Matt Singer

I would say Toy Story 5 is shockingly successful, but really it shouldn’t be shocking at all that Andrew Stanton, the director of Pixar masterpieces like Finding Nemo and WALL-E and a writer of the Toy Story films since the very first one, understands these characters and this world, and found a way to bring them into the 2020s without sacrificing what makes them special.

The film does not live up to all of his promises of shocking revelations, and in general, the movie is a long (though admittedly very exciting) build-up to an underwhelming payoff.

I laughed occasionally, mostly at Faris and Hall (who should really make a movie together that’s not a Scary Movie) but not enough to recommend the film. But, again, I was almost certainly more sober than its creators intended when I saw it.

In a world where original movies like Obsession and Backrooms are suddenly the hottest films in Hollywood, an expensive spoof of Masters of the Universe already looks nearly as dated as the old He-Man cartoon I watched as a kid.

Power Ballad isn’t just a case of a director rehashing his greatest hits — even though the most famous song from Carney’s most famous movie makes a cameo. While it begins in similar fashion to nearly all of his movies — with an unlikely collaboration sparking sonic kismet and a host of catchy tunes — it also takes those familiar tropes in some welcome new directions.

Once you fall into this labyrinth, it’s very easy to get lost, and to lose touch with your true identity from before you crossed into its limitless spaces. Backrooms may be set in 1990, but it’s about the horror of now.

The results are serviceable enough — and calculated in a way that suggests serviceable enough (and utterly inoffensive) was Lucasfilm’s goal here.

In Mortal Kombat II I truly did not care who lived or died for a single second — mostly because the film made it very clear that death is basically meaningless in this story.

Despite its own lineage, Devil Wears Prada 2 still manages to be a surprisingly clear-eyed portrayal of the fight to make things of genuine value in a world dominated by corporate greed.

It’s not just that Michael’s portrait of its title character is incomplete. He’s depicted as so pure that he becomes uninteresting; a moonwalking and talking human jukebox with little in the way of a compelling story. The only thing this basic rags-to-riches narrative has going for it is its non-stop parade of Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 hits, music so good it will surely turn Michael into a major box-office hit.