I would say Toy Story 5 is shockingly successful, but really it shouldn’t be shocking at all that Andrew Stanton, the director of Pixar masterpieces like Finding Nemo and WALL-E and a writer of the Toy Story films since the very first one, understands these characters and this world, and found a way to bring them into the 2020s without sacrificing what makes them special.

The film does not live up to all of his promises of shocking revelations, and in general, the movie is a long (though admittedly very exciting) build-up to an underwhelming payoff.

I laughed occasionally, mostly at Faris and Hall (who should really make a movie together that’s not a Scary Movie) but not enough to recommend the film. But, again, I was almost certainly more sober than its creators intended when I saw it.

In a world where original movies like Obsession and Backrooms are suddenly the hottest films in Hollywood, an expensive spoof of Masters of the Universe already looks nearly as dated as the old He-Man cartoon I watched as a kid.

Once you fall into this labyrinth, it’s very easy to get lost, and to lose touch with your true identity from before you crossed into its limitless spaces. Backrooms may be set in 1990, but it’s about the horror of now.

Power Ballad isn’t just a case of a director rehashing his greatest hits — even though the most famous song from Carney’s most famous movie makes a cameo. While it begins in similar fashion to nearly all of his movies — with an unlikely collaboration sparking sonic kismet and a host of catchy tunes — it also takes those familiar tropes in some welcome new directions.

The results are serviceable enough — and calculated in a way that suggests serviceable enough (and utterly inoffensive) was Lucasfilm’s goal here.

In Mortal Kombat II I truly did not care who lived or died for a single second — mostly because the film made it very clear that death is basically meaningless in this story.

Despite its own lineage, Devil Wears Prada 2 still manages to be a surprisingly clear-eyed portrayal of the fight to make things of genuine value in a world dominated by corporate greed.

It’s not just that Michael’s portrait of its title character is incomplete. He’s depicted as so pure that he becomes uninteresting; a moonwalking and talking human jukebox with little in the way of a compelling story. The only thing this basic rags-to-riches narrative has going for it is its non-stop parade of Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 hits, music so good it will surely turn Michael into a major box-office hit.

Like Saturday Night Live itself, there are too many great comedians involved for it not to be at least occasionally funny. But it’s surely not among Neville’s most insightful films. Michaels guards his secrets like someone in the Witness Protection Program.

As this legitimately clever story begins to unfold it initially seems like director Steven Soderbergh made a talkier, smaller-scale spiritual sequel to his Ocean’s 11 heist films. And if The Christophers was just a straight-forward thriller, and it would have been a nifty little entertainment. But screenwriter Ed Solomon repeatedly surprises us with one plot twist after another. He and Soderbergh really invest in Sklar and Lori’s twinned biographies of artistic passion and pain, until the film becomes far richer than a simple crime story.

Maybe there’s just no time for things like “cohesive character development” or “a compelling story” when you’ve got to service as much Nintendo IP as humanly possible in barely 90 minutes before credits.

The fate of the world, and Project Mary as a whole, ultimately rests on Ryan Gosling’s hunky shoulders. The movie might eventually evolve into a two-hander about a pair of mismatched scientists, but one of the buddies here doesn’t even have hands, and Gosling is the only human face on screen for half the runtime. That he manages to hold the audience’s attention, and occasionally makes them laugh and even cry when he has nothing and no one to play off of is a testament to his enormous star power and charisma.

Hoppers director and co-writer Daniel Chong throws a lot of ingredients in the pot here, but I’m not sure they all blend together into a coherent stew. The film has a couple fun gags, an uplifting theme, and a touching subplot about Mabel and her grandmother (Karen Huie). Still, as a story it’s a bit of a jumble, as if someone took a nature doc and hopped it into a mystery movie that was hopped into a broad comedy.

Let me put it this way: When I look back at this franchise in another 30 years, Scream 7 is not going to be one of the installments I’m nostalgic about.

A few clunky lines of dialogue aside, the movie mirrors the honorable thief at its center: Methodical, cool, and effective.

Between the two, I greatly prefer Wuthering Heights, which looks and sounds fantastic, peppers its torrid love story with a few moments of absurd humor — did I mention the veiny, fleshy wallpaper? — and carries itself with the assured confidence of its Byronic hero. (I’m a philistine, but I’m not a dummy.)

Still, the big finale redeems the middle section’s rocky patches with a very satisfying, very Raimi-esque conclusion.

In a world where the lacerating corporate filmmaking satire The Studio already exists, broad jokes about wacky animal trainers and ego-driven actors trying to influence their projects to benefit their own roles just won’t cut it.

Every time one of these Avatar movies comes out, everyone jokes about how they’re gussied-up cartoons and people online joke about how no one cares about them. Then the film actually arrives in theaters and it’s epic and exciting and gorgeous and heartbreaking. Would I be interested in a James Cameron motion picture not set on Pandora? Absolutely. But after Fire and Ash, which really might be my favorite of the Avatar films to date, I’m also okay if he just stays on Pandora forever.

You want to hate this guy for his arrogance and the way he repeatedly sabotages his own successful. But he’s played with such dynamic verve and genuine movie-star charisma by Timothée Chalamet that you can’t help but root for him anyway, especially as the stakes mount and he refuses his quest to become the world’s greatest table tennis player despite the mountain of evidence that he absolutely should.

Sure, yes, technically speaking Zootopia 2 is intended for your children. This is a colorful, energetic, and extremely busy animated film about talking animals. But while these critters’ adventures keep the kids occupied, a lot of the movie’s humor, tucked into its corners and backgrounds of the frame, is aimed squarely at their parents and guardians, at least those who love a groan-inducing play on words.

Ultimately, the best creative argument in favor of making two Wicked movies is that it let the audience spend even more time with the story’s characters and the two lead performers, who really are terrific together.

This is not just a cheap rehash of the story beats of an earlier film. It is not a legacyquel that trots out a few beloved old characters to bestow their blessing on a new generation. It takes the core elements of this concept and reconfigures them into something new.

Black Phone 2 conjures an artful milieu out of those disparate elements, and it’s saturated with the chilly ambiance of a classic campfire ghost story. But the actual story it tells never quite measures up to its superior influences, or even the previous entry in this series.

The best performance in the film actually comes from Gillian Anderson as Julian’s overbearing mother.

The final act pickles Jay Kelly’s tragicomic vibe into something more overtly and excessively sentimental.