John Powell

[6] Florence Pugh (Midsommar, Little Women) stars as a 1950s happy housewife living in an experimental desert paradise where the women cook and clean by day, host parties by night, and have sex with their husbands in-between. But she has a hard time shaking certain dreams and memories, especially after witnessing one of her fellow happy housewives commit violent suicide. Much to the consternation of …

[6] Writer/director Dean DeBlois wraps up the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy with a mostly satisfying finale. In this third film, young Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his comrades discover a second, rare Night Fury dragon — and it’s a female. Hiccup’s dragon Toothless naturally falls in love with the new Fury, but when a nasty dragon-napper sets his targets on the two lovers, …

[7] After the polarizing (and frankly great) The Last Jedi, and the almost insufferable Rogue One, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from another Star Wars movie. But I was excited about the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, because his performance in the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar is one the most charismatic turns I’ve seen at the movies in many years. And …

[8] Jay Baruchel voices a pre-pubescent Viking who fancies himself a dragon hunter — that is, until he accidentally befriends one of the creatures and dubs him Toothless. That’s when How to Train Your Dragon becomes a romance between a boy and his dragon. I was not prepared for how much I would enjoy this movie — great script, endearing characters, well-choreographed (and sustained!) action …

[7] This sequel taps into two powerful currents of audience identification: the love between parents and children, and the love between people and animals. You can approach these with cloying calculation, as many family films do, or you can attack them with a level of sincerity that makes you forget they take root in our deepest, mythic past. Both How to Train Your Dragon movies …

[6] This is certainly the most action-packed of the X-Men movies, but it’s also the most disrespectful and emotionally hollow. There are some great set pieces, including the free-for-all at Jean Grey’s childhood home, the Golden Gate bridge raising, and the visually stunning climax at Alcatraz, where Dark Phoenix (Famke Janssen) unleashes an effects-filled can of whoop-ass upon the world. There’s potential in that sequence …