Thor: Ragnarok proves to be so creatively loopy, not to mention so consistently hysterical, I found it hopeless not to enjoy myself while sitting in the theatre watching things play themselves out to their conclusion. Waititi delivers the goods, and for fans of the MCU his arrival ends up being a breath of fresh air worth getting excited about.

I find that I want to like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets more than I actually do, even if the stuff that’s great about the film is downright extraordinary.

Spider-Man: Homecoming might just be the most adorable motion picture I see all summer.

Wonder Woman is grandly entertaining, offering up a hero whose heart and sincerity reveal a palpable sense of decency and self-sacrifice our modern world could use to learn a little from.

As ludicrous and as unfocused as it all might be, Kong: Skull Island kept me amused for practically every second of its two-hour running time. While not a great movie, it’s still an awfully fun one, and as big budget, visually resplendent monster mashes go I’m somewhat eager to give it another look relatively soon.

Not to say I believe The Space Between Us is worth a viewer’s time and money, not even that of the teenage audience this story is so clearly targeted at, this interplanetary romance a rocket ship of schmaltz and cliché that’s impossible to take seriously.

With Rogue One, Edwards doesn’t attempt to redo what has come before, isn’t interested in any already established template. He and his team have crafted a film that exists inside a known universe yet still manage to plant their own idiosyncratic stamp upon it. This is a marvelous piece of entertainment, as wondrous as anything I’ve seen in 2016.

I almost can’t wait to see this master of the mystic arts return for another adventure, and not just alongside the Avengers, Doctor Stephen Strange a mysteriously fascinating firebrand of courage and curiosity deserving of future solo outings into the unknown sooner rather than later.

Not only is Kubo and the Two Strings an original tale, it is one that is both culturally sensitive to its Japanese origins as well as universally accessible to viewers the world over. It is a movie that works beginning to end, practically every piece one worthy of cherishing as events work their way towards their heroic conclusion.