The 2018 Halloween isn’t an entirely successful film, and it won’t provide an easy template for a new generation of revitalized slasher flicks. But it does serve as a fitting coda to a story that began 40 years ago.

Christopher Robin doesn’t just use nostalgia as a salve; it uses it as a way to mourn things that we’ve lost in our lives and as a way to unpack how our actions can hurt those around us. It’s a feel-good movie that really doesn’t think there’s a whole lot to feel good about much of the time.

Outlaw King has plenty of the right pieces in play to make this kind of personally enriched story possible, but compared to Mackenzie’s best work, it’s plodding and artless.

It’s hypnotic just how horrifying Arthur’s existence is, just as Phoenix’s performance is hypnotic as he spirals from fragile hope into increasingly outsized and confident acts of destruction.

The results aren’t flawless, but Split is nevertheless a tense, exciting thriller anchored by a stunning performance by James McAvoy. And it may just restore Shyamalan fans’ belief in the power of the twist ending.

Unlike Fisher’s book, the film is warm and comforting, occasionally sad but more often giddy and gleeful. It’s a melancholy final visit in light of the recent death of both its subjects. But it’s still a rare chance for viewers to sneak behind those weird, eccentric compound gates, and hang out as if they were part of the family.

At its best, it’s a reminder that King’s biggest strengths lie in his unparalleled ability to build tension, create atmosphere, and tell a direct and brutal story, not in his ability to launch profitable many-branched franchises.

Writer-director Jeff Baena has squeezed heart into this film, particularly with a surprisingly sincere, potent ending. Beneath all the bodily fluids and sex jokes, Baena and his actors show a deep fascination with the way we communicate our love, romantically and platonically — especially when the going gets tough.

While the characters are distinctive and charming, and the dialogue is often pretty funny, The Nice Guys is a large step down on the ambition scale from Kiss Kiss. Having deconstructed his favorite genre so perfectly, Black has a harder time reconstructing it without leaving out some pieces.

The siblings address their family through a Wes Anderson lens, with a tone so playful and visually poetic that it drops into surrealism. It feels like a fresh new approach to an old genre — a willingness to not just embrace the subjectivity of family documentaries, but to charge into it full-bore.

For the serious fans who this series is meant for, the promise of at least six more hours of Fantastic Beasts action likely means a lot more thrilling beasts, barriers, and beats to explore. Everyone else may find that all the little personal bits of character business and frantic complications aren’t much of a substitute for a clear and compelling plot with a single meaningful protagonist.

After a run of live-action Disney remakes that mostly play things safe, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a much needed swing-for-the-fences dose of originality. It doesn’t always hit it out of the park, but it’s wickedly fun to watch it try.

Happy Death Day 2U pulls off a trick that isn’t especially easy for original movies, let alone direct sequels: it makes all the laborious world-building and storytelling effort feel like fun.

It’s a sleek and effective thriller, often scary and usually visually impressive. But too often, its reasons for doing absolutely anything amount to “because this is the way Alien did it.”

Elvis & Nixon is at its best when it sticks to what-if whimsy and the enjoyable fantasy of worlds colliding, with all the outlandish possibilities that crossover stories suggest.

Radius is a puzzle story built around a series of reveals. The script is tight and propulsive; the writer-directors have a talent for not over-explaining the implications of each development, and for giving the audience space to figure things out for themselves. That makes the developments hit harder and feel smarter.

Hail, Caesar! is immensely entertaining, but it's also frustratingly discursive, with so many incomplete sidelines and distractions that it suggests an overcrowded but exciting TV pilot more than a self-contained film.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is an enjoyable enough expansion on the first film. But its final-act setup for John Wick: Chapter 3 is more trying than promising.

Peters periodically relaxes into moments of pure art, with the camera studying faces, skateboarders on the move, a young couple kissing, or whatever else catches his eye. Give Me Future is a remarkably dense portrait of a place and a moment.

The Hateful Eight is a feature-length battle between thoughtful sophistication and the filmmaker's sloppiest and most self-indulgent instincts.

While it falls short of its predecessors, the film is generally more confident and inventive than any of the non-Toy Story Pixar sequels.

The Book of Birdie is most enjoyable as a moody horror poem, but if I had to pull out a theme, I might point back to its place in the female coming-of-age canon.

The film makes a strong argument for the value of artistry in horror. Stark colors and an active camera, chasing or leading the characters, give the whole film a sense of intensity and dynamism.

Not every joke works, on paper or on screen. But Fey and Poehler at least look like they're having fun, and they make it easy to get pulled along for the ride, no matter how awkward it gets.

It’s rare that a blockbuster movie feels this competently, serenely middle-of-the-road, but maybe being this safe in an era of easy outrage is its own form of mild, moderate, entirely bland achievement.

Detective Pikachu is a fever dream — a product of night time car rides with a Game Boy, staring up at the street lamps that pass you by, painting the darkened sky with wild imaginations of what a world full of Pokémon might feel like. Detective Pikachu is a silly, almost hallucinogenic ride.

Fuqua's film is ultimately a reminder of why the genre was once so wildly popular in the first place.

The colorful characters don't entirely hide the fact that this is a lesser Pixar film, coasting on Finding Nemo's popularity, and telling a too-similar story that isn't as ambitious or emotionally intense.