Bravo’s style echoes King’s own: It is fun and whimsical, formally playful, sometimes bordering on the fantastic but always grounded in the real and the intimate.

As a filmmaker, Questlove utilizes his celebrity connections more than he does original directorial vision, trading instead in long-established, standard documentary structure and form. Summer of Soul is polished, but it pales in stark comparison to the raw footage and energy of the Harlem Cultural Festival.

If you’re going to make a movie in which a psycho slices away at both campers and counsellors in direct homage to the age of Jason Voorhees, you need to go scuzzy or go home. A proper slasher movie should make you want to take a shower. Here, I felt sparkling clean.

Once we’re in the story proper . . . Black Widow quickly turns into another rote exercise in Marvel house style.

It is a fool’s errand to imagine what someone like Verhoeven would have done with The Tomorrow War’s material – this is a movie made for the express purposes of delivering some lazy woo-hoo summer fun, not any kind of sneaky subversiveness.

Sound the alarm, hide the children and lock the doors: another Purge movie is here. And it’s deadlier, and dumber, than ever.

While Janiak is able to easily tick off the hallmarks of the genre, and perhaps convince those actually alive in the nineties that the entire decade must have been backlit in aggressive neon, her film doesn’t quite scream (or Scream) out for two more films’ worth of context.

The thrills here are both cheap and oddly, comfortingly captivating. Of course nothing can ever kill Liam Neeson, but it is a whole lot of no-brain-necessary fun to watch everyone and everything try.

F9 is a welcome blast of fizzy action glee. You won’t come out of it a better or smarter person – quite possibly dumber! – but you will leave satisfied that your summer movie season wasn’t a completely life- and joy-less bore.

A witty tale of deceit and betrayal, it’s an uncomfortable look at the values we tend to buy into and why.

The challenge of watching Fatherhood is that it’s tough to make out what sort of a narrative it’s trying to tell.

As you get immersed in the story, you’re also entranced by a lovely escape to a nostalgic Italian summer that’s inspired by visits to real-life places and rendered in a style akin to that distinctive Miyazaki aesthetic. I also want to get my hands on the original score – the music soars gorgeously.

The filmmaker assumes that aping the cheap aesthetics of the era are enough to establish style, and that making Enid a mystery amounts to layered characterization. It all leads to a climax that is nasty for all the wrong reasons.

Akilla’s Escape recasts the monolithic narrative of gang involvement as one that rejects a trope of Black peril in order to tell a multi-dimensional story of resilience – one where keen strategists are developed through unsolvable situations, where the enduring love of Black mothers demonstrates what it means to walk into the line of fire and where, amidst abject tumult, moments of tenderness and triumph persist against all odds.

New Order might go down as the most uncomfortable watch of the year. Sadistic and ugly and crushingly depressing. But also demanding of your engagement. The reward? A master-class in high-anxiety cinema, and enough fodder for a thousand uncomfortable conversations.

So for those asking the obvious: Yes, Awake should put you to sleep rather quickly.

As with other Miranda properties, In the Heights is designed to charm you into submission – and charmed you will be. You might even get up and dance. And whether that’s in the company of strangers at a theatre or in front of your indifferent pets at home, there is something to be said for a movie that can make you move.

As with every summer – even this supremely strange one – there are a ton of horror movies coming down the pike. But no matter how scary the new Conjuring or how disgusting the new Saw may be, I can guarantee that you won’t see as soul-shaking a film this season as The Amusement Park.

Regardless of whether Undine is working at a level of allegory or actual fantasy, it is an expansively rich film.

The Devil Made Me Do It is a resolutely pedestrian kind of horror.

Despite the predictable plot, there are moments of genuine delight – and they all come from the fresh talent.

In recounting the protests and sit-ins against the institutionalized racism of a past era, it offers a visual field guide to what activism looks like in a community that, for some, is not traditionally associated with speaking truth to power.

A lot of things are said; a lot is not. It was a dark and stormy night. An audience walks into a film – and stays for the whole 90 minutes, because it is worth it.

One reason The Outside Story works is that it doesn’t follow an established template. Nozkowski pre-empts speculation by divulging Young’s backstory at a steady pace. And while the script is laudable for its gentle laughs, it is Henry’s portrayal of Young that holds our attention.

Even those familiar with the legacy of the show will discover new and fascinating things about the history of Sesame Street throughout the film – and anyone who watches Street Gang will come away moved by everything its cast and crew managed to accomplish.

It’s ultimately difficult to wade through the muddled plot line, or plot lines, rather, as there are so many disparate storylines contending for top billing in this movie.

Drifting Snow is almost a tribute to what the past year has been for so many of us, fumbling our way toward something less lonely and waiting for the snow to pass.

Despite its unique premise, Eat Wheaties! is easy to embrace.

As the central characters, Helms and Harrison play their parts with empathy.

Spiral too often gets in its own way and reveals its internal machinations before they’re due.

Much like the heroes of this story, The Retreat manages to defy expectations. And while some gory clichés still abound, it makes for a gruesome, gritty thriller that lets its leads shine.

This dandy foreign feature from Anders Thomas Jensen is only posing as a revenge film – clickbait for the violence junkies and the popcorn crowd. Yes, leading man Mads Mikkelsen plays a brooding killing machine out to avenge the loss of a loved one. But Riders of Justice, in Danish with English subtitles, is actually a pitch-black comedy about questions, coincidences and ideas that pile up faster than the body count.

While the film has all the makings of something that could easily be overly saccharine because it’s so predictable, Blue Miracle manages to be a rather charming family-friendly affair.

It is mighty impressive, in a stupefying way, just how close Cruella’s filmmakers get to pulling the dang thing off. This isn’t to say that the movie is a success – it is embarrassing on many levels, and seems to be frequently at odds with its presumed family-friendly audience – but as far as movies that have no business existing outside sketch-comedy land go, it could’ve been worse.

Army of the Dead is exactly the kind of uber-stylish, ridiculously muscular, exceptionally juvenile storytelling that he’s made his bones on. Some audiences will make a meal of it. Some will gag. You’ll know which viewer you are after those first 15 minutes, guaranteed.

The Woman in the Window isn’t sure whether it’s a thriller, a drama, a psychological study or a slasher. Each Big Moment™ succeeds in eliciting a reaction, but that just leads to a new state of confusion. Confusion that’s spurred on by questions that aren’t answered.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is solid meat-and-potatoes fun – it knows its job, gets it done with minimal fuss and leaves its audiences full and satisfied.

The Water Man myth feels incomplete. What is magical, though, is the chance to root for a young Black male hero as he navigates a family crisis that’s both specific and universal, and not based on race.

Ritchie pulls together an impressively determined thriller that sticks. Ideal for both a certain generation of viewer who gets excited when hearing the line, “We’ve got eight weeks of recon” and for those who will watch absolutely anything starring Statham (hi!), Wrath of Man is the best, bloodiest surprise of the year so far.

Yes, The Father is a familiar story and a universal one. Yet Zeller has been uniquely inventive in the way he evokes the unreliability of memory and the subjectivity of experience in the senile – and the healthy.

While there are the requisite number of jump scares and red-herring narrative fake-outs, Berman and Pulcini – who are odd fits in the first place, given their decidedly non-genre filmography – zig where you expect them to zag.

At least Without Remorse gets one thing right: casting onscreen dynamo Michael B. Jordan as the out-for-blood hero.

It is all very, very stupid, But first-time director Simon McQuoid regrettably refuses to embrace that stupidity.

Whenever the story’s central tension threatens to get interesting and complicated, the filmmakers deflate it in the most obvious of ways.

When Ben Wheatley is having a laugh, he can make for a perversely pleasant genre tour-guide. When he starts to get high off his own supply, though, it’s best to hike back to civilization.

Chaos Walking is, in its own way, a masterclass in everything that contemporary filmmakers should avoid doing.

The jokes arrive fast and plentifully, knowing just what will tickle both younger viewers and adults.

The plot could have benefited from some sort of subversion – something to make the familiar trope of a dysfunctional family wedding a little less predictable.

Tender, topical and well-crafted, No Ordinary Man is no ordinary film.

Sugar Daddy will be gripping viewing for anyone who wonders what it takes to make it – and whether it’s all worth it in the end.

With the exception of a few demented scenes teleported over from a stranger, better comedy . . . Thunder Force is as sloppy and disappointing as the label “A Ben Falcone Film” previously suggested.

It’s all too common for history to remember victims as numbers, but Quo Vadis, Aida? counters this, offering instead an eye-opening and deeply felt personal portrait of tragedy.

The film is scary not in its extraordinary imaginings but in the mundane familiarity that underpins those imaginings.

Simply put, I didn’t care for a single person or situation on-screen, and Jacobs’s curiously unconfident and drab direction, which is in desperate need of tighter editing, only hastened my growing annoyance.

Eventually, The Unholy reveals itself not to be an entertaining ride to Hell but an earnest sales pitch for the power of Christ. Fair enough. But for Easter 2021, I was hoping for something a little more enjoyably demonic and less been-there-redeemed-that. Let us pray.

The photography is elegant, but nothing else is. With action that is standard and not at all tense, the melodrama is much higher than the reward.

A compelling, if ultimately predictable, coming-of-age drama.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a ridiculous movie made even more ridiculous by a distinct lack of care in its conception and execution. But it is also the kind of cinematic assault that delivers just the right jolt to the most base sensibilities hiding within our lizard brains. You walk away dazed but bemused.

There are immense, leisurely pleasures to be found in The Courier, which presents a familiar spy-versus-spy drama in a familiar way. Which is fine: So long as you’re not expecting subversion or surprise, you can gently sink yourself into director Dominic Cooke’s intentionally, pleasantly lukewarm waters and come out the other side refreshed and squeaky-clean.

Of course, sexism in any realm is hardly shocking. But Lee presents her argument in such a clear and empathetic way that you’re not only enraged by the state of the genre, but how the women we meet are still fighting a fight that’s hurting us all.

While the situation is played for dark laughs, Odenkirk’s commitment to the role is dead serious. He makes its ridiculousness believable. By the end of Nobody, I wanted desperately for the producers of the next Fast & Furious film to cast Odenkirk as the muscle-car-driving villain. In your heart of hearts, you know it would work, too.

The dead-seriousness with which Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli approach their subject is admirable, as is the former’s unsettling lead performance. And you won’t find another film this year that subverts the male gaze in such a brutally naked manner.

While the film is awful, Jarecki’s approach to filmmaking is still paint-by-numbers watchable, solely because the genre is familiar. The director has clearly watched enough movies to understand that pool halls and dive bars are good places for gangsters to hang out, that seedy deals happen in motel rooms and that a mother’s love is stronger than any other earthly force.

It is still by no means a great film, even compared against the standards of contemporary superhero cinema, which is bleeding any sense of individual artistry and purpose each passing year. But it is a wild, invigorating experiment to experience.

With a fine balance of winking absurdity and wry humour – Cohen would tip his fedora to the born-and-raised Montrealer Bissonnette on that score – Death of a Ladies’ Man is a charming study of a man in crisis. It’s serious here and funny there.

Ultimately, Yes Day doesn’t commit to either being a full-out family fun movie or a family drama.

It’s bloody, brutal, stupid fun – until it isn’t. Either running out of ideas or running into budgetary problems, Carnahan slows things down about halfway in, stopping the madness in its tracks to give Roy some humanity (not needed here, but thanks!) and to give audiences some yadda-yadda villainy from a bored-looking, here-for-the-paycheque Gibson (also, no thank you!).

Norbit was memorably offensive. Coming 2 America is merely offensively forgettable.

It’s tricky to give such a layered glimpse of high school in a movie that keeps its pace at a decent click. And while Moxie is just a small snapshot of those weird and wonderful years, it gives viewers a decent lesson in how to be an ally, without being preachy about it.

By handing the spotlight, and even the camera, over to the bold and beautiful Zeytin without guiding the viewer too aggressively, Lo has created something worth seeking out for anyone who wants to expand their world view – and perhaps also lower it a few feet.

Boogie is, finally, Huang’s cinematic realization of his dream, a debut filmmaker’s warts and all.

While Macdonald manages to come up with one of the most impressively brutal cut-to-black endings in recent memory, the rest of this feature cannot hope to match the power of his cast.

Director Maria Sodahl tracks the couple’s story over the course of only one Christmas break, but the film is more a chronicle of one family’s entire existence. Skarsgard, by the way, is typically excellent – it’s just that he mostly, and graciously, cedes the screen to Hovig, who is given much more to do and handles it with aplomb.

After watching the film twice in quick succession – a futile attempt at catching a glimpse of what usually makes a Falardeau film so immensely watchable (see the Quebecois filmmaker’s Monsieur Lazhar, The Good Lie, My Internship in Canada and Chuck) – My Salinger Year ultimately lands as a mere footnote.

Any excuse to tune out the real world and escape into a fantasy land is welcome – especially through a film that’s about trust and the loving bond between family and friends, and also manages to deliver a couple of solid laughs in between.

The heart of the needlessly lengthy 140-minute film is Eilish’s support system, which is to say her family – a screenwriter mother, a construction worker father and her older brother/producer/songwriting partner Finneas O’Connell. They’re all grounded, thoughtful and dedicated to the protection of a self-loathing teen who is coming of age in front of the world.

Cherry is a mess. Nonsensically stylized, wildly overlong and constantly mistaking yelling for dramatic tension, the film unintentionally underlines everything that made the Russos’ Avengers films so sloppy .

The film forms a kind of origin story, giving voice to the often silent experiences of a particular immigrant community in the 80s. Lachlan Milne’s cinematography veers from prosaic to evocative to breathtaking, depending on the scene.

Pelé is a terrific examination of the player, the man and his status in recent Brazilian history. It’s about his astonishing skill, his World Cup victories and defeats, and his celebrity. But at its core it’s about how Pele legitimized the dictatorship that governed Brazil during the later portion of his career.

A deceptively simple and concise narrative structure allows Ford to parse her subject and characters with a graceful internal complexity that shows rather than tells.

Ultimately, The Sinners would make for a better miniseries. With so much story to tell and so many characters to root for (or against), we could use a deep dive into the risks of unchecked misogyny.

Supernova feels less like a film to cherish and more a tweet to favourite.

Think of one of Wiig’s closer-to-1 a.m. Saturday Night Live sketches coloured with the purposefully unpalatable aesthetic sensibilities of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and you’ll start to form the right picture. If none of the above appeals or even makes sense in the slightest, then feel free to run far, far away.

As visually stunning as it is profound, Two of Us is an incredible exploration of what it means to love and be loved in return. And while Sukowa’s passionate and remarkable performance is heart-stopping, Chevallier’s quieter moments will make an indelible mark on your heart, changing the way you see others and even yourself.

If you want a movie to nail-gun you to your seat, then you must visit Greenland.

Malcolm & Marie is the worst kind of self-indulgent nonsense. It is an obnoxious gripe about everything and anything that is so devoid of wit and imagination that it ends up being about nothing at all.

Mostly, Falling succeeds because Mortensen is playing by his own uncompromising rules. The result is a vision that may grate, but will never be lost to memory

Completely miscast, egregiously plotted and ludicrous in absolutely every single other way, Bliss is a true cinematic disasterpiece.

It is a lot, and Ascher only has so many stylistic tricks up his sleeve – including a unique, if eventually exhausting, spin on talking-head Zoom footage – to delay the sheer weight of his subject matter from crushing his film into multiverse-ready dust.

I don’t know how many subscribers actually interested in its mature story and top-level craft will be able to unearth it from their Holidate-choked queues, but here’s hoping some are willing to embark on the excavation.

Hancock (The Blind Side, The Founder) keeps the action moving briskly and with little tonal confusion, highlighting just what a polished studio-favoured professional can do when given gobs of money and zero intellectual-property obligations. And his trio of leading men are all given ample space to play to their strengths.

This isn’t some cutsey, bordering-on-laughable inspiration porn. It is more patient, messy and dead-serious than its sight-gag of a poster might have you believe. This doesn’t mean it’s a great movie – just a passable one.

Timberlake fares fine enough in his strong-and-mostly-silent role, displaying genuine chemistry with Wainwright (though let’s not bring in whatever the tabloids and gossip sites have to say about the matter). Allen is delightful in that refreshing way that only newcomers can be. And in terms of Apple TV+’s bid to become a more family-friendly competitor to Netflix, Palmer makes good, decent sense.