The real story of the King Richard dig is fascinating, but the movie, directed by Stephen Frears (“Cheri,” “The Queen”), is just OK.

Moving On is effortlessly intelligent in depicting the experience of being old. Even if you’re not there yet, you know intuitively that old age has very little to do with sitting in a rocking chair in perfect equanimity. It’s about living with the accumulation of things you did and things you didn’t do.

The formula is tired, and it’s particularly sad to see Shazam! surrender so completely and pathetically to it, when it might have been DC Comics most human superhero franchise.

Watching Inside is like being stuck inside a house, unable to escape. No, it’s worse than that. It’s like being stuck inside a house, unable to escape, and Willem Dafoe is there with you.

Not cheesy enough to be fun/bad (the recent loss of Raquel Welch reminds us of what a hoot such junk films like her 1966 “One Million Years B.C.” could be) nor awesome enough to compete with the “Jurassic” movies of the world, this production is an in-betweener whose biggest asset is a tight, 93-minute running time.

There’s a lot in Scream VI to satisfy longtime fans, but it still feels like a step down from the last one.

Harrelson and Olson make a good pair. He’s genial and bewildered and expects the best, while she’s guarded and clear-eyed and expects the worst. They deserve a better movie, but they make Champions more than bearable.

Palm Trees and Power Lines feels like an honest story about grooming, which is not only valuable in and of itself but kind of crucial at a time when hate-mongers have perverted the concept for political ends. But then, why see a movie that’s good-for-you important and profoundly uncomfortable? Because its humanity and artistry never falter.

Unfortunately, “Operation Fortune” doesn’t consist entirely of scenes between Grant and Plaza. There are pockets of genuine life onscreen, followed by long, dull stretches. The movie always gets better, but then it always gets worse. Then gets better again. It’s that kind of experience.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that conveyed with such vividness and precision the helplessness of childhood.

Maren’s direction is tonally right, full of warmth and touches of humor; he makes it an inviting film to watch.

To put it into a larger perspective, if Creed III were a “Rocky” movie, it would be up there — nowhere near the original “Rocky” and a little worse than “Rocky II,” but certainly better than the rest of them.

Cocaine Bear is a movie that will appeal mostly to people who think it’s hilarious to get their dog stoned. If you’re someone who loves to sit on an old couch with a bong between your legs, crying with laughter as your dog bangs into furniture, “Cocaine Bear” might be your “Citizen Kane.”

How Yeon-hee became Frédérique Benoît and what it all means is at the heart of Return to Seoul, an ambitious, challenging and sometimes uneven character study by French-Cambodian director Davy Chou.

It’s all rather enjoyable, and O’Connor, having starred in “Mansfield Park” (1999), certainly knows her way around 19th century romance. Yet the question remains: What is the point of all this?

To watch Close is to be fully immersed in its finely detailed world suggested by Dhont and co-writer Angelo Tijssens; realized by Dhont and cinematographer Frank van den Eeden; and brought to life by the exquisite performances of its top-notch cast, led by Dambrine, De Waele, Dequenne and — as Leo’s mother — Léa Drucker. As its accolades suggest, it is one of the best films of 2022.

The Blue Caftan, like its title garment, has a handmade, lived-in quality, an authenticity that marks Touzani — a former journalist making her second feature — a director to watch.

While it is imminently watchable, it’s a movie that consists of mostly people sitting at tables with fantastic period clothing plotting and scheming, but sometimes barely moving at all.

“Ant-Man: Quantumania” is a glum, tiresome exercise that follows the pattern of every run-of-the-mill superhero movie ever made.

Nothing about Of an Age seems forced. The film delicately embraces grand sentiments without ever being sentimental. And throughout the journey, we can’t help but be enthralled.

With the exception of Jessica Lange, who tears into her fairly brief role as a wealthy and wicked former movie star, everyone in Marlowe is directed as if to seem groggy with depression. It’s as if they’re all bored with the story before they tell it, and then they tell it while trying not to fall asleep.

Sharper works like a machine, and so it seems unfair to complain that, by the end, it feels too mechanical. It’s fun. It should have been more fun, but take the fun where you can get it.

Your Place or Mine has a feeling of old and new about it. It’s an old-fashioned romantic comedy in that it depends almost entirely on the charm of its principal actors, Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, yet it comes up with a new way of telling its story.

Targeted as Valentine’s Day comfort cinema, the new Paramount+ movie At Midnight is as sappy and predictable as it sounds, with walks along the beach, romantic getaways, candy-colored scenery and, of course, the inevitable mix-ups, misunderstandings and silly arguments that are requirements of the rom-com genre.

Somebody I Used to Know comes dangerously close to being interesting. It’s a romantic comedy, but it’s almost a twisted drama about a seriously damaged creep who goes back to her hometown and starts wrecking people’s lives.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance may not be as dirty a delight as the male stripper series’ first two movies. It has other pleasures, though, especially for fans of screwball comedy, musicals and — yikes — serious dance.

All That Breathes is the kind of immersive documentary experience other filmmakers, and film lovers, would do well to study. It never feels the need to explain what it’s doing. It’s as calm and patient as the Samaritans at its core.

Though One Fine Morning is low-key and flows easily from one scene to the next, it’s truly innovative and original. Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve has cracked a code. She figured out how to make a kind of movie that other filmmakers would love to make but don’t know how.

It’s hard to deny that Shyamalan remains one of our most prolific, longstanding filmmakers, and that his work continues to make an impression on our culture. His tense, never dull “Knock at the Cabin” makes us uncomfortable at times, and few punches are pulled. Perhaps he’s found a formula that will take him to new, interesting places.

80 for Brady is a good-natured effort, and that good nature keeps it from becoming hateable. But still, it’s fairly awful.

There’s crafty playfulness to Wohl’s approach, though; dialog can be as killer as Jo’s darkest impulses, and some scenes are drop-dead funny even if they’re about wanting to drop-kick Baby out of your life.

If you watch “Pamela, A Love Story,” you will probably discover a few things: that you like Pamela Anderson more than you realized, that she’s probably nicer than you think, that she’s an open book, that her sons are eminently normal and proud of her, and that she has some of the worst taste in men of any woman in public life. (She makes even Liza Minnelli seem lucky in love.)

Infinity Pool is a twisted, visually intriguing and at times unhinged movie designed — elegantly so — to make you squirm (for maximum impact, skip seeing the spoiler-filled trailer).

The only thing wrong with “Shotgun Wedding” is that it isn’t any good. Aside from that, it’s a pleasant experience.

The truth is, “You People” is too confused to be offensive — too inconsequential to merit that level of engagement. But it’s certainly disappointing, virtually from its opening minutes.

We still have Kendrick’s performance. We still have the compelling situation. We still have the unusual subject matter. But it’s enmeshed with unreal nonsense.

By the time “Missing” reaches its truly terrible ending (which makes you wonder if the movie was all just a stealth Apple promotion), the feeling is one of programmed exhaustion rather than catharsis.

Though hardly anybody’s idea of a jolly time at the movies — and not nearly the equal of Florian Zeller’s previous film, “The Father” — “The Son” provides an arresting and unsettling experience. It’s an interesting movie, and different.

Like all his films of the last dozen years, “No Bears” brims with paranoia and metaphors for the trouble Panahi’s pictures have gotten him into. This time, though, he implicates himself in a complex exploration of how his work can exploit and even exacerbate the real-life tragedies it’s always so powerfully depicted.

The movie’s overall aura of cheapness, the cast of unknowns and the half-baked theology all call to mind the low-budget horror of the 1980s.

We’ve gotten too used to action as mere spectacle, explosions on a video screen. Plane takes time — not a lot of time, but just enough — to make this a story about people.

The Drop can feel like being stuck with someone who has their good qualities, in serious ways, but that you can’t stand.

This Place Rules isn’t the last or best word on the events of that day in 2021, but it’s a fresh angle and one that was hard-won. Callaghan didn’t just turn over a rock to get this story, he burrowed under the rock and lived there for months.

At its titanium core, M3GAN is a mostly on-the-mark commentary on our tech dependence.

Because Living is all about unexpressed emotion — and an unexpressed life — there are times when we’ll feel impatient with the characters; we’ll want them to throw off their restraints and say everything they’re thinking. Just don’t be in a hurry. Living gets where it needs to go, and gets its characters where they need to be, in its own good time.

A Man Called Otto is a formula movie, and no matter the nuances, this formula is not that satisfying.

The worst failing of Corsage is that it makes Sisi boring and unsympathetic when it’s trying to do the opposite. You kind of catch on that there’s something wrong with a Sisi biopic when you start sympathizing with Franz Joseph, who not only was a lousy husband but helped start World War I.

While pacing and believability issues in The Pale Blue Eye cannot be overlooked, this finely made period mystery’s virtues should still be savored.

Though specific to the stories of its central characters, this documentary is as complicated as life. It’s happy, sad and uncertain — genuinely moving and uplifting, yet never reassuring.

Women Talking has a remarkable cast — Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, among others — and it’s grounded in dramatic real-life events. But it’s mannered in its conception and wooden in its execution, and has little to do with living, breathing people.

It’s easy enough to have problems with Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. It’s not nearly as truthful or as dramatic as it could have been, and it glosses over things that could have added those elements. But it’s hard to argue with a movie-length experience of listening to Whitney Houston’s voice.

It’s a perfect package of whimsy, sass and sweetness.

Directed by Matthew Warchus, Matilda is a curious creation, one whose tone maintains the barest toehold in light musical comedy, while introducing dark, disturbing elements. The movie taps into the reality and the magnitude of childhood trauma.

Don’t mistake his movie’s lack of sentimentality for callousness. Babylon is coarse, hard and wild, but its emotion is undeniable. Babylon is what movie love really looks like.

As in “The Wrestler,” Aronofsky presents us with a protagonist whose physical appearance is forbidding, and then shows us their delicacy of spirit. He films Charlie’s home with just a hint of the macabre, which serves as a counterbalance to any whiff of sentimentality in the script. The Whale doesn’t make a lunge for your emotions. It earns them.

Pelosi in the House is a one-of-a-kind document of one of the most important women in American history.

Avatar: The Way of Water is a one-hour story rattling around in a 192-minute bag.

An atmospheric and, to a degree, challenging mashup of psychological, social and folk horror, Nanny casts a spell it doesn’t put us entirely under.

Something From Tiffany’s rides the line between Hallmark cheese and the Hollywood gloss of big-screen rom-coms once headlined by its producer, Reese Witherspoon. It emerges as a top entry in the former category and a middling example of the latter, with lots of nice moments along the way.

By the time we get to the last 20 minutes, Empire of Light is so scattered, so without impact or focus, that every scene could be the last. Ending it anywhere would make equal sense, because making sense is no longer a possibility. The movie is a glossy wreck.

Unfortunately, by the time the movie gets around to the parts that might have dazzled us, Emancipation already lost its audience.

It’s a remarkably life-affirming message coming from a mess of animated puppets and a monster-loving filmmaker.

Even when it tries to be funny, there’s never any point of connection. The emotions in White Noise are neither real nor meant to be real. The audience is always watching from a distance — until, finally, it starts wondering why it’s watching at all.

Violent Night isn’t terrible, but it’s stuck between parodying something and trying to fit the genre it parodies. And it really should have been funnier.

A great visual artist documentary has to be more than a series of images set to narration like an art history course. The best films find some compelling reason in the present to spend time with them. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed filmmaker Laura Poitras’ searing, urgent portrait of photographer Nan Goldin finds that in the opioid crisis.

Sr. is elegiac in tone, often moving, with moments of irreverence and humor.

This adaptation does not allow for the energy and primal healing quality of sexuality. The movie’s grief of tone finds no antidote in the exuberance of this physical connection. The rhapsodic language of Lawrence’s text gives way to the spectacle of grinding between two average-looking mortals.

Both Parsons and Aldridge surrender to the material, and we are moved as Kit and Michael come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of their love for each other.

Bratton has made a film that isn’t necessarily anti-military — he is no doubt proud of his service — but pro-humanity. In a sense, Ellis is going through his own personal boot camp. Perhaps the film should have been called “The Introspection.”

So The Fabelmans is entertaining enough, but perhaps what’s best about it is that Spielberg got it out of his system. After this, he won’t ever need to make a film about himself or his parents again.

Guadagnino has a choice, whether to be an artist or just the maker of artistically rendered, conscientiously realized garbage. It’s time to quit while he’s behind.

White structures the documentary as an absorbing adventure tale, and that it is.

But after two instant classics in “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Encanto” in 2021, “Strange World,” while pleasing, is a bit of a step down for Walt Disney Animation.

Devotion earnestly tells that story in a stolid, straightforward manner, flying admirably high while knowing when to remain grounded.

Disenchanted, a delightful follow-up to the beloved fairy tale Enchanted, delivers everything you could ask for in a sequel. It not only continues the original film’s magical mix of music, animation, live action and humor, but also takes the story in a new and interesting direction.

It could be considered an achievement that a full-length feature movie with a talented ensemble cast, led by Kristen Bell and Allison Janney, couldn’t create a single character that you would want to spend more than five minutes with, but there it is. Not even picturesque London can save this witless comedy.

Bad Axe is a raw and stunning work of immediacy, a frontlines report from Trump country on the immigrant experience, family loyalty and community co-existence. It is not just among the finest and most important films of the year, but it will stand as a valuable historical and social document of these times.

It’s maybe not one of the best movies of 2022, but it was certainly one of my favorites.

It isn’t exciting, because such movies never are. Rather, it is consistently, calmly and compellingly interesting, not the story of a crime but about the process of revealing it.

Spirited was never going to be any good, but it would have been slightly better — and a change of pace — if Reynolds and Ferrell had switched roles.

The brilliance of what Iñárritu does here is that, if you watch any scene in “Bardo” for 30 seconds, you will keep watching. But you have to be willing to give him those 30 seconds at the start of each scene. You have to work with him a little.

Is That Black Enough for You?!? is the noted film critic and author’s ode to Black contributions to American cinema — reaching back to the silent era but focusing on what he considers the apex of Black Hollywood, a wild and energetic period from 1968-78 that revolutionized the art form.

As it stands, Wakanda Forever feels as lost and forlorn as the Wakandan people.

The experience of seeing Causeway isn’t what you’d imagine while trying to decide whether to watch a 92-minute movie about a veteran’s slow recovery. It feels more like moving in with her — invisible — for weeks, and watching as she makes a sandwich or stares into space. That isn’t drama. That’s practically audience abuse.

Enola Holmes films are too concerned with chases, romance and flattering their target audience to even consider challenging anyone’s puzzle-solving abilities.

The Wonder is no fun at all. It’s not even fun in the way it’s not fun. Even for a movie about starvation, it’s not a nourishing experience. The more the audience finds out about what’s actually going on, the less compelling the movie becomes.

Going into Armageddon Time, I had no interest in James Gray’s childhood. But that was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was to have even less interest going out.

The best thing about The Banshees of Inisherin is Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister, an intelligent woman with an even temperament and a good sense of humor who finds herself marooned in the wrong part of Ireland and in the wrong half of the 20th century.

Aftersun is a film about memory and regret, of finding small islands of warmth and happiness and holding on; a movie that beautifully struggles to say what is unsaid.

The result is so bursting with sight and verbal gags, Afropunk aesthetics and socially conscious subversions that it can be too much to take in. Like a bountiful trick-or-treat haul, you should probably come back to this bag of dank goodies multiple times, rather than try consuming it all in one sitting.

Call Jane doesn’t depict a radical transformation, just a deepening. And Banks makes it worth watching.

Seriously, don’t see Black Adam. Don’t encourage this. I don’t even want to admit that it’s an actual movie, but assuming it is, it’s the worst of the year — and one of the worst I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, thanks to Lourd, Clooney and Roberts — who radiates an appealing groundedness and sanity, despite having been suffocatingly famous since her early 20s — “Ticket to Paradise” is a lot more enjoyable than it deserves to be.

Descendant isn’t just necessary. It’s urgent.

The real magic of “School” resides in its stars. Caruso loses Sophie’s moral direction in deliciously fun yet behaviorally alarming ways. Wylie finds Aggie’s righteousness without damaging the character’s cunning intellect; a scene involving “wish fish” has no business being as moving as Wylie makes it. Together, the young actors take this project beyond good and evil, into the realm of something real.

It is, in fact, good: a simple, well told story, about an impossible love decades ago, and the collateral damage that results.

Till confirms Chukwu as an actor’s director and should establish Deadwyler as a major presence in movies.

Together, the two actors build a rapport that goes beyond the dialogue and justifies where the story ultimately goes. Anyway, that’s the paradox in “The Good Nurse,” which potential viewers must sort out for themselves: The performances are worth seeing, but the movie isn’t.