Aquaman ★ ¹/₂ “After the travesty of Justice League, now there’s Aquaman to sink the DCEU even further into the murky depths, no matter how colorful Furious 7 director James Wan has made the movie” Read more »

Bumblebee ★★★ “Finally freed from the directorial clutches of Michael Bay, a man who never tires of blowing things up, director Travis Knight’s wonderful Bumblebee is the film we should have gotten to begin with.” Read more »

Escape Room ★ ¹/₂ “Take 1997’s Cube, mix it up with the Saw series, soften it up with a PG-13 rating and voila! You’re left with the quintessential January stinker, Escape Room.” Read more »

Holmes & Watson – 0 stars “This third reteaming of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly is in theaters now, but it opened on Christmas Day, making it the worst film of both 2018 and 2019.“ Read more »

If Beale Street Could Talk ★★★ ¹/₂ “An adaptation of a 1974 novel by late literary giant James Baldwin (the subject of 2016’s Oscar-nominated documentary, I Am Not Your Negro), it’s also the latest bittersweet romantic drama from Barry Jenkins, whose Moonlight won Best Picture a couple of years ago.” Read more »

Mary Poppins Returns ★★ “If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, then you might consider bringing a fistful of the utensils to Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns, since Rob Marshall’s sequel plays like a heaping bottle of bad medicine…” Read more »

The Mule ★★★ “Eastwood plays Earl Stone, another Korean War veteran who’s trying to set things right during his twilight years—and he’s all-too-believable as a 90-year-old, looking and sounding more frail than you could ever envision the Man with No Name to be.” Read more »

Second Act ★★ ¹/₂  Jennifer Lopez stars as a beauty consultant with a secret in Peter Segal’s Second Act. Read more »

Shoplifters ★★★★ “Shoplifters, winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Kore-eda has wandered into the slightly messier neighborhood of Mikio Naruse, who frequently dealt with women living on the fringe.” Read more »

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ★★★ ¹/₂ Dimensions collide in an animated adventure that proves anyone can be a hero. Read more »

Vice (pictured) ★★★ ¹/₂  “As a writer/director, Adam McKay has spent his career mocking self-centered idiots, from the newsmen in Anchorman to the NASCAR drivers in Talladega Nights … So it’s no surprise that he’s brought all of these interests together for his latest picture, the Dick Cheney biopic Vice.” Read more »