“The Legend of Hank” offers a few hints of the wit and wisdom of its predecessor but is mostly content to coast through a familiar story on the accumulated charm of its star-studded cast of voice actors.

This is a film that pops on the big screen — no CGI needed here, folks. But the way Dosa shapes the story, emphasizing the couple’s deep love for each other and their unconventional lives, is what makes Fire of Love...one of the most moving and memorable films of 2022.

This world of entirely nice people seems like a trite fantasy — trite because the movie never makes you believe it. But it does makes you want to believe it, and so, like a lot of these movies, it takes you halfway there.

Persuasion is a handsome film, but it doesn’t have much trust in its audience to think or feel for itself.

Most of Thor: Love and Thunder is a mess, pleased with itself and tonally everywhere. As bad as one of the better “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but that’s still pretty horrible.

Both Sides of the Blade is what people like about French cinema. Its indulgences are worth wading through because, in its commitment to the truth about people and its willingness to explore the hugeness of normal human life, it’s unlike anything you’ll find in America.

Director Le-Van Kiet and screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton succeed by making the action look real, by coming up with intriguing plot twists and keeping our heroine in danger at all times.

At 88 minutes, Minions: The Rise of Gru struggles to find enough story to encompass its run time, ending up feeling substantially longer as a result.

As a 110-minute diversion, as a source of some laughs, as an opportunity for two funny guys to be funny — and to be funny with each other — what’s not to like? Just go in not expecting much.

Argentine filmmakers Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (who wrote the film in collaboration with Duprat’s brother, Andrés) direct Official Competition with a sophisticated understanding of its tone, which is essentially realistic and deadpan. The world isn’t crazy, just the people in it.

At 86 minutes, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe feels twice that long. Most of the good laughs are front-loaded in the premise; the rest pop up every 15 or 20 minutes, which isn’t exactly prime Mel Brooks ratio.

The Black Phone has better-than-average acting, an interesting period setting and well-developed characters. But it runs out of story less than halfway through, forcing the filmmakers to repeat the same kinds of actions, over and over, in order to stretch it to feature length.

It’s extraordinary how Luhrmann is able to tell this story honestly, while still making it palatable. It’s equally extraordinary that he can take this short and tragically misdirected life and make it feel like a triumph.

In dramatic terms, Spiderhead is mostly a face-off between Hemsworth’s irresistible force and Teller’s immovable object. It offers the pleasure of watching two actors, just coming into their full powers, going at it full-bore, moment by moment. And each makes the other’s performance better.

By end of Cha Cha Real Smooth, you feel like you’ve met some people, and you liked them all, and it all felt true. For a 24-year-old filmmaker, that’s not bad.

Ultimately, the people who made “Lightyear” bet too much on the appeal of Buzz, when they really needed to be deepening him and transforming him. Buzz is no Woody, and to sustain an entire movie, he pretty much had to be.

The ultimate failure of Jurassic World: Dominion is not only that it relies too much on action, but that the action is lousy.

The movie is so enamored of Walker, and Colter radiates so much charisma and pleasant mischief in the role, that it takes about half the running time to realize that the movie is not delivering on the basics.

Rylance is always good, but director Craig Roberts, to use a golf term, lays up instead of going for the pin. In other words, he plays it safe.

There’s a sweetness at the film’s core that never gets too sickly. The international angle feels right for a league that has never been more worldly. Most of all, there’s Sandler, who finds something very real in Stanley, something beaten down but still hopeful. The actor has reached a point in his career where he can summon gravitas without it feeling like a hustle.

As writer and director, Cronenberg devises for himself a compelling situation, but a situation is not the same as a story. Within 20 minutes, Cronenberg has written himself into a hole, one populated entirely by passive characters who do nothing but get cut up or watch other people get cut up.

Benediction is an awesome combination of wildness and control. Davies is out there all by himself, speaking a cinematic language that is his own and that has little to do with plays or literature.

Despite the shortcomings, Fire Island is a feel-good, enjoyable comedy and a celebration of queer, Asian American storytelling. Let’s hope its success paves the way for even more subversive films to come.

It moves, makes us care and involves us in the genuine drama of two young people trying to heal themselves. The austere beauty of the locations doesn’t hurt either.

If they can swallow the intensity of the musical numbers, fans of the show will feel at home with this adaptation, which is just a higher-stakes version of a typical episode (with shadows).

“It’s not what it looks like” is both the marketing tagline for Emergency and an accurate description of this ingenious independent film.

The acting is splendid. Fellowes’ dialogue may not be subtle, but the actors are so familiar and at home in these roles that they make up for whatever is lacking.

Senior Year is a just-OK movie, but it’s a very good Rebel Wilson movie, in that she has been funny in supporting roles, but this is the first time she has excelled as the name above the title.