Hollywood has long had this habit of studios putting out twin movies, films that have a similar theme within the same year or months apart from each other. Armageddon and Deep Impact, Mission To Mars and Red Planet, Girls Trip and Rough Night, This Is the End and The World’s End, the list goes on and on. This year, we’ve gotten twin movies out of adaptations of stories about gay conversion therapy. The Miseducation of Cameron Post was released late this summer, an adaptation of a novel.

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2015’s Creed was a highly enjoyable and highly successful expansion of the Rocky franchise from director Ryan Coogler. It featured Michael B. Jordan in the role of Adonis Creed, son of Apollo Creed, and Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Rocky sliding into the Mickey for Adonis. Sticking with a familiar formula but also finding ways to be newer and fresh, Creed II is a welcome next chapter.

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I’m not a complete Potterhead, but I am a fan and owner of all the Harry Potter books and movies. I read the entire Deathly Hallows when it came out in one sitting, staying up all night to finish it because I’m a slow reader. I proffer my bona fides as a fan because after two installments of a planned five (FIVE!?!?!?) prequels, I am decidedly not a fan of this Fantastic Beasts franchise and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald may have convinced me that I am ok walking away from this franchise.

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I’m trying something a little different with this review. Instead of doing the traditional, straight forward review of the film, I’m changing it up and going with an “Up/Down” format for this one. Bohemian Rhapsody is a biopic about the life of Queen’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury, directed by Bryan Singer and starring Rami Malek. Let’s get into it.

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Biopics are frequently hagiographies, making saints out of their subjects often despite their flaws. Damien Chazelle’s First Man is not in the hagiography business. It’s a straightforward narrative about how mankind got to the moon. That journey culminated on July 20, 1969, but it began nearly a decade earlier, when President John F. Kennedy announced his desire to see a US astronaut on the moon by the end of the decade. That journey is told through the life of Neil Armstrong, the first man who landed on the moon. The film tracks the highs and lows of both Armstrong and NASA on this journey to the moon.

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Spider-Man is my favorite superhero of all time. Venom is a character that many consider to be the greatest villain in Spidey’s rogues gallery, but I think he is one of the most overrated (and Carnage is right up there with him; go ahead and @ me, I don’t care). He has occasionally been fun to have in Spider-Man video games (in Ultimate Spider-Man for the PS2 you could actually play as Venom). But most importantly, I blame the character for ruining Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, a character he swore he didn’t want to do and then the studio essentially strong-armed him. Everything about this Venom spinoff seemed ill-advised and, clearly, I carried a lot of baggage into it. In fact, I had my knives out and I was ready to carve this film up and throw it on the trash heap along with some of my least favorite films that I’ve reviewed, like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. And then I watched it and those plans had to go out the window.

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Toward the end of A Star Is Born, one character says to another, “Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave - 12 notes and the octave repeat. It's the same story told over and over, forever. All any artist can offer this world is how they see those 12 notes. That's it.” It’s a line of dialogue from the third remake of the film (fourth if you count 1932’s What Price Hollywood?). This particular remake has been in the works for a few years now, initially with Clint Eastwood attached to direct and with Beyoncé to star at various points. Every couple of decades, this film seems to get taken down off the shelf and repackaged for a new generation and an artist offers the world how they see that same story told over and over.

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Mandy exists in a world that doesn’t make any sense, and yet it totally works. It’s the kind of film that midnight showings were made for. It’s firmly grounded in the grindhouse exploitation tradition of movie-making. I’ve never done drugs, but I imagine movies like this give a pretty fair approximation of what a bad experience is like. Nicholas Cage, so often a target of criticism and ridicule as a celebrity, has found a movie that matches his craziness and puts it to good use and, frankly, he’s rarely been better. It’s not A Quiet Place or Hereditary in terms of the kind of horror film it is, it has its own unique blend of horror and entertainment going for it. This is an instant cult classic.

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I had hoped that Shane Black would bring an interesting reinvention or sharp new angle to the Predator series of movies. Instead, what we’re treated to is a muddled mess. It’s hard to tell if there was too much studio meddling or if Black is just trying to put too much into this one movie. Either way, The Predator is just the latest example of how not everything should be a franchise.

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Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel or tell us a new story. Romance, drama, comedy, horror, these stories have a universal language that transcend language and geographical barriers. What Crazy Rich Asians does is freshen up the formula with new faces at the center and expose us to a culture and way of life that is not typically seen in mainstream Hollywood films except in fish out of water stories.

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For most kids, being a teenager is rough. It’s full of uncomfortable and embarrassing moments, situations, and events. Puberty hits everyone at different stages and there’s the difficult task of starting to figure out how to start being more like an adult with your own distinct identity and everything that entails. Plus, other kids can be unsparingly cruel. The coming of age tale is a well-worn trope in movies, and it seems like every year there is at least one or two that stand out. Few, though, capture the painful awkwardness of this better than Eighth Grade, a terrific indie film from comedian Bo Burnham.

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Sorry To Bother You first popped up on my radar when it was one of the most talked about movies coming out of Sundance. Created by musician and first-time director Boots Riley, I was mainly intrigued by the cast that featured Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson, two young and promising actors that have emerged over the last few years. The premise of the film also interested me too. It came out locally while I was still away at the Maine International Film Festival, so couldn’t see it until I got back; it was the very first movie I went to post-MIFF and fulfilled and exceeded my expectations for it.

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Everyone talks about how the Fast & Furious franchise remade itself, found its footing after a couple of mediocre sequels, and became a serious box office attraction, but the Mission: Impossible franchise has actually had a similar trajectory. The first film was a successful remake of the classic TV series. The second one faltered a bit. The third one was a step in the right direction and a decent return to form. Ever since, the franchise has excelled. It’s rare that franchises get better as they put our more sequels, but here we are with Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth entry in this Tom Cruise-starring vehicle, is among the best of the series (I’ve got Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation neck and neck).

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For many, many years, Mister Rogers was a staple of PBS and children’s lives in America. I remember watching him as a child growing up in the 80s. He was far from my favorite show as a kid, but there is no denying that he was a distinct part of my childhood. All these years later, even if I can’t remember all the words to the song to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” I can at least remember the tune, Mister Rogers coming in through the door, changing into his sweater and changing his shoes, the trolley to the neighborhood of make-believe, and then the closing song “It’s Such a Good Feeling.” My experience with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was limited to my own individual childhood viewing for a few years, and so it was great to get to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor? to gain a greater appreciation for who Fred Rogers was and how radical his show truly was.

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