Violent Night does exactly what it sets out to do, and does so with panache, frivolity, and style. It’s a blood-splattered act of resistance, and not since Billy Chapman went on his Silent Night, Deadly Night rampage has a Santa Claus crushed so many skulls as he removes names from his extensive “naughty” list.

Knives Out set an impossibly high bar. Glass Onion vaults over it with rhapsodic ease.

Strange World is a gloriously weird adventure that’s like the ungainly love child of a Dr. Seuss storybook melded with Fantastic Voyage that revels in the goofy cosmic sensibilities of a random episode of the classic 1960s television series Lost in Space.

The Menu is as delicious as it is vile, as mouthwatering as it is salacious.

Based on articles written by New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor in 2017, the investigative journalism procedural She Said is as enthralling as it is infuriating.

Coogler aims high with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and when the director hits his target, it’s right in the absolute center of the bull’s-eye. But the misses add up.

I’m not going to badmouth Falling for Christmas. Nothing truly terrible happens, and even in something as middling as this, it’s still wonderful to see Lohan back on the screen, willing to do whatever it takes to generate a laugh or get those sitting in the audience to smile.

The good news is that watching Enola run around Victorian London solving crimes, getting into trouble with Tewksbury, and in general making a fiercely independent feminist nuisance of herself remains a great deal of fun.

The Banshees of Inisherin is unquestionably one of the year’s best films.