Clint Eastwood's The Mule casts the 88-year-old as professional horticulturist Earl Stone, and in the man's first five seconds on-screen, he refers to his Mexican employees' vehicle as a “taco wagon.” He does it with a grin, of course, and the friendly chuckles of his workers indicate that they know good ol' Earl is just pulling their chains. But like that elderly relative of yours whose casually racist comments at the Thanksgiving table make you wish you'd had a drive-thru burger instead, Clint, from the start, is so relentlessly, “adorably” offensive in his first starring role in six years – and offensive in so many different ways – that I spent almost the entirety of the film's two hours silently loathing him. In theory, The Mule, with its script by Gran Torino scribe Nick Schenk, is about a broke, aging man who finds a steady income and renewed purpose running drugs for a Mexican cartel. In actuality, though, it's about Eastwood knowing he can say and do anything he damn well pleases and the faithful will devour it with ravenous gratitude. Personally, I'm well past full.

Forty-five years after The Exorcist, we can still count the number of legitimately great demonic-possession movies on the fingers of one hand. (And that's including works that employ the conceit only tangentially, as this past summer's phenomenal Hereditary does.) Consequently, in regard to this particular horror-flick sub-genre, it's easy to be grateful for the little things, and Dutch director Diederik Van Rooijen's The Possession of Hannah Grace, although fair-to-middling overall, actually boasts a number of little things worthy of gratitude. It's doubtful you'll remember much about the film a day after seeing it, but while you're there, it's an inoffensive way to pass 85 low-expectation minutes.

There's a little something for everyone in the adventure fantasy Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald – and that's kind of the problem. Serving as both prequel and appendage to her Harry Potter series, screenwriter J.K. Rowling's continuation of her latest wizard saga boasts plenty of random pleasures, including some nifty visuals, a couple of cheerful comic turns, and a scarily resonant sequence suggesting a Rowling-ized Nuremberg rally. Yet this second installment in a planned five-part franchise – one that began with 2016's Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them – is still so wildly overstuffed with incident and exposition, and so distractingly focused on The Bigger Picture, that it barely gives us a chance to admire its many lovely fringe touches. There may be a little for everyone here, but taken overall, there's not a lot for anyone.

Before I'm accused of being one myself, let me state up front that Dr. Seuss' The Grinch – the latest retelling of the good doctor's How the Grinch Stole Christmas – has quite a few things going for it (Happy Holidays!), even if they're eventually outweighed by the things going against it. (Bah, Humbug!)