Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Darkest Hour

I couldn’t stay up.

But I heard Gary Oldman

Was a good Churchill.

I’m exaggerating when I say that I slept through all of “Darkest Hour,” but it was without a doubt the most boring movie of 2017. Not since last year’s Loving have I actually been so miserable that I wished I was anywhere but the theater, and coming from someone whose happiest when the lights are dimmed and the projector is rolling, that’s saying something.

But in Darkest Hour’s defense, its cause wasn’t helped by the fact that my family was coming off the heels of seeing “The Greatest Showman,” our other flop of a holiday weekend selection. I think my faith in the cinema was temporarily broken, and I should’ve leaned into something other than a Winston Churchill biopic to fix it. But unlike “Showman,” “Darkest Hour” was a well-made movie. Everything worked seamlessly to create an air of tension and unease, from the dialogue to the cinematography to performances beyond just Gary Oldman’s Churchill. But in the end, movies have to be more than just well-made to be enjoyable.

In Theaters, MicrowavedGuest UserDecember 25, 2017