Creed II is a respectable if not revelatory sequel to the sequel, even if it lacks its predecessor’s grace and narrative texture.

Much like the painter, who died without the recognition he deserved, the movie approaches greatness without quite achieving it.

Ralph and Vanellope’s growth in the first film was what brought them together. Here, it’s what might force them apart. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, they’re attempting to hold on to one another while also trying to let go, and the film treats that struggle with sensitivity and care (along with some flatulence jokes).

The more invested you are in the old-fashioned Robin Hood of legend — the less likely you are to enjoy what amounts to a chilly and flavorless frappé of historical speculation, revisionist folklore and every lazy action-movie cliche ever written.

“The Mortal Remains” brings all these tales together beautifully, by which I mean in a coda that is somber and hauntingly unsettled, like the last note of a dirge. Its music lingers in the air long after the closing credits.

Most confoundingly, it sheds no light on Hart himself: a man who steadfastly insisted on maintaining his privacy, whose impressive intellect was couched within an aloof, withholding persona, remains a cipher, the missing core of a movie that’s nominally about him, but can’t seem to get a bead on its own protagonist.

Most winningly, Green Book puts two of the finest screen actors working today in a sexy turquoise Cadillac, letting them loose on a funny, swiftly-moving chamber piece bursting with heart, art and soul.

It proves how smarts and style can elevate even the pulpiest material into something shrewd, socially attuned and bracingly observant. Rarely has a movie been so illuminated by a single character simply breaking into a smile, and rarely has a smile been so unequivocally earned.

While the movie doesn’t shy away from confronting the obstacles of foster parenthood, it never fully earns its happy ending.

“Spider’s Web” may have its flaws, including a bit of villainous motivation so oversimplified it makes Dr. Evil’s thought processes look like Einstein’s. And yet despite Lisbeth’s makeover, there’s still something cool, complicated and compelling about this “Girl.” Lisbeth may be stuck in a silly movie, but she’s nobody’s victim.

With its charming character animation and inventive art direction, The Grinch is a vast improvement over Ron Howard’s live-action adaptation of the same story.

Takes a turn for the dark side that will satisfy the franchise’s adult fans even more.

Finally, one of our finest actresses has been given material that calls on her to utterly transform herself — vocally, physically, seemingly existentially — and prove how gifted she’s been all along.

Lee plays the actors off one another to create a compelling exploration of human nature. South Korea’s official Oscar submission, Burning culminates in a finale so astonishing that it will sear itself into viewers’ memories for years to come.

The result is a classic on a par with “Winesburg, Ohio” and “Our Town,” a narrow slice of contemporary American life that manages to be both admiring, yet capable of polite skepticism.

This tedious slog through the highland muck should win no Oscars, only groans and raspberries. Even the much-buzzed-about glimpse of a nude Pine, as his character emerges from a lake, doesn’t make this worth watching.

In this immersive, often deliciously sensuous documentary portrait of the late opera star Maria Callas, viewers are treated to another rise-and-fall story of a great but tortured artist, this one punctuated by the occasional real-life bed of roses and pleasure cruise.

Boy Erased is a showcase for Hedges, who played a closeted boy in “Lady Bird” and who plays a teen with a different sort of burden in the upcoming drama “Ben Is Back.” In each of those roles, the boy-next-door actor finds just the right combination of ordinary and anomalous.

In the end, “Nutcracker” is a delightfully old-school diversion. The plot may not always hum with the clockwork precision of one of Drosselmeyer’s mechanical toys, but like a music box, it nevertheless plays a sweet tune.

Good intentions only go so far, especially when they mask tawdry melodrama. Even the best movies push emotional buttons, but they work because viewers become wrapped up in the story. This one is so manipulative you can hear the gears grinding — until they lock up.

Winds up being giddily entertaining, first as an exercise in so-bad-it’s-funny kitsch, and ultimately as something far more meaningful and thrilling. Every now and then, a film comes along that defies the demands of taste, formal sophistication, even artistic honesty to succeed simply on the level of pure, inexplicable pleasure. Bohemian Rhapsody is just that cinematic unicorn: the bad movie that works, even when it shouldn’t.

It takes every resource available to a recently minted Oscar nominee — but does almost nothing with it.

The film lacks the very imagination it touts, along with another trait that it links to exceptional athleticism. That’s obsession.

The powerful and affecting documentary On Her Shoulders doesn’t rehash Murad’s suffering in painful detail. Instead, filmmaker Alexandria Bombach, who made the 2015 Afghanistan documentary “Frame by Frame,” chronicles Murad’s more recent life, revealing her to be a compelling and inspiring subject.

Mid90s” is often painful to watch as Stevie puts himself through the punishing rituals of proving his street bona fides. But Hill takes even the most treacherous dangers in stride, suffusing his story with as much tenderness as stark terror.

You’ve never seen Melissa McCarthy like this. And she’s not even the best thing about her new movie.

The result, Bisbee ’17, is a fascinating exercise in nonfiction filmmaking as a performative, interdisciplinary, collective act, as well as a provocative inquiry into how selective memory, ideology, shame and unspeakable trauma shape what we come to accept as official history.

Mulligan’s eccentric energy is her greatest strength, but it makes for a slightly wobbly — if just this side of wonderful — film.

What works best here comes between the movie’s heavy opening and its lightweight conclusion.

Here, however, Atkinson may even outdo Cruise, with the comedian hurling his 63-year-old body into the service of comedy.

Sometimes feels like a horror movie with a contact high.

As the chief avatar for parental distress, Carell is sympathetic if not always entirely convincing: The toughest moments of Beautiful Boy simply seem out of his range as an actor, especially when he takes reportorial zeal one step too far by trying hard drugs himself.

Fortunately, the maudlin moments are offset by fine performances, flashes of humor and a visual sense that’s more astute than the script.

A balanced and deeply satisfying documentary assessment of his work, which is lavishly on display in hundreds of the artist’s images.

A blistering political satire that may rip the bandage and the scab, as well as a lot of the skin, off a political wound that has barely had time to heal.

Greengrass employs a handheld camera effectively, as usual, to simulate confusion, panic and terror. He cuts away from the most horrific moments of slaughter.

Like its protagonist, First Man doesn’t go in for theatrics or gratuitous emotion, however justified. It gets the job done, with professionalism, immersive authenticity and unadorned feeling, of which Armstrong himself might just have approved, however apprehensively.

Not all of its surprises are pleasant ones, but there is a certain satisfaction in experiencing a yarn that is so obstinately un-anticipatable.

The comedy, while unflinchingly honest and prone to bandying about such terms as “intracytoplasmic sperm injection” and “follitropin,” is never really about technology, though. Rather, and to its great credit, it’s always about the people involved.

The pure athletics of Free Solo, which chronicles Honnold’s months-long training regimen as well as his subsequent attempts, would be spectacle enough to create an entertaining film.

The Old Man and the Gun ambles along with such unhurried, folksy ease that it’s easy to overlook the people — mostly women — Tucker leaves in his wake, victims who may not be physically scarred, but often look as if they will bear unseen injuries into the future nonetheless.

Like the infamous “talk” that opens the film — the conversation that many black parents feel forced to have with their children about how to behave when you are stopped by the police — it is a movie that feels both essential and terribly, terribly sad.

This is Audiard’s first English-language film, and he evinces sure instincts with both the visual and spoken vernaculars. The Sisters Brothers looks terrific and, propelled by Desplat’s beautiful music, ambles along with pleasing, if routinely episodic, ease until its unexpectedly touching conclusion.

This entertaining fantasy has intellectual ballast, but it’s cleverly disguised.

The movie gives some depth to its misfits, and ultimately sends the valuable message that nobody should be ashamed of who they are.

Colette’s story is a good one — she went on to produce multiple works under her own name, the best known of which is “Gigi” — but here it’s shakily told. As a tale about a woman whose life was defined by fire, Colette lacks much of a spark.

A well-seasoned, handsomely cured slab of showbiz schmaltz that hits all the right pleasure centers. With equal parts glitz and grit, Cooper has successfully navigated the most perilous shoals of making a classic narrative his own, managing to create one of its best iterations to date.

Hope may be a commodity that’s in short supply by the time that Fahrenheit 11/9 has finished painting its unsettling portrait of an America in crisis.

“House” sometimes loses track of convoluted plot points and skimps on exteriors. But it does a fine job of capturing the childlike wonderment that suffused those earlier films.

Movies should invite viewers in, taking them on a journey together with the characters on-screen. Unfortunately, Life Itself is less journey than lecture.

Where the novel’s omniscient narrator provides ample insight into its protagonists’ interior thoughts and backstories, much of that is missing here: Some characters, particularly Gen, come across as flat, their motivations not deeply explored or explained.

The sexual backstory is a new twist, one the filmmakers handle with less finesse than is healthy for the argument that they ultimately make.

Accompanied, appropriately enough, by Bach piano pieces, The Children Act is an unmitigated pleasure to watch and listen to, primarily as a showcase for Thompson’s incomparable gifts as an actress.

An absorbing, illuminating film.

It is a remarkable, strange and politically potent first film.

White Boy Rick is permeated by an atmosphere of grimy hopelessness that makes it hard to watch.

The most surprising performance is Lively’s. As the cheeky Emily, the star of such recent thrillers as “All I See Is You” and “The Shallows” finally gets the chance to be funny. She proves quite adept at it

In his effort to inject fresh blood into this gory franchise, which has already seen four sequels (including two “Alien” crossovers), the filmmaker can’t seem to summon up that old Black magic.

Directed by Heather Lenz, the film offers insight and eye candy, despite the fact that it is far more traditional — in style and format — than its subject.

“Chaos” might have been better had the filmmaker revisited his interview subjects now that we are deep into Trump’s presidency. But that would have required additional work. If the film is a testament to anything, it’s Stern’s laziness.

Peculiar yet provocative film, which exerts a slow, mesmeric pull over the course of nearly 2 ½ hours.

It’s unfortunate that the tribute to veterans that is so much a part of the movie’s marketing turns out to be little more than a framing device that’s dispensed with for most of the plot.

Cinematographer Larkin Seiple’s fine camera work and Eli’s mystery weapon just don’t keep the thunking, derivative script afloat.

A film that feels like something conjured out of memory and magic, a poetic, often ecstatic re-creation of childhood that captures its ungovernable pleasures as vividly as its most threatening terrors.

As a director, Abrahamson uses that sense of the detached observer as a scalpel, whittling away at our expectations of horror films until we have no choice but to look at — and really listen to — what is happening. It’s an approach that requires patience, on his part and ours, but the rewards are worth it.

Unfortunately, whatever steam has been built up during the more compelling first act slowly dissipates under the overly talky, on-the-nose conclusion, despite some modest suspense ginned up as Argentine authorities get close to discovering the safe house.

Like most mysteries, this one relies heavily on coincidental discoveries, even if they arrive via Gmail or FaceTime, rather than more traditional means. But the plot’s contrivances are less problematic than the movie’s insistence on maintaining its artifice even after it becomes a hindrance.

Mostly, The Bookshop is a pretext to watch three great actors do their thing: Mortimer, as the film’s mousy but surprisingly formidable heroine; Clarkson, as her smiling adversary, Violet Gamart; and Bill Nighy, as the town’s reclusive loner — and its only voracious reader — Mr. Brundish, who comes to Florence’s aid and advocacy.

A handsome production that delicately skewers literary-world pretensions and Great Man mythmaking. But primarily, The Wife offers viewers a chance to observe one of the finest — and most criminally underpraised — actresses of her generation working at the very top of her shrewd, subtle, superbly self-controlled game.

The result is a movie that feels both hard-edged and dreamy; punk-rock and lyrical; wised-up and unbearably tender.

The only real crime here is the debasement of a great film’s name.

Described as a “98-minute diversion” by producers at a recent screening, the romantic comedy is just that: a sweet-tart confection that, like lemon sorbet, cleanses a palate gone sour from too many cinematic servings of the heavy stuff.

For the most part, the film balances its outrage with objectivity.

If Bowers’s present-day life has slowed down considerably, his memories haven’t, and the subject of Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood exerts his luridly voyeuristic pull, as he shares name after name of his most shocking exploits.

Sweet, strange and at times slightly scary.

Too clever for its own good.

Like the finest forebears of the rom-com genre — including its urtext, “Four Weddings and a Funeral” — Crazy Rich Asians indulges in the escapist pleasures of aspirational wealth, obscene consumerism and invidious judge-iness.

As a cinematic mutt, it possesses a certain scruffy charm, as long as you’re in the mood to forgive its lapses.

Unlike his action-movie rival Johnson, Statham does not have the charisma to carry this film. He gets the job done all right, but makes it feel more like work than play.

The film is at its best when evoking the painful labor of adolescent self-discovery, a process — as rendered here — that is not unlike a butterfly struggling to emerge from a chrysalis.

Accompanied by an expressively lush jazz-blues score by Lee’s regular composer Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman announces from the jump that viewers are in for a lush, sensory treat as Lee plays with the film vernacular he’s manipulated so adroitly and expressively for three decades.

The film is pretty conventional Disney fare: silly, slapsticky, all-too-neatly wrapped up and punctuated by a surfeit of poignant moments.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Laugh a little bit, but prepare to be overwhelmed a lot.

One of the great gifts of Far From the Tree is simple visibility, whereby viewers are given the opportunity to watch people live their lives, share their wisdom and flourish within the loving care of their family and friends.

In Puzzle, Macdonald has finally found a movie that she doesn’t need to steal, because it belongs to her completely.

McQueen makes the case that its subject was an artist whose clay was clothing. It also, despite giving short shrift to psychoanalysis, reminds us that everything you might want to know about the artist can be found in the art.

Vreeland’s film, for the most part, is structured around spoken passages from Beaton’s voluminous diaries, which are read, expressively, by Rupert Everett. The actor ably channels the persona of the self-described “rabid aesthete.”

Meaty interviews with journalist Chris Hedges, for instance, lend the film needed context and a sense of intellectual detachment.

Even its most irritating parts don’t fatally damage a whole that works amazingly well, despite its own excesses.

It’s purely unintentional, but the little numeral dangling, like a broken, mangled finger, from the end of the title of The Equalizer 2 signals more than the fact that this is a sequel to the 2014 action thriller about a violent vigilante. It also lets you know that there are two, and only two, pleasures to be had here.

Thanks to Burnham’s exuberant, alert writing and Fisher’s masterful command of vulnerability, anxiety, resilience and steadfast self-belief, Kayla emerges as an icon of her own — just by being herself.

The best films teach you how to watch them within the first few minutes. Blindspotting is no exception. The film gets off to an exhilarating start, with split-screen images of Oakland, Calif., unspooling to the tune of a soaring aria.

Uplift winds up getting the better of “Don’t Worry,” in which Phoenix delivers an impressively committed performance that nonetheless can’t overcome the movie’s worship of Callahan’s most immature, solipsistic and self-dramatizing foibles. A movie that’s supposed to inspire winds up being irritating instead.

Its exuberant, enthusiastic energy seems to belong in an entirely different movie.

As Ravel puts it, the disproportionate influence of money on elections isn’t a Democratic or Republican problem, but a “gateway issue to every other issue you might care about.” Dark Money makes the case, as well as any film can, that she’s pretty much right on the money.

There are few surprises delivered in Skyscraper, an entertaining if middlebrow thriller whose very name — blandly descriptive, generic — seems to advertise its fungibility.

It’s one that speaks not just to Presley’s (and, arguably, America’s) fall from grace, but to the imperfections — and, yes, the lofty ambitions — of this strange, in some ways beautiful and in some ways overburdened little film.

This crafty sociological thriller, set amid the pristine townhouses and lawns of a quiet Reykjavik suburb, builds slowly but surely into a film that feels utterly of a piece with a much wider world.