Part psychological thriller, part moody thought piece, part romance, “All of Us Strangers” feels like a feature-length update of a classic “Twilight Zone” episode, and we mean that as a high compliment.

Unfortunately, “He Went That Way” never finds a steady tone, veers off into some bizarre subplots and features two surprisingly underwhelming performances from the talented lead duo.

This is a film in which characters make questionable and sometimes troubling choices right up until the final scene, and yet we understand why they do the things they do, and we root fiercely for things to work between them.

Levy now takes his quadruple-threat skill set to feature-length film by directing, writing, producing and starring in the warm and lovely albeit formulaic weeper “Good Grief,” which is not the story of the adult Charlie Brown (rats!) but the tale of a man who turns to his best friends for solace in his time of great need.

It’s a blazingly vibrant, emotionally resonant and exhilarating movie musical that does justice to Alice Walker’s iconic 1982 novel and the subsequent stage and movie versions while forging new creative paths and standing on its own as a bold and original work.

It’s not that “The Boys in the Boat” doesn’t have an inspirational impact; it’s that we’re so aware of being pushed in that direction.

A depressingly uninspired superhero adventure sequel that leans heavily on plot points and battle sequences we’ve seen in at least a dozen other films in the genre — and almost always done better.

It leans HARD into the romantic comedy tropes, to the point that you might find yourself giving into the silliness and the over-the-top embracing of so many clichés. It’s like you’re getting bombarded with rom-com snowballs for the entire movie.

Unless this is a parody of “Star Wars,” it looks like we’re in for a long and ponderous, CGI-dominated slog filled with stock characters, slow-mo battle sequences and interminable flashbacks designed to give clarity to a murky and convoluted story. Spoiler alert: It’s not a parody. We should be so lucky.

Ferrari never quite achieves the greatness of previous Mann movies such as “Thief” and “Heat,” but it’s a solid and extremely well-filmed slice of one legendary life.

All four of the actors playing the brothers are standouts, with Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White leading the way with some of the finest work of their respective careers. “The Iron Claw” isn’t an easy watch, but it’s one of the best films of the year.

In writer-director Cord Jefferson’s timely and sharp and subversively funny “American Fiction,” Wright is accorded the relatively rare opportunity to take the lead, and he delivers a richly layered performance that reminds us he’s one of the best actors of his generation. It’s a joy to watch.

The Family Plan exists in a world that defies all logic and reality. Granted, this is an over-the-top comedy, and yes, there are a few dark laughs, but this is basically a live-action cartoon with a deadly premise.

There’s always room for wholly original and unique stories, as evidenced by the one-two summer punch of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” In that latter category, we can now add Yorgos Lanthimos’ beautifully garish, wonderfully twisted, unabashedly raunchy and at times grotesquely striking Poor Things, and while it might sound clichéd to say you’ve never seen anything like it, trust me: You’ve never seen anything like it.

Despite the best efforts of the talented director/co-writer Paul King (who gifted us with the “Paddington” movies) and the wonderful ensemble cast, Wonka is like one of those enticing-looking chocolates with a smooth and silky and delicious coating — but inside, you taste dry coconut instead of caramel or a cherry, what a bummer!

Director Tedesco employs some clever animation to capture certain moments, and also delivers a bounty of memorable moments when various musicians play a familiar drumbeat or guitar riff or piano intro in present day, e.g., Russ Kunkel playing brushes to hit the tom fills on “Fire and Rain.”

Caan is notably frail in appearance, but he gives a forceful, funny, warm and strong performance in one last tough-guy role. Brosnan is a graceful and generous screen partner. Seeing these two veterans effortlessly nailing their scenes is the best thing about this movie.

The only reason I’m not giving Eileen a higher rating is because there are a couple of cheap and manipulative jump scare moments that only serve to take us out of the story and feel frustrated. Other than those hiccups, this is a first-rate period piece thriller with hauntingly memorable performances.

While this period-piece, existential fantasy adventure doesn’t rank with the absolute finest entries in Miyazaki’s iconic canon, it’s still one of the most inventive and creative films, animated or otherwise, of the year.

Over the course of a brisk 86 minutes, the filmmakers do a stellar job of providing context and explaining just how the special came to be.

Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is as much a work of art as the monolithic concert production itself. The documentary-concert film brings into detailed view the blood, sweat and tears that went into creating the pop star’s most enigmatic tour to date and, in the process, reveals that even Queen Bey can sometimes grapple with the duties of wearing the crown 27 years into her career.

For the 77-year-old Woo, who has influenced generations of directors with films such as “The Killer,” “Bullet in the Head” and “Face/Off,” this is his first American film since 2003’s “Paycheck,” and it is hardcore evidence Woo regains his signature style and his flair for over-the-top, sometimes poetically brutal action.

Candy Cane Lane is harmless but teeters on the brink of being quite terrible.

Maestro is sure to garner multiple Oscar nominations, and deservedly so.

Leave the World Behind is a bold and tricky endeavor that pays off in just about perfect fashion. You might never think of “Friends” in the same way again.

Writer-director Fennell, who won an Oscar for her screenplay of her film “Promising Young Woman” (2020), once again proves to be a cinematic provocateur capable of creating memorable shock-value moments, though at times the candy-colored, exquisitely staged yet often brutally ugly histrionics are more about the fireworks than substance.

Yes, this film is unapologetically corny and unabashedly self-congratulatory, and while it pales in comparison to many of the classic animated films referenced throughout, the little ones should find it entertaining enough and the parents should be at least mildly amused as well as grateful for a zippy 95-minute running time.

As you’d expect, Ridley Scott’s sweeping, decades-spanning and magnificently filmed epic Napoleon is a stylized and violent interpretation of the life and times of one of the most famous and infamous military commanders and political leaders history has ever known — but it’s also a surprisingly funny indictment of a sniveling brute of a man who is utterly unaware of his shortcomings, so to speak.

This is a shoddy-looking, superficial and cliché-embracing effort that misses the mark at every turn.

With Samy Burch’s razor-sharp script providing some fantastically flourishing dialogue passages, frequent Haynes collaborator Julianne Moore delivering the latest in a long line of magnificently calibrated and memorable performances, and Moore’s fellow Oscar winner Natalie Portman turning in equally layered work, this is an intricately crafted study of people who are experts at putting on facades and all too skilled in the art of deception.

A visually underwhelming saga that tests (and fails) our patience with a whopping 2-hour-and-37-minute running time — and even with all that storytelling room, engages in some whiplash changes of character in the final act that make little sense and feel forced and contrived, as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they had to draw a connection between this story and subsequent events the audience already knows about.

Writer-director-editor Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario has one of the most ingenious setups of any movie of the 2020s and, even more remarkably, delivers on that premise for at least three-quarters of the story, before it falls just short of greatness in a final sequence of events that feels just slightly, slightly underwhelming.

With Brooks’ close friend Rob Reiner serving as director and interviewer, the HBO documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life serves as a wonderful Greatest Hits retrospective of Brooks’ invaluable contributions to the entertainment world, as well as a brief but insightful look at Brooks’ upbringing, which provides some therapist couch-worthy insights into his motivations and his particular brand of comedy.

The callbacks to “Taxi Driver” and, on a lesser level, “Fight Club” are many in South African writer-director John Trengrove’s well-shot but heavy-handed and depressingly obvious Manodrome, a blunt indictment of toxic masculinity that strikes mere glancing blows and packs a relatively soft punch.

As you’d expect, It’s a Wonderful Knife is filled with blood-spattered twists on holiday movie tropes. Unfortunately, there are few surprises and only a handful of genuine scares, and the film suffers from subpar lighting and occasionally clunky editing. It’s a “Knife” in need of some sharpening.

The Marvels has a kind of 1990s B-movie vibe throughout and is neither as funny nor as engaging and warm as it tries to be, despite the best efforts of the talented director Nia DaCosta (2021’s “Candyman”) and a trio of gifted and enormously likable leads in Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani.

For those of us who fell in love with “Rocky” and have stuck with him, it’s pure documentary gold when Sly recalls how the film was shaped.

More often than not, the dialogue turns into quotable speechifying and the overwrought score pounds the points home in decidedly unsubtle fashion, but thanks to the performances of an outstanding ensemble led by Colman Domingo’s electric and moving work in the title role, this is a valuable portrait of a man who hasn’t exactly been forgotten to history but is hardly a household name. (He should be.)

Spaeny, with the aid of Coppola’s finely honed script and the first-tier makeup and wardrobe teams, does a marvelous job of capturing Priscilla’s transition from a ninth-grader who finds herself starring in her own fairy tale to a 28-year-old mother who knew her marriage was over long before it was finally over.

This might have worked as a short film or a 30-minute TV episode, but as a feature film, it grows increasingly cloying as the minutes tick on.

Although at times overly talky, The Holdovers on balance is a charming and smart comedy/drama that is set in 1970 and actually looks like it was made in 1970, from the scratchy opening titles through the grainy-looking visuals, which were achieved through a combination of old school lenses and digital post-production magic. Hal Ashby (“Harold and Maude,” “The Last Detail”) would have been proud.

David Fincher’s The Killer is a meticulously crafted and masterfully rendered film about a meticulous and masterful assassin, and with Michael Fassbender in the lead role, you just couldn’t have a better triangle of material, director and actor.

Butcher’s Crossing is a tightly spun, well-acted, beautifully shot and unforgiving slice of Old West madness.

Directed by David Yates, who has spent most of the last two decades helming “Harry Potter” movies and prequels and might not be the best fit for this material, Pain Hustlers aims to be a fast-paced, raucous, blunt and slick work a la “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Big Short,” but winds up caught between the worlds of breezy satire and hard-hitting expose.

Given the unapologetic, sharp-edged tone of Burr’s comedy, it’s surprising that as director, co-writer and star of this vehicle, he played it so safe.

With Bening giving an all-in, nomination-worthy performance and Foster providing invaluable supporting work, Nyad is an effectively inspirational biopic.

Martin Scorsese’s true-crime American period piece Killers of the Flower Moon is a big, sweeping, glorious, heartbreaking, insightful, powerful and unforgettable epic that serves notice the 80-year-old Scorsese remains at the forefront of innovative and provocative filmmaking.

Now comes Foe, which is set primarily in the year 2065 and envisions a dystopian world in which the delicate and dangerous balance between humans and sentient AI creations is the basis for a pretentious and empty cautionary tales with some interesting ideas — but it’s mostly a pile of hokey claptrap.

On the surface, The Burial is about a contract dispute between a white small business owner and a white billionaire. Soon, though, it becomes about much more than that, and the result is a thoroughly entertaining, old-fashioned yet timely courtroom thriller.

It’s a mix that doesn’t always work, and at times the 1980s period-piece jokes are almost too easy, but the dialogue is snappy, the horror scenes are effectively staged, and the cast is terrific.

Nearly 50 years after William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” elevated the horror genre to Oscar-level greatness and produced chills and thrills that resonate with us to this day, the direct sequel The Exorcist: Believer is a tasteless, tacky, uninspired and just plain lousy knockoff that upchucks pea soup-colored porridge all over the legacy of the original, from the crummy-looking and tedious exorcism sequence to the murky cinematography, to the return of an iconic character who is given an absolutely awful and borderline offensive storyline.

Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick turn in layered, nuanced performances, while the male actors playing varying degrees of scumbag are suitably and effectively nauseating and intimidating. The Royal Hotel is a little like the Hotel California in that you can check out any time you’d like, but on some level, you can never really leave.

This is dicey material for a screwball comedy, even one with dark undertones, and despite the best efforts of the ensemble, She Came to Me drifts further and further away from anything approaching reality or relatability. Nearly every major character in this film is exhausting to be around and/or thinly drawn.

While Friedkin will always be heralded primarily for the towering twin achievements of “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” this is a more than respectable farewell.

[Del Toro] carries this sometimes convoluted and derivative thriller into three-star territory with an absolutely mesmerizing and authentic performance that conjures up memories of past anti-hero greats such as Bogart and Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Sterling Hayden. It’s authentic, grounded, stunning work.

The dry, drab and disappointing would-be crime thriller Heist 88 is a prime example of a movie that has all the right ingredients on the table but fails to create an appetizing entrée at nearly every turn. It’s a film that initially intrigues but quickly loses its way — and ends so abruptly it almost feels like everyone lost interest and decided it was time to go home.

Gareth Edwards’ ambitious and visually striking AI parable “The Creator” is a mashup of familiar elements from so many science fiction and war movies that we’re tempted to say it actually could have been written by AI. But I’m not sure artificial intelligence is capable of creating such a shamelessly schmaltzy, cornball script that at times makes Michael Bay’s films feel subtle by comparison.

The final few scenes of The Kill Room stretch the satiric premise to the breaking point, but by then we’re content to go along with the ride and enjoy the dark humor and the fine work of the entire cast, led by Jackson and Thurman in twin knockout performances.

This is a lurid, cynical, nasty, rough piece of work, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Whether you’re a diehard baseball fan (and, in particular, a White Sox fan) who recognizes everything from the aforementioned Andy the Clown to the welcome appearance of slugger Lamar Johnson to the references to the Bard’s Room to a poignant interview with Darryl Strawberry or just a casual baseball observer, The Saint of Second Chances has a universal appeal in its core story.

The movie plays out like a thrift-store version of Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” in that it takes us through the looking glass into a world so complex and nebulous, even the major players sometimes seem utterly befuddled — but does so as if we’re taking a thrill ride in a Financial Theme Park.

With Branagh also providing stylish direction (he’s also not above indulging in jump-scares), screenwriter Michael Green fleshing out and making some major changes to a relatively lesser work by Agatha Christie (titled “Hallowe’en Party”) and a terrific international cast who embrace the inspired, over-the-top lunacy of the story, this is an instantly involving murder mystery with a semi-crazy ending that really works — if we don’t think too hard about it. After all, this is a whodunit wrapped inside a ghost story.

This is not an easy watch, but there are also moments of deep emotion and genuine inspiration in the documentary.

Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk veer close to “Godfather” territory with an extended sequence that cuts between a somber religious ceremony and extreme carnage, but this is not Important Cinema — it’s well-filmed, well-acted, high-class B-movie pulp, and we get a neat little twist to wrap it all up at the end.

Not every joke lands, but with a brisk running time of 1 hour and 32 minutes, director/co-writer Seligman displays a keen sense of timing and a real awareness of how to make a point with edgy wit and then move on to the next target as we’re still admiring her willingness to go there, and there, and also there.

A disappointing and murky mess of a film that feels like an uncompleted project and leaves the viewer frustrated, despite the gritty visuals and a game lead performance by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank.

Alas, Gran Turismo ultimately feels like a tribute to marketing campaigns and brand ambassadorships more than “Rocky” on the racetrack.

Though specific in its humor and humanity, this is a film that also has a universal quality. Anyone who’s ever had a falling-out with a best friend can relate to the heartache felt by Stacy and Lydia when things go sideways — and will be rooting for these two wonderful young women to find their way back to one another. Theirs is a friendship worth saving.

We’re halfway through the movie when the villain’s identity becomes painfully obvious. Spoiler alert: We’re not wrong. The dialogue is often so painful, it’s almost entertaining on some level.

BS High directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe do a splendid job of alternating between present-day interviews with Johnson as well as a number of former Bishop Sycamore players, who will break your heart as they talk about the realization the dream Johnson was selling to them was almost all illusion.

This is a bold and unique slice of storytelling that serves up some genuine scares and bone-chilling fright moments while pointing a finger at a culture that alternately glorifies, worships and sexualizes young women and revels in stereotyping them and tearing them down.

With Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx as the lead pups, Strays delivers a handful of solid chuckles and a few laugh-out-loud moments — but it’s a premise that turns out to be awfully thin for a feature-length film.

Writer-director Defa has delivered a small and quietly compelling low-key gem filled with offbeat characters who are perfectly normal — which means they’re kind of odd.

While it’s great to see a Latino hero from the DC Universe get center stage in the form of Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle, and the dynamic among the loving and fiercely protective extended Reyes family is the highlight of the film, this is a mostly by-the-numbers origin story with underwhelming VFX, a disappointingly cartoonish villain and a final battle sequence and epilogue that follow the pattern of a dozen or more previous superhero origin stories.

Based on the novel of the same name by M.T. Anderson, the third effort from the talented Finley (“Thoroughbreds,” “Bad Education”) features some impressively staged sequences and terrific performances, but awkwardly straddles the fence between biting social commentary and dark humor, never quite finding its footing and ending on a curiously flat note.

Directed with action-movie aplomb by Tom Harper (“The Aeronauts,” “Peaky Blinders”) and featuring great-looking visuals from settings including London; Lisbon, Portugal; South Tyrol, Italy; Morocco, and Reykjavik, Iceland, “Heart of Stone” is clearly intended to jump-start an action franchise for Gadot, and it’s off to a promising start.

Despite its attempts to be racy and of-the-moment and to earn that R rating, Red, White & Blue comes across as contrived and, at its foundation, quite formulaic. Not even the cake gives a convincing performance.

The film leaves no doubt Ted Hall was a brilliant man, and that he and Joan had a beautiful marriage. His legacy beyond that remains a subject of intense debate.

This is a true story, and it’s now getting the feature film treatment in Bill Pohlad’s warm and elegiac and lovely Dreamin’ Wild, with Casey Affleck doing his disheveled-restless-socially awkward thing in a searingly strong performance as the brilliantly talented Donnie, and the versatile Walton Goggins making the most of an opportunity to play a genuinely nice regular guy in Joe, who always knew he was at best the Ringo to Donnie’s John.

The Beanie Bubble is a frequently funny and breezy reminder of the pure insanity of the craze surrounding plush toys with names such as Patti the Platypus and Peanut the Elephant and Iggy Iguana, with an nearly unrecognizable Zach Galifianakis capturing Warner’s childlike curiosity, admirable drive and disturbingly narcissistic and sometimes emotionally bruising persona.

An energetic, sprawling, sometimes aimless but ultimately entertaining old-fashioned blend of comedy and horror that’s overflowing with Easter Eggs and insider winks to the theme ride attraction, and benefits greatly from an ensemble cast that works overtime to make sure we enjoy ourselves.

Like that damn disembodied hand, Talk to Me will keep you in its grips throughout.

Born of a years-long collaboration by Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman (which included a proof-of-concept short film), with all four writing the screenplay and Gordon and Lieberman co-directing, Theater Camp is an affectionate and winning yet sometimes bittersweet satire created by a talented quartet who clearly know the territory quite well.

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical biopic Oppenheimer is a gorgeously photographed, brilliantly acted, masterfully edited and thoroughly engrossing epic that instantly takes its place among the finest films of this decade — an old-fashioned yet cutting-edge work that should resonate with film scholars and popcorn-toting mainstream movie lovers for years and decades to come.

Thanks to the creative efforts of director Gerwig (who co-wrote the screenplay with her partner Noah Baumbach), the absolutely pitch-perfect casting starting with the gorgeous and talented humans Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and a candy-colored, screen-popping production design that transports us to Barbieland and beyond, this is a truly original work — one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year.

This is a film that has much to say about the systematic oppression of marginalized and exploited classes, and the powers that be who will go to extreme measures to make sure the more things change, the more things stay the same. Also, it’s funny as hell.

The Miracle Club contains few surprises, but that’s kind of the point of these kinds of movies, yes? We’re here for the comfort-viewing and the location scenery and the hand-me-a-tissue moments and the sublime performances.

The cloak-and-dagger stuff with the appropriately named Grace is reminiscent of a mid-20th century Cold War film. Director McQuarrie and his team are experts at staging these types of sequences.

As much as I’ve enjoyed Adam DeVine’s work, he’s played variations on this same guy for nearly two decades now (he’s 39) and the man-child act is getting tiresome.

These neat little notes are dropped like so many breadcrumbs along the trail and offer some clever hints about the larger storyline, but that brings us to where Biosphere falls short: The Big Picture it is painting remains a bit too fuzzy and frustratingly ambiguous to the end.

Catherine Hardwicke’s sharply drawn, slow-simmer domestic drama Prisoner’s Daughter has the cool vibe of an indie film from a generation ago, from the lived-in look of the Vegas sets to the authentic performances of the terrific cast.

I avoid saying a comedy is “laugh out loud hilarious” unless that’s literally true, but I laughed out loud at least a half-dozen times at the edgy antics of Joy Ride — and I was genuinely moved by the warmhearted scenes depicting the complicated bonds of friendship and family.

There’s no overreaching attempt to paint the band as anything more than they were, no roster of professors and music experts and somber social commentators weighing in.

We’re left with the feeling that while Rock Hudson enjoyed an often-spectacular career and a rich and full and glamorous life, the real Roy Fitzgerald was never able to truly emerge from the shadows. The world wouldn’t allow it.

Dial of Destiny has a few clever ideas and some well-crafted action sequences, but the main plot line is creaky, corny and contrived, and the final action twist lands the story in such disastrous, B-movie territory that not even Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones can rescue it from collapsing in a dusty heap of mediocrity.

It’s a great-looking ride with a few legitimate jump-scares and some suitably chilling imagery, but the finale leaves us frustrated and let down, wondering: Is that all there is?

With Surrounded, Mandler solidifies his standing as a talented and versatile filmmaker, with Letitia Wright and Jamie Bell burning up the screen as two wounded and fiercely independent adversaries who both realize they’re in this thing together, and the outcome is most likely going to be a bloody mess.

In the hands of director and Stevenson High School grad Gene Stupnitsky (“Good Boys”), who co-wrote the screenplay with John Phillips, this is a hit-and-miss romp with just enough wit and heart to carry the day over the utterly predictable plot and the occasional bit of physical comedy that misses the mark.