Carlito's Way, like Casualties of War and Mission: Impossible, seems to stand at a nexus between commercial fealty and directorial idiosyncrasy; it's a sort of half-breed film that exudes personal vision but functions satisfactorily for the multiplex crowds at the same time.

Alas, The Edge is a film that, quite ironically, loses it.

Design and artistry here is the primary draw of The Dark Crystal, not necessarily the writing or the performances or the direction (Henson and Frank Oz shared the directing responsibilities for this one), although the are no glaring missteps in any of those areas.

White Noise holds up a mirror to contemporary America, forcing a self-examination that both amuses and terrifies. It may be set in the ‘80s but it’s as prescient as ever, forcing us to examine the failings of postmodern culture and face the comedy and terror inherent in our society. It may be funny, even light-hearted in places, but White Noise confronts heavy, poignant topics with a level of awareness that will make you laugh while your skin crawls.

Roofman’s excellent performances are hampered by a middling script that’s executed with minimal visual flair or excitement.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers isn't the first movie to do what it's doing -- with live-action and animation sharing the screen, helping nurture a meta-comedy adventure -- but it's damn fun and one of the cleverest uses of elder pop culture properties in a while.

While playing with the trope he made famous, Wes Craven crafted a lighter, more self-reflective tone for Kevin Williamson’s script to shine a light on everything we love (and everything we think is kind of silly) about slasher movies.

Swan Song is a beautifully acted near-future exploration of self, technology, and the soul.

A quick, funny victory lap for anti-establishment Redditors and stonk enthusiasts.

With a layered performance by Regina Hall as the university’s first Black dean of students, the film plays with familiar tropes and images from American horror, but re-fashions them into an unexpected, subdued story with a chilling emotional payoff.

Jonah Hill's impressive directorial debut Mid90s is full of heart, fun and a sense of longing to belong somewhere.

In Thirteen Lives, Ron Howard sheds the spectacle of the 2018 Thai soccer team cave rescue by recreating the impossible logistics, choices, and dangers with intimacy and chilling claustrophobia.

Harriet has the best intentions, but despite a powerful lead performance by Cynthia Erivo, the film feels bereft of originality. It’s a shame that a film centering a woman whose life was filled with fear, risk, and compassion couldn’t summon those same elements for its story.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes It’s not as emotionally complex as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or War for the Planet of the Apes, and isn’t attempting to punch you in the gut like those films do. But as this series enters its post-Caesar, Disney-owned era, Planet of the Apes is still on remarkably solid footing.

Elio boasts dazzling animation – and even more striking emotional depth.

A muddled mix of '90s teen flicks, curated for a new generation (with a Hitchcock premise swirled in), Do Revenge is a lukewarm high school vengeance tale that never settles on a tone and is barren when it comes to laughs.

It’s morally upstanding but dramatically dull, without any of the allure or excitement that made Armstrong’s Succession series such a smashing success.

Despite the character’s trademark flippancy, there’s a real unexpected warmth to Deadpool 2. Not only does the sequel explore this flawed character, it firmly establishes him as a loveable and effective hero.

The Way Back is a somber sports drama more interested in exploring the plight of its hero than in just the big games.

This contest of wicked wills is a vibrant, penetrating Pandora's Box of predicaments and likeable yet evil central characters, played with satirical skill by Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage.

Luckily, with a dash of mischief, a dollop of whimsy, and, yes, a hearty spoonful of sugar, Mary Poppins Returns manages to feel less like a cynical cash-grab and more like a visit from an old friend — even if the reality of her reappearance doesn’t quite live up to your fuzzy memories of the good ol’ days.

Starve Acre is a rousing addition to the British folk horror tradition with intensely emotional lead performances that takes viewers on a nostalgic journey into pagan ritual.

Despite a passionate performance from Colby Minifie and some compelling visuals, The Surrender sidelines its deft exploration of grief for drawn-out, pointless supernatural horror.

Vivo's animated musical sequences are gorgeous to look at and fun to listen to, even if the plot loses the rhythm about halfway through.

What it lacks in so-bad-it’s-good silliness it makes up for with its heart and mostly practical slaughterfests. Kevin Bacon and Peter Dinklage having an absolute blast in their roles doesn’t hurt, either.

Last Night in Soho’s biggest strengths and weaknesses come from the same place: its attempts to replicate much better psychological horror from decades past. However, despite everything that doesn’t work, its musical energy keeps it fun.

It’s not as delicious as its practically perfect predecessors, but Paddington in Peru preserves the series’ sweet-natured fun.

The End We Start From is a muddy post-apocalyptic drama that fails to nail the human connection at its core.

It's quite possibly the greatest Batman movie ever.

It’s a self-consciously juvenile pizza party of a movie that's lots of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

If you've never been to a midnight screening of Rocky Horror, please go. It's a delight. And if you can't make it, this Blu-ray attempts to bring that experience home. Just don't watch the film without, at least, some form of audience participation. It's just not much fun without it.

The writers are comic geniuses, and the experience is so enjoyable that upon viewing This Island Earth's non-MST3K version, a grin will cross your face as you remember this parody masterpiece.

It's pleasant, and while it's a bit sloppy, I rather enjoy the unclean look of the animation.

Bill & Ted Face the Music is a pleasant escape for the quarantine-stricken, a sweet and entertaining romp that defies expectations by largely recapturing what worked about the series so many years later.

Featuring one of Tom Cruise's best performances in recent years, American Made is a darkly funny, dizzying crime film that nevertheless ultimately feels inconsequential and overly familiar.

V/H/S/Beyond is the most cohesive, best arranged, and most creatively complementary V/H/S yet. Here’s hoping we get a bundle of found-footage mayhem like this one every Halloween for the foreseeable future.

Operation Mincemeat turns an absurd chapter in World War II history into a dour homework assignment.

Krysten Ritter, along with Winslow Fegley and Lidya Jewett, provide enough pizazz to keep Nightbooks afloat, creating an engaging supernatural hostage scenario.

Ron’s Gone Wrong is a weird, quirky family comedy that pushes all the right buttons. Unexpectedly poignant, it asks some big questions about growing up in the age of social media.

The Dragon Ball franchise’s first 3D CG-animated feature film is a fun, low-stakes love letter to Gohan fans with exciting momentum as well as room for some moving sentimentality amidst earth-shattering fights.

Returning to cinema with a heartfelt look at the creative process, Michel Gondry dives back into filmmaking without a safety net, channeling all his artistic angst through an onscreen alter ego.

Covenant’s framework and exciting action put enough new spins on the series’ most reliable touchstones that the cast is able to carry it through to a satisfying end.

The charming, skillful storyteller George Lazenby himself is the best reason to watch Becoming Bond. The reenactments, while often funny and involving, simply can't hold a candle to the man and his anecdotes.

While it's not as wonderfully weird as it could have been, the latest SpongeBob movie still delivers silly, family fun.

The Courier is a tense, well-executed spy drama that wisely focuses on character and performance more than thrills, knowing that if we actually care about these men it will drastically heighten every narrowed glance, near miss, and frightful chase. It's not always the freshest adventure, but that's when the acting carries the piece and breathes life into these unlikely heroes.

Men, from Ex Machina and Annihilation director Alex Garland, is a folk-horror movie about gendered trauma that quickly falls apart. It skillfully builds tension in its first half — with the help of brilliant lead performances — only to have that tension dissipate when its inventive metaphors become consumed by traditional staging and literal explanations.

The LEGO Movie 2 isn’t quite as funny or as brilliantly executed as the original, but it’s an ambitious, likable sequel. Kids will enjoy it and adults will appreciate that the filmmakers took it seriously, and tried to say something meaningful. Just don’t think about it too much, because the LEGO universe is often weird and confusing.

It’s more than a creature feature, but never in a way that undercuts the main event: Some truly startling above-and-underwater sequences.

The setup is forgettable, but Stopmotion builds to a grotesque and darkly beautiful finale that’s a great showcase for stop-motion animator Robert Morgan.

Be sure to watch the film all the way through the end credits for a clever post-credit cookie (a rarity for this era).

With scenes of natural disaster grounded in a human point of view, Lee Isaac Chung's spiritual sequel transcends its visual shortcomings, and proves to be a wildly fun and effective summer blockbuster worth watching on the biggest and loudest screen.

Strange World may fumble its environmentalist themes, but its story of fathers and sons is fairly touching.

It's a frequently fascinating and often moving film despite its many, often glaring, flaws.

One of the most original films of the year so far, The Art of Self-Defense is a searing critique of male violence, and the notion of power at large, told through a traditional kung fu flick set in present day America. Dryly funny, the film also carries a wisdom that makes Riley Stearns a talent to watch.

Alice, Darling is a measured, affecting observation of a young woman finally coming to grips with how much an emotionally toxic romantic relationship has viscerally changed her.

Drop is a tightly plotted and unpretentious thrill ride.

The Good Nurse shines a light on the inherent darkness of a for-profit healthcare system while exploring the even darker recesses that allow a serial killer to thrive. Based on a true story, it’s a terrifying examination of systemic failures, not to mention a wild cover-up from self-interested hospitals.

Writer-director Elijah Bynum fills the screen with some impressive imagery, but it’s all in service of an ugliness that Magazine Dreams cops out on depicting.

Transformers One’s strong central friendship – and a great Brian Tyree Henry performance – aside, this animated origin story could have used some major transforming before rolling out.

The Black Phone mixes the supernatural with relatable horrors in ways that will leave you both terrified and hopeful.

With Eddington, Ari Aster tries his hand at political satire and turns in his first bad movie.

Sergio Pablos' Klaus is a beautifully animated mix of old and new - offing up a unique and quirky take on Santa's humble beginnings. It's a fun, fresh story about friendship and the power of kindness that coats snowbound cliches with a shiny sheen.

Scott Cooper directs Hostiles with an eye for quote-unquote “greatness” but the actual material simply isn’t deep enough to justify the solemn presentation. It’s not entertaining, it’s not illuminating, it’s not even complicated. It’s mostly just a bummer.

Ride Your Wave is the sweetest and most conventional story Yuasa has ever directed. Even with its formulaic story occupied by characters who would have benefited with more development and personality, there’s still plenty to enjoy in this light-hearted romance.

While Sharper is visually stylish and is driven by some excellent performances from Sebastian Stan, Julianne Moore, and Brianna Middleton, this con-artist thriller overuses the same plot twists so much that they lose all their impact, and later the initially shrewd characters become too easily bamboozled.

The First Omen is a fiendishly entertaining origin story for both the antichrist and a filmmaker to watch.

If the film doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts, it’s important to note that most of those parts are still pretty great.

Cocoon has its flaws, to be sure, but it's an ambitious, visually stirring piece of sci-fi drama. The performances from the cast (both young and old) are terrific, and visual effects are quite gorgeous.

These First Steps might not be the great strides I was hoping for, but they are sure footing for the Fantastic Four to officially leap into the MCU.

Leo looks like the kind of standard big-studio animation Netflix has been regularly knocking off, but it’s far funnier, and more unexpectedly sweet, than the average kid-targeted cartoon. In fact, Robert Smigel, Adam Sandler, and their collaborators have made one of the funniest movies of the year that doubles as a love letter to the complexities of teaching kids, in or out of the classroom.

In spite of all of its nail-biting close calls and harrowing footage from the actual rescue, it’s actually a lot of fun.

Directed with a threadbare and minimalist style by producer Charles Band, Trancers is the ultimate science fiction cult classic.

Space Sweepers is low-risk, low-reward entertainment. It’s a breezy bit of escapism with some social commentary baked in, but it’s the spectacle and whiz-bang that’s on the front burner. Even as he gleefully reshuffles familiar elements from a variety of sources, director Jo has created a fascinating science fiction tableau that feels both original and inviting.

Alien: Romulus’s back-to-basics approach to blockbuster horror boils everything fans love about the tonally-fluid franchise into one brutal, nerve-wracking experience.

Frozen 2 has amazing animation and great new songs but also a muddied message and some continuity issues.

Mia Goth shines as usual, and Ti West's third slasher entry feels more visually polished than its predecessors, but it's also more dramatically sterile, thanks to a story that quickly falls apart and mounting references that add up to very little (if anything at all).

What should be a high-spirited family film instead feels leaden and overstuffed, more concerned with laying the groundwork for a hypothetical sequel than spinning a quality mystery. The result has the look and feel of a traditional Sherlock story with a feminist spin, but little of the substance.

Captain Marvel manages to take the best ideas of early MCU origin stories like Iron Man and Thor and use them to form something that feels both familiar and fresh. It can be a bit on-the-nose at times, and occasionally has to fast-track its exposition in ways that can feel slightly clunky, but what it lacks in grace it makes up for in charm.

Effectively moody, but disjointed and over-reliant on played-out horror audio gags, Undertone sounds better in concept than it plays on screen.

Confess, Fletch is a clever soft-baked cookie of a mystery, never getting too intense or presenting massive stakes, which is the perfect sandbox for a wise-cracking investigator like Fletch to play around in as he relies on a mix of charm, smarts, and luck to make it through to the other side.

The Bad Guys 2 provides more of what made its predecessor great, but doesn’t improve enough on its predictable plot.

Charlize Theron's eerie turn as Megyn Kelly aside, Bombshell doesn't do justice to the subject matter it explores.

Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is an interesting intellectual exercise, too ambitious to be ignored yet too overbearing to be enjoyed. Despite moments of genuine terror the film is less interesting in being scary than it is in humanizing what scares us, but once we know more about the witches in Suspiria, the less intriguing they are.

This is an entertaining game of tension and gore with a strong funny bone, all in a well-wrapped package clearly designed with surprising thought and artistic effort with a star-making performance for Samara Weaving.

Although its rapid pacing doesn't always allow for the dramatic moments to resonate for as long as they could, Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic is a heartfelt and moving tribute to the late rocker.

As a historical epic, Napoleon is handsome but a little impersonal – you can really feel the absence of texture lost in getting it down under three hours. But between the textbook bullet points, a very funny anti-Great Man biopic peeks through, thanks largely to Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as a Bonaparte who’s more boy than man.

It’s not very funny, it’s not very dramatic. There’s a spark of intelligence here, a valid critique of doomsday culture and escapism, but it’s the sort of message you can easily get off of a cocktail napkin.

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is extraordinary because – like its fluffy-haired heroines – it makes no apologies for what it is. Mumolo and Wiig have created a story that is proudly deranged, setups that are savagely silly, and centered all that around two delightfully daffy caricatures of middle-aged women that feel fresh yet familiar.

Vivarium rates as an ambitious near-miss.

The Guardians of the Galaxy deliver their swan song in Vol. 3 and it’s a rockin’ good time. Through Rocket’s tragic origin story we’re given a new appreciation for this whole family of lovable malcontents. And even though the plot has a bit too much going on, some of the humor feels stale, and Adam Warlock was woefully underused, the cast’s incredible chemistry and James Gunn’s soulful style remain unlike anything else in the MCU, and this movie sends them out on an emotional and action-packed high note.

It’s not a home run, but it’s an enjoyably goofy and gory time.

The adaptation stumbles in its third act, but before that, Akimoto builds a killer video game-like time loop with striking imagery and a heartfelt depiction of loneliness. The action is tremendous, and the character of Rita provides an excellent viewpoint for watching an alien attack play out over and over again.

Netflix's I Am Mother is an engaging sci-fi thriller-meets-coming of age drama, with three strong lead performances.

Jung’s The Villainess offers enough action to make up for the otherwise confusing complexity of its storytelling.

The script – which revolves around a serial killer and explores the idea of traumas both mental and physical – isn't particularly strong, but the direction is, as always, first-rate.

Gladiator II finds strength and honor in the well-worn armor of its predecessor. Paul Mescal is adept in the belabored-hero role, going toe-to-toe with not only the delightfully deranged Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger, but also with Denzel Washington, whose mercurial Macrinus practically screams “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED” at the audience every second he’s onscreen.

Yes, it’s gruesome and violent, but it’s also wickedly funny and surprisingly poignant. And while those Keanu comparisons are always going to be there, Nobody easily holds a candle to Wick.

Yorgos Lanthimos returns to his days of nasty absurdism, with three vicious, amusing stories about love and obsession. The recurring ensemble, led by Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons, delivers a showcase of versatility in which they meet the director on his peculiar wavelength, leading to nearly 3 hours of unsettling fun.