Alison Willmore

At this point in our collective superhero experience, it’s strange to see such a major installment surrender so much of its run time to scaffolding for things to come. But watching Brand New Day feels like watching the work of a group of people who’ve forgotten what made these films so successful in the first place.

Koreeda doesn’t have it in him to make an alarmist dystopian tale, and Sheep in the Box remains tender and sun-dappled as it eventually steers its main human characters toward healing.

The result is something that’s splendid and sprawling while remaining insulated from major emotions.

Moana isn’t the worst of the live action Disney remakes, or the ugliest, but it’s the fastest in terms of the amount of time that’s elapsed since the original, which is its own extra depressing stat.

Before it surrenders to the conventional in its final act, Minions & Monsters is irresistibly awash in the liberty of being the seventh installment of a franchise so consistently successful that the powers that be approved a story line that pivots on the advent of sound.

Alcock, with her smirk and her anguished eyes, is a very watchable lead, but this aggressively minor movie doesn’t know what to do with her or her character.

It’s a strange, strange movie, but a thoroughly compelling one, thanks in large part to Early’s performance as Maddie.

Toy Story 5, which was directed by studio stalwart Andrew Stanton (who co-wrote the script with Kenna Harris), is both the best thing Pixar has done since Turning Red and disappointing in a way that only something you once found utterly captivating could manage to be.

All this setup, and the sparse and sometimes clumsy writing, is just scaffolding to support the mind-boggling set pieces and fight sequences, which come frequently and involve a rewarding variety of settings, from your classic split-level nightclub to a freezer room full of bodies frozen into slabs of ice.

Masters of the Universe isn’t a real movie. It’s a bunch of half-realized, semi-contradictory ideas accrued over years. It takes the rough shape of a comedy without ever really landing a joke.