It starts as a crime caper, makes a pit stop among the sitdowns and power-jockeying of gangster films, and somehow manages to tie its many disparate threads together in a period drama about the destruction of an American city. It’s all the more dazzling that it does all this while being slickly entertaining and assured

It’s unclear yet whether this attempt at the MCU-nification of young-adult horror will come together in a satisfying way, but at the very least, Fear Street: 1994 lays a solid foundation. It’s a spooky, pulse-pounding horror romp with likable characters and terrific scares.

An overwhelming chunk of The Forever Purge’s brisk 103 minutes is devoted to the film’s Mexican immigrants saving the Tuckers’ lives, helping them survive, and furthering their moral development. It is, frankly, an insulting running thread that sours an otherwise deft horror-thriller.

Any goodwill provided by the concept or cast is utterly squandered by a film that packs in endless references without having anything whatsoever to say.

While Black Widow’s director and writers try valiantly to make the film a fitting swan song for Natasha and an impressive action vehicle for Johansson, tying up the Avenger’s disparate character beats across seven other movies in an action movie that out-fights her male peers, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that it’s circling around a cul-de-sac.

The bloat that makes this chapter unsuccessful has nothing to do with cartoon action — Lin gets it, and it’s often spectacular. It’s that, with Diesel’s Dom in the driver’s seat, F9 doesn’t choose a lane

Richardson’s task is to play off everyone else’s broadness, and his ease in doing so smooths over the rougher patches of Werewolves Within.

Luca isn’t trying to make people cry, the way some Pixar movies now feel obligated to do, but it still rings as a bittersweet experience. Instead of a tearjerker, it’s a fond memory, a soft sigh after a recollection of a time gone by.

Wright takes an exhaustive approach to the band’s career, going album by album, talking to collaborators and supporters as well as to the Maels. Throughout, Russell and Ron remain somewhat aloof, perhaps by design. They’re more open about their past and their intentions here than they’ve ever been in interviews, but they aren’t about to give away all their secrets.

Untitled Horror Movie is the kind of finely tuned exercise that benefits from the chemistry of its cast, the managed-expectations feel of its storytelling, and a firm awareness of the kind of low-stakes entertainment so many of us might appreciate right now.

Mark Wahlberg should never be in a science fiction movie ever again. While the Paramount Plus exclusive streaming movie Infinite isn’t entirely his bad — the direction, script, and overall absence of creative vision also range from nonsensical to embarrassing — it suffers profoundly from his bland, phoned-in, looking-for-the-craft-table performance.

A lot of the plot elements feel overly familiar, but in the few moments where the movie transcends those trappings, it’s a fun, memorable romp.

At best, it’s basically a heavy-handed, inelegant Twilight Zone episode that was ultimately rejected by the religious organization that commissioned it.

Through the alien beauty of its visuals, Andrewin’s hidden-waters-run-deep performance, and its increasingly tense atmosphere, Tragic Jungle casts an unsettling spell.

Ultimately, The Devil Made Me Do It’s attempt to shake the franchise up with a new director falls short, and like the young man at the heart of its supernatural horror, it risks losing its soul.

In addition to the latent sexism, unmitigated by Sorvino’s nothing of a mom role, there’s something insidious about the movie’s incompetence, and the accompanying belief that it’s good enough to entertain audiences of any age. It aspires to harmlessness, and fails.

The film is a horror story with the heart of a family drama, and for the most part, it works very well. But just like real families, it’s pretty consistent in both its strengths and its flaws — in other words, it’s the perfect sequel for fans of the original movie, while also being not that bad at welcoming viewers who might have missed the first go-round.

Even though his film is dragged down by its criminally long runtime and weirdly sympathetic sob story, Cruella is a delightful romp full of fashionable heists and over-the-top theatrics. Does it work as an origin story for a familiar villain? Not really, but it’s a pretty damn fun time.

The parts of Snyder’s Army of the Dead are definitely stronger than the whole. But if you’re looking for a preposterous onslaught of blood and guts melded with sharp-tongued humor, then Army of the Dead is the big swinging zombie film of your fantasies.

The film is a stylish, melodramatic addition to the thriller-adaptation trend, but it falls victim to Letts’ faithfulness to the original book.

Amid the paper-thin plot, stilted script, inartful editing, and imbalanced character development, Jolie stands unblemished. She isn’t the only good thing about the otherwise rote Those Who Wish Me Dead, but she doesn’t have much competition, either.

This is how In the Heights won me over. Because in spite of its flaws — like lopsided twin romantic subplots where the lead characters are overshadowed by their best friends, or cloying lyrics that play on both the literal and figurative meanings of “powerless” — it’s ultimately a work of affection for both its subject and its medium.

Spiral lacks depth and nuance, and by avoiding irony or camp, it’s asking to be taken seriously. This is not a fun romp through a field of bloodied mayhem, or a self-referential metatext filled with winks at the audience.

f not for the uptempo rhythm, The Water Man’s thin plotting would make it a slog. If not for Oyelowo’s handsomely mounted camera capturing the forest in supernatural blues and reds, the audience’s attention might wander to their phones. Thankfully, the well-executed components support the fairy tale when the tale itself runs short.

The ending is a bold play in a movie full of bold plays, but it seems designed more to whip up discussion than to draw the narrative together, or to give viewers either a horror-movie catharsis or a marriage-drama resolution.

It’s a movie that commands attention, with everything going on across the screen and in the script. The action plot augments the family conflict and vice versa, with every moment of the story pushing those plots forward. It’s an utter delight from start to finish that brings the best of animation and the internet to life.

While Sollima tries to rekindle Clancy’s 1990s magic, Without Remorse is rendered as unmemorable schlock due to his inability to map the author’s familiar espionage themes onto a new protagonist with very different story requirements.

Street Gang certainly doesn’t tell the whole story of Sesame Street’s early years — it can’t begin to. But it’s an absorbing, nostalgia-courting start, and for people with fond memories of the show, it’s an unbeatable chance to approach it as an adult, and understand their own childhoods a little better in the process.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train is a brilliant encapsulation of the series’ strengths and appeal, filled with moments of pulse-pounding action, heady emotional gravitas, and fantastic character-affirming moments of levity and humor.

That go-for-broke violence has always been a core component of Mortal Kombat, and this reboot succeeds because McQuoid and his team remember that, and have the self-awareness to acknowledge it. It isn’t a flawless victory, but it is lizard-brain fun.

For all the eye-popping battles and fast-moving action, it’s an emotional story that takes the time to explore what its protagonist really wants out of life, and why god-tier power may be as much of a burden as a benefit.

Ride or Die strikes some strange tones, and features some questionable motives. But that just supports the world Rei and Nanae have crafted for themselves. It’s messy and imperfect, and in that way, it feels unnervingly real.

Ultimately, everything about Arlo the Alligator Boy feels like a setup for something yet to come. That isn’t an inherently bad thing, but it does shift the audience’s expectations for the movie.

Thunder Force is only occasionally insightful, and almost never surprising. It’s arriving in a world where people generally expect more from its genre than light, enjoyable performances and a handful of overstretched gags, and that’s all it has to offer.

In the Earth is an immersive portrait of tribalism and madness, angst and survivalism. And in spite of the somewhat predictable narrative, the film builds to an unshakably tense, unsettlingly eerie conclusion.

The film deftly balances a crowded narrative that includes a father-son reconciliation and a depiction of the dangers of running the streets.

Burger has crafted a shrug of a movie that insists teenagers should follow the rules and submit to the greater good, but fails to imagine what toll that kind of sacrifice would really take.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a gorgeous, kinetic spectacle that’s so effectively big in its loud colors and ridiculous choreography that any screen outside of a multiplex feels too small for it.

It comes across more like a showreel than a stand-alone film, like, a confusingly edited sizzle teaser for a much more in-depth Doors drama series.

It’s mostly a plain thriller, but in its focus on espionage as relationship-driven work, it’s still entertaining.

Happily is incredibly fun from start to finish. If nothing else, its nagging flaws feel less like errors, and more like untapped potential. Grabinski is clearly onto something, and it’s only a matter of time before he truly finds it.

This cut isn’t going to win anyone over — it’s a self-serious sermon to the converted that isn’t terribly concerned with getting the audience to like its characters — but it all goes down much smoother than the theatrical cut, which feels garish and jagged by comparison.

On-Gaku: Our Sound is a story of musicians who can’t play music, but still find gratification in the act of creating. It’s a deadpan buddy comedy about amateur passion, produced through the raw power of an animator’s amateur passion.

Painstakingly hand-painted frame by frame, the film is visually dazzling, veering between styles and time periods to create a living, breathing continuum of Indian art. It’s mesmerizing — but given its haphazard narrative, the film’s delights begin and end at its aesthetics.

Come True has some bone-chilling passages, like an epic sleepwalking sequence that feels eerily untethered from reality. Yet some chunks of it feel informed by the sleep-study scenes that unfold by the sickly glow of monitors: too clinical for pure-horror scares while lacking in convincing science fiction specifics. True to form, this is an impressively dreamlike movie: half vivid, half inexplicable.

It’s mostly a movie with designs on over-the-top action that are undercut by the actual action.

Murphy’s charm, his close chemistry with Hall, Snipes’ wily performance, and the resplendent costumes uplift this nostalgia trip.

While this movie may feel like a Simpsons-esque case of a series failing to recapture lost grandeur, the result is still mile-a-minute fun if you can keep past expectations out of sight and out of mind. Or… you could just watch the first film again.

In classic unpredictable Liman fashion, this jumbled and seemingly truncated adaptation of the first book in a YA trilogy is nonetheless likable, entertaining science fiction.

Tom & Jerry feels freer in its moments of unbridled cartoon silliness than it ever does when it’s attending to its human plotting. It’s yet another hybrid where the overlit crumminess of live-action tries and fails to rescue animation from its own artistry.

In spite of its roughly chronological timeline, The World’s A Little Blurry is formless, less a slickly crafted come-up story and more a long compilation of vignettes, many of which don’t linger long enough. It’s like scrolling through someone’s smartphone to get a sense of what their year was like: some of the discoveries are amazing, and the rest leaves questions behind.

I Got a Story to Tell is a movie without a clear audience. It’s too thin for fans who’ve heard every beat of this story told over and over again, and too narrow to be a good introduction to anyone who’s less familiar with Biggie’s work and his role in New York City hip-hop history.

Billie Holiday’s skills as a talented singer, vibrant performer, and intuitive improviser never come first. All the qualities that made her singular play second fiddle to her many relationships with awful men.

Ultimately, everything in Cherry is a trope, and everything rings false.

It’s hard to say if it’s comprehensible to someone who doesn’t love the series, but its bombastic action hardly lags during its hour-and-a-half run time. It’s a happy member of this new class of video game movies written with an obvious love of its lore, though possibly not able to stand up without a deep appreciation for the source material.

Imagining space as an extension of earthly capitalism certainly isn’t new, but at least Space Sweepers’ cast has the collective charm to make the material feel like fresh, worthwhile viewing among the increasing detritus of streaming content

While the movie contains some genuine heartfelt moments, the thread connecting them all is flimsy, and the core conflict is overdone. By focusing on a clichéd dilemma and doing nothing to make it particularly unique, Always and Forever concludes the trilogy on a flat note.

The new comedy Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar cashes in all the mainstream cred accrued by writer-actors Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo after the phenomenon of Bridesmaids, then puts it toward the greatest use of all: silly, bizarre, ecstatic jokes.

It’s one of the director’s more mainstream efforts. What could easily devolve into a Crank-like exercise in hyperactivity is conducted with a steady hand and an appreciation for the details. Sono wants his audience to luxuriate in the brutal beauty of Boutella wielding a gatling gun.

For the most part, Weng weaves adventure and sentimentality together, but when it comes down to it, Finding ’Ohana works when it focuses on the ohana at its core.

It’s a pleasant enough hangout movie, and someday it may be held up as a slanted portrait of what mid-2020 felt like for people privileged enough to ignore politics. But it still feels like a minor movie in the face of a major catastrophe.

Nothing about where the story is going or how it’ll get there stylistically can be taken for granted. That’s one of the biggest joys of Shaw’s projects — the sense of something new and different happening, of that anti-capitalist, anti-conformist, anti-containment bent that stretches throughout the story also extending into every aspect of the film’s aesthetics.

Purists could well complain at how far Howl’s Moving Castle departs from Jones’ terrific story in order to wedge in Hayao Miyazaki’s longstanding personal obsessions, like flight, the destructive and horrific nature of war, and the way courage conquers evil and love saves lives. But at least the film has a point of view, and the benefit of its creator’s highly specific and recognizable voice. Earwig, by contrast, often feels generic.

The UK-born Jones apparently learned to sign, sing, and put on an American accent for the role, and you’d never know it — she holds the movie together in an astonishing breakout performance.

Saint Maud feels like a closed system, more designed than fully felt. Its moments of ecstasy are never as thrilling nor frightening as they should be.

The film is full of potent human drama (largely coming from Gourav’s performance), but as an examination of the world’s intersection with modern India, it usually lands on the wrong side of inauthentic.

Hancock, in what might be his best film, grazes with greatness by constructing an enthralling thriller that relies on the talent of its three leading men to mine regret for mystery. But the mawkish little habits, the slow start, and the timid finale just barely get Hancock caught. It’s the little things that tear The Little Things apart.

In spite of its heavy subject matter, it’s also one of the most electrifying and downright fun historical dramas to come out of Hollywood in years.

Rather than being depressing or overly nihilistic, Locked Down fills the situation with a dry humor and slight absurdity which, combined with the distance from the beginning of the pandemic, makes the film the best COVID-related piece of media to come out so far.

Soul feels like the best Pixar movies used to feel — deeply humanistic, with both silly, kid-friendly humor and a sincere solemnity that feels entirely adult. Docter and Powers weaponize all of this in a story that literally and directly questions the meaning of life.

The first two movies are packed with “I can’t believe that just happened!” moments. The third one instead chains together a series of “Oh yeah, I’ve seen this before” scenes.

Fincher’s movie about movies seems to be about attempting to work within a system that’s encompassing enough to impose itself on fantasies and reality alike.

The film’s ultimate admiration of celebrity is only vaguely tolerable because its concurrent message of inclusivity is theoretically admirable — but must it be delivered by the likes of a thoroughly exhausting, irredeemably self-satisfied James Corden?

Whether strictly factual or broadly truthful in a poetic sense, its approach to queer history as coded, long-buried document is its most exacting facet. But as a story of science, hidden desire, and sparks re-igniting the soul, it’s a languid affair.

The result is a movie that interrogates Disney tropes but actually delivers on dismantling them.

Without spoiling either Max Cloud’s action or its comedy, Owen makes the running gag about Max’s macho bluster into some of the sharpest gaming criticism released this year.

What Coppola accomplishes is less a magic act than an elegant threading of a needle.

The brightly rendered details and Mulligan’s full-throated performance accessorize a film that ultimately might not be as groundbreaking as Fennell thinks it is regarding gender roles and heterosexual dynamics. But there’s an undeniable satisfaction to her brutish approach.

The current DC movie universe is always dark, but it seems that with a movie drenched in the neon aesthetic of the ’80s, they’ve finally found a way to dim even Wonder Woman’s light.

The ticking clock makes The Midnight Sky a post-apocalyptic survivalist space film whose narrative is so overloaded that the emotional weight offers zero gravity.

Part cheesy Hallmark movie, part community-theater production, part A Christmas Carol meets It’s a Wonderful Life, the special is a mosaic of holiday tropes — and that’s a good thing. The acting is over-the-top, and the plotline has as much subtlety as Dolly’s bedazzled platform boots, but its larger-than-life theatrical nature makes it even more enjoyable.

Though any Cage-free attempts at comedy fall flat, the action remains exciting, thanks in large part to Logothetis’ steady-handed, no-frills approach. Who knew putting together a bunch of gifted martial artists and letting them exercise those skills could take an action film so far?

In spite of a few nail-biting sequences, Run is more of a slog than a sprint.

Freaky boasts such energetic performances from the thoroughly game Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn that the horror-comedy breezes by in a pleasant, amusing way, no matter how reductive its central conceit gets.

Hillbilly Elegy is a prime example of a systemic failure, from script to craft to acting.

In Penny Dreadful, Green demonstrated an ability to alternate between seeming preternaturally confident and absolutely tortured, and that contrast is on full display in Proxima.

Remi Weekes’ feature directorial debut not only exposes the horrors of the immigration system, but mines survivor guilt for a clever, bone-chilling thriller.

Though the central idea is fun, everything that’s been built around it feels rote, if not totally outdated.

In The Craft: Legacy, the witches have no evil intent, only giddy desires and confident decision-making. This suggests witchcraft doesn’t invite trouble, regardless of how it’s used — it’s just power that can vanquish problems. The Craft portrays witchcraft as alluring, complex and consequential: in The Craft: Legacy, witchcraft is fashionable, quick to master, and easily renounced.

If anything, this version could have benefited from being weirder. Given that weird is territory Zemeckis seems to specialize in, The Witches’ relatively tame nature is a letdown.

It sounds ridiculous to say, but the Borat sequel is about as optimistic as a film about the current political moment can be right now.

Chalamet and Fanning do okay in Rainy Day, but Selena Gomez is the one who shows surprising facility with tart-tongued romance.

On the Rocks is her most accessible movie so far, with less hazy atmosphere and a sturdier, more traditional center: Laura is written by Coppola and performed by Rashida Jones with a directness lacking in The Virgin Suicides or Lost in Translation.

The charisma that was fully on display in Goggins’ previous work is firing on all cylinders in John Bronco — the role demands grins, winks, and whoops, and Goggins is a master at them all.

The film seesaws between being a persuasive argument for standing up for what’s right and simply being an actor’s showcase.

The entire 104-minute show is performed in a single “room,” so it comes down to the sheer strength of Schreck’s writing and performance to hold an audience’s attention. Schreck more than pulls it off.

It’s what James and Thomas bring to the table that makes this new adaptation of Rebecca worth watching.

Working with fellow directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, Gibney has delivered a swiftly paced chronicle of history in the making, rich in both immediacy and uncertainty.