Contributor: Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Money Monster

The movie isn’t actually trying to get us to barge into cable shows if our retirement portfolios dip, but its satirical tack is still troubling.

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Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War comfortably follows the CGI-enhanced template, but with one interesting change.

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Keanu

The kitten is cute. The movie is not.

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Union Bound

Union Bound is based on the real-life diaries of Joseph Hoover, and it is determined to remind viewers that slavery is indeed a terrible evil.

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Criminal

Criminal is a fitting name for this movie. Indeed, we could say, “This movie is Criminal” and leave it pretty much at that.

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The Boss

Letter of reference? Ha! What The Boss really deserves is a pink slip.

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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

While this movie’s violence doesn’t go beyond what we see in most Marvel flicks, the atmosphere here is so darkly brooding that it feels much harsher.

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The Divergent Series: Allegiant

While this movie is marginally cleaner than its predecessors in terms of content, it’s unquestionably worse in terms of story.

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10 Cloverfield Lane

This is a horror movie, both intimate and sprawling in scope. And as a horror movie, it works. It works too well, perhaps.

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Knight of Cups

Terrence Malick movies are like onions. Remove a layer, and there’s always another one to explore. And sometimes they can make your eyes burn, too.

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London Has Fallen

Even if the mayhem makes it past your familial sense of protectionism, the obscene language probably won’t.

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Gods of Egypt

Gods of Egypt has some nifty CGI work, but is otherwise terrible in pretty much every sense of the word.

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Race

An inspiring story and a great reminder that, while we were not all given Jesse Owens’ speed, we were all put here to do something.

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Race

An inspiring story and a great reminder that, while we were not all given Jesse Owens’ speed, we were all put here to do something.

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Zoolander No. 2

This might be fashionable these days. But it’ll never be pretty.

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