Nothing's better than spending the weekend holed up in a movie theater, devouring the latest big-screen debuts. But how do you choose what to see? Well, that's where we come in. Obviously, there will be certain movies throughout the year that feel like must-sees just because everyone is talking about them. (Have you seen Star Wars yet? More than once? Okay. Moving on.) But if you want to be a more discerning cinephile, you can visit this cheat sheet. Here we'll give you the lowdown on new releases — and the critics' verdicts on them. Then you'll be able to determine which one is right for you.
This post will be continually updated, so don't forget to check back!
Dirty Grandpa
Starring: Zac Efron, Robert De Niro, Julianne Hough
Rated: R
Tomatometer:6%
Synopsis: Zac Efron's pecs get into hijinks with Zac Efron's grandpa, played by Robert De Niro, making some questionable choices.
What's The Word: Efron may be beautiful, but even that shouldn't convince you to go see this one. Variety's Nick Schager called it "brutally unfunny" and said that "the film’s incessant verbal diarrhea is less shocking than merely embarrassing." Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "It can be definitively stated that Dirty Grandpa is utterly unfunny. Or, you could say it's as funny as child molestation, a subject which, incidentally, inspires one of its least tasteful gags." Mike Ryan of UPROXX called it"The Most Important Movie Ever Made," and we highly recommend reading his full (hilarious) critique. At risk of ruining Ryan's punchline, we'll let his own TL;DR version of the review speak for itself: "Dirty Grandpa is the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a movie theater. Burn it."
The 5th Wave
Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe
Rated: PG-13
Tomatometer: 20%
Synopsis: Aliens invade; teens fight.
What's The Word: The fading YA craze sludges along with this lackluster entry. EW's Clark Collis wrote that the film has a "very small amount of grit, either emotional or literal." Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian argued that "Moretz is a strong presence, but without the Katniss factor." Alonso Duralde at The Wrap compared it to a "bad orange," saying it "lacks both juice and flavor."
The Boy
Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Jim Norton
Rated: PG-13
Tomatometer:N/A
Synopsis: A woman becomes the nanny for a seriously creepy doll charge.
What's The Word: The Boy isn't must-see horror. The A.V. Club's Katie Rife explained that "moments of inspiration, or craftsmanship, or whatever you want to call them, are ultimately seasoning sprinkled onto a mushy, microwaved platter of lukewarm horror clichés." Joe Leydon, writing for Variety, said that "the movie never fully distracts its audience from the inherent silliness of its premise — a young woman is hired by an elderly couple as a nanny for a life-sized doll — and, as a result, is more likely to elicit laughs and rude remarks rather than screams and rooting interest. "
Ride Along 2
Starring: Kevin Hart, Ice Cube, Olivia Munn
Rated: PG-13
Tomatometer:17%
Synopsis: Remember the first Ride Along? This is the sequel.
What's The Word: Look, it’s not like Ride Along was a masterpiece, so don’t get your hopes up. Entertainment Weekly’s Kevin P. Sullivan wrote that there was really no attempt to distinguish the sequel from its predecessor: “The films are so note-for-note similar that it’s easy to visualize a split-screen YouTube comparison video, if you can imagine such a horror.” Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporterhad a great burn for the film, calling the “storyline less challenging than that of a typical CBS crime procedural.” At least The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman had some kind words for the actors, writing: “Though some of the jokes land, that’s entirely due to the performances; there’s not one example of clever writing in the entire picture.”
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Starring: John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Pablo Schreiber
Rated: R
Tomatometer:57%
Synopsis: Michael Bay does Benghazi. Do you need to know anymore?
What's The Word: Given the subject matter, the film was bound to elicit a complicated reaction.Variety's Justin Chang explained that 13 Hours"largely avoid[s] the political firestorm in favor of a harrowing minute-by-minute procedural," describing the movie as an "experiential tour de force but a contextual blur, a shrewdly dumb movie that captures, and perhaps too readily embraces, the extreme confusion of the events as they unfolded on the ground." Stephanie Zacharek of Timesaid that it "comes so close to being action entertainment that it made me a little queasy. It’s violent, but also weirdly detached from all-too-recent history." Still, Slate's David Ehrlich had an unexpected reaction to the movie: "Imagine my surprise that, more than anything, 13 Hours almost feels … humanistic? Almost," he wrote. "Bay has stated that his intentions were simply to honor the heroism of the guys on the ground, and 13 Hours bears that out. The result, much to my surprise, is one of the most politically astute films about America’s foreign politics in years, purely on the strength of what it’s willing to ignore."
Norm Of The North
Starring: Rob Schneider, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong
Rated: PG
Tomatometer:5%
Synopsis: Animated antics from a polar bear who wants to stop people from moving to the Arctic.
What's The Word: Yikes. The A.V. Club's Katie Rife said, "The bad one-liners in Norm Of The North could fill an entire review on their own."Variety's Geoff Berkshire wrote that it is "blandly executed" and derivative of other recent animated films.At least Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter called it "mildly diverting."
The Benefactor
Starring: Richard Gere, Dakota Fanning, Theo James
Rated: R
Tomatometer:32%
Synopsis: Richard Gere plays a wealthy drug addict, who helps out the child of his friends who were killed in a car accident.
What's The Word: Though Gere has some good notices, the response is pretty lackluster overall. “While writer-director Andrew Renzi’s feature narrative debut is problematic whenever Gere isn’t onscreen (and even sometimes when he is), the veteran star exudes a damaged magnetism reminiscent of the character studies that thrilled discerning moviegoers in the ’70s,” Robert Abele wrote at The Wrap. The Playlist's Jessica Kiang, however, described the movie as “a character study of a character almost entirely composed of screenwriting conveniences and actorly flourishes.”
The Revenant
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson
Rated: R
Tomatometer:78%
Synopsis: Leo plays a fur trapper who must fight for survival after being attacked by a bear.
What's The Word: Go see this movie if you're interested in seeing Leonardo DiCaprio suffer for about two-and-a-half hours. Though deemed the actor's Oscar movie, critics have been mixed. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone hailed it, but declared, "Note to movie pussies: The Revenant is not for you," and called it "one brutal, badass epic." In Peter Bradshaw's five-star review for The Guardian, he wrote: "This is not an immersion that feels like a sensual surrender; it's closer to having your skin peeled."Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson wasn't as sold, writing, "The gore is unflinching and realistic, but it tends to overwhelm, or outright preclude, any deeper thought, any more complex idea than 'Pain is real.'"
Anomalisa
Starring: David Thewlis, Tom Noonan, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Rated: R
Tomatometer:98%
Synopsis: Charlie Kaufman made a stop-motion animated film about a man on a business trip.
What's The Word: Critics love this one. Matt Patches wrote for Esquire that it's the "mosthuman film of the year. And it doesn't star a single human." Dana Stevens for Slate praised its technical achievements: "Whatever combination of practical effects and digital wizardry went into the technique that gave rise to Anomalisa’s otherworldly yet very human narrative universe, I hope it will be used to tell more stories, perhaps by this same storyteller." Manohla Dargis wrote for The New York Times that Kaufman's "gift for quotidian horror remains startling; he’s a whiz at minor miseries."
The Hateful Eight
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins
Rated: R
Tomatometer:75%
Synopsis: Quentin Tarantino maroons a bunch of questionable characters together during a late-19th-century blizzard. It gets bloody.
What's The Word: If you have some time on your hands, you may want to check out Tarantino's lengthy Western. (If you're a film buff, you should check out the Roadshow version screened in 70mm.) It's controversial, of course, because it's Tarantino. "Mr. Tarantino doesn’t make films that are 'about race' so much as he tries to burrow into the bowels of American racism with his camera and his pen. There is no way to do that and stay clean," A.O. Scott wrote for The New York Times. He continued, "Some of the film’s ugliness is therefore a sign of integrity, and of relevance. But much of it seems dumb and ill considered, as if Mr. Tarantino’s intellectual ambition and his storytelling discipline had failed him at the same time."New York's David Edelstein was harsher: "It seems perversely crabbed, nihilistic, and shot through with cruelty for cruelty’s sake." The movie does have its fans, though. Variety's Peter Debruge noted: "Familiarity aside, however, the movie absolutely delivers on the sheer moment-to-moment pleasures fans have come to expect, from dynamite dialogue to powder-keg confrontations."
Anesthesia
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Corey Stoll, Sam Waterston
Rated: R
Tomatometer:33%
Synopsis: Tim Blake Nelson wrote and directed this ensemble piece about people in New York.
What's The Word: For a movie featuring an awful big collection of stars, this one is flying very under the radar. Perhaps because the reviews aren't that great. (It's drawn comparisons to everyone's least favorite Oscar-winner, Crash.) The A.V. Club's Mike D'Angelo called it "turgid and heavy-handed," saying it "employs a dozen or so cardboard characters as mouthpieces for singularly unilluminating thoughts about the ways in which people struggle to bury their unhappiness."Variety's Guy Lodge wrote, "The ensemble labors sincerely to bring Nelson’s dense, frequently didactic writing to life, though it can be a hard task." The reviews aren't all that bad, though. Jordan Hoffman at The Guardianwrote, "The good news is that all of the individual scenes, even the ones that resemble a play being workshopped right there on the screen, have sharp writing, good performances, and are interesting in and of themselves."
The Forest
Starring: Natalie Dormer, Taylor Kinney
Rated: PG-13
Tomatometer:11%
Synopsis: Natalie Dormer plays identical twins in this horror film. One twin goes missing in Japan's Aokigahara forest; the other goes looking for her. Terror ensues.
What's the Word: Yeah, not great. The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips said: "There's not a lot of filmmaking energy in 'The Forest,' and roughly 40 minutes of story surrounded by 45 more minutes of Dormer in nonverbal distress." The film "is flawed on so many levels," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Kevin C. Johnson. "It’s a tiresome bore, and the story is filtered through white characters when an Asian lead could have carried the movie just fine." Still, the Village Voice's Michael Nordine had at least some props for Dormer, writing that she is "let down by the demands of a tired script, though she makes the most of it, and in a few bright spots she almost self-reflexively comments on its absurdities."
The Treasure
Starring: Toma Cuzin, Adrian Purcarescu, Corneliu Cozmei
Rated: Unrated
Tomatometer:93%
Synopsis: A Romanian comedy about buried treasure.
What's The Word: Should you be in the mood for subtitles, go. The New Yorker's Richard Brody wrote that it's an "ingeniously intricate goofball comedy that evokes heroes of legend while bringing sociological abstractions to mucky life." A.O. Scott at The Timescalled it "an absurdist anecdote, a modest story that has the feel of an urban legend."
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