Hollywood regularly churns out underdog sports movies, but rarely do modern entries in the genre work as well as Queen of Katwe, a true story that centers on a non-traditional subject (a Ugandan girl) and a non-traditional game (chess). Like this year's Eddie the Eagle (side note: holy crap, Eddie the Eagle came out this year?! I would have pegged it as a 2014 or 2015 film for sure), the film leans heavily on the formulaic aspects of its genre, but it's so enjoyable to watch these actors and these characters, it hardly matters that you know every major beat before it happens.

Queen of Katwe
Director: Mira Nair
Starring: Madina Nalwanga, David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong'o

As Hollywood continues its obsession with remaking and rebooting classic films, the conversation will continue about the best and worst examples of this phenomenon. John Carpenter's The Thing and David Cronenberg's The Fly are consistently raised as examples of how to do it correctly, while more recent remakes like Total Recall and RoboCop are widely seen as wastes of time that give their predecessors a bad name. Antoine Fuqua's The Magnificent Seven falls into the latter camp. It's a soulless retread that not only fails to justify its existence, but fails to excite, inspire, charm, or otherwise elicit any emotion aside from contempt. This may be one of the most tedious action movies I've ever seen.

The Magnificent Seven
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Haley Bennett, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard