The essence of an M. Night Shyamalan film rests many times where the filmmaker is in his own head and where that path might take him. With ”Trap,” there is a weird essence of dual personality not unlike his lead character Cooper (played by Josh Hartnett) who begins the movie taking his daughter to a concert. The irony is the way it is built.

The progression of a story depends on knowing where it is going in an overall sense. With "Dune - Part II", director Denis Villenueve understands and motivates on the context of what Part I promised. He delivers but there are different cracks and jumps that inherently lift but also restrict the film in certain ways.

The aspect of "The Meg" is based on the necessity of messing with the modern world through creatures from before humanity. While "Meg 2: The Trench" panders a bit less in its obviousness but also in its financing, the melodrama and by extension, bad writing and relationship structures tend to bog the film down despite an middling interesting mid-tier descent into the trench.

The texture of Batman is always tricky because you want to have him be more out of control than the villains he pursues but that can be a tall order and run against the texture of any given story. That is the trick of the series.

The trigger point of "The Matrix" has always been what is reality and what are we? There was also a dexterity of approach that mirrored both with an intensity and with a coldness. There are some ideas in "The Matrix: Resurrections" that are quite undeniable but it doesn'‘t push it to the nth degree.