses want to win. Faith-based comedy rarely aims this low and still misses.

Memory

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

114 min | R | April 29, 2022 | Open Road Films

An aging assassin takes a contract in El Paso, then refuses to kill a child and becomes the target himself. The catch is that early Alzheimer’s is erasing his memory faster than he can cover his tracks. Great hook, ordinary movie.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

142 min | PG-13 | April 15, 2022 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Dumbledore cannot fight Grindelwald directly. A blood pact made in their youth binds his hands, so he sends Newt Scamander and a small team to stop Grindelwald from seizing power through an election. Three films in, the saga still cannot explain why any of this matters.

Father Stu

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

124 min | R | April 13, 2022 | Columbia Pictures

A foul-mouthed boxer survives a near-fatal crash and decides to become a Catholic priest. Mark Wahlberg punches and prays his way through a real-life conversion story. The faith is sincere. The movie around it is not.

Ambulance

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

136 min | R | April 8, 2022 | Universal Pictures

A paramedic and a wounded cop. A bank robbery gone wrong. Two desperate brothers hijack an ambulance and drag the LAPD across Los Angeles at ninety miles an hour. The chase never stops, and neither does Michael Bay.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

122 min | PG | April 8, 2022 | Paramount Pictures

Sonic settles into small-town life until Dr. Robotnik crashes back to Earth with a new sidekick named Knuckles and a plan to grab a power source that could level the planet. The action is bigger and the jokes land more often. The movie just forgot to leave anything on the cutting room floor.

The Contractor

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | April 1, 2022 | Paramount Pictures

A Special Forces sergeant gets discharged without a pension and takes a private contract he should refuse. The money is good. The job goes wrong in the first twenty minutes, and the movie spends the rest of its time looking for the thriller it forgot to build.

Infinite Storm

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

97 min | R | March 25, 2022 | Bleecker Street

A nurse climbs Mount Washington alone and finds a stranger half-frozen and barely alive on the descent. She abandons her own hike to drag him down through a whiteout. The mountain is the easy part.

Umma

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

83 min | PG-13 | March 18, 2022 | Sony Pictures Releasing

Sandra Oh raises bees on an off-grid farm and homeschools her daughter to escape the mother who abused her. Then her mother’s ashes show up in a suitcase on the doorstep. Generational trauma deserves a better horror movie than this one.

Studio 666

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

106 min | R | February 25, 2022 | Open Road Films

The Foo Fighters move into a haunted mansion to record their tenth album. Something in the house wants the record finished, and it does not care who has to die. Dave Grohl plays a possessed version of himself, which is funnier as a pitch than as a movie.

Uncharted

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

116 min | PG-13 | February 18, 2022 | Columbia Pictures

A bartender with light fingers gets pulled into a hunt for gold that Magellan’s crew hid five hundred years ago. Tom Holland climbs, Mark Wahlberg squints, and the clues unlock right on schedule. It assembles every part of the treasure-hunt genre and forgets to bury anything worth finding.

Death on the Nile

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

127 min | PG-13 | February 11, 2022 | 20th Century Studios

Hercule Poirot takes a honeymoon cruise down the Nile, and a body turns up before dessert. Kenneth Branagh surrounds his detective with a glamorous cast and a digital Egypt that never feels like a real place. The mystery gets solved. The movie does not.

Marry Me

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

112 min | PG-13 | February 11, 2022 | Universal Pictures

A global pop star gets jilted on stage in front of millions and marries a random man holding a sign in the crowd. He is a divorced math teacher who came along to chaperone his kid. The fantasy works until you ask it a single question.

Moonfall

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

131 min | PG-13 | February 4, 2022 | Lionsgate

The moon falls out of orbit and starts dropping toward Earth. A disgraced astronaut, a fired NASA boss, and a conspiracy blogger are the only people who can stop it. Roland Emmerich destroys the planet again and forgets to bring the fun this time.

Clean

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | January 28, 2022 | IFC Films

Adrien Brody plays a garbage man hauling around a violent past he cannot bury. A teenage girl next door pulls him back into the world he tried to leave behind. The atmosphere does all the work the script forgets to do.

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

92 min | PG | January 14, 2022 | Amazon Studios

A magic crystal turns Dracula human and turns Johnny into a monster, and the whole family scrambles for a cure before the change becomes permanent. The fourth Hotel Transylvania bets everything on a body-swap gimmick. Everyone transforms except the formula.

The 355

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

122 min | PG-13 | January 7, 2022 | Universal Pictures

The 355 sends a CIA agent to assemble a team of international spies and recover a weapon that can crash the world. Five of the best actresses alive sign on. The movie forgot to give them a movie.

A Journal for Jordan

Sat, 25 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

131 min | PG-13 | December 25, 2021 | Columbia Pictures

A soldier fills a journal with everything he knows for the infant son he is leaving behind. Denzel Washington adapts that true story into a film that feels everything for you so you do not have to. The movie does the crying so the audience never has to start.

American Underdog

Sat, 25 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

112 min | PG | December 25, 2021 | Lionsgate

Kurt Warner stocks grocery shelves for minimum wage and insists he belongs in the NFL. He is right, and the climb from the night shift to a Super Bowl is one of the great true sports stories. The movie about it plays as safe as a kneel-down.

Sing 2

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | PG | December 22, 2021 | Universal Pictures

Buster Moon talks his way into the biggest stage of his life by promising a reclusive rock legend he has never met. The show must go on, even if the whole thing rests on a lie. Sing 2 is a jukebox musical that runs on charm and fumes.

The King's Man

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

131 min | R | December 22, 2021 | 20th Century Studios

A pacifist duke builds a secret spy network while the First World War grinds his world to mud. Rasputin dances, a villain’s cabal schemes, and Ralph Fiennes grieves in the middle of it all. The prestige war drama and the cartoon spy romp keep tripping over each other.

The Tender Bar

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | R | December 17, 2021 | Amazon Studios

A fatherless boy grows up in a Long Island bar full of men who decide to raise him. His uncle hands him a reading list and a code to live by. The bar pours warmth. The movie sips it.

Rumble

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

95 min | PG | December 15, 2021 | Paramount+

In a world where monster wrestling is the national sport, a teenage girl trains a giant beast who would rather dance than fight. Winnie wants to revive her dead father’s gym and drag her washed-up town back to glory. The monsters are enormous. The ideas are not.

Don't Look Up

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

138 min | R | December 10, 2021 | Netflix

A comet is coming to wipe out the planet, and two scientists have the data to prove it. They beg the president, the media, and the internet to pay attention. Turns out the end of the world makes for bad ratings.

National Champions

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

116 min | R | December 10, 2021 | STXfilms

A star running back goes on strike two days before the national championship, demanding pay for the athletes who make the sport billions. He has the one piece of leverage the system cannot survive losing. The argument is bulletproof. The movie keeps shooting itself.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

58 min | PG | December 3, 2021 | Walt Disney Pictures

Greg Heffley starts middle school convinced it is a battlefield for social rank. He keeps a record of his climb in a journal he swears is not a diary. The animation finally looks like the books. The kid at the center is still a little jerk.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

107 min | R | November 24, 2021 | Screen Gems

A pharmaceutical company poisons a dying town, and the corpses do not stay down. Two cops and a handful of franchise heroes spend one night trying to get out of Raccoon City alive. The game knew exactly what it was. The movie keeps forgetting.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

124 min | PG-13 | November 19, 2021 | Columbia Pictures

A broke single mother and her two kids inherit a rundown Oklahoma farm from a grandfather they never met. The grandfather is a dead Ghostbuster, and the soil is full of demons. The movie spends its energy decorating a grave instead of telling a story.

Clifford the Big Red Dog

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

96 min | PG | November 10, 2021 | Paramount Pictures

A lonely girl in a cramped Manhattan apartment adopts a tiny red puppy from a magical rescuer, then wakes up to find he has grown into a ten-foot dog she cannot possibly hide. The city panics and a biotech CEO comes hunting. The premise is sweeter than anything the film does with it.

Eternals

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

156 min | PG-13 | November 5, 2021 | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Immortal beings have walked the Earth for seven thousand years, sworn to fight monsters and forbidden to touch anything else. Now they reunite to stop a threat bigger than any they have faced. Chloé Zhao makes Marvel slow down, and the franchise forgets how to move.

A Mouthful of Air

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | R | October 29, 2021 | Stage 6 Films

A children’s book author survives a suicide attempt and tries to raise her newborn while postpartum depression hunts her. Amanda Seyfried gives the illness a devastating face. The performance is braver than the film built around it.

Halloween Kills

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

105 min | R | October 15, 2021 | Universal Pictures

Michael Myers survives the fire that was supposed to end him and walks back into Haddonfield. The town that spent forty years afraid of him decides to stop running and hunt him down. The mob turns out to be almost as dangerous as the man in the mask, and the movie is too busy pointing that out to scare you.

Hard Luck Love Song

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | R | October 15, 2021 | Roadside Attractions

A drunk country singer wins a dice game in a dive bar and uses the cash to chase down the woman who got away. Justin Corsbie builds his debut from a Todd Snider song and fills it with character actors who deserve better. The song is three minutes long and the movie keeps going.

Needle in a Timestack

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | October 15, 2021 | Lionsgate

Nick and Janine have a perfect marriage. Then her jealous ex starts traveling through time to erase it. The mechanics get in the way of the heartbreak.

Mayday

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | NR | October 1, 2021 | Magnolia Pictures

Ana escapes her grim life through a radio and lands in a dreamworld where women lure soldiers to their deaths. It wants to be a feminist war fantasy with teeth. It settles for a beautiful postcard.

The Jesus Music

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | PG-13 | October 1, 2021 | Lionsgate

A fringe sound born in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s grows into stadium worship and crossover radio. The Erwin brothers chart that rise with archival footage and the genre’s biggest names. They throw a victory party and forget to ask anyone the hard questions.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

97 min | PG-13 | October 1, 2021 | Columbia Pictures

Eddie Brock and his alien parasite are stuck in a bad domestic partnership. Then a serial killer gets his own symbiote and starts a war. The bickering is more fun than the carnage.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

126 min | PG-13 | September 17, 2021 | Searchlight Pictures

Tammy Faye Bakker builds a televangelism empire alongside her husband Jim, then watches fraud and scandal burn it down. Jessica Chastain vanishes under pounds of prosthetics to play her. The makeup does more work than the script.

Dating & New York

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | PG-13 | September 10, 2021 | IFC Films

Milo gets dumped, then meets Wendy on a hookup app, and the two agree to be friends with benefits while pretending neither one wants more. The movie knows every beat of the rom-com it is copying and announces each one with on-screen text. Self-awareness is not the same thing as having something to say.

Malignant

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | September 10, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Madison starts seeing visions of brutal murders as they happen, killings committed by a figure she cannot stop and does not understand. James Wan abandons the slow-burn dread of his earlier work for something louder and stranger. The first ninety minutes promise a horror film the last twenty refuses to deliver.

Queenpins

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | September 10, 2021 | STXfilms

A bored couponer in suburban Arizona figures out how to game the manufacturer rebate system. She turns a hobby into a multimillion-dollar fraud and drags her best friend along for the ride. The scheme is more disciplined than the movie about it.

The Voyeurs

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

116 min | R | September 10, 2021 | Amazon Studios

A young couple moves into a Montreal loft and finds they can see straight into the apartment across the street. They start watching the strangers there have sex, fight, and unravel, and they cannot make themselves stop. The film wants to be Rear Window and ends up peeping at itself.

Cinderella

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

112 min | PG | September 3, 2021 | Amazon Studios

A scrappy seamstress dreams of running her own dress shop while a reluctant prince dreams of escaping his crown. Kay Cannon swaps the fairy godmother for Billy Porter and the orchestra for a karaoke playlist. The dress is the only thing that fits.

We Need to Do Something

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

97 min | NR | September 3, 2021 | IFC Films

A family takes shelter in their bathroom when a violent storm hits. A tree falls across the only door and traps them inside. The thing outside is worse than the weather.

Vacation Friends

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | August 27, 2021 | 20th Century Studios

A buttoned-up couple meets a feral one on a Mexico vacation and makes the mistake of trading numbers. Months later the wild pair crashes the wedding, uninvited and undeterred. Some friendships you escape. This one books a flight.

Flag Day

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

108 min | R | August 20, 2021 | United Artists Releasing

A con man drifts in and out of his daughter’s life, lying to her even as she grows old enough to see through him. Jennifer Vogel loves her father and writes the truth about him anyway. Sean Penn casts his own kids and films it like a memory he cannot stop romanticizing.

Reminiscence

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

116 min | PG-13 | August 20, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

The seas have risen and Miami lives by night. Hugh Jackman runs a machine that lets people relive their memories, then a woman walks in and vanishes, and he dives into the past to find her. The film drowns in the same nostalgia it diagnoses.

The Protégé

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | R | August 20, 2021 | Lionsgate

A retired assassin learns her mentor has been murdered and goes hunting for the people who did it. Standing between her and revenge is a smiling fixer who flirts as easily as he kills. The chemistry is real. The plot around it is not.

Don't Breathe 2

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

98 min | R | August 13, 2021 | Screen Gems

The Blind Man from the first film is back, this time raising a kidnapped girl in his fortified house. Then a crew of armed men show up to take her. The movie wants you to root for a serial killer because the new bad guys are worse.

Jungle Cruise

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

127 min | PG-13 | July 30, 2021 | Walt Disney Pictures

A riverboat captain with a rigged routine and a secret guides a scientist up the Amazon toward a tree that supposedly cures everything. German soldiers and cursed conquistadors chase them the whole way. The ride is smoother than the movie.

Joe Bell

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | July 23, 2021 | Roadside Attractions

A father walks across America to lecture strangers about bullying after his gay son suffers for being himself. The walk is real. The movie is a guilt trip with a backpack.

Jolt

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | R | July 23, 2021 | Amazon Studios

Lindy carries a rare disorder that drowns her in rage, so she wears a vest of electrodes and shocks herself calm. When the one man who steadies her turns up dead, she stops shocking and starts swinging. The premise has voltage and the movie keeps shorting out.

Old

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

108 min | PG-13 | July 23, 2021 | Universal Pictures

A family wanders onto a beautiful beach that ages them two years every hour. Childhood, marriage, and mortality collapse into a single afternoon. The concept is terrifying until Shyamalan explains it.

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

121 min | PG-13 | July 23, 2021 | Paramount Pictures

A mute orphan watches his father die, grows up fighting for cash, and gets pulled into a war between two ancient ninja clans. He swears revenge and lies to everyone to get it. Then the movie forgets it ever set that up.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

88 min | PG-13 | July 16, 2021 | Columbia Pictures

The survivors of the first murder room get pulled back in, this time onto a New York subway car rigged to kill. Minos runs a championship bracket of past winners, and the prize is staying alive. The puzzles are clever. The people solving them are not.

Gunpowder Milkshake

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

114 min | R | July 14, 2021 | Netflix

Sam is a hired killer who breaks the rules of her syndicate to protect an eight-year-old girl. She teams up with her estranged mother and a library full of veteran assassins to survive the fallout. The cast is loaded and the colors pop, but the gun never finds anything to say.

The Forever Purge

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | July 2, 2021 | Universal Pictures

The annual night of legal murder ends at dawn. This year a movement decides it should never end and turns its guns on immigrants, the poor, and anyone they call un-American. The masks come off and the satire goes with them.

The Tomorrow War

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

138 min | PG-13 | July 2, 2021 | Amazon Studios

A future war against aliens is losing, so the military drafts civilians from the present and sends them forward in time to fight. A schoolteacher gets conscripted into a battle his future self is already part of. The hook is sharp, and the movie spends two hours dulling it.

False Positive

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | June 25, 2021 | A24

Lucy wants a baby, so she puts her body in the hands of a charming celebrity doctor and a husband who always takes his side. The pregnancy goes wrong, and every man in the room insists she is imagining it. The dread is real. The film just never decides what it is about.

Mary J. Blige's My Life

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

82 min | R | June 25, 2021 | Amazon Studios

Mary J. Blige revisits her 1994 breakthrough album twenty-five years later and walks fans through the depression and addiction buried in the songs. The candor is real. The film around it is a press kit.

Fatherhood

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | PG-13 | June 18, 2021 | Netflix

An advertising guy loses his wife the day after their daughter is born and has to raise the girl alone. Kevin Hart drops the manic act and plays it straight. The grief is real. The screenplay is greeting-card.

12 Mighty Orphans

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

118 min | PG-13 | June 11, 2021 | Sony Pictures Classics

A washed-out football coach arrives at a Fort Worth orphanage during the Depression and builds a team out of boys who have nothing. They have no shoes, no playbook, and twelve players total. The true story is stirring. The movie wrings it dry.

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway

Fri, 11 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | PG | June 11, 2021 | Columbia Pictures

Peter Rabbit runs off to the big city and falls in with a gang of streetwise animals. Back home, a slick publisher wants to turn Bea’s gentle stories into a global brand. The movie about selling out is itself the merchandise.

Flashback

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

97 min | R | June 4, 2021 | Lionsgate

Fred Fitzell has a corporate job, a dying mother, and a memory he cannot place. A high school drug called Mercury lets him slip sideways through time, and a vanished girl named Cindy keeps pulling him back. The trip is more interesting than the destination.

Spirit Untamed

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

88 min | PG | June 4, 2021 | Universal Pictures

Lucky Prescott leaves the city for a dusty frontier town and bonds with a wild mustang named Spirit. There is a defiant girl, a stubborn horse, and a runaway train. The horse has more personality than the screenplay.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

112 min | R | June 4, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A young man stands trial for murder and pleads not guilty by reason of demonic possession. Ed and Lorraine Warren leave the haunted house behind and chase a curse into a courtroom. The premise promises something new and then runs back to the same old tricks.

Finding You

Fri, 14 May 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

119 min | PG | May 14, 2021 | Roadside Attractions

An American violinist heads to Ireland for a study-abroad semester and falls for a movie star shooting a fantasy franchise in her village. He is famous and shallow. She teaches him to be real. You have seen this exact movie before, and it had fewer leprechauns.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw

Fri, 14 May 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | May 14, 2021 | Lionsgate

A killer starts murdering cops and leaving puzzle-box clues for the one detective everyone in the precinct already hates. Chris Rock plays it straight inside a franchise built on viscera. The premise has teeth. The movie pulls the punch.

The Woman in the Window

Fri, 14 May 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | R | May 14, 2021 | Netflix

An agoraphobic woman drinks too much wine, watches her neighbors through the glass, and swears she sees a murder across the street. Nobody believes her. Neither will you.

Above Suspicion

Fri, 07 May 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | R | May 7, 2021 | Lionsgate

An FBI agent posts up in a dying Kentucky coal town and leans on a local woman to make his first big case. She gives him everything and expects a way out. He gives her a federal paycheck and a problem he needs to make disappear.

Here Today

Fri, 07 May 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

117 min | PG-13 | May 7, 2021 | Stage 6 Films

A dying comedy writer with early dementia befriends a singer who shows up to collect on a dead man’s auction prize. They have nothing in common except a willingness to keep showing up. The friendship is real. The movie around it is not.

Tom Clancy's Without Remorse

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | April 30, 2021 | Amazon Studios

A Navy SEAL loses everything to a Russian hit squad and goes hunting for the men who pulled the trigger. Michael B. Jordan throws himself into every fight scene like he believes in the movie. The movie does not return the favor.

Mortal Kombat

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | April 23, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A cold-blooded ninja, a washed-up cage fighter, and a band of chosen warriors train to defend Earthrealm in a tournament to the death. The fights are brutal and the blood is real. Everything between the fights is filler.

Voyagers

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

108 min | PG-13 | April 9, 2021 | Lionsgate

Thirty kids ship out on an eighty-six-year mission to colonize a distant planet. None of them will live to see it, and someone decides to stop taking the drug that keeps them calm. Turns out a spaceship full of horny teenagers with no rules is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

Zack Snyder's Justice League

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

242 min | R | March 18, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A dead Superman leaves Earth defenseless, so Batman assembles a league of gods to hold the line against an alien invasion. Zack Snyder finally gets his full vision restored, and it is enormous. The vision is the problem.

Boogie

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

89 min | R | March 5, 2021 | Focus Features

Alfred Chin can ball, but his parents, his rival, and his first girlfriend all want a piece of him. Eddie Huang crams a coming-of-age story, a romance, and an immigrant family drama into one undersized debut. The voice is real. The movie around it is not finished.

Coming 2 America

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

108 min | PG-13 | March 4, 2021 | Amazon Studios

Prince Akeem returns to Queens to find the bastard son he never knew he had and drag him back to Zamunda. The throne needs a male heir, and the script needs a reason to exist. It finds the first and fakes the second.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

131 min | R | February 26, 2021 | Hulu

Billie Holiday sings a song about lynching, and the federal government spends years trying to cage her for it. Andra Day vanishes into the role and sings every note herself. The performance is electric, but the movie around it never finds the same key.

Silk Road

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

116 min | R | February 19, 2021 | Lionsgate

Ross Ulbricht builds the dark web’s biggest drug bazaar from a laptop and a libertarian fantasy. A washed-up DEA agent claws onto the case to save his own career. The movie wants to be two stories and commits to neither.

French Exit

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

113 min | R | February 12, 2021 | Sony Pictures Classics

Michelle Pfeiffer plays a Manhattan widow who has spent her fortune to zero and chooses to blow the rest in Paris rather than economize at home. She brings her grown son, an aging cat that houses her dead husband, and a frozen heart she refuses to thaw. Pfeiffer is electric, and the film keeps falling asleep around her.

The Mauritanian

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

129 min | R | February 12, 2021 | STXfilms

Mohamedou Ould Slahi sits in Guantanamo Bay for years and is never charged with a crime. A defense lawyer fights to free him while a prosecutor builds the case to kill him. The story is damning, but the movie settles for a courtroom drama.

Bliss

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | R | February 5, 2021 | Amazon Studios

Owen Wilson gets fired, ruins his life, and meets a woman who tells him the world is a simulation and none of it counts. The pitch sells itself as a mind-bender about addiction and denial. Then it explains the magic crystals and the spell breaks.

Malcolm & Marie

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

106 min | R | January 29, 2021 | Netflix

A director and his girlfriend come home from his premiere, and the celebration curdles into an all-night fight about who owns the story he just turned into a movie. Two people who love each other take turns aiming for the soft spots. The performances are real. The screenplay is a grudge.

Palmer

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | January 29, 2021 | Apple TV+

An ex-con returns to his Louisiana hometown and ends up caring for a neglected neighbor kid who likes dolls and dresses. The bond is genuine and the lead turn is quietly committed. The screenplay just hits every beat you can see coming from the opening reel.

The Little Things

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

128 min | R | January 29, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A burned-out deputy and a rising detective hunt a serial killer through 1990 Los Angeles. The case is a pretext. The movie is really about the things that get inside a cop and never wash out.

No Man's Land

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

114 min | PG-13 | January 22, 2021 | IFC Films

A retired Texas rancher and his son are mending a fence along the Rio Grande when a panicked night goes wrong and a boy ends up dead. Jackson runs south into the country he was raised to fear. The movie wants to atone for a sin it cannot stop committing.

The Marksman

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

108 min | PG-13 | January 15, 2021 | Open Road Films

A retired Arizona rancher and Marine sniper finds a Mexican boy and his mother at his fence line, running from a cartel. He buries the mother and drives the kid north toward Chicago with killers on his bumper. Liam Neeson has made this drive before, and the road is getting familiar.

Locked Down

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

118 min | R | January 14, 2021 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A divorcing couple rides out the first lockdown in the same house, one firing employees over video calls and the other reciting poetry to no one. Then they decide to rob Harrods. The heist is the excuse. The marriage is the crime scene.

Fatale

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | R | December 18, 2020 | Lionsgate

A married attorney has a one-night stand in Vegas, then watches a detective investigate a break-in at his home. She is the woman from the hotel. The trap closes from there.

Monster Hunter

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

103 min | PG-13 | December 18, 2020 | Screen Gems

Artemis and her unit chase a vanished team into a sandstorm and come out in a world ruled by monsters the size of buildings. Paul W. S. Anderson turns a Capcom game into one long chain of soldiers versus claws. The monsters land. The movie does not.

Wild Mountain Thyme

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | December 11, 2020 | Bleecker Street

Two Irish farm families share a fence and a lifetime of things left unsaid. Rosemary loves Anthony. He cannot say it back, and the film never figures out why that should take so long.

The Prom

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

131 min | PG-13 | December 4, 2020 | Netflix

Four self-absorbed Broadway stars descend on small-town Indiana to defend a lesbian teen barred from bringing her girlfriend to prom. They are there to fix their public image, not the girl. The cause is real. The movie is a billboard.

The Croods: A New Age

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

95 min | PG | November 25, 2020 | Universal Pictures

The Croods, a family of prehistoric cave dwellers, stumble into a walled paradise run by an evolved, smug couple who think they’re better. Two clans collide over property lines and parenting. It is loud, it is bright, and it is exactly what you expect.

The Last Vermeer

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

118 min | R | November 20, 2020 | TriStar Pictures

A Dutch forger sells fake Vermeers to the Nazis and gets charged with collaboration for it. His only defense is proving he is a liar. Guy Pearce has a blast. The movie around him does not.

The Craft: Legacy

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

94 min | PG-13 | October 28, 2020 | Columbia Pictures

A teenage girl moves to a new town and discovers three classmates have been waiting for a fourth witch to complete their coven. They induct her, bend reality, and start remaking the boys around them. The premise has teeth. The movie files them down.

Roald Dahl's The Witches

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

104 min | PG | October 22, 2020 | Warner Bros. Pictures

A boy and his grandmother check into a seaside hotel that happens to be hosting a convention of child-hating witches led by Anne Hathaway in full hiss. The premise is pure Roald Dahl menace. The movie sands every sharp edge off it.

Honest Thief

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | PG-13 | October 16, 2020 | Open Road Films

A retired bank robber decides to come clean for the woman he loves. The FBI agents he confesses to would rather keep the money than close the case. Liam Neeson punches his way through another one of these, and the autopilot is showing.

Evil Eye

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

90 min | NR | October 13, 2020 | Amazon Studios

A mother becomes convinced that her daughter’s perfect new boyfriend is the reincarnation of the man who once tried to kill her. She might be paranoid. She might be right. The movie cannot decide which possibility is scarier, and that indecision is the whole problem.

The Lie

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

95 min | R | October 6, 2020 | Amazon Studios

A teenage girl tells her parents she pushed her best friend off a bridge. They decide to protect her instead of calling the police. Every choice they make to cover it up digs the hole deeper, and the film mistakes that hole for suspense.

Antebellum

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

106 min | R | September 18, 2020 | Lionsgate

A successful Black author wakes up on a Civil War-era plantation, enslaved, brutalized, and unable to escape. The film promises a horror story built on a twist. The twist is the only idea it has.

The Secrets We Keep

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

97 min | R | September 16, 2020 | Bleecker Street

A Romanian immigrant in postwar America hears a whistle and a laugh and becomes certain her new neighbor is the Nazi who assaulted her and killed her sister. So she knocks him out and chains him in the basement. The question is whether she grabbed the right man, and the movie is too eager to answer it.

Centigrade

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

89 min | NR | August 28, 2020 | IFC Midnight

A couple wakes up in their SUV, buried alive under a Norwegian avalanche, with no signal and a baby on the way. The walls are tight, the air is thin, and the marriage is already cracked. The premise traps you. The movie just leaves you stuck.

The New Mutants

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

94 min | PG-13 | August 28, 2020 | 20th Century Studios

Five teenage mutants wake up locked in a hospital that doubles as a cage. Their powers are out of control and something in the building wants them dead. The premise is a horror movie. The result is a franchise placeholder that forgot to be scary.

Summerland

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | PG | July 31, 2020 | IFC Films

A reclusive writer on the wartime Kent coast gets saddled with an evacuee boy and a heart she would rather keep frozen. The folklore she studies turns out to be the grief she has buried. The coastline does more work than the screenplay.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

121 min | PG-13 | June 26, 2020 | Netflix

Two Icelanders from a fishing village chase a lifelong dream of winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Will Ferrell sulks behind a fake accent while Rachel McAdams sings her heart out. The songs believe in the dream more than the comedy does.

Irresistible

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | R | June 26, 2020 | Focus Features

A burned-out Democratic strategist sees a video of a plainspoken Wisconsin farmer defending immigrants and decides he is the future of the party. He hauls a flood of consultant cash into a tiny mayor’s race to prove it. The point is that this is grotesque, and the film agrees so loudly it forgets to be funny.

My Spy

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | PG-13 | June 26, 2020 | Amazon Studios

A hulking CIA operative blows an operation and gets stuck on surveillance duty in a Chicago apartment. The nine-year-old he is supposed to watch catches him on camera and blackmails him into spy lessons. You have seen this movie. You have seen it better.

You Should Have Left

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | June 18, 2020 | Universal Pictures

An older man, a younger wife, and a quiet daughter take a modernist rental in the Welsh hills that does not measure right. The walls run longer inside than out, the hallways loop, and the house knows exactly what Theo did. The movie just doesn’t trust you to be scared by it.

Mighty Oak

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | June 5, 2020 | Paramount Pictures

A band manager loses her teenage guitarist son in a crash. Years later she decides a ten-year-old guitar prodigy carries his soul and rebuilds the band around the kid. The movie thinks this is heartwarming.

Scoob!

Fri, 15 May 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

94 min | PG | May 15, 2020 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Scooby-Doo and Shaggy meet as kids and grow up solving mysteries with the Mystery Inc. gang. Then a cosmic plot pulls them into a superhero crossover with Blue Falcon and a half-dozen forgotten Hanna-Barbera characters. The dog deserves better.

Valley Girl

Fri, 08 May 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | May 8, 2020 | Orion Classics

A Valley girl falls for a Hollywood punk in the summer of 1983, and the soundtrack does the courting. Rachel Lee Goldenberg turns Martha Coolidge’s cult original into a glossy jukebox musical. It remembers every song and forgets why the romance mattered.

Arkansas

Tue, 05 May 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

117 min | R | May 5, 2020 | Lionsgate

Two low-level drug couriers work the back roads of the South for a boss they never see. One bad delivery turns the whole operation against them. Everybody in this movie wants to be in a better one.

Trolls World Tour

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

91 min | PG | April 10, 2020 | Universal Pictures

Poppy and Branch discover that troll society splits into six musical tribes, and a rock queen wants to melt them all into one anthem. The film preaches that every genre deserves to survive on its own terms. Then it runs every last one of them through the same pop blender.

Resistance

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

120 min | R | March 27, 2020 | IFC Films

Before Marcel Marceau becomes the world’s most famous mime, he is a young Jewish art student in France who joins the Resistance and smuggles orphaned children past the Nazis. Jesse Eisenberg plays him with conviction. The movie around him cannot decide what it wants to be.

Bloodshot

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | PG-13 | March 13, 2020 | Columbia Pictures

Ray Garrison dies a hero and wakes up a product, rebuilt with nanites by a biotech company that hands him a tragedy to avenge. The man is unstoppable. Pity the movie around him is not.

I Still Believe

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

115 min | PG | March 13, 2020 | Lionsgate

Christian rocker Jeremy Camp falls in love with a college classmate the same week she learns she has cancer. The Erwin brothers build a faith-based biopic around the gap between the prayers and the prognosis. Sincerity is not the same thing as honesty.

The Hunt

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

90 min | R | March 13, 2020 | Universal Pictures

Wealthy liberals kidnap a dozen strangers and hunt them for sport, certain their victims are deplorables who had it coming. One of the prey, a quiet Mississippi woman, turns out to be very good at staying alive. The premise is loaded, but the movie fires in every direction and hits nothing.

The Roads Not Taken

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

85 min | R | March 13, 2020 | Bleecker Street

Leo drifts through a single disordered day in New York while his mind splits into the lives he never lived. His daughter tries to hold him in the present. The film mistakes confusion for depth.

Wendy

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

111 min | PG-13 | February 28, 2020 | Searchlight Pictures

A poor Louisiana boy hops a freight train to an island where children never grow old and never grow up. Benh Zeitlin remakes Peter Pan as a barefoot ode to feral youth. The ambition outruns the result.

The Call of the Wild

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

100 min | PG | February 21, 2020 | 20th Century Studios

Harrison Ford goes north to the Yukon and finds a dog. The dog is a computer. The wilderness is a hard drive.

Downhill

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

87 min | R | February 14, 2020 | Searchlight Pictures

A family at an Austrian ski resort scatters when an avalanche bears down on their lunch. The snow stops short and nobody is hurt, but Dad ran and left his wife and kids behind. The mountain misses. The marriage does not.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

99 min | PG | February 14, 2020 | Paramount Pictures

The fastest creature in the universe hides in small-town Montana, alone, until a power surge brings the government down on his head. A local sheriff and a hyperactive blue alien hit the road one step ahead of a roboticist with a god complex. It runs fast and arrives nowhere.

The Rhythm Section

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

109 min | R | January 31, 2020 | Paramount Pictures

Stephanie Patrick loses her family in a plane crash and learns it was no accident. She trades grief for a gun and goes hunting the people who built the bomb. The training montage is more convincing than the revenge.

The Gentlemen

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

113 min | R | January 24, 2020 | STX Films

A British weed kingpin wants out of the business and into retirement. Every gangster, journalist, and aristocrat in London smells the opening and moves in. Guy Ritchie comes home to the geezers, but home looks smaller than he remembers.

The Last Full Measure

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

110 min | R | January 24, 2020 | Roadside Attractions

A Pentagon careerist gets stuck with a dead-end assignment: investigate a thirty-year-old medal request for an airman killed in Vietnam. The deeper he digs, the more he understands why the government wanted it buried. The story is true and powerful. The film keeps reaching for the violins anyway.

Underwater

Fri, 10 Jan 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

95 min | PG-13 | January 10, 2020 | 20th Century Fox

A drilling crew at the bottom of the Mariana Trench feels the floor crack open. The water comes in, and so does something living in the dark. The premise is a haunted house with eleven kilometers of ocean for a ceiling.

The Grudge

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 20:00:00 +0000

★★☆☆☆

94 min | R | January 3, 2020 | Screen Gems

A cursed house collects the dead across years, families, and detectives, and the curse spreads to anyone who steps inside. Andrea Riseborough leads a loaded cast straight into the rot. The house takes everyone and the movie keeps nothing.