It’s rare to see an anime story that solely focuses on adults navigating the issues of maturity, personal development, and a stymied future. It’s even rarer to see anime that simultaneously tackles those ideas, and wraps them in such an extravagant visual fantasia.

It’s a silly family-friendly story that stands on its own, without expecting its audience knows what came before or cares much about what comes after.

While it captures the fantastical quirk conjured up in Greenberg’s pages, the edges are sanded down into something more digestible.

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

Alien: Romulus is made up of roughly two parts: a haunted-house story in outer space à la Alien, and a crowd-pleasing horror-action spectacle like Aliens. The former element is stronger than the latter in this case, and the imbalance is one of the reasons Alien: Romulus feels like a by-the-numbers retread of the franchise defining it, rather than the resuscitative breath it so desperately needs.

The side plots are the burst of energy the movie needs.

The film doesn’t come across as ironic, satirical, or like a thoughtful analysis or commentary. It’s the first of the three that could actually be considered a new entry in the genre it’s referencing.

The second Enola Holmes movie is the rare sequel that improves on the first. The first had its strengths, most notably Brown’s magnificent acting, but director Harry Bradbeer and screenwriter Jack Thorne seem more certain of the theme and the characters this time around.

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.

Mottola and Hamm don’t seem like they’re trying to rewrite Hamm in Fletch’s image, or vice versa. They look more like they’re making exactly the half silly, half sly movie they personally want to see.

This would-be tale of female empowerment spends too much time worrying about visuals rather than the story it’s telling, and it loses any sense of catharsis as a result.

Apart from some compelling procedural elements, the movie is mostly style, and that style is a generic mess of tics: pseudo-documentary quick zooms, exchanges of fraught glances, and handheld camera work.

Napoleon isn’t a movie about grand triumph, or about disastrous failure. It’s a story about masculine insecurity, and how it can reduce the world to violence.

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.

Sometimes the acting is stiff and sometimes the plot points are routine, but overall, it’s a transformative magic act, taking the familiar and using a few flourishes and sparkles to turn it into something magical.

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.

At heart, Vivarium is a puzzle, a story full of twists and thin on character development. To the film’s credit, the alien-ness is effective, lending Vivarium the tenseness of a horror movie and engaging the audience where the story fails.

Turtles has familiar John Green touchpoints — a gimmicky story setup, a teen romance, a quirky best friend — but it turns the story inward and pulls off a fantastic character exploration, one that feels like a gut-punch in its best moments.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a Marvel film of unusual conviction, where every character beat is given the same weight, whether it’s the climactic battle against the villain, or perennial goofball Drax quietly explaining that someone hurt his feelings.

It helps a lot that the filmmakers have footage of the couple and their climbs going back to 2015. That sense of scale does a lot to put their growth, both personally and professionally, on full display.

Cold Storage makes horror-comedy look as easy and appealing as it’s supposed to be.

All You Need Is Kill isn’t as tight or fun a film as Edge of Tomorrow, but the visuals are stunning, and the moody tone makes it easy to get immersed in the world, even when the story doesn’t fully deliver on the premise.

Writer-director Jeffrey Brown may not be an innovator, but he has a poetic knack for coaxing the old roots of dread into fresh, cancerous bloom.

It’s the rare teen movie that doesn’t seem like it’s mostly a fantasy, that gets beyond the big, artificial beats of series like Glee and Riverdale.

Greyhound’s greatest asset is its sense of spectacle, unfortunately somewhat diminished outside a theater setting. But Schneider and Hanks keep Greyhound compelling through detail, and through the sheer power of Hanks’ furrowed, determined brow.

Even when The Bad Guys resembles other movies, it’s stealing from them gracefully, with its own sensibility and energy.

The Creator is a fully realized future in the service of a rote story and flat characters that only gesture in compelling directions; I’d rather not bother with that story at all.

Gyllenhaal is the whole show, and his irritable, driven, struggling character doesn’t exactly glorify his line of work. His unpleasantness gives the movie its edge, and perhaps also an unearned sense of gravitas.