Red One movie review: a very copaganda Christmas
Unfunny action comedy can’t even pull off sloppy Yuletide kitsch. The anti-chemistry among its likable stars is “bested” only by the ugly CGI. Have some light festive violence — you know, for kids!
Dwayne Johnson
Jungle Cruise movie review: raiders of the recent swashbucklers
Wonderfully escapist, dripping with magnificently congenial charm thanks to the comic chemistry of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Plus it’s sure to enrage people who use “woke” as an insult. Yay!
Jumanji: The Next Level movie review: this game needs to be over
It’s more of the same tedious nonsense, all action sequences bereft of excitement and body-swap comedy minus any real laughs. An abysmal lack of fun with stakes way too low to generate much suspense.
Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw movie review: everything wrong with the world today
A stew of “hilarious” toxic masculinity and nonstop violence as the solution to all problems. Sexist, stupid nonsense, tediously familiar and wholly predictable. Even the cartoonish action falls flat.
Fighting with My Family movie review: real fake
Genuinely heartwarming, totally cheerworthy, bursting with warm and generous performances, and just a whole damn lotta fun. (And I hate professional wrestling.) Florence Pugh absolutely rocks it.
The Meg movie review: shark lark
Jason Statham versus a giant prehistoric shark. It’s never less — yet also never more — than you expect, and never more suspenseful or scary than it is cheesy. But whatev. Go, and enjoy.
Rampage movie review: American kaiju
Raises the bar on big dumb fun, with The Rock’s social-justice-warrior badass and his genuinely charming relationship with a gorilla, plus a ton of goofball sci-fi monster action turned up to 11.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle movie review: jungle feeble
Culturally clueless cinematic vomit, a cynical undertaking embracing the most diminishing clichés it can apply to its characters. Low stakes, and low humor.
Baywatch movie review: sun’s out, dumb’s out
A beach-slap to anyone with a brain. Embodies everything that is wrong with Hollywood today. It is proudly dumb. It is proudly sexist. It is proudly pointless.
Fast & Furious 8 (aka The Fate of the Furious) movie review: notes from the critics’ ward
EMPs and nukular codes and cyber crap and submarines, oh my! “What does this have to do with us?” Michelle Rodriguez cries, and I’m like I know, right?
