I remember co-star Seth Roben recently saying that Spielberg was in tears for nearly the entirety of his shoot with him. I'm sure he was. That doesn't mean the rest of us were crying – except, possibly, at the sadly wasted opportunity of it all.

Ingenious, unsettling, and oftentimes riotously funny, director Mark Mylod's The Menu has been prepared exactly the way I most enjoy my satire: blackened to a crisp. While its thematic and presentational inspirations are unhidden and encompass everything from Hell's Kitchen to Midsommar to Fantasy Island, what this savage comedy chiefly reminded me of was Don't Look Up, last year's end-of-days spoof that ended on the bleakest of all possible notes.

All throughout writer/director Ryan Coogler's superhero sequel, there are lovely grace notes, particularly in the actors' readings, that both suggest and demonstrate the haunting loss of original Black Panther T'Challa and, by extension, his unmatchable portrayer Chadwick Boseman. Nearly everything directly concerning the character's and the star's absence is moving. It's nearly everything else, unfortunately, that goes wrong.

As familiar as I am with the oeuvre of Martin McDonagh, I couldn't necessarily teach a course on the playwright/filmmaker's darkly comedic stage and screen works. But if I could, I would likely start with The Banshees of Inisherin, an absolutely delightful (if slightly grim) reunion for In Bruges co-stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and one that seems to boil its creator's signature style down to its absolute essence – yet in unexpectedly tender fashion.

No two-hour-and-40-minute movie about inappropriate transactional relationships, cancel culture, the #MeToo movement, and the challenges of conducting Mahler's 5th Symphony should be this much freaking fun.

No matter its other pluses and minuses, and they're mostly minuses, director Jaume Collet-Sera's Black Adam is certainly one of the oddest comic-book blockbusters I've yet seen, in that it somehow feels like both a superhero/villain origin story, which it is, and the final installment in a three-part series, which it isn't. Then again, maybe I was just hoping it was a trilogy-ender, because after only two hours in the film's company, I think I've already had enough.

Directed and co-written, as the series' previous two installments were, by David Gordon Green, Halloween Ends is something I never expected this slasher flick to be: not bad. Also something else I didn't predict: a helluva lot of fun.

It isn't a great film; during its protracted midsection, it's closer to a lousy one. Yet there's more going on in Amsterdam than there has been in about 95 percent of the year's other releases, and the contributions of its impressively overstuffed cast make David O. Russell's latest worth a look. Maybe more than one if you take a nap in the middle.

Nicholas Stoller's and Billy Eichner's achievement gave me everything I want and so rarely get from Hollywood rom-coms: interest, involvement, investment, sexual heat, huge laughs, legitimately threatening obstacles.

Some movies are love-them-or-hate-them. The polished, mediocre Don't Worry Darling doesn't do much to inspire either reaction.

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