Jesse Hassenger

Despite a few nasty bits of violence, Cat’s Eye almost plays like an intro to King for younger viewers ready for some shocks but not yet prepared for full-on nightmares.

In pure plot mechanics and interpersonal dynamics, Splitsville resembles any number of Woody Allen movies, double-hinged on the capriciousness and endurance of love.

Kandhari’s film emerges as an off-kilter treatise on identity, and what cultural, social, and physiological elements can shape it, even well into adulthood.

As with the first film, the look of 28 Years Later is key to its effectiveness.

Wilde’s film gets a lot of comic mileage from its lead actors’ ability to create a funny, believable relationship. Feldstein and Dever are both terrific in it.

Fincher’s movie about movies seems to be about attempting to work within a system that’s encompassing enough to impose itself on fantasies and reality alike.

It’s a movie that sometimes feels obsessed with music, and sometimes feels like an old man flipping back to his preferred, familiar playlist.

But even for a highly satisfied 30-year fan of Mission: Impossible as a Hollywood institution, this adventure is a little exhausting, and leaves Cruise looking ready to move on to the next world, even if he refuses to admit as much on screen. He’s a great actor and peerless movie star. Maybe it’s time to find another mask to put back on.

Alpha is more of a horror-inflected drama than an outright genre piece, which allowed plenty of critics to fixate, not unfairly, on its failings as an AIDS metaphor. Yet the movie has resonance beyond simply recalling the years of its creator’s youth.

Zootopia 2 feels like it came out as the filmmakers intended, even if they set their own expectations at medium instead of high.

A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up.

The movie is both a daring and empathetic deconstruction of Monroe iconography anchored by a beautiful performance from de Armas, as well as a miserabilist wallow in exploitation. Like its fictionalized subject, the lines between the two are sad, blurry and spellbinding.

Cop-supremacy pulp may be hard to revive with a straight face; the laugh-a-minute spoof, though, is momentarily and gloriously back.

Hamaguchi’s film – and the performance style of Omika, a Hamaguchi crew member moving into acting here – is too controlled to produce an anguished tragedy out of this material, but it’s too unsparing to offer an easy exit.

The many great scenes in Janet Planet underscore the frustrations of its few bad ones: Even an emotionally tumultuous childhood can be a lot more absorbing than the indulgences of the adult world.

Kline’s movie works best when it blurs the lines between the people of a nerdy subculture and the style of their obsessions.

Happy Death Day 2U pulls off a trick that isn’t especially easy for original movies, let alone direct sequels: it makes all the laborious world-building and storytelling effort feel like fun.

Like a lot of memes, Ralph Breaks The Internet appears proud both of its clear place within a system and its ability to stand outside and poke fun at that system.

Efron imbues his handsome-dope routine with such nuance that Teddy is not only funny but also touching in his sincere desire for brotherhood, in short supply postgraduation. What could have been simplistic self-parody becomes a genuinely, almost confusingly terrific performance.

What makes The Princess so surprisingly fun is its commitment to a hooky premise.

If The Lego Movie was a delightful tribute to the multifaceted experiences of playing with Legos, this movie is like one of the licensed sets that inspired it: Less essential, more market-driven, and still irresistible for certain kids, fans, and nerds.

This is an uncharacteristically unsubtle work from Lee — yet in the end, it’s not ineffective.

While there’s plenty of familiarity in Pixar’s small-scale animated romp Hoppers, there’s also a smart, unruly variation at its center.

Some jokes may dissipate quickly, but its unusual warmth lingers in the air like a friendly ghost.

The lack of dialogue makes Shaun The Sheep easy for younger children all over the world to understand, and the film is undeniably intended for that demographic.

American Made has such style and energy that its hasty patchwork of a narrative becomes a kind of charm unto itself, even when it means losing track of talented actors.

While The Man From U.N.C.L.E. probably isn’t any less of a caricature of its period than "Sherlock Holmes," it carries its fakeness with more snap in its step. The imaginary intrigue it generates is fleeting, but often beautiful.

Here Scafaria makes nice use of her widescreen frame, and cuts the movie together crisply—a lot of the jokes actually come from the cuts, and the way they punctuate the often pitch-perfect dialogue.