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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s so many different kinds of movies crammed together; a paranoid thriller, a stoner adventure, an issues movie of the sort that used to be the Hollywood studios’ bread and butter but rarely get made today in the world of IP and risk-averse corporations. That’s one more reason to see it, and another reason to marvel at the fact that it exists at all.

Washington and Rocky’s scenes are flat-out electric. Even when they’re just talking over the phone, there’s an intensity to their scenes sorely lacking from everything that precedes them. In fact, Rocky brings so much passion to his scenes that Washington actually has to level up his own game up to keep pace. The pair’s confrontations prove to be Highest 2 Lowest’s high points.

This Superman does something more impressive than make the audience believe a man can fly. It makes them care about the man doing the flying.

F1 never quite says “It’s not the car, it’s the driver” — but it comes awfully close on several occasions. And it makes it clear that when it comes to action movies, it’s not the subject, it’s the director. That strikes me as a pretty old fashioned notion, and a good one.

Yes, 28 Years Later is gory and violent and the zombie kills with that jerky Bullet Time iPhone rig are cool. But the film is also thoughtful, even contemplative at times.

Thunderbolts* is a nice reminder of what this company is capable of at its best. It looks good, it sounds good, and it really does turn its protagonist’s pain into an effective allegory about rejecting despair and apathy in favor of action and brotherhood.

The way Coogler resolves Sinners’ central ideas within a traditional horror story framework is truly masterful. He plays the audience like a fiddle. Or a blues guitar.

Stoller cooked up a solid premise, assembled a funny cast, gave them some good scenes to play and lines to deliver, and let them do their thing.

In an earlier era, Babygirl might feel less novel, and its unwillingness to push its story into truly uncomfortable territory might be a bigger issue. These days, when Hollywood has pretty much abandoned sexuality as a topic of serious discussion, the film can easily lay claim to the title of top dog.

I believe Mangold directed the Dylan movie he wanted to, and in some ways A Complete Unknown is interesting precisely because it is a willfully withholding portrait of an enigmatic star. Then again, it's hard to make a completely satisfying movie about a subject that its director seems to believe cannot be understood.

The reason to see this Nosferatu anyway is its handsomely detailed production, which is soaked in gothic atmosphere thanks to incredible design, cinematography, and that creepy Skarsgard performance.

All of Wicked’s best moments are still the ones from the stage. There are a lot of those great moments, though; certainly more than I expected. When Erivo’s Elphaba hits the soaring high notes in Wicked’s signature song, “Defying Gravity,” it’s enough to make you wish the wait for the second half of the film was only 15 minutes, instead of an entire year.

If Anora does well and enables Baker to keep making quirky films about the lives of richly-detailed working-class people, that’s great news. His is one of the truly unique voices in American film today.

When you have Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as your central stars, some things don’t need to be said out loud.

It’s as if remaking a John Woo movie finally gave John Woo permission to make a true John Woo movie again.

Back in the day, the endless comparisons between Shyamalan and Hitchcock felt like a bit of a trap themselves. With Trap, though, there’s no point trying to escape them.

On the whole, Inside Out 2 lacks the structural elegance of the first film, and it holds far fewer surprises for viewers on a narrative level. Still, whether you call them anxieties or fears, Inside Out 2’s depiction of tween insecurities is right on the money.

In another franchise, it would stand as a significant achievement. In this franchise, it almost qualifies as a disappointment.

It’s such a pure-hearted celebration of movie magic it makes you want to make your own film — or at least watch one.

The era Enter the Clones of Bruce chronicles wasn’t that long ago, and yet it feels entirely alien to our own.

Zendaya gives an incredibly rich performance as Chani . . . Her mostly silent performance in the movie’s final scenes is really remarkable — all the more so because it grounds this epic story in the emotions of this one person. Watching Paul through her eyes shifts Dune from a hero’s journey to a cautionary tale.

Durkin, a self-described wrestling fan from childhood, has managed to stuff a moving tribute to the art form and its practitioners into a two-hour feature. There’s just so much story to tell here.

Of course, making food that looks effortless requires enormous effort. Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros is a movie about that effort; about the hours and days and months and years of sweat, thought, choices, and practice required to produce something worthwhile — great food, certainly, but really any work of art.

The frame is filled with observed but uncommented-upon details . . . The film seems to exist in a real world populated by fully dimensional people.

Killers of the Flower Moon earns its expansive presence. Not only is Scorsese trying to condense an epic of American history and true crime, its extravagant runtime emphasizes the staggering indifference — or, in some cases, deliberate neglect — by the Osage’s white neighbors to the acts of violence happening all around them, which allowed these crimes to continue for as long as they did.

So many blockbusters these days are designed to comfort viewers with the familiar; giving them exactly what they expect in narcotizing doses of beloved intellectual properties. While Mutant Mayhem obviously originated from the same commercial impulse, it adds a lot of novel wrinkles to the old Ninja Turtles formula.

Those quibbles aside, Oppenheimer is intelligent non-IP-driven filmmaking on a scale we simply don’t see in movie theaters anymore — especially not in mid-July.

All told, Barbie is a fascinating movie, even if it is occasionally a little frustrating and often more fun to look at than it is laugh-out-loud funny. I think my daughters will probably enjoy it quite a bit — when they watch it when they’re a few years older.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One starts at iabsurd and only gets more bonkers from there. (The film openly jokes about how many times Ethan Hunt has gone rogue and still managed to keep his job as the world’s greatest spy.) But Dead Reckoning also passionately believes in those themes — and, above all, in Tom Cruise doing ridiculous things on camera for the amusement of his paying customers.

It’s also much more about what it means to create something that rejects the notion that Peter Parker needs to be the central focus of every Spider-Man story, even in the face of intense opposition. It’s also about notion that every sequel needs to spoon-feed the audience more of the same stuff they liked the first time around.

However you write its title, Past Lives is a great romance, a great coming-of-age story, a great tale about the ways technology can bring people together (but only so far), a great New York City film, a great story about immigrants — and a great movie, period.

I don’t think Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 quite matches the sublime pop silliness of the first film in this trilogy, but it’s easily better than Vol. 2, which had wonderful bits along with an overstuffed storyline. Vol. 3 isn’t exactly streamlined — it still runs about two and a half hours — but it is more focused on its themes and ideas, and on giving the Guardians the sendoff they deserve.

In another director’s hands Air could very easily have become a piece of corporate propaganda for Nike and its ongoing Michael Jordan apparel empire. And, in a way, it still is — only it’s now an exceedingly entertaining and impressively heart-warming piece of corporate propaganda.

It manages to capture not only the adventure of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, but also the sense of camaraderie the game engenders, because it is typically played by groups of close friends meeting regularly for months or even years to a complete a campaign.

This thing ain’t a “chapter.” It’s a whole damn book — a glorious, nightmarish, biblical compendium of all manners of asskickery.

Creed III returns the franchise to its roots in macho melodrama. Yes, Adonis and Dame eventually fight. But a lot of Creed III is about their lives away from the ring, and about universal themes that have nothing to do with boxing like getting older and feeling as if your dreams are about to slip through your fingers.

You can’t say The Way of Water doesn’t give you your money’s worth, especially in the visual department. This thing’s got enough eye candy to give you ocular diabetes.

In general, Glass Onion is a much sharper comedy than Knives Out, with snappier dialogue, flashy cameos, and quirkier characters.

I hope Spielberg makes 20 more movies. But if this is the last one he ever directed, it would be the perfect career capper: An origin story, a thesis statement, a love letter, and a cautionary tale. Like life, it is hilarious at times, and pitifully sad at others. From the first scene to the last, it had me leaning forward in my seat like Sammy Fabelman at The Greatest Show on Earth.

Like another of the year’s very entertaining action movies, RRR, it uses real events as a jumping-off point to tell an invented tale flecked with real history supported by fanciful storytelling. In other words, it’s a movie, not a documentary. And a fairly exciting one at that.

It didn’t knock me out with ingenious plot twists, bold cinematography, or groundbreaking editing. But it made me smile for 98 minutes. That doesn’t happen too often lately.

But the more I sat with the film, the more I found myself returning to the sequences that work (and I mean really work), and to the way all of Nope’s stories and characters collectively create a portrait of an uncaring entertainment business that’s constantly looking for new targets to chew up. It doesn’t even spit them out. Sometimes, it devours them whole.

So maybe Lightyear isn’t the kind of movie that Hollywood would have made in 1995. As a 2022 movie, it works just fine.

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers isn’t so much based on the old animated series as it is a relentless mockery of it, along with just about everything and everyone else in soulless modern Hollywood.

Top Gun: Maverick has so much fun flexing the might of its practical effects that issues like logic go right out the window. That’s the magic of the movies for you.

To my surprise, those moments in this silly, busy blockbuster moved me. That’s what’s so great about Sam Raimi; it’s not just that he believes in these characters, he makes you believe in them too.

Despite the lack of conflict, Apollo 10 1/2 is a charming and engrossing 95 minutes, mostly because of the way Linklater blends his memories and dreams of that period, and filters both of them through the medium of Rotoscoped animation, which produces images that are somehow both surreal and hyper-real all at once.

It’s one of those special movies where during your first viewing you already know there’s going to be a 100th viewing someday.

I wound up walking out of The Batman with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. The more I thought about it, though, the more I appreciated Reeves’ ambitions and his willingness to do something that wasn’t just more of the same old Batman. He really did make you see the character in a new way. Even the stuff in the shadows.

In more ways than one, Jackass Forever really might be the most balls out comedy ever produced.

The thing that carries The Matrix Resurrections through some of those rough patches instead is Wachowski’s obvious affection for the characters, and the actors’ reciprocal love for this world and its endless intellectual curiosities.

But that’s Spider-Man in a nutshell. He’s the guy who perpetually breaks stuff, then has to patch it all back together. (Good thing he’s got those webs.) No Way Home, with its use of the old characters from previous Spider-Man movies, really gets that idea. Power and responsibility are important. Seeing something through after you mess it up? That’s the mark of a genuine hero.

Spielberg’s version improves upon the original in almost every way; the performances are stronger, the casting is better, the script is sharper, and the social commentary is more biting. He’s made a musical that feels like it was written about today, not the New York City of the 1950s — much less Renaissance Verona.

Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns screenplay falters a little in the third act; it relies on a couple of twists that are either too poorly established or too obvious to properly land. (They might also undermine the film’s themes, although that’s debatable.) Still, even when the story stumbles, the cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung is absolutely gorgeous.

To my amazement, and to Villeneuve’s credit, this new Dune is totally clear in its premise, politics, and operatic sci-fi story. It’s also filled with the sort of epic grandeur of vision that Dune fans always insist makes the original text special.

After that thrilling opening act, The Suicide Squad settles down into a more conventional (if still satisfying) superhero adventure. The story flags a little, and some tricky editing in the final act designed to keep up the energy just makes the climax more confusing. Still, the opening is a blast — and the whole thing looks like a Fellini movie compared to Suicide Squad.

Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar isn’t a movie, it’s a wavelength. You either get on it or you don’t. I’m sure some viewers will complain that Barb and Star are so quirky and chipper that they’re annoying, or that the film’s comedy is too bizarre and random. Take my advice: Cut those people out of your life. You don’t need to associate yourself with anyone who is that wrong about something this important.

With Tom Hagen and a different Mary, The Godfather Coda could actually rise to the level of the first two Godfather movies. Without them, it’s still a fairly good sequel, a sad story about guilt, with an endless supply of memorably dialogue from Coppola and Mario Puzo (“The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.”) and an underrated Al Pacino performance.

At times, Soul is as heavy as it sounds, and invites all sorts of contemplation from viewers about our purpose on this planet, and whatever (and wherever) comes afterwards. At other times, it is uproariously funny, particularly after Joe and 22’s story takes a very unexpected turn in its second half. In typical Pixar fashion, it’s also visually stunning.

There were times I wished Freaky was a little bit bolder and more surprising. Still, it’s an entertaining showcase for Vaughn and Newton, and a solid entry in the body-swap canon. In other words, it’s exactly what you think it is, inside and out.

Even if Cohen’s targets remain untarnished, even if his attempts to push undecided voters to the ballot box do not succeed, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is still an amusing sequel, with a few moments of surprising sweetness amongst the chaos and horror.

Even at their most bewildering, the raw imagination and distinctive imagery on display are always thrilling.

Bill & Ted Face the Music breezes by for 95 minutes, cruising along with the same chill energy that Bill and Ted bring to every room they enter. It’s admittedly very slight, and the ending is way too abrupt. Still, Matheson and Solomon managed to make a movie about how life’s accumulating failures can turn people cynical without making Bill and Ted into cynics themselves.

Like the resort it captures, everything in this film is fun and games right up until the moment someone gets seriously injured.

The film offers at least one tangible piece of advice for dealing with this impossible, seemingly endless time: Keep your sense of humor about you. Palm Springs, which is billed as a “Lonely Island Production,” is consistently funny, from Samberg’s IDGAF attitude, to Milioti’s initial fury at her entrapment, to a deep roster of comic talents who bring hilarious variations to the numerous riffs through the same day.

The atypical stuff in The Old Guard all comes from director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who brings a level of thoughtfulness and nuance to material that’s usually just an excuse for onscreen bloodshed.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Disney+’s Hamilton. The performers are at the top of their game and the material — music, lyrics, and book by Miranda, based on a Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow — is as powerful and catchy as its reputation. It would have been nice to see a movie version of that material that was as unique as the material itself. Perhaps someday, we’ll get one.

Even as it interrogates the traditional rules of its genre, Da 5 Bloods remains an outstanding war movie about the values at the core of most great films of its kind, like honor and brotherhood. And Da 5 Bloods is also a great heist movie about the values at the core of all great heist movies, like greed and distrust. The friction between those two genres generates incredible tension as the story progresses.

At 137 minutes, The King of Staten Island is a long movie, but not too long. I never got bored or wanted Apatow to wrap things up. If anything I wanted to spend more time with some of the supporting characters, particularly Bel Powley as Scott’s longtime friend (turned occasional hookup partner) Kelsey.

The Trip to Greece reminds us that anyone who gets to take a picturesque holiday with good food and friends should savor every last second of it. Because it won’t last forever. And it could all end when you least expect it.

It’s powered by a truly harrowing performance from Moss, and with the exception of one plot thread it probably telegraphs a little too obviously, is cleverly constructed for maximum dread — and maximum audience identification with Cecilia and her precarious grip on sanity.

Onward’s ups and downs suggest these probably are less magical times at Pixar. But that doesn’t mean with enough hard work or concentration — or maybe just following your gut — that the magic can’t come back, if only for a little while.

The themes introduced in the early scenes are explored in the second act, further expressed through the chases and fights, and resolved in the conclusion. This might sound like rudimentary stuff. But it’s sometimes shocking how few blockbusters successfully pull off the rudimentary stuff.

Like HBO’s new Watchmen series, Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep doesn’t simply rehash its source material, and instead uses its characters, setting, and themes in smart and novel ways.

I can (and have) defended each of the later Terminator sequels, but there’s no question Dark Fate is the best of the bunch.

The Safdies have crafted a complete experience here: A pointed critique of the “American Dream,” a wry portrait of Jewish assimilation in the 21st century, a cautionary tale about gambling addiction (that also doesn’t shy away from showing how seductive sports betting can be), and an unflinching character study centered around the best performance of Adam Sandler’s career.

While The Lighthouse didn’t hit me as deeply or as sharply as The Witch, the fact that such a strange feature can still be produced with so few concessions to the mainstream, and that it’s coming to theaters, feels like a breath of fresh air — albeit one cut with at least a few Willem Dafoe farts.

Lee has already made another movie in high frame rate, and seems to have a solid handle on how to use it to his advantage. “HFR” makes water and cityscapes look spectacular, and Gemini Man has plenty of both. And it makes action scenes even more visceral, especially ones that utilize long takes to allow for a lot of movement through the frame towards and away from the camera. There’s a long take of Smith’s character riding a motorcycle in Colombia that will go down in history as one of the coolest bike stunts ever.

The Irishman doesn’t always go by that quickly. But those moments contemplating the end of everything are among the most moving of Scorsese’s career.

While Gray may have told basically this same story before, Ad Astra’s cosmic setting makes it even more poignant, because it puts into such sharp relief how small each of us is against the vastness of space, and how our time in that space is the most finite blip possible when compared with the totality of cosmic history.

What a pleasant surprise that the movie is far funnier and more perceptive about this brutal, hilarious time in a child’s life than I anticipated.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is drenched with symbolism and layered with ideas about lost innocence and the power of stories — and the power of creating something that resonates with an audience for years and years. I suspect this movie will do exactly that.

The movie has an elegiac quality; it’s filled with passionate feeling about the fleeting nature of life and the magical permanence of cinema.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is best viewed as the dessert at the end of an elaborate and overindulgent tasting menu. You’ve already eaten twenty-two courses, you’re totally stuffed and in no mood for more food, and then they bring out the cookie sampler with eight different kinds of homemade sweets and of course you eat it and you’re even more full than before but it was worth it because the cookie sampler is amazing.

In my mind, there’s no question Toy Story 4 is the weakest movie in the series. But it’s also the riskiest and the most pleasantly unpredictable.

It’s got more than its share of disturbing sequences, and a string of brutal murders. It’s also got surprisingly decent special effects for a movie that was surely made on a fraction of the budget of a DC Comics film. And it has a perfectly cast Jackson A. Dunn as Brandon.

While the film refuses to be subtle with visual metaphor, Exarchopolous and Seydoux hungrily devour their scenes; they are articulate in ways both emotional and verbal, seemingly recreating, in detail, a sumptuous feast to share with an audience that could never possibly know how it tastes. But we get very close.

No matter what comes next from Marvel Studios, this Avengers is a gargantuan love letter to the equally enormous mythology that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and the rest of their collaborators built — and to the generations of readers and moviegoers who truly believe in it.

Fans occasionally refer to Shazam as “The Big Red Cheese” and this movie is very faithful to the spirit of that nickname. It’s warm and sentimental about blended families, and it sincerely believes in the importance of being a hero and doing the right thing. It’s got plenty of goofy kid-gets-to-play-superhero-for-real humor. And other than some friction between Levi and Asher’s performances, it all works.

The cast was the original’s greatest asset, and every single character of note is back, along with the original film’s mordant sense of humor and surprisingly charming sentimentality. Best of all, 2U weaponizes your knowledge of the original — your confidence that you have seen this all before and you know what’s going to happen — and uses it against you.