Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Marked essential because it restarts the line that continues, and the first hour earns it on its own terms. Jason Reitman, directing the series his father made, moves it out of New York entirely: a broke single mother and two children inherit a derelict farm in rural Oklahoma from a man who left the family decades ago, and the film is a small-town mystery for a long time before it is anything else.

Mckenna Grace carries it. Phoebe is a twelve-year-old who tells jokes with the timing of somebody reading them off a card, has no interest in being liked, and works out what her grandfather was doing from the equipment in his barn. Pairing her with Paul Rudd's seismologist, who is the only adult willing to treat her as an equal, is the best decision in the film.

The second half is where opinion divides, and the complaint is fair: the film stops discovering things and starts recreating them, down to the same antagonist, the same gate and the same confrontation on a rooftop by another name. Afterlife is at its weakest exactly when it is most faithful.

The ending is the hardest part to write about. Harold Ramis died in 2014, and the film closes by putting a digital recreation of him on screen as a silent presence. Some viewers find it the most moving thing in the series and some find it unbearable, and it is worth knowing it is coming. Ivan Reitman died three months after the film was released.