AQUAMAN - The Wet and the Furious

Well, the good news is that we finally have a good King Arthur movie for the first time in a very, very long time.

The bad news is NOPE, JUST KIDDING - IT'S ALL GOOD NEWS BECAUSE THIS IS A KING ARTHUR MOVIE WHERE AN OCTOPUS PLAYS THE DRUMS.

BUMBLEBEE - See, was that so hard?

Well, Merry Cussing Christmas to us - there's finally a good Transformers movie!

Took 'em long enough.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE - Greatness Awaits

Well. . . wow.

Given my reaction to this film, I can only imagine the new part it's going to leave in the hair of viewers who are much more in need of inspirational representation than a 30-something cis/straight/white man.

Because, even to me, this feels like a wave breaking.

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET - Disney's Unbroken Streak

It's a testament to Disney's cyclically eternal appeal that they're thought of as the mostly-unquestioned masters of feature animation, even though - from the very beginning of their forays into film - the studio has gone through fallow periods. Only a few years after Snow White, Disney released a financial flop with Fantasia. Their output during much of World War II was relegated to shorts and propaganda films. The studio floundered in the wake of Walt's Death and damn near shuttered their entire animation department for good in the '80s, got mired in direct-to-video garbage in the '90s, and they've apparently abandoned 2D animation in the wake of 2009's The Princess and the Frog.

And yet, they always follow their lean years with a run of highly successful and quality films, and Disney is currently in their longest-running streak of good-to-great animated movies. If there were an obvious choice to buck that trend, the meme-soaked sequel to 2012's Wreck-It Ralph would have been it, but it's not looking like Game Over any time soon.

CREED II - Rocky Road to Victory

2015's Creed ended up being one of my favorite films of its year. I've gone on record saying that it's a masterpiece and - in my opinion - the best overall film in the Rocky saga. So, needless to say, my apprehensions that things would go off the rails immediately with the sequel (which Creed writer/director Ryan Coogler passed on to make a small indie drama called Black Panther) were fairly high.

Luckily, while Creed II may not be the masterpiece that its direct predecessor was, it's still a damn fine entry into what has now become one of my favorite film series, and packs a couple powerful secret weapons that make it more than just a solid cover of earlier numbers.

THE MEG - Bruce Almighty

I, uh. . . look, I at least had to try to equal the pun on the poster, ok?

THE EQUALIZER 2 - Social Justice Assassin

Sometimes you go to a certain kind of movie because you're following an ongoing franchise, sometimes it's because a popular property that you're invested in is getting a compelling cinematic adaptation, sometimes you're a fan of a particular actor or director, or sometimes you're just in a foul mood and want to go watch someone dispatch violent justice in an unapolagetic "dad movie."

And sometimes it's kinda all of the above?

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR - Against All Odds

What's that, you say? You like your epic genre entertainment to really put you through the wringer during the penultimate chapter? Well, have I got good news for you!

. . .in a manner of speaking.

RAMPAGE - On Like Donkey Kong

"So, the movie is about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and his gorilla friend -"
"Ok, I'm interested."
"But the gorilla gets exposed to Science Gas and grows big -"
"I'm sold."
"And then Johnson has to help his big gorilla friend fight two OTHER giant monsters -"
"Look, you're sweetening a deal you already closed, but keep going..."

Yeah, I liked it.

READY PLAYER ONE - Somewhat Buggy Beta

There are few filmmakers - hell, few artists - with such immediate cultural cache as Steven Spielberg. The man is single-handedly responsible for the matinee fever dreams of multiple generations of movie-goers as well as being able to put together Oscar-nominated films on the turn of a time. So the fact that he decided to be the one to adapt Ernest Cline's novel celebrating a whole bunch of the "stuff" that Spielberg was either involved with producing, or more directly responsible for, always seemed like. . . an odd choice.

How do you make a decent film out of a coming of age novel about celebrating your own stuff?

As it turns out, you make the movie all about how empty the pursuit of only "stuff" is in the long run.

BLACK PANTHER - Make it Reign

Immediately after getting out of Black Panther, my overriding thought was that this must have been what it felt like to see Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie on the big screen in 1978 and watch a filmmaker redefine a genre for an entire generation.

Since then, damn near all I can think about has been when I can next go back.

As the World Burned - The Films of 2017

Well, that year sucked. And we got a long fight ahead of us until it gets better, so.

. . . Let's talk about some fun movies, huh? And some bad ones. And some surprising ones. And - well, you know the drill by now.

THE SHAPE OF WATER - The Hearts of Monsters

Look, if you guys don't start going to see Guillermo del Toro's movies more often, he's eventually gonna run out of crazy people to finance them. And losing out on films like The Shape of Water would be a damn tragedy.