Jim Vejvoda

Director John Krasinski delivers that rare horror sequel that (almost) stands toe-to-toe with its predecessor.

While Soul offers food for thought and has heart, it’s never quite as funny, engrossing, or emotionally rewarding as Pixar’s best.

Francis Ford Coppola has tightened up and retweaked his final Godfather film, but the original's inherent flaws remain.

The New Mutants didn’t deserve to be locked away for years. It’s not some unwatchable mess but rather a perfectly fine, entertaining, if at times formulaic small-scale genre movie.

Bill & Ted Face the Music is a pleasant escape for the quarantine-stricken, a sweet and entertaining romp that defies expectations by largely recapturing what worked about the series so many years later.

With any other actor as the menacing lead, Unhinged would have been a TV movie or straight-to-streaming release, but Crowe and a few well-executed scenes of action still manage to hold the viewer’s interest throughout what’s essentially 90 minutes of genre filler material.

The earnest and entertaining Scoob! is a perfectly fine distraction for kids and parents stuck at home, with enough cute and amusing elements throughout to keep viewers engaged.

Josh Trank’s somber, small-scale drama is not the guns-blazing Al Capone biopic some gangster movie fans might be expecting, but it’s a curiosity that nevertheless demands a look-see for a fresh take on a crime legend whose most notorious exploits have been retold many times already.

Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke's fun chemistry helps elevate the predictable murder-mystery Spenser Confidential.

Blumhouse’s theatrical adaptation of the TV classic Fantasy Island never quite works as a horror film, a comedy, or a melodrama despite its attempts at being all three. It works marginally better as a mystery but by that point, you’re not as invested in the story’s outcome or its generic protagonists to muster much of a reaction.

For as much love, passion, and nostalgia is evident in this movie, it’s also a film very palpably made from a place driven by fear of disappointing the audience, and that anxiety fuels a lot of the story’s curious creative choices and unwieldy execution.

1917 is an expertly crafted and emotionally exhausting thrill-ride behind enemy lines. Gloriously shot, deftly paced, and striking in its gruesome recreation of the time and place, Sam Mendes’ 1917 wisely never loses sight of the smaller, intimate elements in a fast-paced story with immense scale and action.

If you can compartmentalize the film’s well-intentioned but problematic modernized elements and just focus on the cute dogs then you will likely find Disney+’s remake of Lady and the Tramp a lightweight and engaging distraction to watch at home.

Tim Miller’s film deftly builds upon what worked in the first two James Cameron-helmed entities while bringing in a new host of characters and circumstances to challenge the course of humankind. While there’s definitely some frantic leap-frogging involved in terms of accepting why some characters have evolved the way they did, Terminator: Dark Fate ultimately succeeds in serving as both a suitable closing chapter for the original two films and a possible gateway to exciting new chapters ahead.

There are still plenty of scares and things to enjoy in It Chapter Two even though it can't quite stick the landing.

Featuring a riveting, fully realized, and Oscar-worthy performance by Joaquin Phoenix, Joker would work just as well as an engrossing character study without any of its DC Comics trappings; that it just so happens to be a brilliant Batman-universe movie is icing on the Batfan cake. You will likely leave Joker feeling like I did: unsettled and ready to debate the film for years to come.

The Kitchen has a good cast and strong premise, but it never quite finds its footing and falls into gangster cliches.

The respective performances of DiCaprio and Pitt and the film’s meticulous attention to period detail are all great and keep you invested in where this cruise around Tinseltown will ultimately take you.

Crawl is a fun albeit familiar human vs. beast movie, one that gets plenty of mileage out of its setting and people’s deep-set fear of being eaten.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is great fun, filled with heart, humor and lots of cool stuff for fans to geek out over.

Dark Phoenix is ultimately yet another fumbled take on the classic saga from the Marvel Comics, albeit one without the side plots of The Last Stand. Add to it a jarringly uneven latter half and some underdeveloped cosmic villains, and Dark Phoenix is fortunate to have not fully ended the X-Men’s current big screen run on a completely down note.

Chock full of inventive set-pieces and brutal kills, while also providing new facets to the intricate underworld lore fans of the franchise have come to enjoy, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum pushes its title character to his breaking point and back while offering fresh information about his backstory.

Shazam! is a lot of fun and it further proves how, in the wake of the success of Wonder Woman and Aquaman, DC’s movie future is indeed bright. Zachary Levi was born to play this superpowered man-child, delivering lots of laughs alongside sarcastic but amiable co-star Jack Dylan Grazer.

While some purists may balk at the changes and omissions made here, those simply looking for a horror movie as compelling as it is wicked should enjoy this new Pet Sematary.

The Curse of La Llorona offers some decently suspenseful set-pieces and has a family you care about at its center, but it's also a very familiar and formulaic Annabelle-adjacent entry in the Conjuring franchise.

The glee that director James Wan clearly has playing in the world of Aquaman is infectious. He’s made a movie for both types of 10-year-olds: literal kids and those who are 10 at heart. Aquaman is one hell of a popcorn movie.

The Transformers franchise gets a much needed tuneup in Bumblebee.

It’s intellectually intriguing and well-acted, but the inconsistent visual effects undermine the necessary suspension of disbelief when it comes to mixing live-action humans with talking CG animals in such a serious and somber adaptation of the Kipling classic. Still, it’s a thoughtful and dramatic interpretation, which sets it apart from most incarnations of The Jungle Book.