Bilge Ebiri

It’s a sweet, swift 91 minutes long, and only about 80 if you skip the credits — but it’s a surprisingly immersive affair, and the authenticity writer-star Hanks and director Aaron Schneider bring to it is a huge part of its appeal.

I watch The Old Guard and try to imagine a new world, one where other comic-book movies are this well made and breathtaking.

The Truth possesses the observational power and intimacy we would expect from a Kore-eda work, and we recognize the quiet cadences of the director’s storytelling, but the film also has an uncharacteristic air of desperation and insistency. Everything — every scene, every line of dialogue — feels like it’s working toward a point.

Eurovision gives us an inspired and hilarious match between subject and stars, all driven by melodrama: The glorious, over-the-top theatricality of the song contest makes an ideal stage for Ferrell’s brand of high-highs and low-lows.

It might have worked as a drama, but as horror, it’s a disaster.

It is one of the greatest films Spike Lee has ever made.

Even if it had been released at a less tense and tender time, this thing would go down like an oversized flaming lead balloon.

Actress and director build a symphony out of Grandma Wong’s grimaces and her glares. There are emotions in there, but she’s not about to let us get to them, and to her, that easily. And so, we are transfixed.

The Trip films have a remarkable (and welcome) tonal consistency, and there’s plenty here of those lively, escapist elements that have made these movies so charming and irresistible (and such a comfort at this particularly bizarre moment in time).

It builds a deeply moving emotional journey out of the simplest, most mundane elements. By the end, almost nothing has happened, and yet you’re a wreck.

In most good rom-coms you fall in love with the characters; in The Half of It you fall in love with their sheer longing.

Sea Fever teases out elemental anxieties that have been given fresh life by unfortunate reality, but the movie is worth seeing because, when all’s said and done, it gives us characters and circumstances we can care about.

Trolls World Tour is ruthlessly simple, rushed, and obvious.

Well-researched and highly detailed in how it lays bare the empty promises of the gig economy and the ruthless techno-feudalism of e-commerce, Sorry We Missed You is a movie that will infuriate you. But what makes it one of Loach’s best isn’t just its rage (which is plentiful) but its compassion (which is overwhelming).

Farmageddon made me laugh quite a few times, and kids will probably love it. But it can’t quite measure up to the glories of the first Shaun the Sheep film.

This film feels like a pile of prefab story ideas occasionally enlivened by brief flashes of earnestness and invention.

Carrey is the film’s most prized weapon, letting us wallow in the ridiculousness of this whole enterprise without ever holding himself above it. Quite the contrary, he overcommits in the best possible way.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire builds and builds and builds, as we keep waiting for an explosion, a big emotional climax. And, not unlike with another great recent import, Pedro Almodóvar’s "Pain and Glory," it arrives with the very last shot — which I won’t reveal other than to say it’s one of the finest pieces of acting and one of the most moving images I’ve seen in eons.

July takes these weird, desperate characters and gives their lives a couple of cosmic twists that serve both to clarify her vision and to expand it. This might be her best film yet.

It can’t quite match the power of Östlund’s film, or its bemused, clinical (dare I say Scandinavian?) sensibility, but it has an awkward, American charm all its own.

Dolittle is a calamity for the ages.

This is, indeed, a somewhat kinder, gentler Bad Boys: less proudly offensive, less extravagant, but still basically the same collection of stylish clichés made palatable by a duo of likable stars with good chemistry.

It’s a gloriously hand-animated existential fable that manages to be both genuinely sweet and thoroughly twisted.

The primary pleasure of Underwater is the spectacle of everything going wrong, all at once.

Jordan has a great face for doubt and inner conflict. There’s a quizzical, nervous quality to him — which is also why when he does action movies, he’s so wonderfully unpredictable — and you can sense his devotion to justice clashing with his genuine fear.

We shouldn’t be so smug as to assume that we would always know the right thing to do, or even be brave enough to do it, Malick seems to say. A true act of resistance should crack our universe open.

Jumanji: The Next Level, represents the version we might have dreaded, the tired and only modestly funny one that just coasts on its proved, no-longer-novel premise.

It’s awkward and weird, and yet all that awkwardness and weirdness give it personality and charm and a freewheeling, nonsensical quality that feels refreshing.

That’s part of the beauty of this film: It games out very real, very human impulses to their surreal breaking points, only to uncover even greater truths.

Rarely have I seen a horror-comedy as joyless as Little Monsters. Which feels like a weird (and sad) thing to say, because rarely have I seen a horror-comedy that is also so insistent in its humor, so determined to try and entertain me, as Little Monsters. It’s fast, loud, and impossibly shrill — except when it quiets down, which is when it briefly, belatedly comes to life.

Pain and Glory is at once the gentlest and most emotionally naked movie Pedro Almodóvar has ever made.

It’s a half-assed premise, given a half-assed treatment that makes Wayne’s World look like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The performances are loose and self-aware, the filmmaking strictly at the level of sketch comedy, the jokes amiably predictable, and the story a mess.

Loro itself becomes somewhat Berlusconian, though associating that pseudo-fascist slimeball with anything this visually resplendent should be some sort of crime.

The film feints at comedy with background gags and an occasional broad performance or two, but it’s primarily a dramatic story — and not a focused one at that.

Some might want to leave the theater and file a lawsuit. I stayed and laughed. It’s funny because it’s abominable.

It’s hard to care for characters when what they do and say rings so false. The result plays like the kind of sleazy exploitation movie that the first one so studiously avoided becoming.

The kids’ ambling chatter, the dogs’ routine of rest and play, lull us into a contemplative state, which allows us to better appreciate the mystery of existence.

The hoops our heroes jump through become increasingly surreal and hilarious.

Like a child unwittingly navigating a jungle full of booby traps and deadly creatures, the film walks a treacherously fine line without ever seeming to break a sweat.

There is absolutely nothing original in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which just goes to show that you don’t need originality to be effective.

It’s not original, but it is enlivened by some artful touches and two excellent performances.

At its best, Hobbs & Shaw offers a refreshing antidote to the bloat. I’d rather watch another one of these than sit through one more Vin Diesel speech about family.

The director finds beauty everywhere — in a cloud of dust, a traffic jam, the raucous din of children at play. And wherever such beauty exists, we imagine, hope can never be entirely absent.

I laughed way too hard at too many points in Stuber to entirely dismiss it, even if, as a movie, it doesn’t really hold together.

While The Cat Rescuers movingly portrays the unique individuals committed to helping these cats, it doesn’t quite tackle the full complexity of this subject. Still, no animal lover should be surprised to find themselves holding back tears while watching this documentary.

General Magic is engaging, but there’s a tougher, tighter film in here struggling to get out.

It doesn’t help that the characters in some cases have been rendered with such realism that they have lost all human expression on their faces. Maybe that’s the idea — to not anthropomorphize them too much and to stay grounded in zoological authenticity. But they’re still talking, and singing, only now their faces are inexpressive; it’s a weird disconnect.

Beyond being tiresome, Intermezzo is just plain ugly, with seemingly little care given to the image — odd, perhaps, given that the film is so clearly and confrontationally about its own director’s gaze.

Anna isn’t as stylish or gripping as “Nikita,” but it does have its own demented charm, particularly in how it toys with structure, nesting competing narrative timelines within each other.

The fine cast keeps us engaged, even if the film sometimes loses the narrative thread.

The film never quite lets us know what to feel. It’s an unnerving little movie, one that at any given moment might deliver a burst of feeling, or a big laugh, or a jump scare. It whipsaws you this way and that, and this sense of disorientation is new for a company whose work usually feels so carefully calibrated, so perfectly put-together.

With facile plotting — you could fashion a pretty deadly drinking game out of all the scenes in which someone gets knocked out, or is conveniently left for dead — and humdrum action, the lack of depth or dimension becomes fatal.

Overall, the lively, unfussy Hampstead goes down easy.

It’s not that this new movie has forgotten the fleet-footed charm of the original MIB films; it’s just that it doesn’t quite know how to conjure it again, so it confuses levity with listlessness.

Too scattered narratively to cohere, and yet somehow still funny enough to justify its existence, The Secret Life of Pets 2 makes for an entertaining trifle.

It’s extremely moving and thrilling and it will both make and ruin your day.

That drifting, elegiac quality (which at times may recall his once-neglected, now-classic Jackie Brown) is the film’s great strength. There are several major set-pieces — some hilarious, some creepy, one absurdly violent — that will get people talking, but perhaps the most powerful is a lengthy, seemingly aimless one that comes smack dab in the middle.

It’s the rare actor who can make playing a character this messy look so effortless.

Pokémon obsessives will want to check it out, but the movie is mostly an uninspired slog, not committed enough to work as a demented genre picture, and not funny enough to work as a goofy, lighthearted comedy. You chuckle, you go “aww” a couple of times, and that’s it.

El Chicano is often exciting, but don’t expect to leave the theater riding an action movie high.

Meeting Gorbachev is a hagiography, but it’s unafraid to position itself as such; Herzog makes his case proudly and passionately.

It’s a testament to the strength of Thompson’s performance, and DaCosta’s control of tone and action, that for all the bleakness of this world, we keep watching. The result is a work that lingers, grimly, in the mind.

What’s worse, the songs often distract from the far more interesting real drama occurring onscreen. Kids may find it engaging, but adults may get more restless than usual. Turn the sound down or play your own music over it, and Penguins may well be a near masterpiece.

It is a terrifically scary movie that I wish were more haunting.

You don’t have to believe in divine intervention to be moved by this story.

It’s unlikely to make new converts, but it’s filled with vibrant, graceful ass-kickery, and sometimes that’s all one wants, and needs.

It’s inert where it should be fast, and cluttered and choppy where it should be rousing. Which is a shame, because Hellboy, as conceived, is one of the more interesting comic book heroes we have. He deserves better than this.

The Highwaymen never quite manages to conjure a changing world, and as a result its more interesting ideas are left blowing in the wind. But as an excuse to spend some time with Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson doing what Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson do, it’ll do just fine.