When The Incredibles came out, in November 2004, it was Pixar's sixth movie and only about the ninth superhero movie in the modern era (which archeologists agree started with X-Men in 2000). Focused more on adventure than comedy, with bar-raising computer animation and starring humans rather than...

Tag turns an outrageous-yet-true story into one that's just outrageous, with details that couldn't possibly be true. Based on a 2013 Wall Street Journal article, it's about five men in their late 30s who've been playing the same game of Tag since grade school in Spokane. The game is operative only...

SuperFly, a modern-day remake of the 1972 blaxploitation classic -- about a successful cocaine dealer of color who wants to get out of the business -- is a straight crime drama, made by a music video director but not shot like a music video. It's not kitschy, with no winking cameos by original cast...

With a hint of wistfulness to give it some weight, Hearts Beat Loud is a happy, sunshiny movie about saying goodbye, letting go, and collaborating with loved ones to make sick beats. It stars Nick Offerman as Frank Fisher, a widowed record-shop owner and erstwhile musician in Brooklyn whose...

The John Wick movies have a hotel, The Continental, that's exclusively for assassins, where a code of conduct (e.g., no "working" on the premises) is strictly enforced. So fascinating is the society hinted at (they even use their own currency) that a TV series about The Continental is in...

Remember how Danny Ocean needed 10 friends (and then 11, and then 12) to pull off his heists? In Ocean's Eight, his sister, Debbie (Sandra Bullock), only needs six collaborators (plus a seventh, eventually, as spoiled by the title) to perpetrate an impossible theft of priceless jewels. Are women...

Would you like to watch Toni Collette have a nervous breakdown for two hours? Hereditary is many things -- a haunting story about a disintegrating family, a masterfully directed nightmare by first-timer Ari Aster, a pants-besoiling horror film -- but it's also Collette's highlight reel, full of...

Ian McEwan's novel On Chesil Beach and the movie based on it (which he also wrote) tell a story set in 1962 England that could only work as a period piece, for it is based on the premise that society expects newlyweds to be virgins, and that many of them actually are. The big-screen debut of...

Remember the Robert Redford movie All Is Lost, where he was stranded at sea? Adrift, with teen-romance veterans Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars) and Sam Claflin (Me Before You) lost in the Pacific on a storm-damaged yacht, is like that, only boring. It's based on real events recounted in...

If the absence of Johnny Knoxville's Jackass has left a concussion-shaped hole in your life, it may be partially filled by Action Point, a juvenile comedy with Knoxville as the owner of a rickety amusement park who tries to compete with a fancy new park by embracing what makes his unique and...

Upgrade is an offbeat futuristic techno-thriller in the tradition of B-movies about scientists tampering in God's domain, made with enthusiasm (by Saw and Insidious creator Leigh Whannell) from the spare parts of other sci-fi stories. It has some clumsy dialogue and melodrama, but it also has...

"This is not based on a true story," say the onscreen titles at the beginning of American Animals. "This is a true story." A bold assertion, but writer-director Bart Layton, whose previous film was the unbelievably engrossing documentary Impostor, makes a strong case for himself with his narrative...

While I've always liked the original Star Wars trilogy, I don't have the depth of knowledge (i.e., memorization) that some do, so there are probably references in the Han Solo prequel, Solo: A Star Wars Story, that I didn't catch. That's besides the obvious ones, which kind of poke you in the...

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg started to become a pop-culture icon a few years ago, when the court shifted rightward and she found herself writing more dissents -- scathing ones, often, on subjects that America was newly (re-)interested in, like women's issues and minority rights. The...

The imaginatively titled Book Club, about four women in their late 60s whose love lives are rekindled by reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, sounds like an extended advertisement for the books, but it really isn't. It's just the catalyst for an even drearier formula: a story about four old...