To put it quite simply: Despite wanting to like it, I didn't buy "Shazam!" because the film didn't sell itself, unfortunately.

During one particularly poignant sequence, I imagined my friend in the seat next to me showing 'Captain Marvel' to his two-year-old daughter and the broad smile on her face upon realizing that she too can stand up every time she's knocked down.

'Alita: Battle Angel' is Robert Rodriguez's best film in years, James Cameron's best film in years, the best American manga adaptation ever, and one of the most entertaining new worlds in a long, long time.

The real test of quality is whether the material holds up once the surprise fades. For 'The Lego Movie 2,' the answer, delivered with more tepidity than enthusiasm, is yes.

For 2018 one of the most dominant statements has been that great cinema is not limited by genre, personnel, distribution, or any other such qualifier.

Despite feeling rushed and disjointed, one thing that can be said about 'Glass' is that no matter how many superhero movies are made, no one but M. Night Shyamalan would make a superhero movie quite like this one.

There is already enough inherited cheese in a man wearing glowing underwater armor firing a plasma rifle while riding on the back of giant shrimp. We don't need more.

What's clear is that 'Into the Spider-Verse' isn't limited by being an animated feature. No. For this Spider-Man - Miles Morales Spider-Man - animation is the feature which removes all limits.

"Venom" has no identity to wrap itself around. It's not scary enough to be horror and not funny enough to be comedy. If it weren't for the comic books, it would barely be a superhero movie.

I’ve never made a movie. I’ve always wanted to, I’ve written a couple on my own, co-written a couple more, and even arranged a cast and crew and scheduled a shoot only to have it all collapse, twice, but I have yet to actually make a movie. The excuses are …

The plot of 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' can't help but feel really small, so to speak, compared to the prospect of wiping out of half of all life in the universe, but the off-beat humor keeps the movie brisk when the low-stakes story and low-rent secondary villains aren't enough to propel it forward.

'Solo' is as fun as it is forgettable, but at least it doesn't ruin the character (unlike other 'Star Wars' prequels).

Can the team behind 'Deadpool' succeed without the novelty of the first film? Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes they can.

Let's appreciate the care and effort taken to create a singular, coherent cinematic universe - something that hadn't been done before and, arguably, hasn't been equaled since - before it's all torn apart piece by piece.

One could as easily argue that Jennifer Lawrence turns in a tightly nuanced performance as a wronged woman leveraging her way through an abusive society in which her only asset is sex appeal as one could argue that she's a flat character who simply falls back on her conditioning to get what she wants.