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.

Essentially, Memory is too superficial a treatment of the chestburster sequence to validate making half of a movie about it, and it’s also too lengthy an exploration of it to give the other elements of the movie their proper due.

Good or bad, it’s undeniably one of the most depressing comic-book movies ever made. (It’s also got one of the most depressing comic-book movie scores, an endless dirge of droning strings by Hildur Guðnadóttir.) The calls from some corners to ban the film because it could incite violence give the movie too much credit. It’s not irresponsible. It’s just immature.

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.

A solid, workmanlike melodrama with an attractive ensemble cast. What it lacks is the flair and substance that marked Paolo Virzi’s 2013 version of the same material.

The parade of subplots and explanations keep sinking a story that previously floated along so effectively. I saw It Chapter Two a few nights ago and I think it just ended.

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.

Hobbs & Shaw is the movie version of a replacement-level player. It is adequate, but not exceptional. It’s the baseline version of what one of these movies should be, now that they’re not about undercover cops chasing thieves anymore.

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

As a purely technical achievement, the new CGI cast of The Lion King is impressive. As a means to tell its fictional story, it is deeply misguided.

The stuff about this couple in decline is lacerating and painful in the best and most hilarious ways possible. The stuff about the solstice is standard horror fare made unfurled, with exceptional craft, at a snail’s pace. And the longer Midsommar goes, the further it gets from the pain and the loss that fueled its emotional core, until it has lost touch with the things that made it special.

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.

The degree to which Men in Black International wastes Hemsworth and Thompson’s talents — and in the process almost makes them seem like bland, uninteresting actors, despite all the previous evidence to the contrary — is almost an accomplishment in and of itself, and the rest of the film is equally useless (not to mention long, at just under 120 minutes).

The whole movie hinges on Jean Grey, a character we hardly know (the Sophie Turner version was introduced in a minor role in X-Men: Apocalypse) and her relationships to a team of heroes we’ve hardly seen.

The writing as well as the sprightly character animation captures the spirit of these creatures at their absolute best and hilarious worst in a way every dog owner can recognize and relate to. When the film sticks to that, it works.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is as narratively incomprehensible as it is visually, with an even-more-talented roster of overqualified actors tasked with carrying the film’s insipid story and trying to make their characters’ bizarre decisions seem halfway plausible.

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.

The nicest thing I can say about 2019’s Aladdin is in its best moments it reminded me of a movie I liked a lot as a kid.

None of the life we see J.R.R. Tolkien live in the film illuminates his great works of art — or even makes for a particularly compelling tale.

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.

Beneath the predictable story, Detective Pikachu isn’t about much, and if you need Wikipedia to explain who Mewtwo is, most of the jokes will go right over your head. The whole thing is a bit too childish for adults, and a bit too convoluted for kids. It absolutely deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects however, even if the subject matter makes me think it’s unlikely to receive one.

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.

Characters repeatedly yell jokes from offscreen or while their backs are turned to the camera. They are, almost without exception, not funny. And they’re indicative of a movie that feels like it was worked and reworked in the editing room almost to its literal death.

Dumbo’s great skill, flying around a tent in a circle, becomes a little old after it’s repeated ad naseam over the course of two full hours. Adorable though he may be, Dumbo’s kind of a one-trick pony, in a matter of speaking.

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.

Captain Marvel itself has none of that rebellious spirit. It takes very few risks in the way that something like Thor: Ragnarok did, beyond the fact that it is the studio’s first blockbuster with a female hero in the lead. Personally, I like my movies about rule breakers to actually break some rules.

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.

Alita barely considers any of the existential questions about humanity that are typically central to this kind of sci-fi film. It’s just a slick action film. That is one way, at least, it does feel like a Robert Rodriguez movie.

A great cast and a fairly clever turn into the realm of horror can’t redeem what otherwise feels like a very familiar, very safe piece of satire.

Very cute and very sweet. There was that part of me, though, that kept thinking about the first LEGO Movie, and how much of a genuine Hollywood aberration it seemed — if not a flat-out miracle. The Second Part is fine, but even its title suggests it’s more cog in the machine than disrupter.

I sat watching Fyre in a state of amused disbelief (while, yes, occasionally taking the Lord’s name in vain). There’s not too many places to see this much madness, ego, greed, and full-on stupidity on display at the same time.

Given the visual and intellectual sophistication in the superhero movies Hollywood now churns out at a regular clip, Glass just doesn’t cut it.

The whole production just works. Steinfeld, Lendeborg, and Cena are extremely likable leads, and there’s a soul and an innocence to Bumblebee that was never present in any of the previous Transformers.

I never would have thought I could get so little amusement out of a film where Hugo Weaving dramatically intones nonsense like “Prepare to ingest!”

There are some legitimate criticisms you can level against Aquaman. You could never say, however, that this movie doesn’t go for it. It goes for everything — maybe too much, when all is said and done.

Into the Spider-Verse really is the ultimate Spider-Man film in a lot of ways, the one that crystallizes the character’s moral philosophy, his life lessons, his arachnid athleticism, and his quirky sense of humor into one hugely appealing package. It’s pure dorky fun.

Creed II is very much a Rocky sequel. It’s bigger, louder, and more over the top than its predecessor, with a more formulaic story and more absurd boxing matches. It’s satisfying as a pop confection, but it’s not as special or as rich as its predecessor.

Instant Family didn’t just exceed my low expectations; it obliterated them. It’s the kind of honest, human comedy that’s so rare from Hollywood these days that when one finally comes along, you sit there in the theater in slack-jawed amazement and wonder: How does a movie like this happen?

The first Fantastic Beasts was a bit of a mess. The second one is actively bad. The longer this spinoff franchise goes on, the more damage it does to the legacy of the Harry Potter series — which knew not to overstay its welcome. Fantastic Beasts 2 has plenty of spells, wands, and wizards — and absolutely no magic whatsoever.

Ralph 2 does offer the action, racing, and goofy pop cultures jokes expected of this kind of Disney animated feature. It’s just that along the way it also has a very heartfelt theme about the complexities of longterm friendship, and a timely message about what happens when seemingly strong men begin to feel weak and threatened.

Although Malek looks the part, and has Freddie’s dance moves down, his performance is all stiff British accent and overbite (Mercury was born with four extra teeth). Singer never gets beyond the superficial to tell us anything profound or meaningful about Queen or Freddie Mercury or the perils of rock stardom.

If you are going to Venom for cool superhero action — or for compelling characters, pulpy science-fiction, impressive special effects, a parable about corporations run amok, or a single significant connection to Spider-Man — you will be sorely disappointed. If you can look past all of that (and the dreadful first hour), your reward is Hardy, delivering one of the all-time great unhinged performances.

The edges are certainly rough; the sound quality changes from line to line and occasionally from word to word. But a lot of that works into the film’s mixed-media approach, and to its overall mood of a life that is rapidly falling apart, held together by a thread that is unraveling before our very eyes.

This is less Lanthimos’ film than it is Colman, Stone, and Weisz’s. The Favourite is mostly an excuse to watch these three attempt to one-up each other.

Lots of mystery hangs in the air of the El Royale, but when all is said and done there aren’t a ton of surprises in Bad Times at the El Royale’s story, or the way that story is told. Even with a bunch of twists, things progress largely how you expect, only slower.

Unfortunately, Mid90s isn’t anything you haven’t already seen numerous times before.

It is impossible to discuss the rapturous, experiential masterpiece that is Guadagnino’s Suspiria without dedicating this much space to its thematic density. It’s not a film one considers, but excavates, continually finding additional symbols and meaning within the deceptively simple setting.

As a piece of moral commentary cloaked in a sci-fi gimmick, Overlord is uninspired. As an action thriller, it’s just aggressively boring. Maybe because it exhaustively recycles imagery from any number of genre films that came before it...or because the action sequences are bizarrely monotonous, save for the occasional bit of gory VFX.

Apostle is a solid mystery-thriller, but save for predictably engaging performances from Stevens and Sheen, it’s largely unremarkable. Though it’s interesting to see Evans tackle something a little more conventional, this feels almost too conventional for the man who gave us The Raid and its sequel.

I’ve never enjoyed any of Roth’s grisly R-rated movies, but at least those had a distinct vision and style. If only his kid-friendly haunted house movie was as original, it could’ve been a surprising treat.

If Redford really is done for good, this is a perfect way for him to say goodbye.

If Beale Street Could Talk is a movie about racism and the incarceration of black Americans – realities as significant and relevant today as they were when Baldwin’s novel came out – but most importantly, the deep, shining love that pulses through Tish and Fonny’s story never fades.

The Predator gets off to a promising start, and there are a couple of memorable flashes Black’s verbal wit. Then the action kicks in and the film gets worse and worse.

Though Widows isn’t as exceptional as McQueen’s previous work, his style elevates it well beyond any generic big studio genre film. It’s a first-rate popcorn thriller that dazzles you and gives you something thoughtful and timely to chew on.

More than a third of its runtime is frustratingly lifeless, mimicking the repressed, impassive psyche of Ryan Gosling’s astronaut, and when Chazelle finally takes us to that big rock in the sky, the sequences may be gorgeous to look at, but the film fails to capture how awe-inspiring something as epic as a trip to the moon must have been.

Green serves up everything we love about the first Halloween, completely playing off our nostalgia for the slasher classic, and to me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

While A Star Is Born isn’t a perfect movie, faltering in its second act and rushing far too quickly into Ally’s rise to fame, it’s an undeniably mesmerizing one.

Though Searching is a fun ride, I left disappointed over how little the film uses its digital schtick to unpack the psychology behind our modern screen addiction.

Henson has given us the worst movie of the summer — and quite possibly the worst of the year thus far.

The fights and shootouts are too choppy to be clear and too bloody to be fun. It’s basically an over-caffeinated lecture about geopolitics with frequent cutaways to grisly murders. It didn’t necessarily need a page one rewrite, but a better and less hectic edit could have done wonders.

Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians is good, though, even if it is a little overcrowded.

Like director Jon Turteltaub’s underrated National Treasure movies, The Meg has an innate understanding of its own absurdity, and is at its best when it embraces and amplifies that impulse.

Kate McKinnon deserves better. Until then, she’ll continue to be Hollywood’s most reliable comedy savior, a one-woman circus act on a tightrope, juggling and balancing on one foot, all while holding up lousy studio comedies with her bare hands.

There may be plenty of charming, classic Pooh-isms sprinkled throughout Christopher Robin, but the film just can’t manage to bring the same level of poignance and wisdom to its own story.

Although Teen Titans Go! to the Movies is ostensibly about spoofing superheroes and their hoariest clichés, the film is loaded from top to bottom with loving Easter eggs from DC Comics history.... As a result, it’s actually a far more affectionate portrait of comic books — and a more persuasive argument in favor of their escapist pleasures — than any of the so-called “serious” DC movies.

The new sequel/prequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again – which has perhaps the best sequel subtitle of all time – is only half as fun as the first movie, replacing familiar faces with lesser known ones in a story we already know. But thanks to the returning cast and a showstopping Cher performance, there’s enough zany delights to forgive the snoozier bits.

Burnham is uniquely tuned into the minds and behaviors of his young characters and their hyper-active, hormonally-charged world. For a gloriously funny and heartbreaking 94 minutes, you too will feel like you’re 13 again.

After two decades, Fallout might be the finest film in the series. (To me, it’s a toss-up between this and Ghost Protocol.) Either way, Mission: Impossible is clearly the best ongoing action franchise in the world. And nothing else even comes close.

The’re not a lot of momentum to Hotel Transylvania 3; this is a children’s film after all. But the character and location designs are inventive and appealing, and there are several memorable set pieces, including a wordless scuba diving sequence that draws heavy inspiration from classic Warner Bros. cartoons.

Skyscraper downplays one of the main reasons we go to see an action movie starring The Rock. As a result, our beloved pro wrestler turned movie star feels a little miscast, even as he gets to once again assume his favorite role as the ultimate superdad.

It’s about as unassuming as a movie about a man who can grow 65 feet tall could be, and in its relatively subdued scale, it is fairly refreshing and fun.

A superficial sequel that lacks the first movie’s unique quirks and soul.

Incredibles 2 is kind of like Jack-Jack; relatively small, extremely smart, bursting with potential, and capable of mutating into a new form in a matter of seconds.

It’s a prime example of taking a known property and lazily gender-flipping the cast without putting in the work to pair them with a worthy script or direction. Ocean’s 8 tries to pull its biggest con on us – burying a disappointing movie behind the flashy allure of an A-list cast.

This isn’t just a film you need to “turn off your brain” to enjoy; nothing less than surgically removing your brain from your body would do the trick.

First Reformed is the type of film that leaves you with more profound questions than answers. You’ll probably need to see it two, maybe three times to really soak it up, but even after a single viewing, it left me completely awestruck.

Films like this about slow-burn conspiracies that take ages to unravel their cheeky premises rarely live up to all the work that goes into watching them get there, and Under the Silver Lake is no different. Its final resolution flops to the ground like an airless balloon after all the toil it took to find it.

If the goal here was to really understand how a brash kid from a backwater planet became an amoral smuggler, Solo failed. Han’s evolution in this movie is entirely superficial. He doesn’t become the character we recognize. When you get right down to it, the biggest thing about him that changes is he goes from wearing a vest to a jacket.

The fight sequences aren’t as good as director David Leitch’s previous work like Atomic Blonde and the John Wick movies, but it’s better than the standard superhero fare, with enough clever touches to keep things interesting.

The most disappointing part of Reverse Panic Room is how little it exploits its high-concept premise after spending so much time establishing all the particulars of this fortified lake house.

There’s a twist that brings deeper insight and originality to the story, but it’s one Cody and Reitman don’t land as gracefully or sharply as they could have. It ultimately leads to a too-tidy conclusion that left me unsatisfied and a bit bummed out. That said, the first three quarters of Tully are pure magic, a darkly comedic and earnest ode to the woes of motherhood.

I appreciate the sheer logistical achievement of Infinity War (and the chutzpah of its ending). I laughed a bunch of times, and some of the scenes are definitely exciting. But I would be lying if I pretended this movie ever grabbed me the way the best MCU movies did.

The premise of I Feel Pretty would work better within the quick-hit comedy structure of an Inside Amy Schumer sketch. Stretched across a nearly-two hour runtime, the joke gets old fast.

Wadlow manages to ratchet up the tension in the most clever set pieces, the best of which involves a bottle of vodka and a rooftop. It’s also the type of shlocky horror movie you want to watch with a big audience, and, dare I say, one that is especially fun, and funny, with a chatty crowd. This movie is too stupid not to laugh at.

Rampage won’t set the world on fire (our world, at least; it sets plenty of its world on fire when George and his two giant pals arrive in Chicago), but it does exactly what it says on the tin: It’s a big, goofy romp about creatures who lay waste to a major American city while the Rock cracks jokes in a light brown shirt.

You Were Never Really Here isn’t an entirely satisfying experience, and may benefit from multiple viewings, but it’s still a masterful exploration of the nasty ways repressed trauma can resurface, and how violence can become a means of excising the bruises of the past.

When I think about Haigh’s work, the word tenderness comes to mind. Both Weekend and 45 Years examined the rise and fall of relationships with profound sensitivity. While Lean On Pete isn’t quite as indelible as those two films, it’s another impressive piece of understated storytelling.

Just when you thought rape-revenge movies had nothing left to say (if they even had anything to say in the first place), along comes Revenge — which transcends mere cleverness with a thoughtful, challenging approach to a worn-out concept.

The first half of the film setting up the characters’ meager backstories and conflicts is boring. The second half is livelier but dumber, with the kaiju rising yet again from the depths of the Pacific to rampage through some extremely computer-generated cityscapes. There isn’t a single second where anything involving the jaegers or the kaiju looks real.

Isle of Dogs is the epitome of a heart-warming adventure; a funny, fantastic and thought-provoking tale set in a world where one man’s trash is another man’s best friend.

I don’t know if Legacy is Jody Hill’s first real misfire or his first earnest attempt at making a “normal,” relatable family movie.