Action
Dark Phoenix: Ending on a Whimper
A series sendoff turns into an anthem to whining. This was not the way it should have ended.
X-Men: First Class: A Change of Color
A younger cast puts a spring in this series’ step. One of X-Men’s best.
Avengers: Infinity War and the Power of Change
An ensemble cluster of action and color anchored by one of the best villains in the genre. The series’ most essential film.
Terminator Genisys: When a Series Abuses Itself
About as bad as a movie of its kind could be. The franchise equivalent of suicide ideation.
The Matrix Reloaded
A ton of effort goes into figuring out what to do with a Kung fu movie. It can be beautiful, and it can also fall apart in your hands.
Captain Marvel
The Marvel formula can’t save an unappealing heroine from the greatest power in her universe: herself.
Thor: Ragnarok
It’s like a workout — a lot of flexing and then a lot of fatigue. Good movies never have to try this hard.
Alita: Battle Angel
A passionate lead performance can’t save Alita from burying itself in exposition.
In Defense of Star Wars—The Phantom Menace
The Phantom Menace is unformed as a child’s drawing, and sometimes feels as innocent, and many times threatens through sheer force of will to be charming.
Daredevil
Be wary of superheroes that seem like they were invented as puns. You might end up with a passionate mess, with 85% Dutch angles, undeveloped characters, and a soundtrack like a prepubescent DJ’s iPod on shuffle. “Justice is blind,” proclaims Daredevil. So is Matt Murdock. So is Mark Steven Johnson.
The Mummy (2017)
What was once a man’s desperate quest to resurrect his lost lover ala Dracula has been turned into a petulant girl’s desire to reincarnate the god she serves ala Suicide Squad. Could there be a more fitting beginning to this venture?
Superman Returns
Superman Returns feels like a lot of charming people were motivated to do the film twenty takes ago; now they’re kind of wistful and waiting for a break. The script has the right beats but the film is filled with sleepwalkers.
Aliens: Diversity Done Right
Cinema’s strongest action lady brings us the most charming gore-fest ever made.
Fantastic Four (2015)
If Fantastic Four is supposed the be the story of a superhero family, the 2015 adaptation makes them seem as unsupportive as you can be before civil action becomes your only option. Not only do they see no beauty or meaning in their heroic endowments, but they are so quick to give up their integrity after the accident that you think, as you never should, that these people don’t deserve their gifts.
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
Superman II is exciting even in its flaws: even its badness seems to defy other kinds of movies, like so long as Superman is on top of this, everything else will be okay.
Face/Off
The transition is over pretty quickly. Face/Off is not about change, but about how the face we have and the role we are given dictates how we act. As soon as the act of transferring one actor’s soul to the other’s body is complete in the mind of the audience, the only task remaining is all performance.
Baby Driver
A shot of adrenaline in a tired genre. Edgar Wright has finally made a world that moves as fast as he does.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
If Raiders was a backyard adventure where we put on our explorer’s hat and went bucket-and-shoveling out into the woods for buried treasure, The Last Crusade is like watching a home movie of it. It’s still got the same gee-whizz endearment but in a “boy, don’t we look silly” kind of way.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
No one said Pirates movies were cinematically healthy, but up till now there have been defenders of each film at least regarding tastiness. Dead Men Tell No Tales is like Davy Jones in previous films: chained to the job he was hired to do despite having no heart.
The Incredibles
The film blasts an affectionate symphony of action spy movie set pieces, which Bird composes with such a self-believing style that he reminds me less of a director than of a virtuoso performer. And even they become a back-drop to what is essentially a mid-life crisis film, about a man who misses himself so much that he doesn’t even notice he has a family. Bird offers a genre fattened on mythic pretension a trimming alternative of joyous energy and dazzling characters.
Battle Royale
Fukasaku proves to be a master of the micro-story, the combinations of tiny joys and creeping terrors into one huge, fleeting, emotional whole. After decades of cultural regression, he evokes Japanese cinema’s desperate, horrific roar. It has a primal beauty, of the kind that will always be repressed, misunderstood.
The Foreigner
Martin Campbell, who mined James Bond for the repressed roar of all his debonair instincts in Casino Royale, seems to have no mission briefing on Quan. The Foreigner is so disinterested in its lead that it seems to be made by a computer, which would not be able to tell who is more interesting except by how handsome they are.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
A nauseating movie. I’d say it was hedonistic but that requires it to be pleasurable at some point.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
The title card of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, blazoned in its pulpy font across the opening dance act of shimmering waists at club Obi Wan, was the moment a great movie became a brand. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, Indy’s adventures were born as serials, each entry a new exotic locale, another damsel, another sidekick, a new hellish fortress to conquer with a whip-cracking grin.
Ghostbusters (2016): The Problem with Fake Feminism
Merely a below-average comedy that becomes a disreputable slog by whoring out its cast for a studio’s ill-conceived marketing angle.