The middle school dialect takes a backseat to the ingenuity on hand. It’s quite clear that the masterminds behind Sausage Party really thought this one out, examining this world long enough to have the most fun in it.

If the film often takes an aggressive approach to driving this central thesis home, Shin Godzilla manages to negotiate a difficult balance between delivering the monster movie thrills promised by its central creature and a film that utilizes those thrills in service of something more substantial.

Peterloo is traditional, dryly historical, and all sorts of other Merchant-Ivory slang for stuffy and challenging.

Creed 2 is a commendable chapter in the franchise, thriving from a strong commitment to character, mostly thanks to Stallone’s reverence to his own legacy and the new one being created for Jordan.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll wince, and you’ll sigh. Such is the genius of Wiener-Dog, and of Solondz, and why he remains a reliable visionary.

There’s just no subtlety to any of the proceedings and while there’s an argument to made in how the film’s fairly transparent about these intentions, none of it rises above being anything more than an average historical recap.

Unlike other Disney remakes, the issue with Mulan isn’t that it hews to the formula too closely; it’s that when this movie veers away from that formula, it tries to be something approaching a Marvel movie, and that’s one crossover we still don’t need.

The film is a friendly, warm, and inviting documentary that dances and shouts without ever shaking its body down to the ground. There aren’t any revelations, there aren’t any demons, and there’s zero drama. It’s simply another rolodex of talking heads — including David Byrne, speak of the devil — that want to talk about Michael Jackson.

It’s a performance worthy of all the acclaim it’s received, not just because of the emotional impact that Anderson’s involvement brings. Her work is instead a reminder that none of us are obsolete as long as we keep breathing. We always have a chance to tell our stories.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but Bumblebee feels revolutionary within the confines of a long-running franchise like Transformers.

While the film’s intentions are noble, and its story worth retelling, it struggles throughout to lend a lasting weight to its straightforward plotting.

While one of the few downsides of Causeway is the lingering desire to spend more time with these characters, the film holds an excellent return to form for Jennifer Lawrence and makes a stellar case for many more leading man roles for Brian Tyree Henry.

Imagine all the best parts of E.T. (written, like this film, by the late Melissa Mathison) and all the worst parts of Hook, and you have a pretty solid picture of what it’s like to spend two hours with The BFG.

The Kid Who Would Be King is a reliable family film, and Cornish polishes old tropes with fresh eyes and a sense of clever imagination.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley offers tidy, compelling, and continued proof of Gibney’s skills in the art of delineation.

It’s essentially David Fincher’s The Game matched with the comic overtones of Horrible Bosses, which is why it winds up being an entertaining jaunt.

Wonka’s throwback charms make a striking enough impression, especially with Chalamet in the role, that the idea of another musical Wonka adventure isn't at all objectionable. If, that is, they skip the fat suit next time.

The combination of Schoenaerts’ intensely brutish, sensitive performance and Winocour’s singular dedication to tension gives Disorder plenty to offer.

Where the narrative is sometimes slack, and the film’s larger purpose left to interpretation after a while, Landline’s great strength lies with its performances.

Pieces of a Woman offers a superb performance by Vanessa Kirby, and the most unnerving opening of any film in 2020, but the familiar examination of marital disintegration struggles to sustain interest or justify its lengthy runtime.

Much as he might adore the man’s work, DeLillo’s mannered, precise writing occasionally clashes with the cheeky punch of Baumbach’s typical approach. When he leans into the artifice (see: the scenes around the Gladney dinner table, overlapping dialogue as the family circles around each other in a ritualistic dance), the film fizzes even through the chaos.

Right from the start, Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers knows what it wants to be. It’s clever! It’s playful! It’s meta! Turning the story into a tale of Hollywood has-beens is surely intriguing, and the appeal of the chipmunks investigating a neo-noir mystery largely worked in its favor. However, all the hard-boiled, real world capers may leave fans of the original longing for an altogether different type of revival, more in line with Disney+’s successful, if tragically canceled, reinvestment in DuckTales.

As a primer for one of the funniest, most emotionally satisfying thumbs in the eye to the super-rich in recent memory, Dumb Money is a pretty good time. That said, it leaves out crucial details and has little time to dig deeper into its cast of characters, making it feel like a cardboard glimpse into a complicated blip in the rigged game of American finance.

Skinamarink clocks in at a hefty 100 minutes, and as Ball’s approach to horror lies in the hidden and the mysterious, it might have been more effective if left as a short film instead — because of Skinamarink’s ambiguous and nebulous fear factor, viewers are left more wanting than satisfied after the striking final scene.

There’s little to latch on here apart from its purpose as an actor’s showcase for Boyega, Beharie, and Williams, and its bittersweet status as a sendoff for the latter’s illustrious career.

As a writer and director, Hill demonstrates an endearing and encouraging empathy for his characters, crafting a portrait of adolescence that allows every emotion and every decision — from the most relatable at any age to the most boneheaded — to exist without irony, judgement, or condescension.

Boseman, wildly charismatic, captures Marshall as a magnetic figure, and his drive and fervor are intoxicating.

The film is a welcome return to form for Howard, containing all the makings of a competently crafted crowd-pleasing drama.