Alonso Duralde

If anything, and this is a compliment, the film frequently feels like a charming teen road-trip comedy that occasionally turns into a superhero movie.

As a retelling of a tragedy that had its moments of heroism among uniformed personnel and indefatigable civilians alike, it gets the job done.

There’s a sketch, or a short film, or even an Adult Swim series to be mined from these characters and situations, but as a feature film, Welcome to Me comes off like taunting followed by hugs, where neither feels genuine.

Teen Titans GO! to the Movies never wears out its welcome, from the hilarious skewering of some of DC’s most sacred cows (Kryptonite, Crime Alley) to a range of musical numbers that include an 80s-style you-can-do-it anthem (compete with sax solo) and hip-hop-flavored self-aggrandizement.

This is Tom Hardy‘s show, and any opportunity to see this actor exercise his skills merits attention. He, along with the rest of this top-notch ensemble, give “The Drop” far more than they get back.

While some viewers may find the use of the closet and societal homophobia too heavy for this breezy story, there’s a case to be made that including specifically queer concerns into the language of romantic comedy is another step toward genuine inclusiveness.

Much like the UCLA interviews that inspired it, Framing Agnes is a vital part of the historical record, addressing trans life as we know it right now and providing deeper understanding for current and future viewers.

There’s nothing particularly world-shaking about Our Souls at Night, but it’s a nice movie about nice people finding love.

This sequel might (in, one hopes, a happier future) be hilarious in retrospect, but at the moment, it’s a mostly cringe-worthy experience.

Everyone’s so damn happy and grateful to have been meddled with that it undercuts both the comedy and the drama in this film from writer-director Lorene Scafaria.

That Thunderbolts* (and yes, the movie explains that asterisk) emerges as one of the MCU’s most successful team-up movies is its own victory, considering that the team in question is made up of a collection of sidekicks, oddballs, and losers, mostly culled from lesser-known Marvel movies and even TV shows.

There’s a mild chuckle every so often in Early Man...but overall the movie collapses in a heap of familiarity and lackadaisicalness. Park is an animation legend, but even the greats occasionally whiff it.

This is Depp’s show all the way, featuring his best dramatic performance since another organized-crime movie, 1997’s “Donnie Brasco.”

These characters and their dilemmas could be the stuff of great, or at least good, drama, but Slattery's insistence on accentuating their sorrows with clinically depressed art direction wears thin rather quickly.

The Hateful Eight may frustrate some of his more literally sanguine supporters, but it’s nonetheless an entertaining piece of dialogue-driven theater — with the occasional rifle-shot to the head.

Deep Water offers so many tawdry delights along the way that its flaws aren’t dealbreakers. Affleck and de Armas might not have lasted as a couple off-camera, but as co-stars, they’re a potent combo.

Breeziness is a quality Queen and Country has plenty of, making for a lovely journey that never ends up anywhere particularly groundbreaking.

Amid the excitement — those bugs, a pack of wild horses, a looming forest fire — the film finds room to explore bigger issues, like living life to the fullest even when death is inevitable, and the fact that the toughest-acting kids are often the most vulnerable.

Like so many memorable yet hard-to-describe movies, Why Don't You Play in Hell? takes a ridiculous concept and commits to it fully. You might laugh with surprise or shriek in horror — both, most likely — but you certainly won't dismiss it.

This new movie feels more like a series of sketches that all happen to revolve around the same handful of characters. That said, those sketches are fairly funny, and if this comedy has all the depth of a summer jam, it will eventually be the kind of late-night download that will inspire giggles for years to come.

The Disneynature movies shouldn't be mistaken for traditional documentary, but if they act as a gateway drug for young children to learn more about the animal kingdom — and to open themselves up to more informative non-fiction cinema — then the films are serving a real purpose.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo move their many playing pieces around with as much grace as possible, and they offer up jolts of pleasure throughout.

F1 doggedly follows the expected ups and downs of most sports-movie narratives, and it’s clearly more interested in recreating the experience of racing than telling a story or crafting a character piece.

The pleasurable jolt of a silent scare has given way to predictability.

While Ryan Reynolds still seems to be having fun playing the cheeky mercenary, both the inside-baseball comedy and the cartoonishly bloody mayhem wear out their welcomes in the film’s final third.

Somehow, the blistering comedy you would expect never quite manifests, and instead we get a lot of on-the-nose sermonizing and weak-tea social commentary.

The miracle of Superman is that, in 2025, it’s a superhero movie that inspires genuine delight.

Disarming and delightful, the sleeper indie comedy Feast of the Seven Fishes proves anew that the most universal storytelling is also the most specific.

At his most memorable, Cronenberg creates viscerally unforgettable images that horrify, yes, but they also provoke with big, shocking ideas about our very selves – the monstrousness of disease, the perhaps inevitable hybrid of the corporeal and the mechanical, the determination of the self. With Crimes of the Future, we’re left with a remove from the material, where no matter what happens, it’s all just performance art.

Black Widow reminds us of the pleasure that can be offered by an MCU movie that isn’t having to do the legwork of setting up the next five chapters.

Z for Zachariah feels like a genuine rarity: an American movie that doesn’t tell you what to think or how to feel when the credits start rolling. Contemplating our doom doesn’t seem like a bad idea when it’s done this skillfully.

Band Aid might sound gimmicky, but Lister-Jones keeps the emotions firmly rooted and the characters believably contextualized.

Nocturnal Animals packs a real punch and confirms that “A Single Man” was no fluke.

Delightfully unpredictable and surprisingly shocking, this is the kind of wintry wickedness that will see you through both Halloween and Christmas, especially if you like those holiday flavors together.

"Quantumania” may not swing for the fences as ambitiously as recent entries like “Wakanda Forever” or “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but it does take the wildly disparate tones and plot threads that are seemingly endemic to this series and turn them into an entertainingly cohesive whole. To be continued, obviously.

In the recent flood of superhero movies, several have managed to be quite good — but Wonder Woman ranks as one of the few great ones.

The unspoken joke of the title is that this movie really wants to be called “Freaky Friday the 13th,” which is not a bad starting point, but the line dividing gory violence and farcical hilarity — which Landon has skillfully walked in the past — gets too blurry for the movie’s own good.

If incoming director James Wan (“The Conjuring,” “Saw”) falls the tiniest bit short of what Justin Lin brought to the third, fifth and sixth entries, Furious 7 nonetheless ranks a very successful fourth place overall, with at least one gargantuan set piece that ranks among the series’ finest.

Even those who object to Bowers’ revelations may find themselves unexpectedly empathetic to his life story, and that’s thanks to Tyrnauer’s compassion. There’s plenty of gossip to be found here, but there’s also no shortage of humanity.

There is wit and there are explosions, and while none of them represent a step above “Guardians of the Galaxy,” neither do they impugn the memory of one of the freshest and most fun of the Marvel movies.

There is some humor to be found here, of course, and a bit of exploration of the sheer boredom of being trapped for days inside four white walls, and moments of real connection between Bahari and both his family and the political revolutionaries he gets to know on the street. But Stewart doesn't pursue any of these ideas enough to stick, resulting in a film that relates incidents without ever really telling much of a story.

For those of us who come to these movies wondering what Tom Cruise will be climbing, clinging onto, or falling off of, this sequel delivers the goods.

There’s a great deal to enjoy here, and fans of “Black Panther” won’t necessarily leave feeling disappointed, but there’s a sense of strong elements not quite coming together.

There are no build-ups or pay-offs here, just a lot of random moments of people saying stupid stuff, and fashion people being gently lampooned.

Jurassic World: Rebirth doesn’t go anywhere particularly unexpected — besides being a big-budget, corporate-backed franchise film advocating that medical advancements should go public rather than be patented by drug companies — but the cliffhangers are choice.

If The Peanuts Movie never quite reaches the melancholy of earlier films like “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” and “Snoopy Come Home,” it nonetheless respects the importance of failure and disappointment that Schulz always included in his storytelling.

With its combination of workplace sitcom and social activism, Barbershop: The Next Cut feels more like a binge-viewing of multiple episodes of a TV series than a movie, but even on that level, it’s a show worth watching.

The Book of Life manages to be genuinely surprising and engrossing.

What truly anchors Save Yourselves! is the specificity of the two leads and the sharpness with which Mani and Reynolds perform the roles.

There’s a lot to like about director Kenneth Branagh’s gorgeously fanciful tale.

Blink Twice emerges as a true late-summer surprise, a witty genre film with more on its mind than surface excitement, that draws its sense of dread out of real-world pain without ever exploiting that pain, that serves as an evergreen reminder that if the party seems too good to be true, it is.

It’s cohesive and cathartic enough to make a fourth entry unnecessary, but at the same time, it’s entertaining and gorgeous enough to make the prospect of same something to welcome.

Giving the film credit where it’s due, Wonder never cheats in its pursuit of emotion. It’s never mawkish or manipulative, and its characters are so well-established both in the writing and in the performances that the movie ultimately does the hard work of earning those damp Kleenexes.

It may well be that we’ll eventually stop looking at these Marvel films as discrete, individual experiences rather than chapters in an epic binge-watch, but even by those standards, Avengers: Age of Ultron feels like a solid but overstuffed episode, one more concerned with being connective tissue than anything else.

There’s a goofy spree of a movie buried deep within Sausage Party, but it’s missing both the spree and the goofs. This comedy needed to be a lot smarter if it wanted to succeed at being this stupid.

Come for the city-flattening; stay for the political satire.

The Founder never steps up to become the biting satire of American capitalism it so begs to be. The film is not here to praise Ray Kroc, but neither is it here to bury him.

Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny spin intrigues, break hearts and flirt with scandal just as effectively in the 1790s setting of “Love” as they did in “Disco,” which took place in the early 1980s.

While the digital effects are undeniably contemporary, Crimson Peak is otherwise a period homage that mostly plays like a period film, rarely giving in to contemporary notions of pacing and payoff. When the scares do arrive, however, they’re effectively unsettling.

Director Tom Hooper shakes things up a bit with The Danish Girl, proving that he’s capable of making a movie that’s both steeped in awards-season prestige and in possession of a pulse.

Fast and funny, filled with memorable characters, and able to balance slapstick and violence without spilling too far in either direction, this frenetic R-rated farce is that rare comic gem that lands on all the spaces without ever going to jail.

Somehow, through the alchemy of acting and makeup and lighting and costuming, all traces of Zellweger are erased, and only Judy remains.

Wonka stands as an effective reimagining of a beloved literary and cinematic character — so long as you don’t mind a little extra sweetness.

Blanchett, as you’d imagine, is riveting, even when she’s saddled with the movie’s on-the-nose dialogue, not to mention a handful of fairly contrived domestic scenes.

Storks continually surprises with characters who are more complicated than we might expect in a kid’s animated movie, and a refusal to hit every single pre-programmed plot beat.

It’s a film that hits some narrative bumps along the way without diminishing its tougher observations about race, the police, and the treatment of veterans.

It’s a collective simmer of sight, sound, sweat, and sensation about fascinating, complex people pushed through their paces on and off the court.

Shadow in the Cloud has that boisterous B-movie energy, and it’s a reminder that narrative shamelessness is permissible, even welcome, in the hands of an assured storyteller.

For all its craft, though, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes never finds the “aha” moment that justifies returning to the well for reasons more pressing than branding and global markets.

If you can separate the art from the artist — as most of us do at some point, or there’d be almost no movies or plays or novels or music or paintings left to enjoy — it’s a stone-cold gas.

Deadpool is one of those movies that’s all the more successful for how easily it could have gone so very wrong. It’s suffused with an arch, self-aware wit...yet it takes its romance and revenge storylines just seriously enough to keep us engaged.

While the adventure is suitably wild and the sidekicks are at least visually appealing, Elio never quite clicks in the way that viewers have come to expect from the people behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Nemo.

As with “Summer Hours,” Non-Fiction traffics in ideas and concerns without handing out leaflets; first and foremost, this is an empathetic and charming character piece, featuring top-notch actors (Binoche revels in a rare opportunity to be funny) enjoying richly clever dialogue.

Does Deadpool 2 pick up its predecessor’s baton and run off to new and exciting places? Not really. Is it as tasty as leftovers on the second day? Absolutely. Temper your expectations accordingly.

This is a film with an agenda in mind, granted, but it’s too witty and too heartfelt to be dismissed as a mere public service announcement. Audiences may get a message out of this message movie, but they’ll also get a movie.

There’s probably no real reason for Mary Poppins Returns to exist at all, but now that it’s here, it does at least find some moments of delight even as it travels a familiar path.

He makes his way to the big screen with silliness (and a love of tennis balls) intact, but Dog Man deserves a frenetic pace to match its barrage of absurd jokes and plot twists.

This Finale is basically one giant victory lap that takes the Crawley family and their employees into 1930 and beyond — as Cole Porter once wrote, “it’s fun/it’s fresh/it’s post-/depresh.”

Search for SquarePants comes down vigorously on the side of exuberance.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is for the fans, all right, but in that expression’s worst way.

For as prolific a filmmaker as Ozon continues to be, his occasional misses are far outweighed by his offbeat and insightful forays, particularly in the realm of sexuality — the best parts and the crazy-making parts. For audiences equally interested in his insights about loss and about love, there’s plenty to ponder in Summer of ’85.

As did King before him, Wilson revels in whimsy without drowning in it, and he finds the franchise’s sweet spot of cleverness, poignancy, elaborate physical comedy, witty wordplay, goofy musicality, and just the right amount of sentiment.

This sequel might lack the delightful jolts of its predecessor, but it nonetheless maintains a slow boil of terror that’s consistently unnerving.

The entertaining and occasionally over-the-top The Housemaid returns Feig to A Simple Favor territory, serving up aspirational, glossy wealth-porn with one hand and the dark underbelly of the glamorous life with the other.

For most crime capers, shooting is funny but killing isn’t; the always-divisive Aronofsky obliterates the line between comedy and realism, and the result is a farce that’s both literally and figuratively explosive

This is a film that dares to be about something while still delivering as a piece of straightforward entertainment.

On a gutbucket genre-film level, Alien Covenant delivers when it delivers. As with so many of its monster-movie peers, however, there’s just not much to it when the creature isn’t preening for its close-up.

This time around, writer-director Tim Hill steps in, and he’s managed to take the goofy denizens of Bikini Bottom on a road trip that is visually dazzling and almost consistently hilarious, mixing verbal and physical humor, as well as some perfectly chosen cameos, both in-person and among the voice cast.

Take Me to the River isn’t a horror movie, but then it’s not not a horror movie, either. It’s a slowly tightening vise, all about suspicion and hostility and resentments and what people aren’t talking about when they talk to each other. A stunning debut feature from writer-director Matt Sobel, Take Me to the River is Polanski, with cicadas.

It proves that this mechanized world and its inhabitants are better suited to cartoon form than the headache-inducing Michael Bay movies, but it’s ultimately another piece of elaborate fan service that will bore the uninitiated.

It’s far more successful with holiday magic than it is with character-based comedy, but that’s not enough of a flaw to keep young audiences (and their parents) from potentially turning this feature into a cherished annual tradition.

It’s entirely possible that Benny Safdie was out to craft a different kind of underdog sports movie, one where the audience isn’t manipulated into raising a triumphant fist at the end. But surely the writer-director-editor hoped for more than a disinterested shrug.

There’s a lot to like about the world of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, from the mid-century kitsch to the progressive social ethos to its generally upbeat demeanor, but the movie itself lacks the nerve to carve out a memorable personality. Bespoke costumes and vintage Lucky Charms boxes are the empty props of a timid movie.

Last Breath was made by someone who clearly connects with this material, but somewhere between the non-fiction and fiction versions, the emotional impact has been rendered unfathomable.

The slime and the shadows and the silences are back. Horror DNA is honored rather than pointlessly duplicated. This time, at least, IP familiarity breeds contentment.

There’s a lot to like here, from a rich palette of autumn colors to a potentially provocative subplot that will teach children that nations need to acknowledge and atone for their historical sins, but in the final tally, this is a sequel that exists not because there was more story to be told but because there was more money to be made.

Along with an ending that some will find either enigmatic or unsatisfying, the movie could benefit from some minor re-editing. But there’s still much that works here, from the chillingly droning score to a uniformly strong cast.