What is a marketing team to do when the element guaranteed to get butts in seats – in truth, the film's entire reason for being – is the one element that shouldn't be spoiled in advance?

Unbiased journlalists may seem hard to find these days. But as Alex Garland's film reminds us, they're still out there, and they're not the problems – they're the messengers. And you don't shoot the messengers. Except that here, other Americans very much do.

Where Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley adaptation was luscious, passionate, and emotional, Steven Zaillian's Ripley is chilly, controlled, and cerebral – an entertainment for the head rather than the heart. But yowza did this thing make my head spin. Not for nothing, but at least once per episode, it also made me laugh my ass off.

I'd hardly consider Godzilla x Kong on par with the Oscar-winning genius of Godzilla Minus One, or even a number if its lesser forebears. But I would place it next to, say, the screen adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy's. Take that as whatever recommendation/warning you wish.

When Finn Wolfhard's Trevor Spengler tells his mom about some potentially ghostly strangeness taking place in their inherited firehouse, Carrie Coon's Callie spends their entire conversation absentmindedly scrolling. That's Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Not worth the energy it would take to lift your eyes from your phone.

Most people, I think, would agree that box-office returns aren't necessarily an indicator of quality. But it was still a bit disheartening to discover that of the five movies I caught over the weekend, the two I most enjoyed were the titles most likely to leave the area when the new Ghostbusters gobbles up screens this upcoming Friday.

Almost no one, in retrospect, likes a misleading trailer, and I don't know anyone who enjoys a trailer that seems to give away a narrative's contents from points A to Z, making you feel like you've seen the movie months before you actually see it. (Ordinary Angels, anyone?) Yet I reserve a special kind of irritation for trailers that wind up almost exhaustively descriptive of the eventual experience simply through the predecessors they choose to plug.

The reasons that even Herbert virgins might want to consider showing up for Dune: Part Two lie less with the tale's specifics than the sorts of massive pleasures that only works of this magnitude provide.

Just what is it going to take for Joel and Ethan Coen to end this silly separation of theirs and get back together? An online petition? A generous gift basket? A promise to reconsider the merits of Intolerable Cruelty?

Just how good is Kingsley Ben-Adir as the title character in Bob Marley: One Love? So good that I couldn't make out half of what he was saying.

Pages