What the true legacy of Jenkins’ addition to the catalog may end up being, however, is a template for honoring the past while still managing to move things a few steps ahead. The circle of life, indeed.

What you’re left with is something that wants the brand-name recognition of being a Spider-Man project by proxy, but also wants to give you an overly violent, extremely gory vigilante movie that, despite featuring Kraven fighting a weak-tea CGI version of another well-known Marvel villain, has nothing to do with those films. Congratulations on failing twice, we guess?

What the filmmaker and his collaborators have given us is something truly special: a radical work of art that channels a tsunami of radical empathy. And it couldn’t feel more necessary or vital at this moment in time.

It’s not as gamechanging as that snare drum that opens “Like a Rolling Stone.” But it still feels damn near electric.

There is a sense that it could have gone farther out and pushed even more boundaries, especially before tying everything back up with a “happy” ending that feels mostly but not quite completely earned. But there’s still a bark and a bite here in the way that its allowing a specific strain of too-often stifled female rage to really bloom.

At it’s core, however, The Order is really a horror film, made all the more frightening because the monsters who live on these Everytown, USA, Maple Streets seem way too prevalent at the present moment.

Ultimately, The End is a cult movie that, until it eventually finds its cult, will be more admired than loved. It isn’t the last word on the pending apocalypse. It simply has the fortitude to go out singing.

What the Beatles did in 1964 alone continues to change the world—and Beatles ’64 is testimony to that ongoing story.

No one wants to rock the camakau too much here, and the overall sentiment seems to be something like Sequel 101: You loved the first movie, so here’s a second movie that’s a lot like the first movie. This is the good news if that’s what you’re after. If not, well: It’s one hour and 40 minutes.

You will not necessarily be enlightened, empowered, or enthralled by all of Gladiator II. But you will almost assuredly be entertained.

Yes, The Piano Lesson hits a few bum notes. Its melody nonetheless remains intact.

For many of us staring down the next four years, the idea that a community can come together to take on the rising tides couldn’t be more welcome or needed.

Fans have been patiently waiting for the screen version of Wicked for decades now, and it’s safe to say that their faith will be rewarded. It’s also obvious that as much as this is still a tale of two witches, each blessed with equally beautiful voices, there’s a very clear standout here that’s lifting this occasionally leaden jazz-hands-extravaganza up to higher ground.

Kapadia, as masterful a filmmaker as they come, is happy to let viewers wonder where these stories will intersect, and how they’ll collide into or off of each other.

To say that this horror movie hits all of the marks it needs to hit would be just south of blasphemous. The manner in which Grant both grounds the material and lobs it into over-the-top territory, however, is simply divine.

Bird may be the most divisive movie of Andrea Arnold’s career, and we’re including the gloriously feral 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights. But like everything else she’s done to date, it’s also rewarding in unexpected ways — the sort of film that taps into endless reservoir of empathy as much as it shocks you with extremities.

It’s not Blitz’s sensory-overload sturm und drang that leaves you gasping for breath. It’s the sneak attack.

On the page, the limitations somehow feel groundbreaking and expansive. Onscreen, the film somehow reduces the same notion of one angle/one thousand different moments to little more than a blinkered gimmick.

As for whether this is the last film Eastwood gets the opportunity to make, the jury is still out on that. But you can’t accuse him of resting on his laurels. Artists half his age couldn’t come up with a cinéma du airport read this intriguing.

What Eisenberg accomplishes overall here, however, is beyond measure. It’s the real deal.

Easily one of the best and most modestly brilliant piece of nonfiction filmmaking you’ll see this year.

Do not come to Conclave in search of some divine messages about power, corruption and lies percolating within a sacred space. Just embrace it for being the type of gobsmacking, pope-up-the-jams entertainment that will have you genuflecting with gratitude over its over-the-top ridiculousness.

Why does this Last Dance feel so impersonal, so rote, so step-by-step predictable?

Please welcome to the stage Anne Kendrick, Genre Auteur!

What this sequel really seems to be suggesting is that there is nothing scarier than an unstable pop star in 2024, poised on the edge of a public meltdown captured by a million cellphones and consumed by scandal-hungry social-media addicts. When it comes to possessing your soul, a supernatural demon can’t hold a candle to show business.

The writer-director gives these unsung, oft-judged heroes of labor empowerment via empathy and representation.

We Live in Time is an actor’s movie, by necessity if not always by design. You know where the destination ends before the movie’s even begun. Pugh and Garfield make the endgame worth the journey, no matter where you place it.

As something that seeks to confuse and delight you in equal measures, this is seven courses of absurdity, served with a side of tongue in cheek from a trio who know what they’re doing, even if you’re not always sure what that is.