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

This isn’t a Murakami movie; it’s the Murakami movie.

Malignant is rarely scary, but its outlandish bits likely didn’t happen by accident — not when it culminates in scenes so ludicrously over the top that they invite both fist-pumping cheers and wheeze-inducing laughter.

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

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?

The gratifications of Fear Street: 1978 are not in its few surprises, but in its continued exploration of the history and dynamics of two social-stratified communities separated along the fault lines of unexplained affluence and inexplicable horror.

Villeneuve has spent his career merging intellectual and philosophical queries with striking otherworldly images, but that duality is frustratingly imbalanced in his vision for Dune. The visuals are mesmerizing, but the world-building is flat.

The animation really anchors the movie, which otherwise feels a bit uneven, especially in terms of Anzu and Karin’s relationship.

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.

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.

Gunn, for a time, was uniquely aware of how expendable he was. And The Suicide Squad is thoroughly focused on notions of expendability. It’s also violent, perversely comedic, and despite pacing issues, an impressive effects-driven spectacle.

It’s both a canny contemporary riff on the material and a well-made but only moderately scary slasher.

The film’s intermittent delights are momentarily satisfying, but then numbness sets in, like the brain freeze that blooms after you slurp on the film’s titular ice-cream treat.

Jusu paints a rich portrait of Aisha’s life as an undocumented Senegalese immigrant and nanny under the thumb of a wealthy white family, but the horror elements meant to visualize her internal struggles never quite cohere.

This film isn’t a particularly astute portrayal of war, but it does ably depict sacrifice — something ultimately missing from the movie-star restoration of Top Gun: Maverick. Comparing the two movies isn’t especially fair, but it’s still worth noting that this smaller production is doing more with less.

It’s stupid, exciting, unruly (with a 136-minute run time), and strangely refreshing.

Whether or not it’s to anyone’s particular taste, the fact remains that this is an audacious film that asks viewers to take its hand and come along to some particularly dark, surreal, and grotesque places. Throughout that descent, it holds on with a grip that’s tight enough to keep it from spinning out into ridiculousness. If a film this bizarre can produce gasps instead of giggles, that itself is a remarkable achievement.

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.

With stronger visuals than X, a phenomenal and ambitious performance from Mia Goth, but also an emptier and more meandering plot, Pearl loses the fun parts of Ti West’s pastiche. At the same time, it still delivers plenty of thrills and killer moments. It’s both a vividly painted nightmare and a showcase for its star.

From action director Le-Van Kiet, The Princess plays into well-worn genre subversions, but actually sees those subversions through for a satisfying effect.

It’s all extremely effective, mesmerizing stuff, undercut by Shyamalan’s habits as a blunt, obvious writer.

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.

For all its virtues, Bros is a bit of a frustrating watch, a lovely Nora Ephron-esque charmer buried somewhere underneath the self-imposed burden of representing “5,000 years of queer love stories,” a tug-of-war between the micro and macro that nearly squanders its sunny central romance with an attempt (however noble) to be all things to all people.

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.

There is nothing particularly bold about The Batman. Its strength is in execution.

The ending doesn’t land, but there’s no denying the hilarious, poignant two-thirds that precede it.

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.

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.