Matt Singer

Sure, yes, technically speaking Zootopia 2 is intended for your children. This is a colorful, energetic, and extremely busy animated film about talking animals. But while these critters’ adventures keep the kids occupied, a lot of the movie’s humor, tucked into its corners and backgrounds of the frame, is aimed squarely at their parents and guardians, at least those who love a groan-inducing play on words.

While most of 2022’s holiday toys are destined to be dumped in storage bins or even the garbage in a matter of weeks, I have feeling M3GAN is going to stick around a lot longer than that.

Beneath the (sometimes hysterically funny) gags, is a surprisingly thoughtful examination of the same issues that bubble through Joel and Ethan Coen’s more serious pictures; the folly of man, the nature of faith, and the terror of trying to figure out what path through life is the correct one to take.

It manages to capture not only the adventure of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, but also the sense of camaraderie the game engenders, because it is typically played by groups of close friends meeting regularly for months or even years to a complete a campaign.

The stuff about this couple in decline is lacerating and painful in the best and most hilarious ways possible. The stuff about the solstice is standard horror fare made unfurled, with exceptional craft, at a snail’s pace. And the longer Midsommar goes, the further it gets from the pain and the loss that fueled its emotional core, until it has lost touch with the things that made it special.

The bad news is the studio’s most innovative visuals are wedded to one of its most formulaic origin stories. In some scenes, Doctor Strange is Marvel’s most exciting movie yet. In others, it might be its most boring movie since Iron Man 2.

After that thrilling opening act, The Suicide Squad settles down into a more conventional (if still satisfying) superhero adventure. The story flags a little, and some tricky editing in the final act designed to keep up the energy just makes the climax more confusing. Still, the opening is a blast — and the whole thing looks like a Fellini movie compared to Suicide Squad.

Geostorm is so punishingly bad it makes Independence Day: Resurgence look like Last Year at Marienbad. (Or at least its less well-known sequel, Last Year at Marienbad: Resurgence.)

It’s powered by a truly harrowing performance from Moss, and with the exception of one plot thread it probably telegraphs a little too obviously, is cleverly constructed for maximum dread — and maximum audience identification with Cecilia and her precarious grip on sanity.

I wound up walking out of The Batman with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. The more I thought about it, though, the more I appreciated Reeves’ ambitions and his willingness to do something that wasn’t just more of the same old Batman. He really did make you see the character in a new way. Even the stuff in the shadows.

Combine some of the Italian master’s whimsy with even more of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, along with plenty of Pixar’s now-standard bittersweet lessons about growing up and you get Luca, an affectionate portrait of friendship that never quite rises to the level of the beloved animation studio’s best efforts. Maybe it’s just a little too simple, both in construction and stakes.

But that’s Spider-Man in a nutshell. He’s the guy who perpetually breaks stuff, then has to patch it all back together. (Good thing he’s got those webs.) No Way Home, with its use of the old characters from previous Spider-Man movies, really gets that idea. Power and responsibility are important. Seeing something through after you mess it up? That’s the mark of a genuine hero.

Ralph 2 does offer the action, racing, and goofy pop cultures jokes expected of this kind of Disney animated feature. It’s just that along the way it also has a very heartfelt theme about the complexities of longterm friendship, and a timely message about what happens when seemingly strong men begin to feel weak and threatened.

With little drama or humor, it mostly amounts to watching a guy complain about his fairly decent life for 100 minutes.

Onward’s ups and downs suggest these probably are less magical times at Pixar. But that doesn’t mean with enough hard work or concentration — or maybe just following your gut — that the magic can’t come back, if only for a little while.

This is not just a cheap rehash of the story beats of an earlier film. It is not a legacyquel that trots out a few beloved old characters to bestow their blessing on a new generation. It takes the core elements of this concept and reconfigures them into something new.

The film works effectively on its own terms as a new variation on a timeless subgenre, and as a warning to people who share their lives freely online.

Fans occasionally refer to Shazam as “The Big Red Cheese” and this movie is very faithful to the spirit of that nickname. It’s warm and sentimental about blended families, and it sincerely believes in the importance of being a hero and doing the right thing. It’s got plenty of goofy kid-gets-to-play-superhero-for-real humor. And other than some friction between Levi and Asher’s performances, it all works.

Prisoners is too nuanced to dismiss, but too silly to take seriously.

Essentially, Memory is too superficial a treatment of the chestburster sequence to validate making half of a movie about it, and it’s also too lengthy an exploration of it to give the other elements of the movie their proper due.

I believe Mangold directed the Dylan movie he wanted to, and in some ways A Complete Unknown is interesting precisely because it is a willfully withholding portrait of an enigmatic star. Then again, it's hard to make a completely satisfying movie about a subject that its director seems to believe cannot be understood.

Black’s general atmosphere of resigned melancholy fits perfectly with The Nice Guys and its portrait of sleazy 1970s Los Angeles, the ideal setting for a filmmaker interested in faded dreams and broken dreamers.

This is the sort of film that is more frustrating than bad. Vigalondo had something really special here. He just didn’t quite pull it off.

Despite its own lineage, Devil Wears Prada 2 still manages to be a surprisingly clear-eyed portrayal of the fight to make things of genuine value in a world dominated by corporate greed.

Patel’s desire to make something more than a straightforward action film is admirable, especially since he had to juggle responsibilities in front of and behind the camera simultaneously to do so. Monkey Man suggests he’s got potential as a filmmaker in the future. In the present, his directorial debut is the sort of genre exercise that makes you realize creating a “straightforward” action movie is not so straightforward.

It’s about as unassuming as a movie about a man who can grow 65 feet tall could be, and in its relatively subdued scale, it is fairly refreshing and fun.

Weird won’t make anyone forget Walk Hard, but it might make some folks go and break out their old Weird Al records for the first time in a while. I recommend Dare to Be Stupid.

The atypical stuff in The Old Guard all comes from director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who brings a level of thoughtfulness and nuance to material that’s usually just an excuse for onscreen bloodshed.