Mike Ryan

Late Night is going to wind up being one of the best comedies of 2019.

What’s kind of impressive here is Fair Game does have a lot to say about gender dynamics in a “boy’s club” work environment, but it doesn’t get bogged down in that to the point we are watching a lecture. Like I said in the first sentence, this is a very entertaining movie.

Bumblebee is a total delight.

What makes Lisa D’Apolito’s Love, Gilda special is that D’Apolito has a secret weapon: Gilda Radner herself.

The Lion King is a monumental achievement of technological advancement. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

By the end of A Quiet Place Part II my stomach literally hurt. There’s no way I could have done another 20 minutes because it is too intense. That’s one of the best compliments I can give it.

After you see The Fabelmans you realize this man will never stop making movies. It truly is his life. And, here, he is inviting us in to see how and why that all happened.

So what we have here is a coked-out bear on a murder spree and, honestly, it’s literally everything I would want from a movie called Cocaine Bear.

It really is joke after joke after joke, most delivered wonderfully by Eichner. And they sure landed in front of this big audience, but I do wonder how all that will play in a more subdued environment.

James Gunn bets big that you love each and every one of these Guardians. It’s a movie about friendship and the love these characters have for each other and risking everything to help the people you love. Without that bond to these characters, this movie doesn’t work. It’s still a funny movie with some cool action scenes and a lot of nonsense going on, all glued together by this really powerful emotional core.

After Shazam! ended I said out loud, “What a fun time at the movies.” You know, isn’t that all we need sometimes? A reason to leave the house and also not regret leaving the house? That is a tough combination to pull off...It’s just one of those movies that feels like a communal event. In the end, it’s about family. It’s just a nice movie to watch with other human beings.

It’s a movie that feels like hope as actual hope stares us smack in the face. We are almost there. In the Heights didn’t ask for this responsibility, but it will forever be remembered as the right movie for the right time. It’s the kind of movie that will make you want to dance in the streets. And after this year we’ve all had, we all deserve to have our moment dancing in the street.

The best thing about this documentary is that every singe member of The Go-Go’s is in “no fucks” mode. They are all at an age where they are going to be open and honest about what happened and not sugarcoat the details.

The Sisters Brothers is a much more introspective movie than it leads on to be, but isn’t that surprising when you factor in that it’s directed by Jacques Audiard, making his first film in English.

There’s a sense of personality and life in the Turtles in Mutant Mayhem that the other movies just seem to try and force.

If you do open yourself up, there’s something wonderful to find in this movie. You won’t watch A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and learn more about Fred Rogers, but you will learn more about yourself. And it might not be easy, but, again, as Mister Rogers would say, “and that’s okay.”

We basically just get our orders and go. But I get the sense this is Mendes’ point. His goal is to put us in World War I for two hours. And, no, it’s not a pleasant experience. But what the movie is trying to do absolutely works. 1917 wants to take us to hell and back, and, in that, it succeeds.

Honestly, it’s kind of remarkable what Marvel let Raimi get away with, but all that doesn’t really kick in until maybe an hour into the movie, and it becomes a much better movie once that happens.

The Batman isn’t revolutionary. It doesn’t upend the superhero movie dynamic. Heck, people used to the recent superhero movies getting more cosmic and playing around with alternate timelines might not even like this more back to basics approach. But I, for one, found it refreshing. A nice little breather amidst the chaos. And proof that a good story with good characters can go quite a long way.

It’s the giving season, so, sure, give us some fan service. But the story is still there (though the second act does start to feel a bit long) and I felt some actual emotion, even with all this chaos swirling around. And in the end Spider-Man: No Way Home somehow finds a way to keep it all together.

Look, I’m not a scientist, but, again, chances are, during this movie, you will just run out of adrenaline. Your body will say, “sorry, tapped out, you’re on your own.” So my advice is you might want to pre-schedule in some time for a nap right after. Please make more movies with real stunts. Please make more movies like Ambulance.

Both McGregor and Hawke seem to be having a nice time with each other. Part road trip movie, part “watch these two knuckleheads do wacky things because of their anger and grief,” they contemplate each other well, to the point I hope they make more movies together.

A lot of Mission: Impossible movies have a lot of exposition and can be complicated. Brian de Palma’s first movie (still my personal favorite, with Fallout a close second) is pretty complicated! But a terrific finale can cure all of that. And Dead Reckoning Part One has a really great sequence on a train to close the movie out.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is a two-hour mental break when a lot of people could need a mental break. If this sounds like I’m being condescending to this movie at all, I promise you I am not. I mean this as a huge compliment. It’s so lighthearted and everyone in the movie is so darn pleasant and they all seem to like each other, it kind of feels like the most fictitious Marvel movie to date.

A down and dirty Predator movie that rivals the first movie as a simple film about a Predator on a hunt.

Love and Thunder doesn’t feel as tight as Ragnarok, but it’s still so much fun it doesn’t feel like a lot.

The Suicide Squad is the polar opposite of the movie that came before. Just the fact it’s, again, “competent,” and also “entertaining,” alone put it in direct opposition to its predecessor.

That’s the thing about Borat 2, it’s not shocking anymore. Because it certainly should be. There’s certainly a lot of hilarious things that happen . . . . But over the last 14 years, things have drastically changed enough where “shocking” is no longer a relevant emotion to these movies.