The live-action How to Train Your Dragon can feel hemmed in by its faithfulness to the animated original, but it’s re-creating that film’s sense of heart and soul as well as its entire plot and most enduring images.

From a distance, Materialists seems like a straightforward love-triangle rom com, but Celine Song transforms it into a meaningful, introspective drama about self-worth.

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

A new Wes Anderson movie is always an event, but the writer-director’s latest whirligig comedy, The Phoenician Scheme, might be his slightest in a couple decades.

Predator: Killer of Killers definitely delivers on its premise. Its journey through several time periods is the perfect way to give us multiple Predator stories that each have their own distinct flavor and action highlights.

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

It’s a spinoff that knows why the John Wick series has been so successful, and both effectively follows the rules while adding to the ever expanding world. While it takes a good portion of its screentime to find confident footing, when the second half gets moving, the energy is undeniable as Ballerina becomes one funny, bloody and creative fight scene after another. I’m hoping for an encore.

Fountain of Youth is a robust showcase of Guy Ritchie’s eye for action, but it falls well short of capturing the magic of the quintessential treasure-hunting movies it’s so clearly trying to replicate.

Coming off the triumph of its extension into TV with Cobra Kai, The Karate Kid franchise returns to theaters with Legends, a movie which is far less impactful than that show, yet still reminds us why the underlying story and themes of this series can still connect.

With a blistering score and a darkly comic undercurrent, Tornado is a timeless revenge thriller filled with hurt and heart.

Kelly Reichardt’s heist movie The Mastermind is crackingly, urgently alive, an assured and magnificent addition to an already storied body of work.

Fear Street: Prom Queen fails to channel both the outrageous aesthetics and the brutal violence of the films it’s imitating, making this indifferently made exercise in YA horror supremely skippable.

Highest 2 Lowest features an enormously theatrical Denzel Washington and the kind of wild tonal swings only Spike Lee can manage.

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.

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

Lilo & Stitch is one of the stronger results of Disney’s non-stop remake campaign, taking the emotional core of the original and amplifying it in a stirring manner.

It’s no Purple Rain – though Jenna Ortega is a much better onscreen foil for Tesfaye than Apollonia was for Prince – but it at least manages to find a handful of visually stimulating moments amid the vapidity.

There’s plenty to flinch (or even gag) at when directors Danny and Michael Philippou spill some blood , and Sally Hawkins and young Jonah Wren Phillips commit to the intensity of their roles, but the decidedly unanswered questions posed by the plot contribute to some dissatisfaction

Shadow Force is more like the idea of a movie than a movie proper, totally generic and completely inert.

While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what’s made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn’t actually final.

In Final Destination: Bloodlines, death is the life of the party. There’s little novelty to the boilerplate family trauma plot of this sixth Final Destination movie, but what its comedy-forward take on the franchise’s established formula lacks in thematic depth, it more than makes up for with delightful, well-designed kills and boundless gallows humor.

Josh Hartnett does a fine job in Fight or Flight’s intensely physical, one-versus-100 lead role, but the movie doesn’t have much to offer beyond 15 minutes of inventive action and 80 minutes of aggressive mediocrity.

Though it starts out as a promising slasher throwback, Clown in a Cornfield struggles with a jokey tone and a political message that lacks teeth.

Thunderbolts* is the most solid the sacred timeline has felt in a little while, providing an adventure befitting its overlooked title characters. While it very capably dabbles in a darker tone – touching on the mental health of heroes and villains alike – the filmmakers struggle to balance that dabbling with a snappy, comedic energy. While the movie as a whole left me feeling like it was a downer on the balance, it’s at least the good kind of downer, filled with characters I’m looking forward to seeing again.

The movie leaps to life whenever the bullets start flying. It's the generic gangland stuff in between that's not up to snuff, even with Hardy lending his trusty gruffness to the haunted-cop boilerplate.

Until Dawn is more disappointing than deadly, leaving all the promise of the horror game behind for a jumble of horror-movie re-creations.

The movie plays its fun, spooky premise as straight as possible, while winking at the absurdity of its analog aesthetic.

Ryan Coogler enters the horror realm and nails it in Sinners, which drops vampires into a deeply personal, heartfelt, emotional, sexy, and bloody story that’ll stick with you.