All in all, though it may not be totally awesome, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is still fun, which is what it should be, and you’ll still leave with a song stuck in your head. Maybe even two.

Us is an impressive and astonishingly hair-triggered sophomore feature squarely positioned to decimate genre audiences. It’s purposefully vague, but jam-packed with more memorable genre imagery and inquisitive discussion starters than most braindead by-the-book cinematic offerings beholden to formulaic blueprints.

It may not reach the heights of Disney classics of yesteryear, but Mufasa: The Lion King is a movie worth watching for the clear attempt to turn it into something it could never have been.

It’s a film of maddening contradictions, missed opportunities and half-taken risks, but it’s destined to be one of the year’s most polarizing and talked-about releases regardless.

The Monkey quite competently makes a monkey out of the human ego, though the comedy choreography is a few bananas short of a bunch.

Fast X doubles down on everything longtime fans have come to know and love about the franchise, but anyone who isn't sold on the saga at this stage isn't going to be won over.

If you like the 1992 classic you might enjoy this update, but if you don't have the time to kill, it's probably worth sticking to the original.

As it smiles and waves to the rest of the genre like a good little rom-com, you may catch a hint of a gleam in its eye and wonder, very briefly; is that who Irish Wish really is? Or did director Janeen Damian and screenwriter Kirsten Hansen just pull off one of the most maliciously untheatrical, galaxy-brain plays of the year?

As an experience, Avatar: The Way of Water is second to none. In terms of the storytelling, though, James Cameron has fallen into the exact same pitfalls as he did on the first visit to Pandora.

The Void is a portal back to the 80s, hinged on immersive practical effects work that picks up the slack of a slighter story.

No Man of God doesn't tell us anything about Ted Bundy we didn't already know, but it's a riveting drama anchored by two phenomenal performances from Luke Kirby and Elijah Wood.

Annabelle: Creation is no lifeless dummy. Plotting may run a bit thin and coincidental, but David F. Sandberg whips up bone-chilling scares and hefty doses of peek-through-your-fingers imagery.

In essence, Bloody Birthday is the old horror film, The Bad Seed, multiplied by three on the crazy scale, but far less chilling.

Split is never as clever or poignant as it thinks it is, but James McAvoy won't let it be forgotten, either.

In terms of performance, Freeman generates about all the emotion this nearly one-man show puts out. At first, Andy’s mission is protection and self-reservation, but Freeman captures the process of shifting priorities marvelously, making Andy’s transition from worried improviser to adapted martyr all the more pleasing to experience.

Four powerhouse performances cannot quite make Richard Linklater's occasionally moving dramedy, Last Flag Flying, into more than a minor war movie.

It’s broody and disciplined, soaked in the pungent style of foreign auteurs who molded Scorsese’s own love of film – yet overburdened by a downward spiral lacking fire and unforgiving features.

The Princess fully embraces its outlandishness to deliver a cheesy, violent, R-rated fantasy actioner that's destined to ensure as a camp cult favorite.

20th Century Women relegates a set of extraordinary female characters to supporting players in a standard coming-of-age narrative. It's entertaining, but also disappointing.

Violent Night delivers everything that was promised, and it's destined to find long-lasting life as a cult classic, but there's barely anything of note beyond the superficial.

Ultimately, Stars At Noon provides an interesting look into an important time in history for Nicaragua from the perspective of a French director who has no direct involvement with the reality she is representing. Unfortunately, the conventionally attractive hetero-normative romance between the leads, and the espionage shenanigans they get up to, are wildly uninteresting compared to the gravitas of everything that is going on in the background.

Malignant is messy, chaotic, ridiculous and quite possibly the most insane movie you'll see this year, but James Wan doesn't just know that; he uses it to his advantage.

Psychonauts, the Forgotten Children is bizarre, imaginative and beautiful, but it's also crying out for a stronger narrative.

Michôd’s military dramedy is more about press tours, TV interviews and power plays. That’s what makes this Netflix new release redeeming in its political poignancy – but having Brad Pitt doesn’t hurt.

With a little less preamble and a lot more momentum, The Cow might have been something special.

Doctor Strange is the psychedelic kung-fu spectacle that Marvel hoped director Scott Derrickson would deliver, but it’s got a strange problem – the doctor himself.

Anchored by a top-notch performance from its lead, The Hero surpasses its cliches and becomes an ideal vehicle for its star. In Sam Elliot we trust.

Combining Amblin-style adventure with grind house exploitation theatrics, 'Kids vs. Aliens' is the ultimate 80s man-child movie.

In its braggadocios final form, genre fans have a unicorn watch that surely won’t be replicated anytime soon. Points for creativity, points for ambition, and points for a studio showing the balls to back provocative genre cinema.

Sing runs on some serious super-piggy performance power, even if the emotional notes are expected.

Unfortunately, Smith’s would-be comeback vehicle is hamstrung by a weak script, paper-thin characters, and gets caught too often being overly earnest rather than emotionally honest, something that ultimately taints the integrity of the endeavor and will leave audiences disappointed.

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero certainly lives up to Eli Roth's gory standards, but individual enjoyment will hinge on one's love of schlocky B-Movie antics.

Lean and mean, The Survivalist a realistically miserable apocalypse - and all the more terrifying for it.

Rainbow Time is all over the place dramatically, but somehow Linas Phillips ties together a sometimes wacky, otherwise off-beat family dramedy from perspectives unknown.

Cruella isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s an altogether different kind of Disney blockbuster that pivots from origin story to heist thriller via family drama and a pastiche of the cutthroat fashion industry with consummate ease, all anchored by a tour de force performance from the leading lady.

When Bullet Train sings it’s often a blackly hilarious and knowingly absurd slice of demented action goodness. When it doesn’t work, self-indulgence begins to creep in, almost as if the creative team deliberately set out to make something that would be fondly remembered as a cult favorite in the years to come, but that’s a sentiment that can only be earned, not cultivated.

Dear Joe Lynch, please let me see your Director’s Cut ASAP? Knights Of Badassdom is an unfinished product, but it passes based on the content our director was able to salvage.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a solid action-packed blockbuster that ticks all of the franchise's required boxes, even if it isn't quite a farewell worthy of a cinematic icon.

Hercule Poirot comes out to play again in this horror-leaning murder mystery which, despite looking great, is held back by and underwhelming plot.

Beautifully crafted but tragically underbaked, 'Spaceman' had the blueprints for Adam Sandler's best-ever dramatic vehicle, but wound up becoming the most unrealized one.

A beautifully shot film that doesn't quite conquer the big screen.

More a sacrifice bunt than a homerun, 'The Kitchen' is a commendable, if tame, addition to the dystopian sci-fi library that gets by on pure heart.

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters lays many a colossal Kaiju smackdown, but human arcs crumble under the heavy weights of those 'Zilla-sized behemoths they're forced to shoulder.

Landscape with Invisible Hand is more social commentary than alien infused rom-com. With some solid performances from Chloe Rogers and Assante Blackk, this adaptation of the M T Anderson novel will offer audiences food for thought.

Good Boys successfully exploits a newfound ground between crudeness and innocence, but nearly runs it dry.

It's hard not to anticipate many of Verhoeven's moves, but Isabella Huppert is too good to ignore in Elle.

It might be way too long and suffer from many familiar problems, but 'Ambulance' still has enough action-packed thrills in the tank to rank as Michael Bay's best movie in years.

The Rehearsal is much like any coming-of-age melodrama, and while its meat is a little overdone, its intro and finale bookends do make up for a lack of flavor in between.

Scoob! is an enjoyable-enough start to the Hanna-Barbera cinematic universe, but may leave Mystery Inc. superfans feeling robbed of the Scooby-centric reboot that such a title suggests.

47 Meters Down navigates choppy waters, but ultimately manages to deliver some prime summer-time screams.

The spirit of Stuart Gordon is alive and well in Suitable Flesh, with Joe Lynch picking up the baton and delivering both an ode to his inspiration and a riotous horror comedy in its own right.

National Lampoon's Vacation is a comedic cross-country adventure like no other, thanks to Chevy Chase and the rest of the Griswold family. It's not the best Vacation movie by any stretch, but it's a wild ride from start to finish.

Going in Style doesn't bring much imagination or innovation to the world of crime comedies, but its legendary stars enhance the experience enough to make it passable entertainment.

Medieval works best when it throws dirt, mud, blood, and body parts at the screen, with the crunching battle scenes just about overcoming the narrative shortcomings.

Aftermath may not say much, but Arnold Schwarzenegger's reserved performance is a somber turn that keeps drama surprisingly in-tune.

Rarely is a performance so strong that it’s able to carry an entire production, but – thankfully for John Madden – Chastain wills Miss Sloane into relevance through nothing but sophistication, spunk and champion grit.

Ready Player One isn’t slick enough a commentary worth getting riled up about or distracting enough to hide glaring structural issues underneath a barrage of “HEY I KNOW THEM!” cameos like dangling keys in front of a dog.

Doug Liman's 'Road House' weighs in with sizzling performances, a hearty helping of great action, a script that needed a much longer timeout, and the most self-assured identity crisis we may ever see on the small screen.

Yesterday’s lackluster, underwritten script both births its golden egg concept, and also restrains it from ever reaching the next level of sophistication or interest.

Beauty And The Beast lacks some of the astonishing visual prowess of previous Disney live-action remakes, but still sings and dances with enjoyable style.

An imperfect but fascinating film, The Dinner's stellar cast delivers a deeply troubling and psychologically complex treatment of class and family.

Even though Gran Tursimo falls short of the bar in terms of being the Rocky of race car movies that it could have been, due to the character development falling short in all of the scenes that take place outside the racetrack, it’s still an enjoyable ride, overall.

Despite its undoubted ambition and an excellent central performance from Rami Malek, Buster’s Mal Heart slips into the traps that so often face thrillers of its type.

Copshop isn't quite the movie the trailers paint it to be; It's definitely a worthy first meeting between Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo in the action genre, but Alexis Louder is the one who really steals the show.

The Greasy Strangler is a perverted fever dream that will please few audiences, but those who enjoy it are in for one f*#ked up treat.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt fail to bring the big guns out on 'Wolfs,' but are just the right amount of endearing for streaming success.

Extraction 2 is everything you'd expect it to be; bigger, bolder, brasher, louder, and more spectacular. Unfortunately, it peaks way too early and fails to recapture that early momentum.

Mixing Nicolas Cage's unique talent for weird horror movies and a post-apocalyptic family drama story, Arcadian stretches thin in too many directions. Fortunately, the movie’s unique creature design makes up for every plot mistake.

This disappointing rite-of-passage teen angst hybrid is hard work. If not for the presence of Cameron Douglas and Edouard Philipponnat, 'The Runner' would be of little interest to anyone. Thankfully, they do their best to make this at least worth a look.

There's a lot of compassion in 'Back to Black' for its troubled subject, but its best intentions become its worse mistakes when it fails to direct any semblance of a critical look at the multiple tragic events in Amy Winehouse's too-short life.

The effort put forth by James, Tomei, Hauser, and Fimmel just about carries Delia’s Gone over the finish line, which offsets the overall lack of a laser-focused singular method of storytelling that would have improved things exponentially.

Army of Thieves isn't the most original or inventive heist movie you'll ever see; but it's a massively entertaining expansion of Zack Snyder's undead cinematic universe.

While fans of either Freaky Friday or Friday the 13th might not get enough of what they came for in Freaky, fans of Vaughn will get more than enough to keep them satisfied. He makes Freaky absolutely worth it.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is a biopic every bit as off-kilter and bizarre as the protagonist, but despite all of the whimsy and eccentricities, it finds itself missing a spark.

The Flash is good, and occasionally flirts with excellence, but anyone who goes in heading the game-changer that was promised may be left feeling a touch short-changed.

A stay-at-home mother's slow descent into lycanthropy serves as a metaphor for maternal struggles in this uneven adaptation that never fully commits to its provocative premise, despite Amy Adams' raw and transformative performance.

The film is mindless entertainment by way of scoundrels, dynamite and honor – not quite magnificent, but “The Watchable Seven” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The Gray Man delivers on its promise of spectacular globetrotting action escapism, but there's a noticeable spark missing that could have elevated it above formula and into greatness.

A unique cherry blossom of a period piece finds its roots intertwined with an erotically-charged crime, set to shock and entrance viewers unaware of the free-spirited madness to follow. A cultural appropriation of submission, the male gaze and gender dominance, stretched until storytelling fabrics just begin to tear.

Pandemic certainly won't spark a nationwide outbreak, but it's a sleek enough take on infection thrillers that's worth one good late-night watch.

Zombieland: Double Tap winks and nudges its way through a long-time-coming sequel, but earns its survival badges when cracking wits around new casts of characters.

In a completely calculated way, this feature length stab at the MTV show remains intentionally average and overtly unchallenging – as it never seeks to overshadow the imminent new entry from showrunner Davis.

Vaughn sticks to what he knows with his Kingsman sequel but rarely ups the ante, making this a fun-enough entry into an already-too-familiar franchise.

Tomb Raider, by merely being an OK video-game film, is a great step in the right direction for the struggling genre. It seems that Uthaug got most of the dreary, expositional stuff out of the way early, so hopefully these oncoming sequels will take a hint and give audiences more of what they want.

47 Meters Down is still the alpha of this franchise pack, but Uncaged's stealth "slasher but with sharks" structure is an approved and entertaining surprise.

Danny Boyle's T2 Trainspotting is a diverting nostalgia exercise, to be sure, but it never really justifies its own existence.

Cocaine Bear almost runs its premise into the ground, but delivers some outrageous rampage sequences and laughs along the way.

While The Scribbler isn't exactly in contention with the best that the comic book genre has to offer, Katie Cassidy utilizes the numerous voices in her head to create a unique hero for a bit of stylized freshness.

Your toleration of mother! will be determined by movie-going patience. Aronofsky is painting with some blistering broad strokes, but they’re just that – broad and undefined.

Burial leans too heavily on genre convention without adding anything fresh. For that reason, any decent performances which are happening on screen fail to rescue it from mediocrity.

Us And Them might be a little slighter than expected, but Jack Roth's charismatic fire-starter has enough anarchistic anger to appreciate.

This supremely talented ensemble cast are unable to save 'The Son' from being an overly emotive disappointment.

Office Christmas Party is a naughty Xmas comedy stuffed with enough ho-ho-hos and ha-ha-has to corrupt this holiday season.

Flashes of narrative inspiration and solid performances are not enough to rescue Allswell from mediocrity, as momentum remains in short supply.

Conversational drama (ala Linklater’s Before franchise), plates piled with last-meal dinner fantasies, unparalleled improv – third time is still the charm, but Michael Winterbottom lets the stew boil a bit too long.

The Vatican Tapes relies heavily on its third act, but if you can stomach its more generic beginnings, you'll be treated to an exorcism story with higher stakes than normal.

With a greener blend of heart and humor, Shaft safely ushers in the vigilante detective for modern audiences, though safety never seemed to be a factor before.

It pulls too many punches while being too keen on delivering others, but Speak No Evil's mighty cast and swath of subtleties seal a fine deal indeed.