Alison Willmore

Honestly, watching One of Them Days, you start to wonder why Palmer isn’t one of the biggest stars in the world by now, though part of the problem is that she’s a creature of comedy, and studios barely make them anymore. Even when the writing and pacing falls slack in this one, as it definitely does on occasion, she wrings laughs out of scenes with screwball physicality and surprising line readings.

What his vampire drama is missing is precisely the quality that’s given Eggers’ earlier work its unsettling energy, which is that he’s able to render the past as an alien landscape whose inhabitants don’t just look different, but conceive of the universe in ways very different than we might.

A Complete Unknown doesn’t attempt to offer up a solution to the enigma that is Bob Dylan. It does something more achievable — shows us what it’s like to bob around the wake of greatness.

Kraven the Hunter explores the inner workings of a guy we didn’t care about to begin with, alongside underwhelming action sequences and a lot of scenery chewing.

The Six Triple Eight is about people who received no public recognition for their achievements at the time, but in trying to give them their belated due onscreen, this clunky excuse for a war movie ends up being more about what they endured than about what they accomplished.

It’s so devoid of bangers or any remotely memorable tunes that there’s nothing to distract you from the movie’s lack of clear stakes, or meaningful drama, or antagonists with any personality.

The pleasures of Flow come from the expressiveness of its animals, whose personalities come through so distinctively that, blessed absence of celeb voices aside, it becomes a fun game to start casting the actors who would play each type if they were human.

The thrill of the action sequences just underscores the hollowness of the rest of the enterprise. Sure, not all of us spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire, but those who do deserve better than this.

Bird is the newest feature from Andrea Arnold — her first scripted film since the 2016 U.S. road odyssey American Honey — and it serves up an endearing, ungainly mix of the gritty and the magical.

If Red One were a disaster, it’d be more interesting. Instead, it’s a technically passable action-comedy transparently stitched together from parts scavenged from other movies.

It’s a bold formal choice to regard the world through a fixed point in space, and, unfortunately, it’s all in service of the biggest pile of schmaltz you’ll see this year.

If the rest of the film takes a somber, poetic perspective on the symbolic and literal nature of this partial restoration of a lost heritage, its youth represents a bold, discordant, and exciting counterpoint — vital and engaged, looking toward a future they demand be better than the past.

Venom: The Last Dance isn’t a lark, but a smirk to let you know that while everyone may be aware of what it’s up to, you’re the sucker who bought the ticket.

Union is a rare thing — a documentary that is undeniably political in its focus while being artful and observational in its approach.

Watching Goodrich isn’t like playing tourist in an upscale world — it’s more like stepping into the head of someone whose sense of normal is wildly different from your own.

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.

What’s obvious after a few minutes of Piece by Piece is that the movie isn’t rendered the way it is because of some profound thematic ties between its subject’s life and the plastic construction set, but because the Lego is an attempt to inject something of interest into what is, even by the pre-chewed standards of authorized celeb docs, textureless pablum.

Loktev’s film is a stunningly stressful experience in what it’s like to actually decide when the desire to stay and fight should give way to the need to cut and run.

It’s the sly way that the film starts off lodged in one character’s perspective, and makes its way to the other’s, that enables its rollicking final act to work as well as it does. Sleep is a wild ride, but it refuses to lose sight of the emotional state of the people it puts onscreen, even as they fall apart.

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

In the new Speak No Evil, the ineffectual nature of the characters becomes not a shortcoming so much as a teased-out joke — a Straw Dogs moment that never arrives, leaving us instead to wince at these bumbling fools as they strive, however poorly, to save themselves.

My Old Ass has the premise of a broad comedy and the soul of a bittersweet coming-of-age story. And one of the reasons that it works so disarmingly well is that it doesn’t treat the former as a means of sneaking in the latter.

Chalfant is one of those acclaimed theater actors who has never found the same showcase for her talents onscreen, and the delicacy of what she does in this role is astounding.

Baby Invasion in a theater is akin to watching someone play a video game in the middle of a rave being thrown on a truck driven at high speed down winding streets. If anything, it’d be weird not to end up nauseated.

Mostly, Arthur is acted upon, even when he thinks he’s seizing control — a punching bag for the world and, more importantly, for the director, who subjects the character to so many indignities that he actually stops being pitiable and starts resembling the punchline to a very long, shaggy joke. By the end of Joker: Folie à Deux, that joke feels like it’s on us.

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.

The Room Next Door is an alternately rapturous and ponderous meditation on mortality, though in a very Almodóvarian fashion, that exploration comes by way of a fantasy of set directing one’s own death, down to the moment, location, and outfit worn.

It is an unabashed platform for basking in the rapport of its two leading men, who are in familiar and fine form as a pair of hypercompetent cleaners, and that makes it a consistently enjoyable watch even when the pacing gets a little slack.