Abominable movie review: a bit of a snow job
Lovely animation and gentle, kid-pitched life lessons can’t quite overcome the familiar feel of this E.T. retread, nor the forced sense of wonder that is more convenient crutch than anything organic.
ET The Extra-Terrestrial
Us movie review: a new kind of horror for a newly precarious world
An anxious moan, a looming disquiet of a reckoning coming for America. This is horror as weird, funny, damning, and more disconcerting the more you think about it, finding fear right in front of us.
Bumblebee movie review: floats like a butterfly…
Nostalgic without being mindlessly retro; a sweet, heartfelt girl-and-her-alien-robot-car action-adventure buddy dramedy that hits all the right notes. Hailee Steinfeld is terrific, and there’s not a whiff of Michael Bay to be found.
The Predator movie review: pointless retro junk
Garbage. A bad excuse for a movie, even for the pulpy disposable popcorn nonsense it wants to be. Incoherent and illogical, cheap and shoddy. Wannabe sci-fi action horror that can’t pull off any of it.
The Post movie review: printing truth to power
Crackles with life and energy, depicting a grand adventure in journalism from almost half a century ago with vigor, suspense, and an urgent relevance for today.
It movie review: a series of unfortunate events
The Goonies, Stand by Me, and Poltergeist went into a blender with a pinch of E.T. and John Hughes to smush into a mess of retro 80s mush.
Monster Trucks movie review: what a car-tastrophe
What if “monster trucks” actually meant — wait for it — that there were monsters in the trucks? From an idea by a four-year-old (really), and it shows.
Pete’s Dragon movie review: big friendly dragon
More like a pleasant walk in a redwood forest with a boy and his dragon than a rollicking adventure, but its serenity and warm heart are infectious.
The BFG movie review: that sense of wonder where it all went wrong
Fantasy meandering twists into something more action-oriented, and there’s little magic in it. This is not what we expect from a master cinematic fantasist.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows movie review: shell schlock
Leaden and witless, though it obviously believes there is humor in its loud, chaotic juvenility. It would be an insult to cartoons to call this cartoonish.
