Blake Goble

A passion project from the sing-talk god David Byrne, Contemporary Color is a concert film, but a finicky one, unstable and unfocused.

This is a kitchen-sink hymn for the indomitable spirit of the common man.

When Neville chronicles the failed work of Orson Welles, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead comes alive with newsreel tabloid verve.

The Nightingale has a torn – and riveting – conscience.

It’s fascinating when Smith chronicles Carrey’s stunt in tandem with gags he tested on late night shows.

The movie is like a second verse, sung a little louder and just a little bit worse.

Guided more by emotion and imagery than by any conventional plot, A Bigger Splash is a wicked, mysterious, ceaselessly sexy, and experiential carnal summer whirl.

Queen of Katwe shows that a film doesn’t have to give up on the tenets of genre, but has the potential to win big if it can enliven them in new ways.

Navigating the nexus of hype, commerce, ego, and bullshit that drives the modern art scene, The Square is almost too perfect in its cunning simplicity. The art world’s always been easy to drag, what with its interiority, weirdos, and frustrating games of pin-the-tail-on-the-thesis. But rarely are these ideas lampooned so beautifully.

Out of an act of war, Jolie has created a film of real compassion.

The way Lowery observes Pete and Elliot’s relationship with nominal dialogue is beautiful. While it’s easy to deride the remake as commercially conceived, the film still feels as rare as the dragon it depicts, wholesome and heartfelt.

When the leads are drawn this terribly thin, and Onward is so hopelessly focused on the dad narrative that it can’t help but ignore its creativity in favor of mawkish afternoon special, the product stinks of a bad Amblin ripoff.

Even if the run-up takes its time, DeBlois sticks the landing – for this film, for his trilogy – and makes something that feels a bit more knowing in its themes: Life goes on, protect the ones you love, and enjoy the world we all share. There are far greater crimes children’s films can commit than positive messaging.

It’s a fierce, visceral vision with a superb cast, that one suspects was more focused on pumping up Macbeth than reminding people why it’s such a lasting cautionary tale.

Running the gamut from grotesque to goofy to genuinely scary, Alison Klayman has assembled a compelling and tight look into the inner workings of modern politics in the Trumpian key.

Even if Rocketman is one of those films where you walk in knowing almost exactly what to expect, it still manages to wham, glam, and occasionally elate.

Green Book means so well, and admittedly, it just gets by on its leads and its good humor.

It’s a sequel full of more that still feels like less.

Patriots Day sits right on the line between exploitation and tribute. The star power is dicey, and the action relentless, but Berg means well and likes the people in his recount.

Cohen still has it in fits and starts. That “pedo radar” from Who Is America really ruffled feathers. He’s a performer of chameleonic qualities; see his immersive, anarchic turn in The Trial of the Chicago 7 for a nice contrast. But applying his talents to a sporadically funny, 90-minute SNL political cold open of a film is a little bit of a bummer.

As a political or journalistic statement, Richard Jewell does have the unfortunate tendency to come across like a rant. But that does not greatly detract from the film’s rich biography of Jewell: Here’s a man that was perhaps doomed to be part of an inquisition.

A lot of fandom went into this, but Popstar is relentless to the point where it eventually becomes plodding.

To commend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is reasonably easy. Here’s a film that’s pro-science, and sheds new light on a world that Western audiences don’t normally see. But it’s all so dramatically meager and obvious as well.

The heart is ultimately stirred, and the eyes often pleased, by this new White Fang.

Zoolander No. 2 invokes that old Simpsons headline: “old man yells at modern culture.”

Peterloo is traditional, dryly historical, and all sorts of other Merchant-Ivory slang for stuffy and challenging.

The Kid Who Would Be King is a reliable family film, and Cornish polishes old tropes with fresh eyes and a sense of clever imagination.