Critical Mass: Critics keep their distance from The Space Between Us

Critics are widening the gap between them and The Space Between Us, a teen romance that has thus far failed to drum up much affection from mainstream film journalists. Still, the drama should post decent numbers at the weekend box office, though it’ll likely take a backseat to the horror revival Rings, which lands 12 years after the last franchise installment bowed to a $35 million opening back in 2005.

The Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro also debuts in limited release this weekend alongside the Robert De Niro vehicle The Comedian, the Alexander Skarsgård/Michael Peña comedy War on Everyone, and Dark Night, the buzzy Sundance title inspired by the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting.

With so many new and holdover titles packing theaters around the country, EW wants you to make good choices at the movies, so consult our Critical Mass reviews guide below before heading to the multiplex this weekend.

The Space Between Us

Opens Feb. 3 in theaters nationwide.

EW’s Chris Nashawaty says:

Butterfield, who was so good as a child actor in 2011’s Hugo, is very good at selling the film’s stranger-in-a-strange-world bits. And Robertson has the charmingly feisty moxie of a younger, pre-trainwreck Lindsay Lohan. But they can’t work their way out of the laughable corner that Chelsom and Loeb have painted them into. At one point, Tulsa actually has to spell out that Gardner’s heart is too big for this world. Oh, brother. The emo soundtrack and eye-rolling third-act zero-gravity kissing scene don’t help matters any. C

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 15%

Metacritic: 33

Rings

Opens Feb. 3 in theaters nationwide.

EW’s Christian Holub says:

Rings embodies a common problem of attempted franchise revivals: indecision about it’s intentions. The film tries going in a few too many directions at once, and some wires get crossed. Storylines that seem important at first (like Julia’s mother’s sickness or Gabriel’s affair with a student) end up going nowhere. Characters appear and then fade back into the background. But in the end, there are enough grotesque corpses and symbolic visions of haunted wells to give fans what they came for. C+

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 6%

Metacritic: 19

The Comedian

Opens Feb. 3 in limited release.

EW’s Joey Nolfi says:

De Niro’s spirited work—his best leading turn in years—convinces us that a character can be made in front of our very eyes, even if there’s not much for him to work with on the page. B

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 25%

Metacritic: 40

I Am Not Your Negro

Opens Feb. 3 in limited release.

EW’s Chris Nashawaty says:

If there’s a flaw with the film (and it’s a minor one), it’s Peck’s impulse to cram it with clips from lily-white Doris Day movies and John Wayne Westerns that are a bit too on the nose. Then again, there’s nothing subtle about the sad, tragic legacy of civil rights in this country. As Peck cuts from archival scenes of police brutality in the South in the ’60s to recent footage from Ferguson, Mo., it’s impossible not to think: The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s enough to make you weep. A–

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 99%

Metacritic: 96

War on Everyone

Opens Feb. 3 in limited release and on digital platforms.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

Crass, senseless, and relentlessly talky, War on Everyone mostly seems like a movie at war with itself. Does it want to be Tarantino kitsch? A winky, post-Deapool satire of buddy-cop action comedies? A vaguely hip Naked Gun 4 1/2? Somehow, writer-director John Michael McDonagh (Calvary) managed to convince a raft of good actors—including Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Peña, Paul Reiser, and Creed’s Tessa Thompson—that he had a master plan. What he has instead is a ratatat spray of one-liners, a crude wisp of a plot, and full access to Glenn Campbell’s back catalog. C+

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 59%

Metacritic: 50

Dark Night

Opens Feb. 3 in limited release.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

Director Tim Sutton’s shoestring indie, loosely inspired by the 2012 Aurora movie-theater shooting, is far too moody and quixotic for a mainstream audience. But it’s also a haunting, thought-provoking piece of work, made infinitely more powerful by all the things it chooses not to show. B+

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 61%

Metacritic: 58

Split

Now playing.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

Split’s giddy nonsense ultimately dissolves in a scrum of half-realized ideas, but maybe that’s ­exactly Shyamalan’s goal: tipping his final scene with a perfect tease, to be continued. B

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 74%

Metacritic: 62

A Dog’s Purpose

Now playing.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

Director Lasse Hallström, a veteran of sprawling casts and story lines (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules), shoots in sumptuously rich Technicolor, even if narratively it often feels more like he’s working with finger paints. Each segment, duly framed by textbook fashion and music cues (head­scarves and Simon & Garfunkel for the ’60s, Jheri curls and a-ha in the ’80s), unfolds with the soothing blandness of a bedtime story. And Purpose itself plays like a family film from another era, its gentle sensibilities a million miles removed from the winky pop culture references and meta layers of most modern all-ages entertainment. The effect is sweet, benignly retro, and just a little bit boring; a comforting Milk Bone for the soul. B

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 34%

Metacritic: 43

Hidden Figures

Now playing.

EW’s Leah Greenblatt says:

Charged with streamlining Figures’ knotty real-life histories, director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) tends to paint too much in the broad, amiable strokes of a triumph-of-the-week TV movie. But even his earthbound execution can’t dim the sheer magnetic pull of an extraordinary story. B+

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

Metacritic: 74

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Now playing.

EW’s Clark Collis says:

“The truth is that Resident Evil overlord Paul W.S. Anderson tends to treat each Resident Evil adventure as if it was the last anyway, a spray-everything-at-the-wall approach which helps gift the series its off-the-rails charm. No patient world-builder, Anderson is a man given to killing off promising characters in one film only to revive them in unlikely fashion further down the line and setting up future plots at the end of movie only to ignore that track-laying in the subsequent chapter. For example, at the end of the franchise’s previous entry, 2012’s Resident Evil: Retribution, Milla Jovovich’s heroine Alice combined with the evil Umbrella Corporation to defend the White House from a horde of the undead. However, those who have waited five years to see the ensuing inside-the-Beltway bloodbath will be disappointed.” B-

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 41%

Metacritic: 50

La La Land

Now playing.

EW’s Chris Nashawaty says:

There have been a handful of lavish, big-studio musicals in recent years. But for the most part, they’ve been bloated Broadway adaptations full of sound and fury. And some moviegoers may, no doubt, feel a little tentative about the genre. But La La Land is the anti-whatever those are. It’s more intimate and personal and affecting…more magical. My advice is to see La La Land and surrender to it. It will make you feel like you’re walking on air too. A

Read the full review here.

Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

Metacritic: 93