Kate Erbland

Life Itself thinks you’re stupid. Or, if not stupid, unable to understand how a movie should work. It’s a movie made for people who can’t be trusted to understand any storytelling unless it’s not just spoon-fed but ladled on, piled high, and explained via montage and voiceover.

The heart of this story remains firmly intact, but there’s something about seeing it rendered in live-action that takes away its inherent magic.

It’s funny and strange and sometimes truly dark. Not all of it works or even coheres, but it also offers a fresh look at what love does to people, both on the big screen and out in the world.

An essential entry in the cinematic canon of Spider-Man, complete with new villains, new questions, and new heartaches.

Kitted out with colorful and creative scenes that aim to depict Chagall’s dreamy, expressionist work within the film’s framework, Chagall-Malevich shoots high, though it often comes crashing down to Earth.

It’s all an approximation of fun, mirth in tiny portions, amusement of the thinnest variety.

Attempts to ride the film through its own uncomfortable wavelength do offer some treats, even if they all come with caveats.

The creativity may be lacking in other areas, but “Goosebumps 2” steps up the creature feature quotient with style and smarts.

A delightful mash-up of everything ’80s, from E.T. to Madonna, Princess Diana to Roxy Music, the Jackson family to Ronald Reagan, this anachronistic retelling is faithful to Coolidge’s original film, but with its own flashy new touches.

The scariest thing about The Devil Made Me Do It is the possibility that it will set the stage for more of this, and less of what made the franchise so compelling in the first place.

It seems that this particular game of Pokémon needed more time at the gym. Yes, that’s a “Pokémon Go” reference, and if you can’t follow it, don’t bother.

It’s not exceedingly original, it is well-made and a solid entry into the subgenre.

More sad than salacious, it’s the rare film about a criminal that offers human details without humanizing a man who so many agree was a monster.

And, yes, it is also often quite funny. Most of that humor comes care of Sandler, who slips back into Happy with something like grizzled ease, and seems to have not lost a trick on what makes the character both so funny (his rage, his imagination, his fashion sense) and so easy to care about (his rage, his imagination, his fashion sense).

As “The Cow” sinks deeper into increasingly limp twists, turns, and choices, Ryder keeps hold of Kath, offering the film’s most genuine surprise: a real, lived-in, fully fleshed out performance. No one else can match her, but who could even try?

Mostly, G20 has two major points in its favor, right out of the gate: a super-fun premise for an action film (what if money-mad mercenaries seized the 20 most powerful leaders of the world and demanded some really insane shit?) and a star both so good and so classy that it never feels as if she’s punching below her weight class.

Sewell’s book has always been a better fit for piecemeal storytelling — the book itself is divided up by Beauty’s owners — and while Avis’ script does keep the relationship between Beauty and Jo at its center, that lends an uneven treatment to many of Beauty’s later adventures.

It adds up to a fascinating, if often baffling first effort from Johannson and Kamen, one not afraid of big emotional wallops, but not always able to carry them into truly revelatory spaces. It’s a little predictable, a little bizarre, a little funny, and very sad, but it’s also an ambitious swing at what movies can still be.

As impressive as the final showdown is (it’s easily one of the most impressive setpieces in this fledgling franchise) and as shocking as the film’s closing revelations are (yes, they really are), this magic needs a spell of its own.

Set aside the contrivances and creepy plot twists, and Michael Suscy’s Every Day offers up a timely message about acceptance and the nature of love that’s especially welcome at the moment. Unfortunately, the movie falls short of doing justice to that idea.

Despicable Me 4 already feels like six episodes of just such a show, crammed into a single unwieldy, disconnected, and oddly episodic outing.

Who are these people? Why should we care about them? Not only does this inauspicious debut struggles to answer those basic questions, it never finds a believable way to ask them.

The devil isn’t just on the screen, it’s in the details, and Latif’s film can’t pull those together.

It’s a lot for one film, and Project Power never revs up enough gusto to power through its biggest, best ideas and deliver on their promise. Perhaps the (inevitable) sequel can pack more juice.

The third act is crammed with twists and revelations that ultimately seem forced, and can only offer truncated reconciliations. And yet there’s something to be said for the pleasure of watching Sasha, still a bit silly and definitely in need of more life experience, succeed on her own terms and in her very own movie.

Despite its flaws, Umma is an impressive debut for Shim, the kind of outing that hints at plenty more under the hood or tucked inside a massive suitcase, just bursting with secrets.

There are weeds here, thorny stuff to slash through, but when A Little Chaos stays on course, there’s plenty of beautiful work to admire.

For every scene of dazzling wonder, there’s another of outsized horror; for every big cat who looks ready to jump off the screen, there’s a wolf that appears bizarrely unfinished. There is little middle ground.