Firth and Macfadyen (hey, they’ve both played Mr. Darcy!) are terrific together as two men who really don’t like each other, don’t trust each other and have different ways of trying to connect with Jean.

With the deadpan-great Benedict Cumberbatch effortlessly sliding back into the role of the brilliant and immensely powerful but sometimes shortsighted and narcissistic Doctor Stephen Strange and a bizarro plot that serves up philosophical, ethical and spiritual mind games in between the sometimes repetitive but slick and exhilarating action sequences, this is one of the weirder Marvel movies yet.

Neeson never phones in his performances, but he’s particularly invested this time around, playing a guy who can be a pure killing machine one moment, and as lost as a child the next. Pearce and Bellucci headline the terrific supporting cast, and the 78-year-old Campbell proves he can still direct the hell out of a slick and engrossing thriller.

We believe every frame of this performance, whether Harry is an emaciated figure in the ring in the concentration camp, a formidable opponent as a pro fighter in America or an older man who seems to have found some measure of peace in his life, though the horrific memories will never die.

This is a great-looking film with terrific performances, some lovely messaging and a steady parade of solid laughs—some the kids will enjoy and just as many targeted squarely at the grown-up kids in the audience.

The Northman is often insanely over the top and there are moments when it feels as if Eggers could maybe ease his foot off the pyrotechnic pedals, but still, this is one of the most strikingly original and brutally effective movies of the year so far.

It’s worth the journey due to the sheer star power of Cage’s performance, his willingness to commit to this Funhouse Mirror silliness, and a half-dozen moments that are comedic gold and yet somehow absurdly touching.

The third of the five planned prequels is a relatively lightweight but still consistently entertaining and magical journey that rights the ship after the utter convoluted disaster titled “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (2018) and feels more connected to the larger HPU (Harry Potter Universe).

Father Stu breaks no new ground in the biopic game, but it’s a solid and worthy tribute to the real-life Father Stu, who continued to do the Lord’s work until his death in 2014 at the age of 50.

The dialogue in As They Made Us rings authentic and the performances are universally strong, but there’s a dour air to the proceedings, and we wind up thinking Abigail would have been better off if she, too, had left home the moment it was possible and had never looked back.

Based on the novel of the same name by Olen Steinhauer and directed with style and skill by the Danish filmmaker Janus Metz, All the Old Knives feels like a small-scale version of a John Le Carré adaptation, with the obligatory Spy Movie Score as perfect accompaniment to the tension-building sequences in the restaurant and the cloak-and-dagger stuff in Vienna.

Jake Gyllenhaal is an A-lister for a reason, but he gives a one-note, screaming performance here and is less than convincing as an unhinged psychopath who seems to have a death wish.

The Bubble is ultimately a mediocre movie about the making of an even worse movie.

The great Jared Harris does what he can with an underwritten role.

At times almost too unbearably intense to watch but ultimately rewarding and with an uplifting twist, “Infinite Storm” is based on the amazing, true-life story of one Pam Bales, who in 2010 set out on an excursion to the top of Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeastern United States, which is famous for its unpredictable weather and exhilarating but dangerous paths.

The Lost City breezes along in predictable fashion, touching all the familiar bases of this genre, as the scowling Abigail and his helpless henchmen pursue Loretta and Alan, and oh, there’s a volcano that’s about to erupt. If only Loretta and Alan could have unearthed a more interesting story, we might have had something.

From the opening graphic with its classic 1950s noir static shot, the sometimes appropriately overwrought music from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans and impeccable production design, “Windfall” quickly settles in as a sometimes tense, often comically absurd and always engrossing game of verbal chess, as the Intruder realizes he has been captured by a security camera and ups his game, demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Husband so he can disappear and start a new life.

It’s a new twist on the period-piece slasher movie, smart and strange and fantastically depraved. I kinda loved it.

The disappointingly flat and decidedly un-erotic non-thriller Deep Water is the kind of movie that has you thinking about other movies as you tap your toes impatiently, waiting for this great-looking but dumb and bloody mess to swirl around the drain and disappear.

With echoes of “Back to the Future,” “The Terminator” and even a little of “Heaven Can Wait,” this is a consistently entertaining comedy-actioner with a lot of heart — and the perfect ending. Fine work, Adam(s).

There’s no denying the talents of director Domee Shi (Oscar winner for the 2018 animated short “Bao”) and the infectious, energetic performances of the voice cast, particularly Rosalie Chiang as Meilin. The problems are mostly with the script, which often requires Meilin to be almost irritatingly obnoxious.

This is a movie that raises questions that get to the heart of the matter in more ways than one, challenges our perceptions of what it means to be human — and has a wonderfully strange vibe while doing so. It’s unsettling, in the best possible way.

This is an urban-based Batman saga, and though the citizens of Gotham City have yet to fully appreciate it, they are lucky to have him patrolling their streets, their sewers and their skyline.

Desperate Hour is well-intentioned, and there are flashes of genuine dramatic tension, thanks to Watts’ performance. Mostly, though, it feels contrived and heavy-handed, with nothing really new to say about this well-traveled subject matter.

This is a stupid, silly, freewheeling mix of music, comedy and blood that kills.

For all its predictability and averageness, Texas Chainsaw Massacre does have two fantastically executed shock scenes.

For all its academic precision and fact-based reportage, “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” is at its most effective when we hear from the parents, the grown children, the widows, who had to receive the worst news anyone could ever imagine. This is when “Downfall” reminds us of the real costs of those two terrible tragedies.

Choppy at times and indulging in familiar dog-movie scenarios on a steady basis, “Dog” isn’t going to enter any annual conversations about the best canine films of all time, but Lulu is basically a good girl and Briggs is basically a good guy, and we’re glad they were given the high-concept road trip adventure they deserve.

Watching this movie is like having a particularly unsatisfying Wordle session. You start off in promising fashion but in a few quick moves, nothing is in the right place.

Although “The Cursed” milks its relatively thin storyline a bit too long and engages in some heavy-handed (albeit valid) social commentary about 19th century colonialism perhaps one too many times, this is an effectively creepy and often bone-crunching horror gem with some striking visuals and a first-rate cast.

This particular “Blacklight” is pure, overblown, cliché-riddled fiction.

Beyond the product placement, Marry Me is a high-concept “elevator pitch” movie that is set in present day but feels like a relic of the mid-1990s.

Kimi is filled with the kind of sparkling cameos and supporting work we’ve come to expect from a Soderbergh cast — but always and throughout, this is Zoë Kravitz’s vehicle, and she delivers a smart, empathetic and badass performance in this nifty gem about a woman who has to step outside in more ways than one.

As for the murder mystery, some of the supporting players barely get enough screen time or enough of a backstory to be considered serious suspects, but even when “Death on the Nile” skirts the edge of camp, the fastidious and melancholy Poirot is always there to guide us through the rough spots and solve the case in the nick of time.

Moonfall is the kind of film that doesn’t take itself seriously and yet really doesn’t have a sense of humor about the ludicrous nature of its very existence.

Sure, these guys now have a budget to work with and they can pull off some elaborate stunts, but we’ve seen so much viral, backyard Jackassery through the years, the shock value has dissipated and all that remains is the cringe factor and a growing feeling of restlessness as the gags become repetitive and tiresome.

It’s a memorably stark and authentic work that is at times so gut-wrenching it’s almost unbearable — but Park deftly weaves in moments of warmth and humor and hope as well. This is a special film.

There might indeed be a fine movie lurking within the pages of that original source material, but “The King’s Daughter” is not that movie.

Director and co-writer Clint Bentley’s sun-dappled, beautifully photographed, rough-and-tumble backstretch drama “Jockey” gets the rollercoaster life and often tough times of the jockey and the horse racing world just right.

It was probably the right time to say goodbye to “Ray Donovan,” as the series had begun spinning its wheels in recent seasons, after the action moved from California to the East Coast, but with this movie, Ray gets the send-off he deserves.

Thanks to the razor-sharp screenplay by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick and the stylish and Wes Craven-influenced direction by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and the ease with which Campbell, Cox and Arquette return to their roles, the new “Scream” stabs and jabs at our memories of the original and creates some bloody fresh twists of its own.

At some point during the watching, "Sansho the Bailiff" stops being a fable or a narrative and starts being a lament, and by that time it is happening to us as few films do.

The entire movie comes across as if the screenwriters had gathered the scripts for dozens of similar films in the genre, dropped them into some sort of software blender — and whipped up one big bland smoothie of a story.

A Hero runs a bit long at 127 minutes and is at times frustratingly ambiguous, but Farhadi has delivered another insightful slice of life and Amir Jadidi turns in a remarkably intriguing performance as the never quite heroic Rahim.

Somehow, the great Almodóvar has managed to weave together these tales of recent birth and long-ago deaths in a way that is unnerving and yet authentic, strange yet relatable.

It’s one of the most visually striking and leanest versions of “the Scottish play” ever put on film, with blockbuster performances from Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington as Lady and Lord Macbeth, and a brilliant supporting cast.

American Underdog is a fitting family album for the Warners and solid, safe entertainment for the viewer.

With first-rate production values and a gloriously memory-drenched 35mm cinematography, Licorice Pizza is a visual feast brimming with razor-sharp dialogue, hilarious comedic vignettes, brilliant performances from Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim as well as the veteran, star-studded supporting cast, and some genuine heart. This is one of the very best movies of 2021.

The Tender Bar is unabashedly sentimental — it’s one of those movies about writers told from the point of view of the writer that romanticizes everything about writing — but Clooney’s sure-handed direction and pitch-perfect attention to the 1970s and 1980s period-piece material, combined with the warm and relatable performances, make for classic comfort-movie formula.

Matrix Resurrections is a great-looking film and Reeves and Moss remind us of what an iconic team they made in the trilogy, but the themes of finding one’s identity, free will, taking leaps of faith in order to serve the greater good, humans against machines — we already hashed all that out back in the day, and ultimately this feels more like a warmed-over tribute to the past than a bold and fresh new chapter.

Careening wildly from the black comedy tone of the aforementioned sequences to deadly serious World War I battle scenes, from somber spy thriller to broad comedy, The King’s Man has little of the wickedly outrageous and subversive style of the original film as it flies this way and that and never sticks the landing.

Thanks to the brilliant, nuanced work by the great Mahershala Ali, our heart goes out to both Camerons.

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter is a chilling and unnerving psychological horror film brimming with dicey characters who are capable of deeply disturbing behavior. We keep holding our breath because it feels like something awful is about to happen — and our instincts might not be wrong.

Red Rocket is the latest blazingly original gem from director/co-writer Sean Baker, who in films such as Tangerine and The Florida Project has displayed an uncanny ability to carve out offbeat slices of life in the American subculture.

Filled with juicy performances and unforgettable visuals, Nightmare Alley is one of the best films of the year.

There’s nothing new or particularly memorable about the serviceable CGI and practical effects, but we remain invested in the outcome in large part because Holland remains the best of the cinematic Spider-Men, while Zendaya lends heart and smarts and warmth to every moment she’s onscreen.

There’s life, there’s TV — and there are movies about TV, and though Being the Ricardos is a work of drama, it has the essence of truth.

The ruling on the field is this is an incomplete pass.

Told in solid, straightforward, traditional documentary style and relying heavily on voice-over interviews from unspecified time periods, old TV clips, behind-the-scenes footage and period-piece still photos, Mr. Saturday Night tracks the Australian-born Stigwood’s trailblazing career in its entirety — but a great deal of focus is on the fascinating tale of how Saturday Night Fever came to be.

From Streep and DiCaprio and Lawrence through the supporting players, Don’t Look Up is filled with greatly talented actors really and truly selling this material — but the volume remains at 11 throughout the story when some changes in tone here and there might have more effectively carried the day.

Soaring. Exhilarating. Magical. Heartbreaking. Unforgettable.

Writer-director Nathalie Biancheri treats this potentially sensational material with sensitivity and empathy, though Wolf sometimes careens in the direction of a pure horror film and introduces some late elements that border on the grotesque and seem superfluous to the main story. Still, this is an involving and dark fairy tale, with great performances from MacKay and Depp.

This is a sentimental, utterly predictable and thoroughly charming confection from Jack C. Newell (head of TV, film & digital for Second City), featuring a myriad of gifted local actors delivering warm and witty performances against the backdrop of wintry locales that look like the inside of a snow globe.

Writer-director Griffin deftly toggles between social/political commentary and the deadpan comedy/horror at hand, as this mostly British group does the stiff-upper-lip, carry-on thing for as long as a possible before things start to unravel in raw and brutal fashion because after all, this is the end.

The fantastically nostalgic, consistently funny, mischief-laden and genuinely touching 8-Bit Christmas (now on HBO Max) reminds me of A Christmas Story — with a touch of the storytelling device employed in A Princess Bride.

Sandra Bullock has starred in only seven films in the last decade, and along with Gravity in 2013, her two most intriguing roles by far have been courtesy of the streaming giant Netflix: first with the smash hit horror film Bird Box (2018) and now with The Unforgivable, which has prestige credentials, a brilliant, A-list cast and a few moments of near-greatness, but is ultimately a disappointing and frustrating viewing experience due mostly to script and editing problems.

As you’d expect from this cast, the performances are uniformly excellent, with the standout being Jayne Houdyshell, the only holdover from the Broadway production, who reprises her Tony-winning role and is mesmerizing as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary capacity to get through the night, the week, the year, the life, she’s been given.

With crisp and assured direction from Byron Howard and Jared Bush (with lead screenwriter Charise Castro Smith co-directing), a bounty of catchy new songs by the ubiquitous treasure that is one Lin-Manuel Miranda and fantastic voice work from the ensemble cast, Encanto is a magical and warmhearted journey with lovely messaging about the importance of family, some genuinely funny set pieces and those stunning visuals that fill every corner of the screen.

Adam Driver (who has now played a French squire and an Italian fashion heir in consecutive Ridley Scott movies) and Lady Gaga have legit chemistry together, and it’s still a kick to see Al Pacino roaring like a lion in winter. But Hayek and Irons are playing cardboard-thin characters, Leto flounders about as if he’s in a movie all his own, and “House of Gucci” feels coldly calculating when it should have been flush and warm with scandalous sensationalism.

Some 15 years after Will Smith gave one of his most authentic and enduring performances playing the real-life homeless salesman Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness, he delivers nomination-worthy work as another type of real-life salesman in King Richard.

When it’s time to answer the question of Who ya gonna call, Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes across as a well-intentioned and sincere but unfortunate misdial.

It’s the MMA version of Million Dollar Baby meets Rocky in Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, a well-acted and occasionally involving but overly long, cliché-stuffed sports film that hits all the usual notes and piles on the subplot drama to the point where we’re nearly exhausted by the viewing experience.

With Campion’s native New Zealand standing in magnificently for early 20th century Big Sky Country, The Power of the Dog is a study in contrasts between the almost surreal beauty of the mountains and the sky and the vast land, and the nasty, petty and often unspeakably harsh manner in which people will treat one another — even their own kin.

Much of The Souvenir: Part II is about the collaborative process of creating a movie, and how filmmakers can use their art to tell their stories — not as the stories happened, but how they wished or imagined they could have happened.

Belfast is deserving of double-digit Oscar nominations, from the picture itself to Branagh’s directing and writing to the editing and cinematography to any number of the performances, with Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench near locks in the supporting categories. This is the best movie I’ve seen so far in 2021.

Thanks in large part to Munn’s elegant, authentic, grounded and moving performance, we’re rooting hard for Violet to find some inner peace.

Problem is, there’s no movie inside this movie. It’s a breezy and intermittently entertaining and super slick work, but it’s filled with so many overly familiar notes and well-worn cliches, and there are so many winking nods to the viewer, it feels as if we’re about two rewrites away from this thing being a flat-out spoof on the level of Airplane! or Hot Shots! or Scary Movie.

Finch ends exactly as we expect it to end — but what should be an emotional and profound conclusion feels manufactured. You don’t have to be a super-smart robot named Jeff to know when you’re being manipulated.

With the jazzy score by Jonny Greenwood setting the tone for the cacophony of sounds in Diana’s inner world, Spencer is an exquisitely designed, beautifully photographed and at times hauntingly surreal story, set primarily on the estate where Diana was born.

It’s a shame Eternals devolves into such a run-of-the-mill superhero movie, given it features some groundbreaking and/or relatively unusual elements, including a deaf character, an openly gay character and an actual lovemaking scene between two otherworldly entities (although it’s tamer than what you’d see in a 1950s romance).

It’s a crazy kaleidoscope of bright colors, dark corners, David Lynch-style set pieces and shock moments designed to keep you up at night — and it features a quintet of memorable performances from two of the best young actors around and three iconic Brits.

Thanks to Schweighöfer’s stylish, Italian Job-influenced directing, a sense of its own ridiculous nature and some fabulous performances by the charming and good-looking supporting cast, Army of Thieves is the very definition of an entertaining Netflix confection.

Writer-director Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Hostiles) is an enormously gifted storyteller who infuses nearly every moment of this movie with a sense of despair and hopelessness, as some genuinely goodhearted but in most cases deeply damaged souls struggle mightily to battle a mythical, flesh-eating creature from the deep woods while also dealing with real-world trauma that’s equally frightening.

This is a very personal project for Rebecca Hall, whose grandfather was Black but passed for white, and she has delivered an exquisitely crafted gem.

Even with all the shootouts and robberies and action sequences, this is also a wonderful showcase for screen-stealing acting, with virtually everyone in the all-star cast getting some center stage moments and knocking it out of the park. This is one of those movies where we sense the cast had just as much fun making it as we have watching it.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain grows bleaker as Wain’s fortunes plummet and his grasp on reality weakens by the year, but it remains a loving and respectful portrait of a man who created irresistibly adorable kitschy cats more a century before their spiritual descendants were racking up the views on YouTube.

The French Dispatch is filled with a sense of wistful longing, delivered from the perspectives of creative and observant strangers in a wonderfully strange land.

Perhaps some viewpoints WILL be changed by watching this documentary, which carries no distinct political slant and employs an old-fashioned “fly on the wall” technique, thus allowing the footage and the comments from participants on both sides to speak for itself.

The jaw-dropping visuals and pulse-pounding sound editing in Dennis Villeneuve’s stunningly gorgeous Dune are so awesome it makes up for the slow-moving and quite familiar storyline, which is basically the New Testament meets Mad Max meets Star Wars.

Mass feels like a staged play brought to the cinema, with unobtrusive camerawork that gives us the feeling of eavesdropping on this intense and emotional and hopefully cathartic gathering.

Michael Dorman (virtually unrecognizable and about 40 pounds lighter than when he played Gordo Stevens in the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind) channels James-Dean-meets-Stephen-Dorff in a mesmerizingly good performance as Jesse, a charming bounder who has a good heart and some talent as a singer-songwriter but is always getting in his own way and stepping in some serious, um, stuff.

It’s almost as if Halloween Kills is an inconsistent, sloppy mess.

Nothing about The Last Duel is subtle. Just about everything about The Last Duel is brutally effective.

One imagines his vast fan base will find this to be an immensely satisfying viewing experience.

The ensemble is uniformly excellent, but this is Tim Blake Nelson’s showcase from the moment he appears onscreen, and he delivers world-weary greatness every step of the way.

South of Heaven devolves into a rote thriller, with henchmen upon henchmen upon henchmen falling by the wayside until the inevitable showdown — which plays out in underwhelming fashion.

Still, this is a breathtakingly gorgeous, sometimes thrilling, well-acted and suitably profound sendoff to Daniel Craig in all his ice-blue-eyed, tightly wound, gritty gravitas —a Bond who seemed much more of this world than, say Roger Moore’s 007, a Bond who bled when he was cut and bruised when he was beaten, a Bond who grieved deeply for those he lost, a Bond who will be a very, very tough act to follow.

The flat and uninspired Addams Family 2 is the wrong kind of “twofer,” in that it’s often too dark and grotesque and bizarre for children, but also profoundly unfunny when it tries to appeal to the grown-ups.