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.