Venom: Let There Be Carnage successfully course-corrects from the original, delivering a deeply funny and deeply human film that ranks among the best recent comic…
Dear Evan Hansen is a manipulative, unintentionally awkward musical plagued by a black hole of a lead character. Dear Evan Hansen makes a pretty strong…
Cry Macho is yet another late-career effort from Eastwood deconstructing his own legacy, neither his greatest such effort nor a throwaway piece. Just why does Clint…
Bernard Rose’s 1992 film Candyman, freely adapted from a Clive Barker short story, is the tale of a white academic who inadvertently summons a murderous…
Shang-Chi is perfunctory origin story work boasting little characterization and an overestimation of its representational currency. The Marvel Cinematic Universe marches on undaunted with Shang-Chi and…
Reminiscence is silly, arch, and derivative, an objective failure that nonetheless manages to entertain even as it induces eye rolls. It’s kind of fashionable these days…
Free Guy is the rare tentpole based on an original idea rather than existing IP, and supplements that present-day novelty with a game cast and genuine…
On the strength of Gunn’s outré humor and filmmaking sensibilities, The Suicide Squad is nothing less than the most enjoyable comic book flick in a quick…
In recalibrating its source material, The Green Knight often proves compelling, but it doesn’t always convince as a fully liberated work. “I see legends,” Gawain (Dev…
Jungle Cruise’s attempts at throwback family adventuring are lost to a miasma of awful VFX and greenscreen compositing. For some reason, Disney’s Jungle Cruise, a…
Snake Eyes is all boring backstory and cliched tropes, and not remotely as weird as the material demands. Apparently, it’s absurdly hard to make a…
Old suffers a bit from Shyamalan’s weaknesses as a writer, but by its end, ranks as one of the director’s weirdest and most poignant works yet.…
Space Jam 2 musters an engaging mid-film stretch, but it ultimately sinks under the weight of its overbearing corporate IP. Warner Brothers did their best…
Black Widow is fairly lightweight and doesn’t impress much with its action or visual design, but the character work and comedy prove somewhat redemptive. Although it…
No Sudden Move is another successful crime caper from Soderbergh, as formally and tonally playful as his best efforts in the genre. The endlessly versatile Steven…
Against all odds, Family Business manages to be a wild, engaging sequel to the interminable original Boss Baby. Dreamworks Animation has always shown a penchant for producing…
The Forever Purge is suitably cynical and cathartic effort, righting some of the series’ previous wrongs and more bluntly tackling America’s systemic evils. Since James DeMonaco’s…
F9 continues the franchise’s downward trend, further garbling its outsized action and sentimentality into confectionery pap. What started as a scrappy gearhead ripoff of Point Break…
Luca is an obviously gorgeous film, but its half-cooked conception and execution continues the recent trend of sub-par Pixar efforts. The currently swirling rumors which claim…
Peter Rabbit 2 wishes it were a Paddington film. It isn’t. It’s fair to say Will Gluck’s Peter Rabbit 2 wants a piece of the Paddington pie.…