Luckily, it smartly balances references to the original movies in a way that (mostly) avoids the self-aware smugness that has killed many a “re-quel,” delivering a product that feels consistent with the first four movies but distinct enough to have its own voice.

Unfortunately, the craftsmanship is lacking.

It’s a meticulously crafted, albeit not totally original critique of internet culture, bursting with color and melodramatic teen angst.

With its Indiana Jones-style adventure, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania combines monster powers lost and found (love those innumerable wolf cubs), pure joyous silliness, and surprisingly touching insights into family relationships.

Frustrating in its repetitiveness, Leon’s third feature is like a narrative exercise fascinated by both memory and youth. Italian Studies relentlessly experiments with form, but fails to fully congeal.

The intentionality and editorial eye that make the style of this film so compelling feels sorely lacking from the script, which is at once scattered and repetitive.

Robinson is matter-of-fact, thoughtful and enormously compelling in illustrating hidden chapters of our shared history.

Borrego, an awkward thriller pasted onto a moody strangers-forging-a-connection drama, doesn't allow itself to be what it so clearly wants to be.

The trouble is that while many of these bits and pieces are often fascinating, they never quite pull together into a truly compelling or satisfying narrative.

I wish it was a little more ambitious and had some more meat on its bones regarding internet culture and shared spaces, but it’s undeniably entertaining, which is more than I can say about some of the times I’ve rented homes myself.

Unlike a lot of recent indie horror movies, An Unquiet Grave doesn’t feel bogged down by the last few decades’ worth of American horror. It’s a spare, dread-filled mood piece whose just-so dialogue, too-tight close-ups, and deceptively subdued pacing all tease out small, but essential details from both of these elusive central characters.

The 355 amasses some of the most talented and electrifying actresses in the world, then squanders them in a generic and forgettable action picture.

Although their work is ultimately not enough to make “See for Me” anything more than a gimmick movie that never quite pays off, Davenport almost makes it worth watching and will leave you wondering about what they could accomplish with stronger material.

King Car may leave viewers wondering about a number of basic questions (mostly related to the plot), but it also often feels open and precise enough to work on its own terms.

The Wasteland is the unique case of a horror movie with a more robust visual sense than a lot of its contemporaries, but that still doesn’t create a larger terror. It’s more the stuff of directors' reels, not nightmares.

As an arraignment of the systems that ultimately rule human interaction regardless of the superficial societal differences between Europe, the Americas, and the East, A Hero is a chilling demonstration of how, as the song says, money changes everything.

The Spanish maestro knows precisely how to get all the colors out of his charismatic muse, and in turn, the veteran star takes his material and makes it feel both fiery and grounded.

It wears its heart on its sleeve, unpretentious and sincere as a homemade valentine.

The problem, though, is that American Underdog doesn't ever really connect the modest virtuousness of Kurt and Brenda to Kurt's ascension as a quarterback.

This is a drama that prizes journalistic or documentary values, as well as the "epic naturalism" of films by directors like Terrence Malick and Chloe Zhao in which the camera might be as interested in flowing water, a sunset, a flock of birds, or a line of silhouetted horses as in whatever the characters are doing or saying.

Memoria is a sensory experience, but it takes a performer like Swinton to amplify Joe’s technique.

This “Macbeth” is as much about mood as it is about verse. The visuals acknowledge this, pulling us into the action as if we were seeing it on stage. But nowhere is the evocation of mood more prominent than in Kathryn Hunter’s revelatory performance as the Witches.

It’s a film that is too often trying to be a serious study of politics, warfare, and pacifism until it slaps you in the face with a reminder that this is all set-up to one of the broader, goofier action franchises of the modern era.

The best family films capture the imaginations of younger viewers and teach them the power of storytelling in ways that can affect them for their entire lives, possibly inspiring them to create their own stories as well. By comparison, “Sing 2” serves no other purpose than to waste a couple of hours.

The Velvet Queen is at its strongest when it allows for silence on this gorgeous landscape, using only its mesmerizing score to elevate the imagery into something poetic about the beauty of mother nature.

There’s incredible merit in the action seen in “The Matrix Resurrections,” but those aren’t the elements that free the mind of the medium like bold storytelling, like “The Matrix” preached and then became a game-changing classic, only to become a docket for satisfying shareholders. Blue pill or red pill? It doesn’t matter anymore; they’re both placebos.

Harrowing, unpredictable, painful, confrontational, this is a movie for grown-ups.

Even those unfamiliar with one or both materials can detect the cyclical parable del Toro establishes through his understanding and repurposing of noir tropes, both visual and thematic. His “Nightmare Alley” is a movie of psychological tunnels and downward spirals.

The feature filmmaking debut from writer/director/co-editor Lauren Hadaway is an intimate and powerful sensory experience all around, but it’s the sound editing—Hadaway’s first calling, having worked with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Zack Snyder, and Damien Chazelle—that grabs you off the top and envelops you throughout.

This is the same "young man's coming-of-age story" you’ve seen over and over. Nothing new has been added. The poster calls this “a feel good movie,” but who is supposed to feel good here? Certainly not the average viewer, who has seen this tired material so many times they can practically recite the dialogue.

Touching on issues of identity, integrity, and grief, “Swan Song” never feels formulaic due to the complex, committed performances of its stars and the thoughtful exploration of the issues it raises.

Although it's undeniably well-made, it lacks the kind of energy that might have helped make it truly come alive, and seem like more than a historical reenactment.

There are a lot of ideas swimming around in “The Pit,” but most of them aren’t arranged well enough to demand your attention.

There is some panache to the film’s visuals and a lot of heart in the actors’ collective dedication, but “Mother/Android” feels like a bland mash-up of genre staples to forgettable effect.

The travesties of justice on display throughout “President” become so repetitive and inevitable that it renders one exhausted, grateful if only that the killing of democracy has been so clearly and meticulously documented.

Yes, of course, “No Way Home” is incredibly calculated, a way to make more headlines after killing off so many of its event characters in Phase 3, but it’s also a film that’s often bursting with creative joy.

There’s so much beauty in this West Side Story. It merges things that have truly shaped pop culture from the graceful precision of Spielberg—who has always had a musical director’s eye in terms of how he choreographs his scenes—to the masterful songwriting of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein to the brilliant writing of Tony Kushner to the immigrant experience in this country. It grabs you from the very beginning and takes you there. Somehow, someday, somewhere.

A disastrous movie, Don’t Look Up shows McKay as the most out of touch he’s ever been with what is clever, or how to get his audience to care.

It is with a zippy touch and a number of questionable directorial choices—Sorkin is still a much better writer than director—as well as an immersive, pressure-cooker structure that is never less than enthralling, that Sorkin implants his aforesaid signature style into Being the Ricardos.

Despite its missteps, this is Baker's best-directed film, judged purely in terms of how economically he sets up and pays off each mile marker in the story, often getting in and out of a scene with two or three elegantly choreographed but unpretentious shots.

You need a blackboard full of X’s and O’s to keep track of the petty plays this movie's running.

Director Tim Sutton, working from a script by Greg Johnson, offers some striking visuals and a couple of compelling performances. But for the most part, this high-concept Western is too much of an empty drag to ever grab you.

In theory, that sort of self-victimization could be funny; in this reality, not so much.

While “A Son” has allegorical parables with the political evolution of not just Tunisia but the whole MENA region, the first rate-acting, the very credible environments, and the straightforward, tight-as-a-drum direction make it hum with a directness that few social problem movies can muster.

Cinematographer Samuel Calvin is to be commended for his striking work, and Reece shows an intuitive understanding of when to move the camera, and—more importantly—when not to move the camera. It's all very elegantly put together.

The problem here is a recurring one with recent family entertainment and it's how little there is below the repetitive surface. Jokes are recycled with alarming regularity, and most of the supporting characters outside of Maddie fall flat.

The movie gives pretty good showbiz lore but not much depth.

The extremes uncovered in this film become revealing of what we accept as necessary, in what we as a nation rationalize as justice even without procedure. It is eye-opening, and yet also like Gibney’s best work, affirming in the worst ways.

A country can be a home, and a home can be erased, and the aching, lovely Flee trafficks in the space between belonging and wandering.

There are times when Verhoeven is throwing so many ideas into his purposefully overcrowded screenplay that it starts to feel unfocused, like a dramatic version of the legendary "Aristocrats" joke. And yet there are also times when it feels like a culmination of his career, a film he was inevitably going to make in how it distills sexuality, corruption, broken systems, and provocation into one fascinating story.

With his rich coming-of-age drama The Hand of God, Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino not only courts, but squashes comparisons to formative maestro Federico Fellini.

Writer/director Camille Griffin’s feature filmmaking debut is an ambitious but muddled mix of Christmas comedy and apocalyptic drama.

For a while Pearce does a very clever balancing act, taking everyday unpleasantries and grotesqueries of life and exaggerating them just so.

By the time we get to Ashe’s AIDS-related activism, and the horrible way USA Today twisted his arm into revealing his diagnosis, Citizen Ashe has taken us on a complex, sometimes infuriating tour of its subject’s life. It begins with the birth of an athlete, then morphs into the creation of an activist. The transition is so subtle that you only realize it after the film ends.

But for as much writer/director Biancheri pumps copious ideas into this concept, the solemn tone and lack of thematic focus renders the overwrought outing underwhelming.

The contrast between the edgy, high-energy songs and the thinly-drawn characters and predictable storyline will make it of most interest to viewers young enough to be unfamiliar with the formulas it never transcends.

In the end, I was left feeling like The Scary of Sixty-First was all set-up and no follow-through. Sure, it gets bloody and crazy in ways that will probably turn off some viewers, but it doesn't feel feel like it has something to say about our conspiracy theory culture.

By inviting viewers to share in the most private of transformative periods for his family, Max Lowe scaled the Mount Everest of the soul, creating a cinematic gift that cuts to the heart in ways few films ever do.

Try Harder! is a charming dark comedy with a light touch, with part of its self-deprecating humor right there in the title.

Most viewers will find themselves wishing that writer/director Patrick Ridremont had come up with a few variations on this standard theme in order to liven up this competently executed but painfully familiar genre exercise.

There are points early in this documentary where you might wonder if it really needed to be a feature (one can imagine a cut-down "60 Minutes" piece doing the job just as effectively) but when Lane gets away from the man himself and focuses on the details of the business of music, a new frontier of understanding opens up.

It’s a powerful piece of work that details how communities on the edge of lawlessness and poverty were overwhelmed by drugs in the ‘80s and ‘90s, leading to cycles of addiction and violence that can become impossible to escape. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a moving one.

After the story of the Tulsa Massacre entered the national consciousness because of Damon Lindelof’s “Watchmen” and Misha Green’s “Lovecraft Country,” Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street this Memorial Day feels like the first time that the voices of the victims have finally been heard.

This movie shows us the teamwork, the dedication, the national pride, the astonishing vistas, and the reason that Purja and his team deserve to be as renowned as Sir Edmund Hillary, maybe more.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s golden, shimmering vision of the 1970s San Fernando Valley in Licorice Pizza is so dreamy, so full of possibility, it’s as if it couldn’t actually have existed.

Similar to how Pixar’s Coco paid tribute to Mexican culture, Encanto holds many nods to its Colombian roots, from the use of flowers and animals specific to the regions to crafting songs that incorporated their respective countries’ musical palette.

8-Bit Christmas may have a more grounded approach to gamer culture than you'd expect, but it’s constantly beat by its own limited imagination.

At times the movie feels like Hereditary without the supernatural elements and gore. It's a psychological horror movie about the ordinary miseries and compromises of family.

It’s in the climbing sequences that the movie’s animation is at its most imaginative, creating effects both exhilarating and harrowing.

A thoughtful and tearful ride in which the destination is a spiritual confrontation with oneself, Drive My Car devastates and comforts through its vehicular poetry of the sorrow from which we run, the collisions that awaken us, and the healing gained from every bump in the road.

It's depressingly easy to chart where this film is going to go and who's going to make it to the inevitable sequel. There’s one thing a great horror game can never be (and something one couldn’t really accuse the Anderson movies of being either): predictable.

A Boy Called Christmas is a resplendent Santa Claus origin story with a star-filled cast, sumptuous visuals, and some melancholy details to keep it from being too sugary.

Writing with Fire is a powerful piece of work, although it moves at a mostly slow and steady pace.

This is three movies in one, each of which is progressively worse.

Watching Smith's buddies pay him heartfelt tribute is one thing, but that doesn’t make spending so much time (115 minutes???) with his fawning co-conspirators feel much less oppressive.

Scott’s soapy epic—his second cinematic outing this year after the superior (and also partly campy) “The Last Duel”—isn’t exactly a bore, thanks to a number of its actors (like Leto) unafraid to lean into the film’s kitschy tone as well as some fearless moments—like one sensationally go-for-broke sex scene—that meet them at that amplified level.

There are endless horror movies out there in which a slow burn seems like it's just killing time before it's actually time to kill. But "The Feast" does well with that dread—it's the main course that proves to be the rip-off, however gory, indulgent, and horror-ready it is.

It’s an easy watch in a B-movie marathon but you’ll have forgotten it by the time you’re done with the Thanksgiving leftovers.

There is, nevertheless, something to be said for a documentary that tries to do something different and perhaps impossible, even if it doesn't quite get there. And in the end, any flaws or missed opportunities are subsumed by the movie's sincerity and wealth of insight.

Pleasant but unchallenging.

Miranda, who starred as Larson in a theatrical performance of this play, directs the film with a deep understanding of the passion, struggle, and ebullience of an artist committed to an art form that requires a lot of money and a lot of other people to be brought to life.

Ferrara’s filmmaking always has a blunt elemental force and conviction. It doesn’t quite transcend the commonplace aspect of what he’s trying to “say.” And yet transcending isn’t the point—doing is. This is not just guerrilla filmmaking, it’s a kind of action painting. A literal journey to the end of the night.

It’s a stunning showcase for the great character actor Frankie Faison, who conveys Chamberlain’s confusion and terror with palpable empathy and honesty.

A 100-minute spell of beauty and melancholy, intimate and grand in equal measure, a film that derives its power from the universality of its final destination and the relatability of the pain, love, and regret that pave the guiding road.

Behold the craven exercise in hollow nostalgia that is Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

It seems more likely that this is a film about discoveries rather than statements, with the camera following people and then abandoning them to seek insight elsewhere, by looking into things rather than merely looking at them.

For the most part, So Late So Soon is a moving and thoughtful meditation on the inevitability of aging and mortality and the unstoppable lure of the creative process.

C’mon C’mon is the kind of movie that invites reflection. It’s not building towards a larger cinematic event or full of explosions. It’s a sincere drama about relationships, told from the perspectives of different members of one family.

Jagged rides the wave of that excitement, but avoids opportunities to explore deeper below the surface.

Of all of the things Tatiana Huezo captures in Prayers for the Stolen, her first narrative feature, the terror of the night is most unnerving.

Berry’s Bruised is a familiar comeback tale relying on the inner-city motifs of 1990s hood films to deliver a melodramatic, barely coherent prestige vehicle with very little to say about MMA itself.

The game of wits between Phil and everyone else is a chilling one to watch, and it’s exactly the kind of end-of-the-year movie to finish things with a bang.

King Richard is half sports movie, half biopic. As such, it hits the sweet spots and sour notes of both genres.

Maggio’s film is also deeply moving in how it illustrates the ways in which a single life can have an eternal ripple effect throughout the generations, seamlessly blending Parks’ voice with those of the modern day photographers who carry on his legacy.

It draws together a first-rank cast of character actresses and actors, most of them over 50, then mostly fails to invest the material with the invention and snappiness needed to invigorate it and make it memorable, as opposed to merely agreeable.

A film that is a somewhat uneven journey, though one that proves to be ultimately rewarding in the end.

This is an unrelentingly gripping and often disturbing film that dares to visualize (with taste and restraint) some of the vilest behavior the species is capable of, and take full measure of the psychic damage it inflicts on innocent victims.

Cusp, with its dreamy imagery of golden sunsets and thunder-y twilights, empty Dairy Queen parking lots, and birds taking flight, is a mood-driven piece of work, sensitive to landscape and environment, and the girls' casual comments about rape (just one example) stand in stark contrast.