Matt Fowler

The Cellar has a cool and creepy set up but then fizzles once the answers start arriving.

Metal Lords is earnest with metal but sloppy with character and story. It delivers a rousing finale but the journey there is uninspired and half-formed.

Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union are great pillars here, though the film itself isn't consistent enough with its tone, snapping back and forth between sweet sentiment and cheap gags.

Black Crab has all the ingredients to grab you and take you on a thrill ride -- and at times it achieves this -- but it suffers partial collapse by the end because of its need to land a little loftier than necessary.

Bruised is a good outing for Halle Berry as a director, though a better reminder of her as a star. Aside from that, however, the story progression is light on impact.

Zeros and Ones uses the spy genre as a thin mask for a fever dream that evokes nightmarish uncertainty.

Despite the inherent ugliness of watching a rich kid diabolically dig into a mom and dad who are just trying to save their home for the sake of their own children, Home Sweet Home Alone has some decent wit and heart to it. Archie Yates is good as the new precocious protector of his lair, but it's Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper who anchor the film and give it something resembling a soul.

Kate Siegel does her best to elevate a simplistic thriller that follows all the same beats you're accustomed to.

Night Teeth's winning lead trio and its glossy, electronic buzz save this Collateral clone from sinking into full nonsense. The film's usually interesting, though it never truly strikes with malice or meaning the way it wants to

Escape the Undertaker is a benign but effective use of Netflix's interactive abilities. Pairing the most macabre WWE Superstar with the company's most positive players makes for a fun showdown, one that you might wish had made it to official WWE TV -- not in this form, of course, but as a noble "turn to the dark side" storyline.

It's a bizarre and overly rambunctious ride that forsakes cleverness for Billboard acts and dizzying set pieces.

The Starling contains themes of grief and guilt that are worth exploration, but finds itself unable to delve deep into these elements, instead relying on bad bird effects and a needlessly quirky and eccentric tone to gloss over most of the uncomfortable elements.

Copshop is meaningfully and enjoyably derivative as a patchwork homage to '70s shoot-em-up cinema (even Spaghetti Westerns), but it never quite reaches its potential.

Cry Macho has spare moments of charm and tranquility, but mostly it's a dry and unfinished story that fails to hit even the most basic of Story 101 beats.

Krysten Ritter, along with Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett, provide enough pizazz to keep Nightbooks afloat, creating an engaging supernatural hostage scenario.

Paw Patrol: The Movie is a precious and peppy offering for the pre-preteen set that utilizes gentle character drama and buzzy action to stand out as a big-screen adventure. It won't be any parent's first choice, from an animation standpoint, but the standards of storytelling hold firm, making for an overall calm and comforting watch.

The Last Mercenary has bounding energy and a fun take on star Jean-Claude Van Damme's past exploits as an action star, but the humor is way more miss than hit and the actual nuts-and-bolts spy plot is a trudge.

Gunpowder Milkshake does its formidable cast dirty with a bland script, recycled story, and an empty comic book style that does little but shine up a stale outing.

The Boss Baby: Family Business delivers middle-road mirth, full of action and quasi-clever jokes, and featuring the fun voice additions of James Marsden, Jeff Goldblum, and Amy Sedaris.

The Woman in the Window has both flash and fizzle. Amy Adams is great in the lead role, presenting us with a shattered recluse who wages war on lucidity daily, but the rest of the cast, while noteworthy, are sort of relegated to being plot pawns. Still, if you're looking for a higher class of claustrophobic Noir, and don't care too much about the resolution, there's a playfulness on display here that might scratch an airport novel itch.

Wrath of Man has plenty of anger and action, and it's at its intriguing best when the entire story gets sorted out and all the players are on the board, but it stumbles at being a time-release mystery.

While sci-fi is generally rife with allegories, a steadier hand was needed here in Voyagers. The messaging, though noble and necessary, feels obvious to the point that it takes you out of the film. The cast is talented and the premise is promising, but the story plays out in a predictable fashion, which also works, in a way, to undercut the meaning.

Tom and Jerry hit the big screen for a hybrid live-action romp that too often feels like it's not even their movie.

Cherry is big on style and features a bouncy, pricey soundtrack but its examination of the grim reality behind the veteran/addiction cycle feels rather routine. Holland breaks down many barriers here, performance-wise, and delivers the goods as a fantastic surrogate for societal ills, but the movie is plodding and, overall, an underwhelming patchwork of previous projects.

Willy's Wonderland is a no-frills splatterfest that, while straining to fill its runtime, finds mid-level chills and thrills thanks to Nic Cage bashing the hell out of weaponized pizza parlor characters. It's a shoestring slasher that gets the job done while also not fully rounding a few of the corners it teases.

Wrong Turn delivers a handful of timely twists and coats the franchise with a new, and vastly more interesting, sheen. It stumbles at times to balance all the themes it's trying to handle with regards to societal ills, individual value, and self-determinism but the end result is still a warped ride that could set up more thrills to come.

The Marksman is perfectly watchable old man reckoning cinema, held together by good performances by Liam Neeson and young Jacob Perez, but it's ultimately not much more than an assembly line of non-surprises.

Outside the Wire is too long, too impenetrable, and not fun enough to warrant its lofty man vs. machine gimmick. It's fun to watch Anthony Mackie assume the role of a smart, cordial killbot, but the film's occasionally exciting bits of action aren't enough to breathe life into this muddled mess of a story.