Clint Gage

All of my issues with the first half of the movie aside, Toy Story 5 manages to pull off an adventurous and resonant conclusion. With a handful of new characters adding some fresh batteries to the mix, and sidelining the right legacy characters at the right time, the fifth installment of Pixar’s main event finds another good way to wrap up. At least until the inevitable Toy Story 6…

Even if I don’t agree with the answers Disclosure Day provides to its more interesting questions, it’s a movie I’m still thinking about long after I left the theater.

While Nicholas Galitzine and Idris Elba provide the thematic structure to the film, Jared Leto’s Skeletor gives a delightfully weird and cartoonish energy to every scene he’s in. It’s a film that appreciates the source material, silly names and all, and proves the best way to add to a 50-year-old franchise that’s about toys as much as anything else is to not take it too seriously.

David Lowery’s latest is a visually fascinating chamber piece with great performances from Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ditches an engaging story in favor of a pipe-bursting amount of Easter eggs, but that’s not an all-together bad thing.

Crime 101 has everything a heist thriller ought to have… but not much else.

There’s a wit and humor at play in The Bone Temple that elevates, in all the right ways, the dramatic stakes of a zombie apocalypse working on its third decade, especially in Ralph Fiennes’ record collection.

The look of the sequel builds off the vibrant world of the original, and while thematically the movie may bite off more than it can chew, Zootopia 2, like its bunny-cop hero, shares a contagious hope that things can always change.

A gorgeously crafted tale of time travel, Arco fills two sci-fi futures with hope like if Miyazaki had made Interstellar.

Dan Trachtenberg is heading in an interesting direction with this franchise and he gets bonus points for that. The Predator as a mysterious murder monster is getting some of his backstory filled in, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Badlands, in shifting the perspective to a Yautja main character, actually highlights what’s been great about this franchise in its better moments. Dek and Thia are an unexpectedly fun pairing that bring a new energy to the franchise and an altogether different kind of hunt. It might not be pulling the skull and spine out of us and screaming in bloody victory, but it gets close.

Tron: Ares somehow forgets where it came from and relentlessly revisits the original, only making the latest version of the Grid paler by comparison.

If the film doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts, it’s important to note that most of those parts are still pretty great.

While it picks up threads from the original, like the mysterious curse of their dying drummers or stage props misbehaving, nothing gets anywhere close to the original.

These First Steps might not be the great strides I was hoping for, but they are sure footing for the Fantastic Four to officially leap into the MCU.

There’s a disappointing amount of “same old thing” to Jurassic World Rebirth. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and the rest of the cast are intriguing and sympathetic throughout, but Gareth Edwards doesn’t quite recapture his signature flair for grand-scale visuals nor does David Koepp find the magic of his original Jurassic Park screenplay, opting to follow that movie’s structure as more of a remix than a rebirth.

It's a faithful devotee to the sports-movie formula that’s kept from greatness by a few too many unnecessary components and a finish line that maybe should’ve been closer than two and a half hours away. But in spite of that, it’s still a hell of a ride.

It’s a spinoff that knows why the John Wick series has been so successful, and both effectively follows the rules while adding to the ever expanding world. While it takes a good portion of its screentime to find confident footing, when the second half gets moving, the energy is undeniable as Ballerina becomes one funny, bloody and creative fight scene after another. I’m hoping for an encore.

While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what’s made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn’t actually final.

Thunderbolts* is the most solid the sacred timeline has felt in a little while, providing an adventure befitting its overlooked title characters. While it very capably dabbles in a darker tone – touching on the mental health of heroes and villains alike – the filmmakers struggle to balance that dabbling with a snappy, comedic energy. While the movie as a whole left me feeling like it was a downer on the balance, it’s at least the good kind of downer, filled with characters I’m looking forward to seeing again.

A bizarre tale about a family of sasquatch is an emotional masterpiece of experimental cinema and fart jokes.

Captain Marvel directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's (sometimes very) fun anthology/love letter to Oakland, California doesn’t add enough of its own unique spirit to quite live up to its influences.