Andy Howell

For better or worse, the film is more of an intellectual affair than a thriller.

The director’s cut of The Current War moves at a faster pace than the original, the characters are better fleshed out, and the drama is more focused where it needs to be. The new cut has elevated the film from mediocre to interesting.

Green Book is a real crowd pleaser — aside from the banter between the oppositely-minded characters, it has clear heroes and villains. The writers do manage to sneak a few nuances in, especially when discussing Shirley feeling out of place in both the white and black communities.

I have a feeling Echo in the Canyon will be watched for decades into the future as the essential document of a very specific time and place that changed music forever.

What Daniel Roher has done with well-worn forms is to use them as setups, but put them together with a twist in a way that seems fresh and exciting.

Rustin is an important story well told, with an outstanding must-see lead performance.

The brilliance of Holy Spider is how it takes all the gripping, lurid suspense of the serial killer thriller, turns it on its head, and takes it to the next level as symbolic of a corrupted, misogynistic society.

Another problem with the film is the pacing. The main story is interesting enough, but it just feels padded and stretched.

As clever as the plot is, how it comes to life is something to behold — a command to witness awesome splendor is really the only word that fits here.

An important, compelling story that had to be told.

The Guilty manages to keep things interesting with a propulsive plot.

Characters are keenly observed and come front and center over the plot. Anything can happen. Absurdity reigns supreme. Yet, at the end of the day, we know a little more about the human condition after seeing it bursting at the seams.

No amount of words that can convey the sense of the film, because it is such a gut-punch of emotion.

Lee is beautiful, daring, and elusive, as all great art should be. It’s a fitting tribute to a woman whose work exhibited the same qualities.

The film gets points for style, boldness, and an innovative science fiction setup.

It achieves that magic combination of nuance, depth, and having a big heart that makes it both a crowd-pleaser and a favorite of critics.

ANIARA has plenty going for it — a great concept, a coherent tone, an uncompromising vision, and an ending that’s the ballsiest thing I’ve seen since AI. Sadly these virtues are undercut by some unforgivable sins — it is boring, has underdeveloped characters, and has a childlike understanding of the scientific concepts supposedly undergirding the plot. One of those could be forgivable, but all together they spell doom.

It raises interesting questions about cults of personality, our inability to deal with aging, and how we can use the people around us to get what we want. That’s not exactly surrealism, nor is it realism. It’s just Hollywood.

Even with everything else going for it, Ezra either fails or succeeds based on the title character’s performance, and William Fitzgerald knocks it out of the park. As with any child acting performance, Goldwyn deserves a share of the credit for getting exactly what was needed from the young actor.

Even though you can see the strings in the puppet act, the plight of the characters still sometimes manages to get to you.

You might see Lost Transmissions just for Simon Pegg, but you’ll come away with a deeper sense of what schizophrenia is. You just might become more compassionate about people whose mental illness keeps them on the streets. And you’ll get to see a great debut feature whose nuance will keep you thinking about it for days.

The Starling is trying to be a feel-good movie about finding hope in dark times. That’s admirable, but the main problem is that it does it in such a down-the-middle, straightforward way. As a result, there aren’t any surprises and at least a few missed opportunities. Still, Melissa McCarthy and Kevin Kline are worth the price of admission alone.

The Eyes of Ghana leans heavily into the inspirational part of the story, and that’s understandable. Hesse is an inspiring figure, still fighting to preserve his country’s culture, restore film, and teach the younger generation, even in his 90s. But the film goes a little too hard on this point by adding soaring music and minimizing some of the complexity.