A Real Pain is a hilarious and tender drama that shows us that truly living is the only way to honor those we've lost.

Venom: The Last Dance trips over its own tendrils and lets a boring, generic plot, and bad action distract from the surprisingly resilient central relationship between Eddie Brock and his symbiote bestie.

Blitz's piercing sound design can't make up for its bloodless depiction of World War II, its scattered sense of place, and its saccharine approach to overcoming racial hostility. Saoirse Ronan is captivating in the role of a single white mother to a defiant Black son trying to make his way back home, but the movie can't seem to balance her talents with its own timeline.

Smile 2 doesn’t quite match its sadistically effective predecessor in the scare department, because once you’ve seen one phantom doppelganger grinning like the Cheshire Cat, you’ve seen them all. But the movie works as a nasty portrait of the downside of music-biz fame, and it builds to an ending deserving of every crooked smile it earns.

Although it has some delightfully grotesque monsters, Mr. Crocket is a kids’-show horror spoof that isn’t ready for primetime.

While the bones of the story itself may not be particularly groundbreaking, what’s brilliant about We Live in Time is that it encourages us to find wonder in the everyday.

Despite its ultra-low-budget trappings, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a fun, competent adaptation that offers up a healthy dose of Evil Dead-style supernatural action.

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.

With a cast that takes wildly different approaches to characters we already know from film and TV, and a camera that never slows down, Saturday Night is chaotic in wildly enjoyable ways. The lead-up to the historic premiere of SNL plays like an extended 90-minute climax.

Like a human turned into a creature of the night, Salem’s Lot kicks off with a strong sense of identity that slowly gives way to mindless vampire nonsense.

Terrifier 3 is a bounty of practical effects riches that cannot be denied, but its storytelling is scattershot in ways that hold the sequel back.

Although Apartment 7A's chills are mild, this decades-late Rosemary’s Baby prequel gets by on atmosphere and strong performances.

While its flaws are rooted in what it avoids, its marriage of topic and form yields a blast of positivity in a way that perfectly suits its withholding subject, granting his interviews the kind of depth and creativity embodied by his music. While it avoids all thorny entanglements, it looks good and feels great, like any LEGO movie should.

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.

You can admire the ambition of The Life of Chuck while still wondering if such a lightly philosophical story needed to make the leap to the screen – or if turning all of its prose into Nick Offerman voice-over was the best move. It’s less an adaptation, ultimately, than a glorified book on tape from a talented King superfan.

The American remake of Speak No Evil mostly recaptures the squirmy dread of its shocking Danish inspiration… until it doesn’t.

A deeply human film with no human characters, The Wild Robot is a tear-jerking and unpredictable animated adventure.

Heretic’s slow-simmering first half is much better than its second, but the movie keeps you on your toes throughout. Most of its deranged charge comes from Grant, finding darkness under the pleasant hallmarks of his aging-star persona.

Subtle and intuitive, this documentary about NYC psychics asks all the right questions.

Though it features delightfully weird visuals and a stellar turn by Kathryn Hunter, The Front Room can’t find its identity, both on-screen and in its own marketing.

The worst thing about Joker: Folie à Deux is its unfulfilled potential. It begins with the promise of a novel approach to the Joker and Harley Quinn, placing them in a world where the opposite of cruelty is musical romance. Unfortunately, the DC sequel gets bogged down by a lengthy courtroom saga, which not only keeps the dazzling Lady Gaga away from the spotlight, but centers the movie entirely around its own predecessor, without doing or saying anything new.

Saulnier savages the legal loopholes that allow police to exploit their community, all while offering the year’s most breathlessly suspenseful standoffs. It’s what a modern crowd-pleaser should be: smart, gripping, and about something.

It doesn't always work; it loses its way midway through, as though in desperate search of purpose. But when it finds that purpose, it makes a powerful emotional impression: Visually splendid, emotionally arresting, and features some of the finest filmmaking of Guadagnino's already-accomplished career.

The premise may be intriguing, but the repetitive approach and nearly identical lead characters renders the Ocean's duo without their signature chemistry and strands them in a distractingly underpopulated criminal underworld.

Andra Day delivers a commendable performance as matriarch Ebony Jackson, but the entire experience is neither scary enough as a horror film nor insightful enough as a drama to leave a mark.

The stars are about the only reason to boot up this preposterous thriller, which ends up playing less like a critique of AI technology than another daydream about its power.

Tim Burton allows the cast of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to have fun, even if they're all off in separate movies that barely overlap. Its story is intentionally robbed of dramatic weight, but this makes way for the goofy, imaginative practical effects of Burton's early days, resulting in a small-scale legacy sequel that doesn't take itself too seriously (because it doesn’t need to).

It has no soul or style, and creates no sense of chemistry between lead actors Omar Sy and Nathalie Emmanuel. They try their best to fill the movie's dead air with charm and anguish. Unfortunately, their best isn't enough.