I admire Blue Beetle’s craft in portraying the rhythms of a day-to-day life I recognize, but I resent it for trapping that life in a snow globe, where it’s safe and removed from the lives of white folks who think of themselves as allies. In this movie, that life isn’t much more than a nice Latin corner of the DC Universe, a place to visit for good tacos while everyone waits to see what the next Superman movie looks like.

Despite Baird and Pink’s best attempts at cinematic tension and surprise twists, this story plays better elsewhere, in the retellings with a firmer grip on reality.

Where 2022’s Scream showed how the series could keep adapting and changing to fit new cinematic trends, this one hints at how unsustainable franchise maintenance can feel over the long term, even for a series that’s enjoying its deserved resurgence in creativity and popularity.

The Pod Generation isn’t going to leave anyone with the dread and emotional impetus of a hard-hitting, scary sci-fi future, or the uplift and catharsis of a well-observed satisfying one. It’s more of a placid puzzler than a moving experience, though there’s certainly plenty to see on screen, and plenty to recognize in the commercialization it lampoons.

Birds of Prey is a messy, leg-breaking, heartwarming, inspirational good time.

No One Will Save You is not just a terrific horror-thriller, but one of the most surprising and entertaining sci-fi films the year has to offer.

The Lost City doesn’t have the most exciting or novel plot, and it doesn’t push action filmmaking forward. But it does feature two of the moment’s greatest movie stars coming in at the top of their rom-com game, and mixing adventure and love.

Raimi’s cinematic wizardry lends loads of dazzle to the pack of references and callbacks that make up a large part of the film’s middle. But strip away all the sparks, and Multiverse of Madness is simply leaning on the same cross-referential thrill-of-recognition joy-button that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been frantically pressing for more than a decade now.

See How They Run is neither as clever as the creators think it is, nor as stupid as it sometimes pretends to be. It doesn’t have much to say about whodunits other than “Wouldn’t it be funny if they existed inside their own world?” And yes, it turns out, it would

It’s a polished, entertaining film, but a lot of its meaning derives from how much the audience cares about a handful of TV characters they may or may not already know.

Campbell, Cox, and Arquette all have chances to shine, and Campbell’s rueful confidence even approaches something vaguely touching. But this is a crowded movie where the body count sometimes inspires relief rather than dread: Finally, some of these extra characters are being cleared out!

Lightyear is so clearly calibrated to be something more: a thoughtful meditation on the passage of time. And on that level, the film never hits as hard as it’s meant to.

In The Whale, Aronofsky posits his sadism as an intellectual experiment, challenging viewers to find the humanity buried under Charlie’s thick layers of fat. That’s not as benevolent of a premise as he seems to think it is. It proceeds from the assumption that a 600-pound man is inherently unlovable.

Weapons that send an enemy into a dream state or a phantasmagorical world give director Zhao all the opportunity he needs to radically change animation styles, or fill the screen with wild fantasy images. This is a movie worth seeing on the biggest screen available.

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 craft Miller brought to Fury Road’s relentless chases is now channeled into wondrous stillness, a canvas meant to capture the sheer yearning at the heart of a story. The desire to be known by and know others more fully. One could call that love.

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.

Viewers who are justifiably stressed about contagion and infection might not consider Sea Fever the right kind of light evening viewing. But for people who can handle the strong quarantine vibes, Sea Fever is a solid, engaging creature mystery.

Biographies of great artists often try to define their subjects via grand dramas and dark, defining moments. A Magnificent Life’s perspective is right there in the title: Even in its darkest moments, it’s a hopeful, comforting success story, framed in a way that encourages viewers to look back to their own childhoods, and confront their own wistfully ambitious ghosts.

Any similarities to Little Shop of Horrors are superseded by similarities to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as the story becomes less about a mutated plant and about the lengths people will go to in order to achieve happiness, real or manufactured.

See For Me updates the home-invasion formula with a couple of clever twists and a key relationship. But writers Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue and director Randall Okita only push the formula so far before they run out of innovation.

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.

Sometimes, for a good time, all you need is a great actor and a story that seems like a real bad idea.

Flanagan’s sister piece ensures that its underlying meaning is as close to the surface as the shallow grave discovered in the second act. Flanagan chose to make Doctor Sleep utterly banal. Through means straightforward and blunt, he’s turned a surreal simulation of succumbing to insanity into a plainly stated reminder to always be true to yourself.

The chemistry between stars Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae keeps the romantic comedy charming.

It might leave audiences feeling brutalized, exhilarated, amused, annoyed, or all of the above, but will it leave them feeling like they want to drop a thousand dollars on a handbag? They will certainly feel like they’ve just watched a Gaspar Noé film.

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.

The film is admirable for its patient commitment to unpacking the children’s feelings about each other, the building, and other relics from their pasts, all as they learn how to carry their attachments and memories to new places.