In a career full of continuous surprises, The Boy and Heron’s biggest surprise might be just how magical and unique his work still feels after all these years.

It is full of so much joy, and so much heart, celebrating family, culture, and love, while also emphasizing that even the most ancient of civilizations aren't completely trapped in the past, especially if the new generation has anything to say about it.

Glazer’s latest fits within his distinct style, breaking down a genre and working with the skeleton that’s left over in order to get at the heart of what makes these stories so jarring.

With its tight script, well-balanced characters, and bone-chilling scares, The Nun II is the first Conjuring spinoff operating at the same caliber as the franchise's core films, proving that this universe is far from played out.

Even as Butterfield continues to try to bring something resembling gravitas towards the end of the film, it all just peters out. No matter how many quick cuts and bursts of sound it throws at you, everything it goes for falls flat on its back.

The cruelty at the core of this vivacious vampiric farce is blended up with sharp yet silly gallows humor, ensuring the grim absurdities Larraín gracefully teases out increasingly take flight even as he continually drags us into gruesome and gory depths.

The pacing is brisk without once overstaying its welcome, it has an ultra-charismatic lead, plus boasts all the violence, chaos, and melodrama one could want out of this particular movie.

The cast is sufficiently fun and the remote location a proper backdrop for the offbeat story to play out. It just never brings all its pieces together, revealing that the greatest paranormal force haunting the entire affair is the ghost of a better film.

While the film is rich in meticulous details from its crushing central performance to the delicate way it is all captured, any writing about it requires withholding to preserve the experience.

For all the classic horror stories it gestures at, Killer Book Club never is able to tell a memorable one of its own. No matter how many empty escalations and confrontations with the killer it makes its way through, the real clown show is the film itself.

While its predecessor proved to be a goofy and satisfying watch, the sequel is never able to fully recapture the charm. You're much better off rewatching the first film.

It is a delightfully bizarre film that is always unexpected while being perfectly balanced by the two lead performances of Edebiri and Sennott.

As a complete portrait of youth on the cusp of the rest of their lives, it never manages to be authentically sharp enough to transcend the more tiresome narrative trappings it falls into and a grating over reliance on musical cues as punchlines.

It is mostly a drag with some potentially sharper small details never coming together to outweigh the dullness at its core. For those who may come to the film wanting to understand more of who Golda was and her role in history via a well-written character study, they’ll only end up departing it with all of those questions still lingering.

For a film about a supposedly historic and harrowing journey to the moon, it never manages to charter any new territory of its own.

Even as the film pulls out all the stops, the character work remains subtle in a way that gets under your skin. The magnificent performances of Reyes and Ireland align perfectly, peeling back the humanity their two characters had only tenuously been clinging to.

Playing out almost like a spoof of various genres with both macabre horror and mumblecore misdirects, it's an odd film that's often as lost as the charming characters themselves before settling into a strange groove that starts to cast a spell of its own.

Strays aims to be as raunchy and dirty as a talking dog movie can get, taking full advantage of its premise, although never really going anywhere beyond that. Not all the jokes land perfectly, but those that do illicit some of the biggest and best laughs you'll have at the theater all summer.

Blue Beetle brings a breath of fresh air to DC with its focus on smaller stakes and family dynamics, standing out just enough from other superhero films.

The film's central thesis, that everyone needs somewhere to belong, seems simple on paper. However, it winds up being much more nuanced in practice.

All the clear love the film has for the references it is throwing out is never molded into anything memorable of its own.

Despite using genre conventions both for its thriller and the mysterious horror story layers, New Life feels fresh and innovative, presenting a mix that works so well that it’s a wonder no one ever tried to do something similar before.

Overall, in spite of its stumbles, Red, White & Royal Blue is a charming and diverting rom-com that introduces a welcome new viewpoint to the long-running genre — and Alex and Henry's journey to love is sure to please both longtime fans of McQuiston's novel as well as newer arrivals who are looking for a mostly solid entry point into romance itself.

Hardiman’s feature debut is ambitious, even if the overall structure doesn’t always work, and the mystery isn’t as engrossing as it maybe should be. Yet, for all its flaws, it makes up for it in style and its wild cast of characters.

With verve and style, Heart of Stone does a great job of creating a new character in the espionage thriller genre.

For all the ways Botet and company put their hearts into giving it some life, the film is persistently defined by death of not just its characters, but of creativity itself.

On paper, it already doesn’t seem like it makes sense as a Blomkamp film, and on the screen, he makes even less sense for this project. In the world of racing films, Gran Turismo is merely drafting near the back.

It is a film that sets out to sink its teeth into something a bit deeper and more inventive only to merely serve up an experience with little to actually chew on.