At times coming across like a fusion of Babe and The Thursday Murder Club, The Sheep Detectives gets by a lot on pure charm. The mystery is compelling enough to keep audiences guessing, while the central characters are engaging enough to follow as they find out more about George's death. The film doesn't quite overtake other entries in the cozy mystery genre, but the sweet morals and clever twists make this a worthwhile watch.

Cameron has said in interviews that sharing directorial credit was his idea, and he repeatedly shows us why. In one pre-show scene, the two of them map out where to place the cameras to best capture a particular part of the performance; in another, Eilish explains to camera what she's after with the show's song-specific color scheme. This concert is a work of art, and Eilish is its director – with this film, Cameron is less striving to create his own art than to capture Eilish's.

What enjoyment there is to draw from the action, which has its ups and downs, is tainted by the skepticism of this whole endeavor that's baked into the filmmaking. Even knowing better which direction they should go in, McQuoid & Co. remain frustratingly unwilling to commit to it. What they've made is tellingly at its best when making fun of itself.

Unfortunately for the streamer, their latest outing, Swapped, is not merely bound to be forgotten. It's also one of Netflix's worst animated movies yet."

Both the dramatizations and the interview segments of the film are artistically gorgeous, showing a remarkable grip on genre styles, from film noir to pastel-soaked satire and shadow-heavy psychological thrillers. With animation from April Kovacs and Brad Brown also deployed to tap into Werhun's love of literature, there's not a single frame of the film that doesn't immediately catch the eye.

Hokum is a refinement of what came before, not a rehash: a terrifically composed throwback that knows when to play things grounded and when to embrace the horror for its full potential.

In the moment, I thought it was very successful, and quite moving. In retrospect, however, the lens that we're forced to view the film through cheapens what we actually spent most of our time watching. Omaha can't really be seen the same way twice, but it's well worth it for that first viewing experience – and for John Magaro's performance, which will surely be some of the most quietly powerful work of the year.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a well-constructed sequel that finds a healthy balance between nostalgia and forward momentum. It might not be as richly compelling as the first film, but there's still a lot to enjoy – especially when it turns inward.

Though it's an often beautiful showcase for the Arabian desert landscape, Desert Warrior is a slow, awkward jumble, trying so hard to be cool and lacking any of the style or charisma to pull it off. The climactic battle has some redeeming qualities, but after waiting 90 minutes to see it and finding it so choppily edited as to be distracting, the prevailing feeling I carried with me after it ended was still disappointment.

With thin character work and a familiar story surrounding it, the movie ultimately proves more disposable than enjoyable.

Blue Heron is the kind of movie that begs to be written about at length. For now, I'll have to be content with assuring you that this is one of the year's best movies. If it comes to a theater near you, don't miss it.

Some adaptations, it seems, are far less equal than others.

The finished product has more than justified the cost. From the casting to the costumes to the full-fledged concert performances, Michael lives up to the legendary status of its namesake.

For a film that clocks in at around only 90 minutes and doesn't tackle any one subject outright, Wasteman effortlessly makes you think about many issues.

Writer-director Lee Cronin holds onto the essential mythology while bringing in elements from a host of other influences, including the Evil Dead series, The Exorcist, and Hereditary, to try and shake up what mummies can be on screen. Discovering the true nature of this film's mummy, and what it's capable of, is part of the fun. The result isn't quite a 28 Days Later moment – one way to understand the film's full title is that this feels like one filmmaker's interpretation of a classic monster, rather than a new template for others to follow – but it's definitely the scariest a mummy movie has been in years.

While Lowery's film is ripe for interpretation, and will no doubt be better received by those who enjoy that style of filmmaking, those wanting actual answers will find frustratingly little satisfaction. Mother Mary is, at heart, more about vibes and style than anything else.

Despite having a decent budget and some recognizable actors to work with, writer-director Tommy Wirkola, known for Nazi zombie film Dead Snow and his Santa action film Violent Night, ensured what ended up on screen was a pretty fun B picture. It doesn't have the stylistic touch that can sometimes bring a little something extra to playful genre films, nor does it have a true standout sequence that could give it a chance at a longer cultural life. But it does have just the tone you'd hope it would, especially as it nears its climax, and that's all it really needs to deliver the goods.

Hill is willing to look critically at some of his industry's darkness, but he's also far too inclined to let his lead off the hook, and his film is weaker for it. As dark comedy, Outcome feels underbaked; as drama, it lacks sufficient introspection to have earned its emotional catharsis. Part of that is length: At under 90 minutes, the film is sometimes choppy and out of breath, and more time to flesh out its ideas might have helped it feel more tonally balanced. But no one change could fix a problem that's rooted in the vision for this material.

The movie asks a lot of its audience in terms of suspended disbelief, and while it occasionally handles its cheesier moments by poking fun at itself, there are times when cringe-worthy lines are delivered with absolute sincerity. Particularly early on, in fact, You, Me & Tuscany seems doomed to be yet another trope-y romcom that fails to set itself apart. What ultimately saves the movie is unquestionably its cast. Unsurprisingly, given their respective romance backgrounds, Bailey and Page are everything audiences want in romcom leads.

Not all movies need to be action-packed, and that was never Mermaid's goal, despite what its opening, horror-themed mermaid encounter might have led one to believe. However, for a film that sets out to take viewers into the mind of a broken man clinging to his last shot at change, Mermaid does not pack the emotional punch that is needed to hook the audience all the way through.

Margot knows the dangers of social media – her backstory has shades of cliché, but it's still effective in pushing her down the rabbit hole that her coworkers' superficiality precludes them from exploring. That investigation involves a string of missing persons and a killer obsessed with the dark corners of the internet. The biggest issue with Faces of Death, though, is that it's just not all that dark down there.

Pizza Movie is a refreshing delight. The simply titled Hulu comedy knows who its audience is, and it delivers plenty of gross-out gags for them to laugh at. But it also takes its genre's formula and infuses it with a real shot of originality that gives even non-stoner-comedy fans plenty to sink their teeth into.

In The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, as in the 2023 film, surprise character cameos, nonstop gags and action, and references to 40 years’ worth of games that fly across the screen at 100 mph take precedence over plot, character development, and pacing. However, if you’re ready to turn off your brain for a little under two hours and bask in the impressive animation and countless Easter eggs, there’s a lot of fun to be had in this sugar rush of a sequel.

As it tells a thrilling story, engineered with expert precision to keep you hanging on every turn, it embarks on a truly fascinating thought experiment about the nature of identity in relationships: who we are to other people, how easily that can change, and how disruptive it can be when it does. This film is rooted (to steal one of its laugh lines) in "double empathy," exploring when and why we condemn others without itself condemning any of its characters. It may be an entertaining conversation piece, but make no mistake, The Drama is also one of the best movies you'll see this year.

That's what makes Forbidden Fruits feel both timely and timeless. We rarely leave the inside of the mall, giving the film a claustrophobic feel. The girls use cell phones – it'd be strange if they didn't – but any recognizable social media are absent. It feels like a distinctly modern take on female friendship, but one that owes a great deal to the films that have come before it. And it's lost the sort of optimism that those films often came with.

It sits somewhere at the intersection of Quentin Tarantino and Sam Raimi, though without the former's control of form and the latter's splatstick comedic timing, it can't quite live up to the potential of that mashup. Still, it's plenty of fun. Zazie Beetz is the ideal badass heroine to carry this movie, and there are more than enough moments of stylish violence (and violent style) to get the whole theater cackling.

Sam somewhat shrinks into the periphery of the story to make way for Amanda Peet's Dianne, whose tonal world is welcome, but certainly different. Rather than hold things together, Shear the filmmaker seems to step back, too. The result is a film that only exists in moments: sometimes funny, sometimes interesting, always lacking the cohesion necessary to add up to anything.

Kontinental '25 is an acerbic film which makes you feel uncomfortable for chuckling your way through it, because by doing so you acknowledge an awkward sense of resonance with the guilty.