But it’s Atwell who steps up the most. Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” her motives are fluid, which makes her more fun.

The Lesson is a quiet little film with surprisingly sharp teeth.

It’s heartbreaking at times, but it’s also uplifting — the three subjects are fierce advocates and activists, and Cohen’s empathetic storytelling makes it a personal journey. It’s also often entertaining, because the three are so expressive and engaging.

For all its issues, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is a good excuse to get out of the house with the family and take the kids to see something fun. And that’s what this movie is: fun. Even if I was bored and unmoved, the target audience will have a great time.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is ultimately an OK entry in a legendary franchise. It’s fun enough, but why bother?

Lawrence delivers a performance that’s long overdue. She finally gets an opportunity to show off her comedic chops and her biting humor and executes it with years of dramatic acting in her bag. She is brash yet warm, making this character extremely believable.

It unfolds in ways both comic and affecting.

On the surface, the story might feel rote. But Pixar’s crew has returned to what it does best: Exposing the deepest feelings of the heart under the guise of everyday emotions. Ember and Wade’s relationship is both "Romeo and Juliet," but also the story of many immigrant families.

Not every bit lands and the social commentary is not always exactly incisive. Sometimes it is, though. When a character says they should call the police and everyone breaks out into simultaneous guffaws, the point is made — fittingly, with laughter.

Emotionally engaging from the start, bolstered by brilliant performances and held together by Song’s understated direction that weaves timelines together flawlessly, it’s more than just good.

Logic devolves, cameos abound — there are two that are truly inspired, one of which involves legendary recasting — and lessons are learned.

On the whole, Flamin’ Hot plays like a feel-good family flick. Nothing is too heavy, and some parts feel a bit overdone, but it’s fun for the most part.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is a horror movie, no doubt. It’s also an intelligent one, with the courage to challenge its audience, to make it see the horrors not just in the monster, but in the societal inequities that ultimately created him. Thankfully, Story isn’t afraid to rework a classic.

The movie is emotional without feeling manipulative. It’s progressive without feeling heavy handed. It’s dazzling without feeling like it was made completely on a computer, despite literally being made on a computer! Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is exhilarating, touching, creative and a shoo-in for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards again this year.

What the movie needs is a more coherent story. While keeping an audience off-kilter and disoriented is a worthy goal, particularly in a horror film, it’s got to add up to something. In this case it’s more like meandering.

About My Father isn’t horrible. It’s not great. It just sort of exists as a passion project for Maniscalco, an OK gig for most of the rest of the cast and another curious line on De Niro’s resume.

The Little Mermaid delivers on every front and will likely be one of the summer’s biggest box-office winners.

It’s not a warts-and-all treatment because, at least in this telling, there are no warts. It’s more about securing Berra among a new generation of fans as one of the greatest players who ever lived. And on that front, it more than succeeds.

Fans of the “Fast and Furious” franchise are sure to enjoy the latest model.

In many ways BlackBerry is the standard-fare cautionary tale of tech start-ups. Insert your Icarus metaphors here. But there is a kind of sweetness to the film that makes it more compelling than the typical rise, crash and burn movie.

All of this is interesting, in varying degrees. But watching and listening to Fox talk is magnetic.

It’s not a disaster, and it doesn’t lack for ambition. But it’s wildly uneven and kind of blah, if that can be said of a movie with nonstop, often incoherent action, self-aware needle drops and not nearly enough smart-aleck quips from a cast we’ve seen deliver plenty of them in the past.

Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret is a delightful film, just lovely.

The violence is gory enough to make the audience squirm, and just cartoonish enough to give it permission to laugh. Like the “John Wick” movies, it’s really one brutal set piece after another, though the choreography is not as poetic here.

Aster, who also directed the excellent “Hereditary” and the somewhat less excellent “Midsommar,” has the audience where he wants it — off-kilter, uncomfortable, bewildered. It’s his comfort zone, but not ours. Whether you enjoy this kind of manipulation will go a long way toward deciding how much you like the film.

Of its many brilliant aspects, the film does illuminate the numbing grind of real life when you’re trying to make art.

Using the horror genre to tell a faith-based story is an interesting idea, even if it doesn’t really work in the end. And then Beck shows up, and that’s the scariest thing of all.

The actors are having fun here and, for a while, so will the audience. But the payoff just isn’t there. It’s not-a-stake-through-the-heart disappointment, but the only eternal life Renfield will enjoy is in late-night channel surfing.