The director is at his best, though, when he allows all of the prehistoric beasties to chomp down on a variety of varying victims, and there were certainly times I wondered what might have been had Bayona made a straightforward dino-themed horror flick instead of another installment in the Jurassic Park universe.

A naturalistic marvel of restraint, The Rider is a cinematic triumph I’ll not soon forget.

What’s most annoying is just how much the film wastes such an extraordinary cast and an inherently funny premise and in the process does little to nothing memorable with either of them. It just doesn’t work, and in a year where smart, character-driven ensemble R-rated comedies have made something of a comeback, Tag is an unfunny game of tedious nonsense I personally think isn’t worth playing.

It’s impossible to watch Morgan Neville’s Fred Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and not come away from the experience moved.

“I feel like there is no one out there speaking to the value of civility. Fred Rogers is that person. At a time when those basic ideas of the social compact of how we’re supposed to live together feel threatened, Fred is a vehicle to have this conversation around remembering that those underpinnings of civility and kindness are the things that will keep our society from falling apart.”
– Morgan Neville

Ultimately, Incredibles 2 matters because Bird understands we as an audience are fond of Bob, Helen, Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack because they in turn love one another with selfless transparency. They’re the reason any of this has resonance, the reason we’ve been eagerly longing for a new adventure featuring each of them for over a decade.

“It’s not a movie about an event. It’s a movie about people. That’s what it is.”
– Brady Jandreau

I’ve seen Tomb Raider four times now, which is the most I’ve watched any single 2018 release so far this year. That probably says it all.

Upgrade is a total blast, and if in the coming years this bit of muscular, blood-soaked science fiction silliness were to spawn a sequel I’ll be first in line to see what sort of aggressively violent trouble Grey and STEM will get themselves into next.