Angie Han

With its vivid footage, sometimes captured from breathlessly intimate proximity, you might be able to believe, just for a moment, that you could really reach right through the screen and touch her.

A sci-fi-action-comedy-thriller loaded with zippy style, upbeat humor and sneaky heart.

It’s an earnest mash note to the power of music that resists over-sentimentalizing its sacrifices, or overstating its rewards.

Here I Come still comes out ahead, in the end, delivering enough of the good stuff to keep a fan yelping and laughing and cheering throughout.

I find it hard to wish Riley would rein himself in when the excess is so much a part of the film’s joy.

The feature debut by writer-director Nastasya Popov is certainly messy, a mélange of contrasting tones and contradictory ideas. But darned if it isn’t bursting with enough personality to charm you all the same.

Though its unflashy style and delicate emotionality are unlikely to sweep viewers off their feet, its eye for fine detail and bittersweet tone make it an absorbing experience worth seeking out.

It’s a romantic comedy, and whatever its flaws elsewhere, it works best where it counts most — in the chemistry between the two leads.

Even when the explanations don’t pass muster, the pictures strike a chord.

In Hamnet . . . the two always go hand in hand: joy and fear, love and loss. One feeds into the other in a cycle as old as life itself, and unavoidable. But just as her William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) turns the pain of being caught between the two into the masterpiece that is Hamlet, Zhao harnesses those elements into something gorgeous and cathartic.

Unicorns traces their twin journeys toward self-acceptance with empathy, curiosity and a refreshing disregard for constricting labels.

If Sunfish is a vacation, it’s the kind that’s less about escaping into a fantasy than about trying on a different reality: learning your way around the terrain, getting to know the locals, falling into their everyday rhythms.

Part showbiz send-up and part earnest romantic drama, the film lurches awkwardly between its two modes without settling on a single cohesive tone. Fortunately, both halves are also blessed with the same quality that allows Chris to embody both Zara’s idea of him and Brooke’s: enough charm to make you come away smiling, even as you shake your head at its missteps.

What makes it truly compelling, however, is its willingness to step outside that perspective and reconsider the phenomenon from a broader context with the wisdom of age.

Jacobs‘ magnetic performance alerts us to every tiny miscalculation or epiphany along the way.

Together, Leguizamo and Ferreira share a chemistry as warm and lively as the campfire their characters share over one meteor-filled night.

While Dìdi treats Chris’ feelings without sugarcoating or condescension, taking seriously his sense that he’s totally lost amid life-or-death stakes, it’s also blessed with the perspective of grown-up wisdom.

Were Renaissance the movie simply a recording of the show, it’d be a treat in itself. By weaving in behind-the-scenes footage and interviews that reveal where Renaissance came from and how it got to be here, Beyoncé serves up a fully satisfying meal.

Although the film starts as the gritty crime thriller suggested by its core premise, it pivots, unexpectedly but effectively, into something much more tender.

What a concert it is — and what an experience it makes, even in the relatively modest confines of a movie theater.

Totally Killer may not be destined to become a classic in its own right. But the Amazon release is fun enough for a spooky season night in.

Bennett’s sensitive performance pulls us into her growing anguish and fear.

What Frybread Face and Me lacks in drama, it makes up for in a boundless affection for its characters and an appreciation for the everyday details of their lives.

For those who prefer their gingerbread soaked in booze and their tinsel splattered with gore, Violent Night might be exactly what the season calls for.

If Porcupine doesn’t cut as deeply as it could, it’s still an intriguing window into the lives of two characters who, thanks to Cahill’s precision, feel almost not like characters at all.

A tense, occasionally terrifying thriller that’s hard to look away from, though what it’s ultimately trying to accomplish with all that energy isn’t always so clear.

The sly pleasure of Sick of Myself is that Signe’s narcissism differs from the rest of ours more in degree than kind. Her impulses are as uproarious as they are repulsive not because they’re so hard to understand, but because on some level, we can understand them all too well.

While its ambition and immediacy occasionally lead to some uneven patches, its insight nevertheless makes it a worthy addition to the growing library of films grappling with what just happened.

Thoughtful performances and earnest (if especially subtle) writing keep the film compelling enough until its final minutes, which are even more startling in their heart-wrenching effectiveness than in their mind-bending twists.

Those hoping the film might push the genre to its most extravagant limits may be surprised at how (relatively) low-key their love story ends up being. But sometimes that’s the most pleasurable kind of fairy tale — one so close to convincing, you can forget for a spell that it’s all just a dream.

If Am I OK?‘s tone occasionally tilts too far toward comedy (including in an oddly staged climactic confrontation) its laughs land far more often than not, and bring us closer to the characters by inviting us to laugh with them.

At the end of Living, I felt not like I’d seen an old favorite in a new light, but like I might want to go back and watch Ikiru again. There are worse outcomes for a remake than reviving affection for the original, or retelling an old story for a new audience that may not have heard it before. There are better ones, too.

Regarded as a whole, Fresh is a success — a taste of its creative talents’ abilities that leave the viewer hungry for more.

While approachable even to casual readers, thanks to patient explanations by scholars and biographers who’ve made Vonnegut their life’s work, the film isn’t really geared toward converting skeptics, revealing new information or even telling a really great yarn. It’s an opportunity to bask in Vonnegut’s wit and intelligence — to admire the crackerjack delivery of his jokes, savor the offbeat perfection of his prose, drink in the playfulness of his smile.

It’s not reinventing the wheel or breaking new ground; it’s unlikely to wow audiences with its bold artistic vision or profound emotional depths. But there’s a place for sturdy and familiar entertainment that delivers exactly what it intends, and Clifford the Big Red Dog is just that.

The documentary goes out of its way to consider the situation from all angles, and what might look from the outside like a simple story spills over with complicated emotions once it’s been cracked open.

The Wheel may not, well, reinvent the wheel. But in its expansive empathy, it delivers something that nevertheless feels new and surprising.

While its disparate elements don’t meld together as smoothly as they should, they do, in the end, add up to a superhero movie fresh and fun enough to feel worth a spin.