It's not fair to call Replicas the stupidest movie of 2019. The year is only two weeks old -- and besides, it was supposed to be the stupidest movie of 2017, before it got shelved for reasons that become apparent upon viewing it. An affectless Keanu Reeves whisper-mumbles his way through the...

Everything about The Upside feels contrived and phony, like the movie version of an inspiring-but-fake anecdote your aunt shared on Facebook. Which is impressive, considering it's a true story. Of course, it's more directly a remake of the French film The Intouchables, which itself was inspired...

If you think you would enjoy an uncomplicated, PG-rated movie about a dog traveling 400 miles to be reunited with her humans, there's an excellent chance you will enjoy A Dog's Way Home, which is exactly that and does exactly what you'd expect it to do (albeit with more CGI cats). Based on W....

Destroyer begins with a bedraggled, hungover L.A. police detective being summoned to a crime scene: a man with a distinctive tattoo on the back of his neck shot dead, surrounded by ink-stained money. The weathered detective, Erin Bell, played by a severely de-beautified Nicole Kidman, tells her...

There's something comforting about the fact that any popular new phenomenon will eventually be turned into the premise for a horror movie. For example, escape rooms are big lately. You and a few friends get locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to get out; if you don't do it in time, you "die"...

You don't need any more than a passing familiarity with old-timey comedy duo Laurel and Hardy to enjoy Stan & Ollie, a loving biopic set primarily during a U.K. tour in 1953, years after their heyday and some time after they'd had a falling-out. You should have some L&H movies on hand,...

The usual disclaimers apply: I didn't see every movie, I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about, etc. I note that four of the 10 were directed by women, and nine of them were "festival movies," premiering at Toronto, Sundance, or Telluride. There were a lot of excellent movies in 2018,...

Etan Cohen didn't write Holmes & Watson as a vehicle for Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Indeed, at one point Ferrell was going to play Dr. Watson, with Sacha Baron Cohen (no relation) as Sherlock. It's hard to tell how much the script changed when Ferrell and Reilly got onboard as the...

The documentary RBG gives a fine overview of the life and work of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but the fictionalized version, On the Basis of Sex, isn't entirely redundant. Directed by Mimi Leder (Deep Impact, Pay It Forward) from a screenplay by Daniel Stiepleman (RBG's nephew), it...

Dick Cheney is fascinating – in the morbid way that villainous figures throughout history almost always are. But is George W. Bush’s former vice president compelling enough to serve as the subject of a darkly comedic biopic that runs over two hours long? Filmmaker Adam McKay certainly thinks...

One hesitates to mention right off the bat that Bumblebee is a Transformers prequel, lest discerning readers assume Bumblebee is bad and should be ignored. But it is a prequel, and if the other Transformers movies had been like this -- smallish in scale, focused on a few characters, under two...

Welcome to Marwen is the latest Robert Zemeckis film to use state-of-the-art technology in the service of a story that's cold and emotionless even though it's supposed to be the opposite of that. It's the natural evolution of the trio of animated films he made in the '00s (Polar Express,...

We learn in Aquaman that the amphibious superhero is the product of a brief but passionate romance between a lighthouse keeper named Tom (Temuera Morrison) and Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), queen of Atlantis, who came ashore during a period of rebellion and horniness. She had to return to the sea,...

It’s been over 50 years since audiences last experienced the magic of Julie Andrews’ Mary Poppins, but in the world of Mary Poppins Returns, only a couple of decades have passed. Michael and Jane Banks are all grown up, and the former has three lovely children of his own. But with the death of...

Fans of Vincent van Gogh who have been clamoring for a lifeless, inert biopic, your prayers are answered! At Eternity's Gate, from director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), flirts with greatness by casting the excellent Willem Dafoe as the Dutch painter, but the screenplay (by...