Absent of any edge or layered characters, Wonka is at its most enjoyable when you forget the novel and classic Gene Wilder film and strap in for routine pleasantness.

In “Pinocchio,” when Geppetto wished upon a star, a hunk of wood became a real boy. Eighty-three years later, Disney’s latest animated film, called “Wish,” which is sort of about the origin of that same magical ball of gas, couldn’t be more wooden, manufactured or lifeless.

Saltburn has a brain, no doubt about it, but it also has a script that’s written in jet fuel.

Despite the lacking wrap-up, “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is, like most of the “Hunger Games” films, a well-made dystopian yarn that’s better acted than it needs to be.

It’s too bad Scott could not deliver a brilliant character study of one of the world’s great military leaders — and instead settled for letting a self-indulgent Phoenix fly over the cuckoo’s nest.

In order: bland, annoying and misused.

A lot of this is typical rom-com fare. The genre is not boundary-pushing and that’s perfectly fine — ideal even. But Ryan doesn’t have the sparkle and fizz as a director to make this lacking material sing.

Good old reliable Marty pulls it off again, addictively unraveling a tale that’s almost too terrible to be true with panache, gusto and just the right amount of cultural respect.

Coppola’s movie is packed with many similarly smart, but never egotistical storytelling decisions and is easily one of the finest films of her career.

Nothing Cooper does is organic or authentic, and his show-off performance is always stilted. He arduously thinks through every single choice — it’s time to scream into a pillow; cue the laugh; ready, set, cry. Nobody goes to a movie to watch actors ponder their next beat. We want to feel, and his overwrought turn does not allow us to.

Their heads spun 360 degrees. They vomited up green sludge. They violently shouted curse words...No, not the demonically possessed girls in “The Exorcist: Believer” — the awful movie’s furious audience.

While “Murder On The Orient Express” and “Death On The Nile” were hack-job excuses to force as many disparate and ghastly celebrities onscreen as possible, “Haunting” is an actual, surefooted film with strong performances and a luxurious-yet-frightful tone.

The director (whose “The Assistant” was solid, but this is far better) has built a gripping thriller around the sort of off-hand remarks, boozy outbursts and inappropriate behavior that most bartenders and reasonable patrons encounter all the time. Everywhere.

There are a couple plot threads I found weird — particularly in the final push — that don’t land as powerfully as they intend to. But the resolution is immensely satisfying regardless of a few blips. It’s Payne’s finest work in years.

As well-worn as it may be, Comer reliably freshens up every project she touches and makes otherwise cold scenes sizzle.

Having written this script for themselves, Sharp and Jackson are a scream. Imagine if a vodka Redbull transformed into two human beings — that’s who they are.

Dumb Money, with a predictable script by Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and Ben Mezrich, rambles on and on with an unwaveringly lethargic tone and zero buildup of energy or anticipation. All the while, the audience has little investment in this dud about investing.

When a movie wades into the vast pool of World War II and Holocaust titles, the viewer expects a splash. One Life is, at best, a spritz. It delivers a lot of what we’ve already seen before, but on a less-than-cinematic scale. Yet spending some time with Hopkins and exploring a speck of light in one of the world’s darkest chapters is just satisfying enough.

Hollywood loves nothing more than a true-crime story about a serial killer, but a new movie directed by Anna Kendrick does a number on that familiar genre.

“Heron” is not as perfect as some of Miyazaki’s past movies. The trippy story is dizzying by the end as too many characters are introduced too late and we navigate a thicket of hastily explained narrative elements. But it nonetheless leaves a powerful emotional effect if you let it wash over you.

While the off-kilter film is a fine showcase for the personalities of two of our best emerging comedic stars, Rachel Sennott (“Shiva Baby”) and Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”), the humor falls short of being very funny.

Finally, on the series’ supposedly last outing, one of its films lives up to the ever-deepening talent of its leading man. Equalizer 3 adds nothing new to the thriller genre, true, but it wisely acknowledges what’s worked well before.

Directed by Guy Nattiv, the sluggish film caves to the worst tendencies of forgettable biopics. Mirren is ensconced in prosthetics and a gray wig in hopes that a lookalike transformation can distract from bad writing and a total lack of insight.

Most of DC Comics’ dreadful movies deserve to be violently squished, but not Blue Beetle, a refreshingly spry new film featuring the lesser-loved, bug-shaped superhero who’s been crawling around in some form since 1939.

As always, Dracula sucks blood. But his latest movie simply sucks.

The fight scenes are remarkably exhilarating and spontaneous for being, well, animated. And all of the jokes — written by Rowe, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, among others — are truly very funny and witty while still making sense for this vision of the five boroughs. They’re spoken by a genuine, young cast, who sound like they’re having a party after school instead of the usual stiff, one-day-in-the-studio delivery.

Waffling Disney can’t decide if it wants this thing to be a quirky and fun but unsettling movie like “Beetlejuice,” with some real guts and creativity, or another schlocky ad for a Disney World FastPass. At times Simien’s film is surprisingly dark and emotionally honest, while at others it’s kitschier than “The Country Bear Jamboree.”

Director Christopher Nolan’s seismic Oppenheimer is that rarest of things: a sophisticated and bracing movie that’s made for adults and makes nobody say, “I’ll wait till it’s on streaming.”