The “Transformers” team finally figured it out – bigger doesn’t mean better. After five movies, the metal CGI juggernaut of a film franchise decided to go small and tell a more intimate story. And while the box office receipts for “Bumblebee” didn’t outdo “Transformers: The Last Knight,” they nearly matched it – and for a significantly cheaper price tag.

Sequels tend widen the scope of the films that precede them, to tell a story using the same characters but on a grander stage. Taking Wreck-It Ralph out of Litwak’s retro arcade and into the vastness of the Internet might be among the more dramatic leaps of any sequel, and it makes “Ralph Breaks the Internet” among Disney’s most ambitious undertakings.

That M. Night Shyamalan, he sure loves twists. “Glass,” too, is – unsurprisingly – a film preoccupied with twists.

“Entourage” creator Doug Ellin didn’t realize how spot on he’d be in surmising that only James Cameron could bring a film such as “Aquaman” to life; 2018’s real version is a mammoth endeavor of digital production design and world-building that feels an awful lot like “Avatar” (all the more impressive given Ellin’s prediction was years before that film hit theaters).

The prestige of the “The Big Short” clearly got to Adam McKay’s head. The “Anchorman” director and longtime Will Ferrell comedy partner earned an Oscar for adapting Michael Lewis’ book about the housing crisis into a clever and accessible movie. In “Vice,” he attempts to apply those same storytelling principles to a biopic of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

After 20 years of superhero films dominating the box office and becoming the cornerstone of the moviegoing experience in the 21st century, no one ever stopped to ask, “who do these films need to be live action?” Enter “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” a complete game-changer for not just the business of on-screen heroes, but for animation on the whole.

“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” rounds out McCarthy’s incredible decade with a more dramatic, down-to-earth role that shows that her talent comes from a deep, not merely surface-level/physical place.

It’s unfortunate that not every film or TV show involving close, interpersonal relationships has a Tamara Jenkins in its writing room. Although she’s only made two films in the last 12 years, Jenkins demonstrates an exceptional talent for creating honest drama around ordinary, conceivable hardships.

Even if this particular pet project for Drew Goddard won’t leave viewers buzzing in quite the same way as some of his previous accomplishments, he delivers another astute example of mystery-building and storytelling that immediately pulls you in.

“Widows” doesn’t feel like the film you follow up Best Picture winner “12 Years a Slave” with, but thriller genre fans will graciously accept the talents of Steve McQueen anyway. In tandem with “Gone Girl” author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn, McQueen delivers a crooked Chicago crime story with fully-formed characters, noteworthy performances and lots of powerful visual drama.

Since the 1960s, America has glorified space travel, and for better or worse, Hollywood has been implicit this glamorization. In “First Man,” director Damien Chazelle ironically tries to bring the moon mission story down to earth, making a film about the bold, pensive and unassuming man who became an American hero, whose journey to the lunar surface was anything but glamorous.

Queen, and especially its lead singer Freddie Mercury, is the stuff of rock ’n roll legend. More so than peel back the curtain on that legend, “Bohemian Rhapsody” perpetuates it, celebrating the band’s incredible, genre-defying music and most of all its flamboyant and inimitable frontman.

Considering Sony Pictures was unable to relaunch the universally beloved character of Spider-Man without help from Marvel Studios, it was pretty audacious of them to try spinning off a “Spider-Man” villain into his own franchise.

Bing Lu’s “Minding the Gap” is more than a sleek skateboarding doc that dives into alternative culture; in fact, it might not even be that at all. What probably
began as an exercise in Lu turning the camera on himself and his friends blossomed into portrait of middle-American working-class life, specifically three young men who process hardship and deep emotional wounds best while on a
skateboard.

A real-life South Dakota cowboy stars in a film based on his personal story in Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider,” an exquisitely shot portrait that shows just how powerful film can be when it blurs the line between fiction and reality.