It seems like it gets lost in the shuffle in comparison to all of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe properties, but 2015’s Ant-Man is an easily enjoyable movie. Despite some initial questions about Paul Rudd being tapped to join the MCU, Ant-Man has slid right in alongside all the others in the MCU rather smoothly. In addition to being a superhero flick, it was also a good genre heist movie as well. This time around, it’s more of a straightforward action movie, though still tempered with plenty of comedy.

I’m a huge sports fan. Growing up in New England, I have gotten to experience more than my fair share of championship teams this century. There is a lot of turnover in sports now, with players switching teams regularly. Every once in a while, a team has an exceptional season and wins a title, but loses some key players through free agency or retirement, and the next year they aren’t terrible, but they just aren’t the same as the year before because they were unable to replace those key players. Some of the elements are there, but there is just too much missing of what made the team great.

Can God forgive us?

This is half of a question raised in the film First Reformed, words that linger over everything that transpires in this unique concoction from writer/director Paul Schrader. Schrader is most known for being the screenwriter of some of Martin Scorsese’s biggest films: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. These are provocative films, and First Reformed is also a film that intends to provoke and move the viewer.

We have a special fascination with dinosaurs. Maybe because their skeletons remained preserved for us to discover them and learn about them. Maybe it is because they were at the top of the food chain on this planet before we were around and we now reside in the spot they once occupied. Maybe because dinosaurs are just cool when you first learn about them as a kid. Whatever the reason, a bestselling book named Jurassic Park was became a blockbuster movie in the 90s. It spawned two sequels that were decidedly less impressive than the original. Three years ago, this franchise, once thought to be extinct, was brought back to life in a hugely successful blockbuster, Jurassic World. Given how Hollywood works, there was no way there wouldn’t be a sequel. And given how, apparently, this franchise works, there was no way that this sequel would not come close to matching the success of its predecessor. And so now we must deal with the dino dropping that is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

There are fewer bankable guarantees in film than Pixar productions. Their track record speaks for itself, the Cars franchise notwithstanding (Hey, nobody bats 1.000). It’s hard to believe that it’s been 14 years since The Incredibles came out in 2004. With all of the Pixar films I have enjoyed, The Incredibles remains firmly in my Top 5 for Pixar (In order: Wall-E, Inside Out, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, and Up.). The Incredibles 2 is the 20th feature film release from Pixar and it more than measures up to the stature of the original.

If the D+ Cinemascore is any indication, people need to prepare one of two ways for seeing Hereditary. General mainstream audiences tend to have certain expectations of a movie in the horror genre. If a movie is marketed as the best horror movie of the year, that also tends to put certain expectations in people’s minds. And when a horror movie refuses to conform to the generally agreed upon ideas of what a horror movie is supposed to be, audiences tend to reject them. Hereditary is not a mainstream horror movie. In a lot of ways it is a throwback but also its own unique thing. If that is of interest to you, then you need to prepare for an unnerving viewing experience. I thought I was prepared, and I was wrong.

When I first heard that they were making Ocean’s 8, I was skeptical. I was unimpressed with the all-female Ghostbusters movie, despite being a fan of the cast. I am not much of a fan of Hollywood’s apparent decision to make every franchise some kind of shared cinematic universe like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It works for Marvel, it quickly loses its appeal much beyond that. And while every film should be taken on its own merits, I’m not a fan of the gender-swap trend that seems to be happening in Hollywood; I am a fan of a lot of films featuring great female actresses, and I want more movie roles for them overall, but I also want more original roles for them to play (and, really, I’ve been beating the drum for more original content in Hollywood in general for years). So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this spinoff from the Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney trilogy of films of the last decade.

If the tale as old as time is Beauty and the Beast, the oldest tale in Hollywood might be the troubled production. For all of the financial and critical success of the Star Wars franchise since it was bought by Disney and they set out to launch a new trilogy and a slew of spin-offs and origin stories, there has been a lot of behind the scenes turmoil, most notably on Solo: A Star Wars Story, where the originals directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired for “creative differences” and replaced with Ron Howard, who reshot approximately 70% of the film. Typically, troubled productions produce troubling results, so a lot of curiosity has surrounded this spin-off about a young Han Solo.

One of the things I love most about movies is that they can be a glimpse into the lives and experiences of others. There is only so much of the world I can experience from my little corner of the globe in Maine, even if it is “the way life should be.” Movies provide a chance from the comfort of a living room or movie theater to see things from someone else’s perspective and partake in experiences that are different than my own.  I love sitting in the darkness of a movie theater, near the front so that the screen takes up practically my entire field of vision, and immerse myself in someone else’s world for that brief bit of time. In a time when we seem to be in desperate need of it, movies can serve as great empathy vehicles as we walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. That may be with a character that doesn’t even speak our language or look the same as me from the other side of the globe, or it can be something domestic but still different from my individual life.

There is a 2012 piece in The New Yorker that came out after Moonrise Kingdom (my favorite Wes Anderson film), titled “Does Wes Anderson Hate Dogs?” Given the fate of Buckley in The Royal Tenenbaums and Snoopy in Moonrise Kingdom (still my favorite Wes Anderson film), I suppose it was a fair question to ask. Maybe Wes Anderson read that article, maybe he didn’t, but Isle of Dogs is an emphatic answer to that question, not in the least because the title literally sounds like “I love dogs” when spoken quickly. It’s also Anderson’s second stop-motion animated feature after his 2009 adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox.

It’s all been building to this. Except for when everything was building to The Avengers. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been building to this moment, more or less, over the last decade’s worth of movies, eighteen so far. Avengers: Infinity War is supposed to represent the beginning of the end for what is known as Phase Three of the MCU. With a planned (and already filmed) sequel due to arrive next summer that concludes the story, Infinity War leaves Earth’s mightiest heroes hanging on a perilous note with the stakes pushed higher than perhaps any movie has ever pushed the stakes before.

One of my most anticipated films of 2018 was The Death of Stalin. Adapted from a French graphic novel, it is directed by Armando Iannucci. Iannucci is responsible for some of the funniest political satire of the 21st century in the form of the BBC series The Thick of It, the spin-off movie In the Loop, and the HBO series Veep. These satires are biting, critical, and hysterical. It has been on my radar since early 2017 when I first heard of it and was pleased to discover it was finally getting a spring theatrical release here in the US. Unfortunately, the film failed to live up to my high expectations.

Films are mostly perceived as a visual medium; most people when asked to explain the difference between a book and a film adaptation of the same book will talk about how books are conveyed through words whereas movies are depicted through images.

Lost in this discussion is the fact that film is more often than not also an audio medium. In some films the audio can be just as important and the visuals. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is riveting because of the audio recording that Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul obsesses over. The Blair Witch Project relies almost entirely on the unnerving sounds heard in the woods to be terrifying as anything actually shown on screen. Soundtracks and scores and instrumental (pun intended) in cluing the audience into how the director wants them to be feeling about what is happening on screen. A Quiet Place is a horror film that relies heavily on the aural aspect of experiencing a film and executes its mastery of sound to incredible effect.

Tomb Raider is one of the most popular video game franchises in the history of video games. It has spawned several video games over several generations of platforms. Angelina Jolie famously portrayed the iconic Lara Croft character over two lackluster movies back in 2001 and 2003. After a recent reboot of the character on the latest video game generation, the character has been rebooted on the big screen, this time with the very talented Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander stepping into role.

A Wrinkle in Time is a classic children’s book that I never read growing up, but was keenly aware of its existence, one of a number of books that slipped through the cracks for me growing up. I had purchased the book on my Kindle a few years ago with the intention of reading it eventually. With the release of the film adaptation, I decided to cram this week and read the book between Wednesday evening and Friday morning before catching a Friday matinee of the film. The previews of the film had caught my eye for months and interested me, and, given the quality of Selma, I wanted to see what director Ava DuVernay would do with the project. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the outcome.