Alison Willmore

Heart Eyes is strong enough that the shortcomings that keep it in the realm of the passable instead of the actually good are maddening.

They’re stories you can find in the book, accompanied by ones from a multitude of other contributors, including Schellenbach, who gets to give her own account of what happened. So why not just read that?

The Invisible Man is not as smart as it could have been, but the concept is ingenious even if the execution gets slapdash. And with Moss at the center, it doesn’t matter all that much — she sells what’s approached as B-movie material with the unwavering dedication of someone starring in a prestige biopic.

Brie and Franco, in providing nuance and texture to Millie and Tim, may actually have worked against a film that would be better off allowing its characters to be in an unhealthy relationship from the beginning — a choice that would make the ending feel more unsetting rather than just a flubbed allegory.

Ammonite is Winslet’s movie to shoulder, and she carries it as far as she can.

Watching the film is a reminder that the most boundary-pushing comedy isn’t about risqué content but a willingness to get uncomfortable and the confidence to assume audiences will join along in that journey. Joy Ride instead seeks out the warm fuzzies in a way that feels like a surrender.

For all that it has been positioned as the comeback of the rom-com queen, Marry Me isn’t really a return to form for the genre. Instead, it aims to have things both ways, to have the glamour and the buoyant fantasy and to also be more textured in its treatment of its characters and their relationship.

Selah and the Spades ends just as it feels like it’s really picking up momentum, which is the major frustration of the film and also, likely, part of the reason it was picked up by Amazon both as a release and the basis for a possible series adaptation.

Seydoux may exude voluptuous sensuality, and Stewart may be performing a whispery, dystopian take on a sultry librarian, but the film itself has an aloof, clinical quality. What interests it is not the potential of our physical forms for pleasure and revulsion, but their inevitable failure.

One senses this is a mundane story that’s trying to be something stranger and more buoyant — the film’s off-kilter sensibility keeps threatening to fade away, like it’s stuck at the tail end of a high.

It’s a film about language in ways that are promising but more often exasperating.

No genre really makes more sense for this moment than horror — except, maybe, for black comedy, and Aster’s bracingly nasty but centerless new film offers plenty of both.

Wright’s movie, aside from its mess of an ending, is a propulsive and generally fun affair that sends Powell careering around the Eastern Seaboard like the Tom Cruise successor he’s so determined to become, even if he’s not entirely plausible as a guy who’s volcanic with anger.

The stylistic choices Guadagnino makes throughout Queer are invariably more engaging than the central story itself, no matter what the filmmaker tries unsuccessfully to will it into.

I cried at the end of Babes, despite thinking that it wasn’t working all that well for most of its run time. Movies can be funny that way, leaving you indifferent for long stretches and then walloping you with an emotional moment that’s even more effective for how you didn’t see it coming.

Pearson, as happy-go-lucky charmer, also brings a burst of much-needed vitality to this droll but overly thought-through film.

Dicks: The Musical is never as outrageous as it clearly would like to be . . . But its determination to avoid any trace of self-importance or greater meaning is admirable in its own right — embracing the freedom to just be ridiculous.

It’s a performance that suggests the most interesting stretch of Affleck’s career as an actor is still to come.

The Beekeeper takes a Mad Libs approach to moviemaking.

The best parts of What Happens Later are when it lets its characters just be people who still want to find love and find some of its warmth in the embers of this long-ago relationship. It’s too bad there aren’t more of those moments.

The film also comes across like a rough cut that was never looked at as a coherent whole, and some segments that start off as promising become interminable while others feel entirely unnecessary. There's no pressure on or expectation for Tarantino to please anyone other than himself, and the film feels overstuffed with ideas that should have been pruned.

It’s the worst movie McQueen’s made, which by wider standards means that it’s still not bad. But Blitz’s admirable intentions consistently outstrip its execution, which is clunky and full of narrative artifices required to keep its angel-faced lead on the run from danger and from the authorities who intend to send him back to the train station.

Even at a generous running time that matches this season's other giant award candidates, Les Misérables seems like it's in a hurry, skittering from one number to the next without interlude. After Hathaway's early high point, it starts to feel numbing, an unending barrage of musical emoting carrying us through Valjean's adopting of Cosette, the latter's first encounter with Marius, the battle at the barricade and a last hour that can feel like it's a non-stop series of death arias.

Last Rites comes from Michael Chaves, the same director as that last film, but returns the series to what it does best, which is dealing with a supernaturally infested home.

There’s a streak of defensiveness to Barbie, as though it’s trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they’re made, which renders it emotionally inert despite the efforts at wackiness.

The sheer joy of watching characters in full bridal splendor preparing to plunge into combat can’t be underestimated, but it’s never as satisfying as it should be.

It’s a movie that makes you long to be able to freeze frames in order to appreciate the loveliness and wit of its details, while at the same time giving you little reason to want to revisit the thing as a whole.

That it feels like it’s half at war with its title character, bringing her firmly to Earth (until she, like Bond in Moonraker, has to make her way to a high-altitude villain’s lair) and insisting on emotional coherence from her personal history, is its most interesting quality, though it’s maybe not as revolutionary as it first seems.