It’s infectious, the love Freaky Tales has for the Oakland, Calif., of the mid-1980s.

Kids will likely be diverted by the colorful excess of A Minecraft Movie, but fans of the game may feel it misses the mark. More creativity, please.

Horror comedy, alas, is a tricky balance, and making a movie dance on a unicorn’s horn is trickier still; this one clearly needed a little more unicorn dust.

This curio of a film could have gone deeper into what it means to be a gangster, but its core themes resonate all the same.

Of all the stories in all the world to remake on the big screen, why “Snow White”?

Novocaine wins with violence and personality. It’s simply fun to hang out with Nate.

Black Bag may be rooted in the mind, but it is inextricably connected to the heart, especially in matters of love and trust, betrayal and murder. That’s what makes a Soderbergh genre exercise such a deliciously satisfying cinematic morsel: It is pure fun, but also deeply layered with larger existential themes, making for a delightful romantic spy drama that cannot be missed.

Bong covered many of the same aspects of “Mickey” in his 2013 sci-fi epic “Snowpiercer,” a more streamlined and hard-bitten work of social commentary with the have-nots battling the heedless rich. ”Mickey 17” is less focused and not quite as satisfying a production as that earlier movie.

This sturdy, solid thriller underscores that at their core, survival stories are always stories of humanity’s best, and the impossible things we can achieve when we work together.

Life and death is one big joke in The Monkey, with the sense that Perkins is manically cackling along while he never skimps on the craft to make it all hit brutal pay dirt.

The movie is full of tiny moments of delight.

In the end, Captain America: Brave New World is enjoyable enough for what it is: a proper introduction of Sam as Captain America. Unfortunately, it’s a rather bumpy flight along the way.

This mesmerizing film is a tribute to an astonishing woman and a timely reminder of a dark period in a country’s history. And, through its vivid use of photographs (particularly the real-life ones shown at the end), it’s a reminder that through film, our stories live on.

Overall, Heart Eyes has a winning formula, but maybe don’t expect it to sweep you off your feet.

Ultimately, all we come away with is a few cheap laughs at online culture, which dates Love Me to its own time and place, an artifact not even of now, but the recent past. This love story isn’t futuristic at all.

A tidy if bloodstained little thriller with a clever idea at its core.

The lessons of compassion and empathy are profound, and remind us that tales of good triumphing over evil are evergreen, even when it doesn’t seem to be reflected in the world around us.

With a ruthlessly pared-down approach and compelling performer in Dynevor, who carries the film effortlessly, “Inheritance” is a throwback thriller that hearkens to the retro days of the Y2K era. And while its style eclipses its substance, it’s the style that makes this cinematic curio worth watching.

Koepp is one of the most successful screenwriters of all time, and Presence feels like one of the screenplays from his discard pile that Soderbergh scooped up for a quickie experiment. The experiment was indeed successful, but the story itself isn’t.

The film is a loving tribute from a son to a father figure, but perhaps Deen is too close to the story to have much perspective on it. We’ve seen this story before and Brave the Dark doesn’t shed new light.

All of the performances are vivid (Webber’s ability to convey heartbreak in a silent gaze is uncanny), but Jean-Baptiste, reuniting with Leigh for the first time since 1996’s “Secrets & Lies,” holds on to this movie the way Pansy holds on to a grudge.

Nickel Boys is a life, made up of pieces; some of them lovely, some devastating. It’s a mesmerizing, uniquely told story — of memory, of injustice, of friendship, of survival.

Unfolding like a thriller but uncomfortably real, September 5 is a haunting portrait of a time when seeing terrorism live on television was something new and strange — and a reminder that, sadly, things may not have changed all that much. But it’s also a stirring depiction of people simply doing their jobs, making decisions in the moment as best they can, trying to do things right when there’s no playbook and hundreds of millions of people watching.

Ultimately, The Room Next Door is as much about love as it is about death — not the romantic kind of love, but the sort in which two friends hold each other up (quite literally, as Martha takes Ingrid’s arm during their walks) and give each other what they need, selflessly. Its final, magical moment finds uncanny beauty in sadness.

Anderson, who may well have been waiting her entire career for a role this rich, finds something sweet and haunting in Shelly, whose whispery voice sounds like a shadow and who sees art and value where Hannah sees tacky exploitation.

The movie’s a playful commentary on overdependence on technology — Wallace has machines that bathe him, dress him and make his tea — but it’s also just fast-paced fun, and you look forward to watching it a second time to catch the sight gags you missed.

It’s not the best Dracula movie of all time, though it aspires to that. Murnau’s original still leads the pack. But it certainly is the most stylish. Eggers is a filmmaker with astonishing visual flair.

Kidman is the big deal here, and it is the frisky, introspective elasticity of her performance that sent me out of the theater on a feverish high.