Overview: A fugitive alien helps a lonely Hawaiian girl mend her broken family.

Verdict: Everyone’s favorite chaotic blue alien, Stitch (aka Experiment 626), is back in action in Disney’s latest live-action remake!

For those unfamiliar with the animated version of Lilo & Stitch, the film centers on a young girl named Lilo and her older sister, Nani, who have recently lost their parents. The two are doing the best they can to cope, but with child services involved, Nani must do all she can to make sure she and Lilo aren’t separated.

Of course, this is easier said than done, as a bevy of factors, including job insecurity, Lilo locking Nani out of the house when the social worker pays a visit, and a “dog” adoption that caused more chaos than anticipated. I mean, who would ever think they’d accidentally adopt an alien? With an emphasis on Ohana (family), Lilo & Stitch is one of Disney’s most beloved animated films.

The new live-action remake largely follows the same beats as the animated version, starring Maia Kealoha as Lilo, Sydney Agudong as Nani, and Chris Sanders reprises his role as the voice of Stitch. Other characters from the animated version remain, including Agent Cobra Bubbles, played by Courtney B. Vance; Jumba, played by Zach Galifianakis; Pleakley, played by Billy Magnussen; and David, played by Kaipo Dudoit.

This live-action iteration introduces new characters to the mix, including Tutu, David’s grandmother and Lilo and Nani’s neighbour, as well as Mrs. Kekoa, a social worker played by Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the original animated Lilo & Stitch. I thought this was a nice touch.

The cast was great, especially Kealoha as Lilo, who perfectly embodies everything that fans of the character love. She is adventurous, funny, and stands up for herself against the bullies at her hula class. This might be Kealoha’s first significant role, but she effortlessly exudes so much confidence and energy that you’d think she’s been doing this for decades. In Adugong, Kealoha has an equally effervescent co-star.

The chemistry between the pair is fantastic and exudes genuine sibling energy. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the issue with the casting. Colourism is a real and prominent issue that we unfortunately see regularly in media and casting an actress who is not only light-skinned but also not Native Hawaiian to play the role of Nani was one of Disney’s biggest mistakes on this project. There were many girls and young women who finally saw themselves reflected in the animated version of the film, and in an instant, some of that was stripped away.

The return of Carrere as an original character for this film was a welcome surprise. Carrere was great as the voice of Nani in the animated version of the movie. Mrs. Kekoa is a social worker who is charged with checking in on Nani and Lilo after the loss of their parents.

Carrere is easily believable as the caring figure, doing her best to make sure that Nani and Lilo do not get separated. Carrere is always a joy on-screen, and in Lilo & Stitch, it was no different. In addition to sharing screen time with Kealoha and Adugong, Carrere shares many moments alongside Vance’s Cobra Bubbles. The duo are great together, and Vance is pretty hilarious as the undercover CIA agent.

Carrere was not the only actress playing an original character in the film. Amy Hill playsTūtū, David’s (Kaipo Dudoit) grandmother. They are the Pelekai’s neighbours, and as such, both Tūtū and David have been keeping a watchful eye on Nani and Lilo. The intention behind this was to give a broader meaning to Ohana and to understand that it is something that transcends biological familial bonds.

While I love the intent behind this and the necessity for found family, it is something that will either be a hit or a miss for some people by the time the film reaches its finale, based on the changes made to the story from the animated version.

Magnussen was a pleasant surprise as the one-eyed alien, Pleakley. However, Galifiniakis as Jumba was underwhelming. The changes made to the character’s story for this film weren’t great, nor were they written exceptionally well. I think had the character been closer to his animated counterpart in terms of story, Galifiniakis would have been able to bring more to the character. Jumba, being the main antagonist of the story, didn’t elevate the tale in any way. If anything, it was a downside to the film as a whole.

For the most part, while some of the Disney live-action movies have been entertaining (at the very least), they never reach the same levels as their animated counterparts. Firstly, there is more that you can do in animation that you simply can’t in live-action. Still, aside from that, the elements that were the heart of the animated versions never seem to translate to the majority of Disney’s remakes.

Probably the best ones were Cinderella and Maleficent. Cinderella thrived under Kenneth Branagh’s direction, and Maleficent succeeded for subverting audience expectations by focusing on the fae’s backstory, something that the live-action Snow White would have probably worked better doing, but I digress.

While it might be something no one asked for (including myself), it is probably one of the better live-action remakes – and yes, I know, the bar has been getting lower and lower. However, what Lilo & Stitch has going for it is the exuberant performance from its lead, and the timelessness of Stitch.

Sure, there is a lot to dissect about the film, including major changes to the story and the significant letdown of some casting decisions, but where it shines, it does so brightly. Kealoha is a star, Stitch looked fantastic, and filming the movie on location in Hawaii made a world of difference. Not to mention, the music is just as great as it was in the animated iteration.

Overview: The newest chapter in New Line Cinema’s bloody successful franchise takes audiences back to the very beginning of Death’s twisted sense of justice.

Plagued by a violent recurring nightmare, college student Stefanie heads home to track down the one person who might be able to break the cycle and save her family from the grisly demise that inevitably awaits them all.

Verdict: The Final Destination franchise has been one of the most consistent horror franchises throughout its now six-film run. While the fourth film, The Final Destination (2009), made at the height of Hollywood’s early 2000s 3D craze, was a notable misstep, this franchise has remained surprisingly solid, given the usual roller coaster ride of quality that’s common in other long-lived horror series.

Final Destination Bloodlines arrives 14 years after the release of Final Destination 5 in 2011. Rather than go the route of typical legacy sequels, Bloodlines isn’t particularly interested in bringing back older characters (save for the ever-present Tony Todd in his final screen appearance), instead delving into a new story that connects it with the previous five entries in one overarching narrative.

Our heroine this time is Stefanie (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a college student plagued by terrifying dreams of a disaster that seems to have happened decades earlier involving her grandmother, Iris, as a young woman (Brec Bassinger). Stefanie tracks down Iris (Gabrielle Rose), long estranged from the family for her eccentricities and obsession with death, and discovers that she had prevented that disaster many years ago, causing a chain reaction that sent death after the survivors and their descendants to correct the timeline that Iris altered, not only involving much of Stefanie’s family, but all the characters in all the films we’ve seen up to this point.

One thing the Final Destination does so well is deliver the formula we’ve come to expect without over-complicating it. We know right from the start that death is going to come for these characters in increasingly complicated Rube Goldberg-esque chain reactions that cause gruesome, freak accident carnage. Its attempts to broaden its mythology have been relatively limited to making the lineage of death longer rather than trying to over-explain itself.

The series has historically been at its best when its deaths feel uncomfortably plausible, no matter how outlandish, as we watch each piece fall together with deadly precision. Bloodlines knows exactly what its audience wants and gives it to us: skin-crawling freak accidents, slow-building suspense, and gruesome payoffs!

Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein aren’t reinventing the wheel here. They take a well-worn formula and make it feel fresh and thrilling again. By centering a family dynamic, they ratchet up the emotional stakes, creating one of the franchise’s most compelling stories and engaging casts of characters so that the deaths carry real weight.

Overview: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.

Verdict: We’ve waited two years for the second half of the latest Mission: Impossible adventure, starring the daredevil stuntman Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. I can confidently say that it has been worth the wait. Picking up where ‘Dead Reckoning’ ended, Ethan Hunt has an enormous mission to complete as The Entity, a powerful AI’s whose goal is to take over the world and destroy it. Not to worry, as you’ll also see his signature full-speed running several times during the film with his elbows bent to a 90-degree angle, pushing him forward.

The stunt work is awe-inspiring here, as you’ll be wowed by the biplane sequence featured in the trailers, although you’ll have to wait a bit as it’s near the end. The runtime is a little long, as I thought. Near the middle of the film, it dragged, especially with the lengthy submarine scenes; however, the second time I saw the movie, it didn’t seem as long. It’s refreshing to see strong, significant women in roles such as Angela Bassett, who delivers a fabulous performance as the no-nonsense U.S. president and has a good amount of screen time.

I also enjoyed Haley Atwell as Grace; she adds a softness to the more intense scenes and excels in hand-to-hand combat, which was challenging and entertaining to watch. Lastly, I must mention Pom Klementieff, who plays a blonde character that adds much-needed humor to the film. I always enjoy her performances, as she brings a quirky charm to her roles in both films.

There are other comical lines, one that the always great Simon Pegg, who plays Benji, makes a joke about “Going Nuclear,” which garnered a good laugh from the audience. He’s always helpful as the problem solver and Ethan’s loyal friend. Luther (Ving Rhames), a tech genius, works on problem-solving to save the planet from destruction. Last but not least, the villain is Esai Morales, who plays Gabriel, a debonaire cipher whose relationship to the evil AI remains puzzling. We wonder if the Entity has brainwashed Gabriel into devoting his life to working as its embodied human representative.

Or is he attempting to take it for himself? A line from the film regarding the technology is described as a truth-eating digital parasite. Morales effectively portrays this villain, making him interesting to watch as he delivers his lines with a glint of mischief in his eye.

Once again, Tom Cruise brilliantly brings his character full circle as we see him navigate through various challenging situations, always managing to find a way out. That’s the excitement of these films: Cruise is repeatedly faced with circumstances that would typically be lethal for anyone else, yet he finds inventive solutions.

Overview: Karate Kid: Legends unites the iconic martial arts masters of one of the most beloved film franchises of all time to tell a completely new story full of action and heart. When kung fu prodigy Li Fong (Ben Wang) relocates to New York City with his mother to attend a prestigious new school, he finds solace in a new friendship with a classmate and her father.

But his newfound peace is short-lived after he attracts unwanted attention from a formidable local karate champion. Driven by a desire to defend himself, Li embarks on a journey to enter the ultimate karate competition. Guided by the wisdom of his kung fu teacher, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), and the legendary Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Li merges their unique styles to prepare for an epic martial arts showdown.

Verdict: The popular martial arts drama movie “Karate Kid: Legends” (PG-13) is now playing in theaters. It’s the sixth installment of the ‘Karate Kid’ franchise, continuing the story from the 2010 film “The Karate Kid” and the 2018 television series “Cobra Kai.” I’m excited to share that the talented Jackie Chan, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in Chicago a few years ago, reprised his role as a Kung Fu trainer.

Newcomer Ben Wang stars as the new karate kid, Li Wen, who is both a skilled fighter and an endearing young man. The film is enjoyable primarily due to its cast. An amusing aspect is that Li is referred to as the “Chinese Peter Parker,” and I can easily envision him in a role similar to that of Tom Holland in “The Karate Kid.” The supporting cast is also strong; Li’s mother, played by Ming-Na Wen, is unhappy about her son’s karate training and fears that he might compete in a match. We learn that she lost a son in a fight years ago, which adds depth to her character. After moving from China to New York City, she hopes that Li’s fighting days are behind him.

The film begins with a scene from “The Karate Kid Part II,” featuring the wise Mr. Miyagi, played by Pat Morita, as he shares his family’s karate journey with his student, Daniel LaRusso, portrayed by Ralph Macchio. This scene is expanded to highlight that Miyagi-go karate is also influenced by kung fu.

Early in the film, Li encounters Mia, played by Sadie Stanley, a local girl who works with her father, played by Joshua Jackson, a former kung fu fighter who now owns a pizzeria. Li assists Mia in delivering pizzas, which does not sit well with Mia’s ex-boyfriend, the former city karate champion.

The film is quite predictable, as it’s clear early on that it will culminate in a kung fu match with the protagonist’s nemesis, which serves as the central theme. However, I actually enjoyed these scenes, particularly because they were filmed on a rooftop with a stunning view of New York City.

Overview: Taking place during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, the film follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) who is beginning her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma.

Verdict: In the John Wick world of shadowy syndicates and the assassins who work for them, young Eve’s father (David Castaneda) is murdered by an unknown clan. Winston (Ian McShane), manager of the haven for hired killers, the Continental Hotel, takes the girl under his wing. He sends her to Ruska Roma, an organization that runs a ballet school training students to be as graceful as they are deadly. Under the eye of the Director (Anjelica Huston), Eve (played by Ana de Armas as an adult) counts down the days till she can exact vengeance on the men who slew her dad.

The first movie spin-off from the Keanu Reeves-headlined John Wick franchise (2014 to 2023) possesses all the signature elements – the gun-fu, intense violence and weapons porn. It also has something that was lacking in the series’ recent films: a story with a beginning, middle and end.

At the centre of this origin story, set between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), is Cuban-Spanish actress de Armas, who puts in a formidable performance as the seething agent of chaos. She is fiercely present, physically and emotionally. As a protagonist, Eve’s compelling fury is much more relatable than Wick’s ice-cold stoicism, which has been present since Reeves played the hired gun in the first film.

The John Wick universe is inspired by – or some would say, a direct copy of – martial arts movies set in a feudal China or Japan pockmarked by feisty clans jostling for control.

Ballerina would be the classic Hong Kong tale of an orphan raised in a Shaolin temple and trained to be invincible, so he or she might settle scores in a climactic showdown.

There is a compelling simplicity to the orphaned avenger set-up that American director Len Wiseman (the Underworld film franchise, 2003 to 2016; Total Recall, 2012) exploits to the fullest. There is little of the overwrought lore that dragged down the last two John Wick movies – the stuff about the High Table and its elaborate rules of order is thankfully absent. The inclusion of Ruska Roma and the Continental Hotel is kept to a minimum and feels necessary to the story.

To be fair, Wiseman has an easier job than four-time John Wick director Chad Stahelski, who has had to build a fantasy world over the past decade. By the fourth film, it was clear fatigue had set in, with the plot contrivances that move Wick from one fight to another becoming more strained and bloated.

Ballerina does not squander its new story and protagonist on weak action. Its fights are stunningly choreographed, with one highlight being a battle set in Prague that features hand grenades as weapons. That segment offers maximum bang for the buck.

This fresh start is a good move, one that bodes well for the future of the franchise as it heads into a fifth John Wick movie and a number of sequels and prequels – animated and live-action.

Overview: Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) has a talent for solving complex problems. When an old acquaintance is murdered, leaving behind a cryptic message to find the accountant, Wolff is compelled to solve the case.

Realizing more extreme measures are necessary, Wolff recruits his estranged and highly lethal brother, Brax (Jon Bernthal), to help. In partnership with U.S. Treasury Deputy Director Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), they uncover a deadly conspiracy, becoming targets of a ruthless network of killers who will stop at nothing to keep their secrets buried.

Verdict: It’s unlikely that anyone had “sequel to ‘The Accountant’” on their cinematic bingo card for 2025. Yet, here we are.

That 2016 film was a modest box office hit ($144 million globally), but the numbers didn’t necessarily justify a sequel. However, Ben Affleck’s production company, Artists Equity, has a relationship with Amazon MGM Studios, so why not?

And, yes, it follows the tried-and-tested sequel formula – give the audience the same thing only different. What’s the same? Plenty of violence, plenty of gunplay and a cast – Affleck, Jon Bernthal as his brother Braxton, J.K. Simmons, Cynthia Addai-Robinson – mostly intact.

What’s different? A definite change in tone. The first film was an exercise in seriousness. Although not humorless, any laughs came from a place of awkwardness due to the issues associated with Christian Wolff’s (Affleck) Asperger’s syndrome.

This one? With the return of director Gavin O’Connor, it does a U-turn and leans into the laughs more. No, “The Accountant 2” is still mostly serious, but the tone is definitely more light-hearted as Wolff is called upon to help solve the murder of former FinCen chief Ray King (Simmons) with the aid of current lead FinCen agent Marybeth Medina (Addai-Robinson).

Despite knowledge of Wolff’s past actions and his moral flexibility masquerading as certitude, Medina remains a by-the-book fed – or so she thought. Relying upon a math savant and paid assassin will do things to your moral code.

When their investigation stalls, Wolff calls in his brother Braxton (Bernthal) to assist and there’s a shift in the film’s dynamic. The somber, serious nature that permeated its predecessor is cast aside as O’Connor and Bill Dubuque, screenwriter for both films, develop the relationship between Christian and Braxton.

This change proves to be a strength as Affleck and Bernthal have chemistry to burn. Wolff’s lowkey, minimalist tone is complemented to great effect by Braxton’s bouncing-off-the-wall, pinball personality.

They play well off one another, balancing sibling angst with the humor that comes from their unconventional upbringing.

Overview: Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) is a brilliant, but deeply introverted decoder for the CIA working out of a basement office at headquarters in Langley whose life is turned upside down when his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack.

When his supervisors refuse to take action, he takes matters into his own hands, embarking on a dangerous trek across the globe to track down those responsible, his intelligence serving as the ultimate weapon for eluding his pursuers and achieving his revenge.

Verdict: ‘The Amateur’ is an understated thriller in which an analyst tries his hand at vigilantism following his wife’s execution.

People often say they’d kill anyone who harmed their loved ones, but most don’t have the capacity to do so. It’s not just about being able to pull the trigger, but also the ability to find the perpetrators — particularly before the police apprehend them and they become unreachable.

Thus, most people have to holster their desire for vengeance and let justice run its course. However, in the movies, ordinary citizens become vigilantes and the skilled ones become heroes, taking down dangerous criminals before they can cause more damage. In The Amateur, a widower finds himself somewhere in between those categories.

Charlie Heller (Rami Malek) likes solving puzzles of all sorts, which makes him a key contributor in the CIA’s decryption division. Consequently, when his wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), is murdered by terrorists while on a business trip in London, he can’t rest until the case is solved. Unfortunately, in spite of Charlie’s work to track down her killers, his superiors have other priorities that prevent them from taking any action.

So, Charlie leverages his intelligence and demands the ability to go after the four-person crew himself. Besides being ill-equipped, his mission is complicated by his own aversion to violence and the trainer-turned-assassin (Laurence Fishburne) trailing him across Europe.

Director James Hawes is familiar with slow burn narratives, so this revenge thriller doesn’t unfold at a typical breakneck pace. It takes the time to establish Charlie’s connection to his wife, using their loving, happy marriage to justify his actions — or more accurately, his obsession.

While most action movies revolve around brawny fisticuffs and big guns, this one is quick to demonstrate those are not areas of strength for Charlie. Instead, he uses his brainpower and aptitude for problem solving to track his enemies and stay ahead of his pursuers, gradually working his way to his elusive target: the triggerman.

Since the narrative relies primarily on wits, the body count stays relatively low. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some explosive scenes, the highlight being the destruction of a luxury, suspended pool. One of Charlie’s advantages is he’s repeatedly underestimated because of his inexperience and non-threatening appearance.

However, his resolve makes up for his physical shortcomings, even if his lack of field expertise results in some perilous situations. The irony is that it took his wife’s murder to draw the introvert out of his basement office to travel across Europe.

Charlie expresses a variety of emotions over the course of the film, from adoration to frustration to icy determination and Malek depicts them all convincingly. Conversely, Fishburne portrays a man whose training has made him virtually emotionless, putting his name at the top of the call list when dealing with a complex issue.

Jon Bernthal also makes an early appearance in the film, playing a covert CIA field agent, and then leaves audiences wondering if and when he might return, and who’s side he might be on at that time.

Overview: Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn’t just help you craft, it’s essential to one’s survival! Four misfits - Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen), Natalie (Emma Myers) and Dawn (Danielle Brooks) - find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination.

To get back home, they’ll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Jack Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative ... the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.

Verdict: The grade school kids at A Minecraft Movie had a rollicking good time laughing, talking back to the screen, and doing karaoke repetitions of the dialogue as though appreciating something of their own — a familiar, private joke, a playground, a fun movie. This was different from the oohs and ahhs at Marvel products, whose viewers merely go along with standard overactive, violent manipulation.

It’s surprising that A Minecraft Movie hits the sweet spot of entertainment by finding the childlike essence of its source — a video game first marketed in 2011– and translating that into narrative. Jack Black does his overgrown-child routine as Steve, a man whose childhood fascination with mining is fulfilled when he digs up a portal to a fantasy land, the Overworld.

Steve communes with other lonely souls: Garrett Garrison (Jason Momoa), a has-been champion gamer; and Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers), a pair of orphaned siblings whose need for companionship and self-worth are transferred to the Overworld.

This hybrid of The Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings expands a digital game board into a hallucinogenic place where everything — including inhabitants — is cubic, angular but soft. “A world where anything you can imagine is possible,” Steve explains “as long as what you imagine can be built out of blocks.” A Minecraft Movie returns viewers to kindergarten or preschool playtime.

Steve and the gang learn that “anything you can dream about here you can make.” So it also recaptures the roots of capitalist innovation. Whether those boisterous kids realize it or not, A Minecraft Movie connects them to what used to be an industrialized nation’s cultural heritage — and may still be even if outsourced manufacturing has removed actual places of industry. (Steve’s mantra “First we mine, then we craft!” sparked the audience’s most spontaneous outburst).

A Minecraft Movie attacks the cultural inertia that has deadened contemporary Hollywood/America. It was directed by Jared Hess, best known for the eccentric indie film Napoleon Dynamite, whose sensibility pervades this production, financed by Iceland’s video game developer Mojang and its executives Torfi Frans Ólafsson and Vu Bui.

Like fans who made a genuine, grassroots hit of Napoleon Dynamite, kids at A Minecraft Movie understand the filmmaker’s comic wavelength and respond in kind. Hess transforms the manic Jack Black into an empathetic clown whose childlike ability to turn bad luck into good potential epitomizes exactly how gaming works.

New motor skills extend the imagination — a habit most children eventually outgrow. Imagination was key to the films that Hess made after Napoleon Dynamite: the soulful Nacho Libre, in which Jack Black as a novice monk and Lucha Libre fan gave a fully rounded characterization, and the ingenious fantasy-fiction parody Gentlemen Broncos.

Hess’s fondness for American eccentrics (also displayed in Don Verdean and Masterminds) bewilders film-culture gatekeepers, but it finds unlikely devotees among youth unconcerned with the pseudo-sophistication of virtue-signaling films (whether Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse or Love, Simon) that attempt to teach social justice messages. This affection is palpable when kids laugh right back at Steve’s wild-eyed merriment and his sympatico rivalry with Garrett. Hulking Jason Momoa’s long-haired pink-jacketed outsider matches the young-Santa impishness of Jack Black’s Steve.

Their big-brother/little-brother vibe is more affecting than the relationship between siblings Natalie and Henry, typical Hollywood urchins whose brave action-movie routines are exceptional only for their cubistic, pillowy environs. The conventional exploits are paced with tasty visual surprises (a steaming roast chicken, a succulent pork chop). Garrett tells Steve “Via con Dios,” adding that it means, “Goodbye, brother”; only when Natalie corrects him (it means “Go with God”) does the film’s parallel-universe parable touch on the Christian benevolence that distinguishes Hess from other American filmmakers.

It’s Hess’s humanist generosity that informs the lavish, otherworldly landscapes (“It looks like a giant Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” piped an exited teen); it also defines how we view the team of oddball heroes (seekers). These include pudgy realtor and aspiring petting-zoo owner Dawn (Danielle Brooks) and Henry’s blowsy school vice principal (Jennifer Coolidge), who falls in love with one of the Overworld’s unibrow villagers who enters the real-world dimension.

Most of these ideas pop up and disappear amidst the lavish visual design, yet there’s freewheeling improvisation throughout (Momoa turns a pair of nunchuks into “buckjuckets,” and Gentleman Bronco’s Jemaine Clement enhances the voice cast). A winsome, larky chase sequence is scored to “Your Own Private Idaho,” by the B-52s, which provides the best definition of Hess’s idiosyncrasy since When In Rome’s “The Promise” graced Napoleon Dynamite.

Overview: Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

Verdict: Ryan Coogler’s vampires ’n’ blues thriller Sinners is everything Hollywood tells us the masses don’t want: Set a hundred years in the past, it’s not a sequel, reboot, or adaptation of anything. And yet it’s a smash hit with moviegoers.

What a crazy, compelling mess of a film!

Sinners’s weirdness has real power in a number of sequences, with writer-director-producer Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed, Fruitvale Station) generating a memorably intense atmosphere in his depiction of 1930s Mississippi, where the evil of Jim Crow oppression runs up against paranormal evil in the form of vampires who have an interesting offer to make suffering black citizens. How about eternal life and superhuman killing power?

A blessedly original film in an era increasingly dominated by stale remakes, sequels, and franchises, Sinners has struck a real nerve with the public. Its excellent $63.5 million opening, which is pretty extraordinary for an R-rated, non-IP-based oddity like this one, was strangely downplayed by Variety, which emphasized that given its $90 million budget, “profitability remains a ways away.”

That earned the venerable old film industry rag a sharp rebuke from actor-director-producer Ben Stiller: “In what universe does a 60 million dollar opening for an original studio movie warrant this headline?”

Sinners concerns a pair of hard-living twin brothers, Smoke and Stack Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan, Coogler’s longtime collaborator), who are veterans of brutal childhoods followed by World War I combat and then years of experience as hired muscle in gangland Chicago. They think they’re tough enough to return to the Deep South and take on “the evil we know” in their old hometown.

Armed to the teeth and loaded with suspicious amounts of cash, they plan to open a juke joint at an abandoned sawmill. And they tell the white landowner who sells it to them, Hogwood, that any Ku Klux Klan member who sets foot on their property is guaranteed an immediate violent death.

There’s no more Klan around here, Hogwood tells them.

Uh-huh.

The return of the Moore twins sets off ripples through the rural community, some disturbing, some giving rise to fresh hope. The women the twins left behind — Smoke’s estranged wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), and Stack’s former girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who can pass for white — feel old resentments and longings come back to life.

The twins’ musically gifted nephew, Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), is going to get his chance to play blues guitar at the new juke joint in defiance of his upright preacher father Jedidiah Moore (Saul Williams). And the juke joint promises not only a good time for impoverished sharecroppers and other hard-pressed local workers, but high-paying jobs if it’s a success.

Hard-drinking local legend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), an ace on harmonica and piano, gets drawn into the Moores’s vision of a black-owned and -run establishment celebrating the blues as surely as married singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson), Sammie’s lover. Hulking field worker Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller), who’s hired as the bouncer, is swept up in the community effort along with the Chinese owners of the local grocery store, Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao), drafted to supply food and make the sign.

And it’s the music that links them all in a transcendent flow summoning spirits from past and future, as we see in the exhilarating opening night of the juke joint when Sammie makes his solo debut. Caton as Sammie has such a hypnotically beautiful baritone, he helps make this fantastical scene genuinely moving.

The film’s ambitious score by another frequent Coogler collaborator, Ludwig Göransson, draws on a wealth of blues history as well as contemporary talent like Brittany Howard and Bobby Rush.

Be sure you stick around through the credit sequence at the end of the movie, in order to see legendary blues guitarist and singer Buddy Guy, now age eighty-eight, play a significant role in the film.

Another indication of Coogler’s ambition for Sinners is the fact that it was shot on film by Autumn Durald Arkapaw (The Last Showgirl, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) in two different aspect ratios using Ultra Panavision 70 and IMAX 65. This reportedly delayed its release because of the scarcity of film stock labs in which to process it.

The film’s “genre-fluid” quality, as Coogler puts it in interviews, deliberately evokes such influences as Stephen King’s vampire novel ’Salem’s Lot as well as rowdy movies by Robert Rodriguez — especially the bloody, pulpy, comic horror film From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) — and the Coen brothers. There are several clear citations in Sinners to the Coens’s O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), another film set in 1930s Mississippi about the South’s tortured racial history conveyed memorably through roots music.

The impression of messiness left by the film has a lot to do with the tone shifts between interludes of horror, raucous comedy, and serious drama, though there are also some crudely written scenes and one-note characters to contend with. But just because Sinners isn’t a great film doesn’t mean it’s not lively and bracing entertainment arriving at movie theaters at an ideal time.

As the narration in the opening of Sinners tells us, playing such transcendent music as the heart-wrung blues runs the risk of calling up evil as well, as many Deep South legends attest. Robert Johnson supposedly met the devil at a rural crossroad in order to exchange his soul for supernaturally great guitar playing ability, and he’s only the most famous example of such a swap. In the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, it’s Tommy Johnson who’s there at the crossroads at midnight.

In Sinners, evil takes the form of a nineteenth-century Irish immigrant vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell), escaping from his Choctaw captors in order to prey on the locals. Soon his vampire band is laying siege to the juke joint in one of the goddamnedest cinematic sequences I’ve ever witnessed. While he’s out there singing some lively but eerie Irish song to terrorize the juke joint patrons, with the grinning vampires dancing in a ring around the building, you already feel gobsmacked.

But then in a moment of hair-raising hilarity, Remmick starts dancing a demonic Irish jig. It’s like witnessing a projection of some loony nightmare you had after watching an old PBS documentary about the crossover of Irish and African musical influences mingling in the slave-era South that led to tap dancing as we know it today.

Anyway, in spite of its many recognizable allusions to other movies — as well as its participation in Jordan Peele’s extended project of tackling anguished black history in America through the horror genre in films like Get Out (2017), Us (2019), and Nope (2022) — there’s nothing like Sinners.