Brian Lowry

Mank has the makings of an Oscar contender, and not just because of Hollywood's traditional love for movies about itself. With Gary Oldman as the alcoholic, self-destructive writer of "Citizen Kane," director David Fincher has made a near-great movie about what's in the argument as the greatest of all time.

There's one clear reason to watch The Life Ahead, but for those who appreciate cinematic history, it's a good one: Sophia Loren, still striking at 86, starring in this Italian-language film directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti.

Greta Thunberg's inspiring children's crusade on the climate-change crisis receives dutiful if somewhat sluggish documentary treatment in "I Am Greta," an intimate portrait of the teenage activist that at its best conveys her courage and spirit, before bogging down in what becomes a somewhat repetitious call for action.

Ammonite joins a long list of forbidden love stories, yielding a movie presented in washed-out tones, which shines principally thanks to Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. The result is a slow-moving, somewhat predictable but finally effective period romance that primarily serves as an old-fashioned testament to star power.

This is, admittedly, a strange time related to how and where people will wind up consuming this type of small-boned movie, but there's always room for another good one. "Let Him Go" might not be super, but it's definitely a trip worth taking.

Although the movie is visually impressive, the Chinese-American co-production suffers from a too-thin story, built upon a heavy-handed message soaked in that oldest of Disney tropes: a dead mom.

Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You is a valentine to his fans, an ode to friendship and a celebration of the E Street Band. The latest documentary from the prolific artist also marks the continued migration of what he describes as his "45-year conversation" with his audience into the visual media of film and streaming -- this time via Apple TV+.

His catchphrase notwithstanding, "Borat" isn't always very nice; indeed, the material is pointed, and occasionally guilty of working a little too hard to shock. In its best moments, though, the twisted mirror that Cohen holds up to America from a Borat's-eye-view is telling, and like the previous "moviefilm," very, very funny.

While the new Rebecca is a lot of things, irresistible, alas, isn't one of them.

Blackpink: Light Up the Sky manages to offer a welcome reminder that even for K-pop's reigning queens, all that glitters isn't always gold.

By the standards of Liam Neeson thrillers (and there are a lot from which to choose), Honest Thief is pretty weak tea, a passable, low-octane action movie that doesn't do much more than steal one's time. Like second-tier John Wayne westerns, Neeson offers enough of what his fans want, but a thin script and stilted dialogue make the battle harder than usual.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 feels timely in an at-times jolting way, with images of chaos in the streets and angry crowds chanting "The whole world is watching." At its core, though, writer-director Aaron Sorkin takes the "trial" part to heart, leading to a largely courtroom-bound affair that -- while entertaining and splendidly cast -- at its best echoes his early triumph with "A Few Good Men."

All told, there's not a whole lot new here. Still, for anyone who hasn't waded through Bob Woodward's book "Rage," or deeply reported accounts by the New York Times and others laying out Trump administration shortcomings, Gibney and company have delivered what is clearly intended to be a powerful closing argument, pulling the case together. And to underscore the title's ironic nature, the evidence suggests it's a response characterized more by chaos than control.

Whenever and wherever kids do see it, they're apt to enjoy it, while the theme reminds the adults in their lives that the differences and that come between families -- from politics to something as frivolous as a kid's bedroom -- finally aren't as significant as the deeper bonds that they share.

The main problem is there's a whole lot of scary out there this time of year, and Books of Blood winds up in a sort-of creative no-man's land. Even for undemanding souls, this is a pretty skeletal construct.

There's always the risk of sounding preachy in this sort of exercise in a way that scares off those who can be reached, or perhaps worse, being unduly optimistic. Attenborough finds a middle ground.

An entertaining, wonderfully simple comedy with the qualities of a smooth martini -- it goes down easy, but delivers a bit of kick.

Provides a stellar showcase for its actors, especially Jim Parsons as the central provocateur.

The key performances are strong, but director/co-writer Julie Taymor's movie meanders too much, dragging through the beginning and again toward the end.

An extremely clever concept that takes the "spares" in the royal equation and turns them into a superhero group. While hardly a blockbuster, this Disney+ movie occupies the upper tier of the kind of movies that have proved quite popular for Disney Channel.

Permutations on Sherlock Holmes have a long and spotty cinematic history, which makes Enola Holmes -- a vehicle for "Stranger Things'" Millie Bobby Brown, who doubled as its producer -- such a pleasant surprise. Adapted from the young-adult books, it's a lovely production that reinforces the sense Brown, if there were any doubts, is a major star in the making.

Simply in terms of presenting a draft of history through his earlier work and scalding commentary via his more recent endeavors, Souza's aim has been true.

Antebellum is built around a provocative twist, and it's a good one -- as well as one that definitely shouldn't be spoiled even a little. Once that revelation is absorbed, however, the movie becomes less distinctive and inspired, reflecting an attempt to tap into the zeitgeist that made "Get Out" a breakthrough, without the same ability to pay off the premise.

The casting alone should spur interest in The Devil All the Tim -- Batman (Robert Pattinson) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), together at last -- but can't make the movie feel like less of a slog. Adapting Dale Ray Pollock's grim novel, awful characters proceed along parallel tracks, en route to a whole lot of violence and unpleasantness.

Helen Reddy might seem so 1970s, but her song "I Am Woman" became a feminist anthem of its time, and serves as the title and centerpiece of a reasonably good movie biography, if one that -- perhaps due to the nature of her life -- feels a little like the Hallmark Channel version of "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Strange and more than a little sad, You Cannot Kill David Arquette -- a documentary about the actor's adventures in wrestling -- derives most of its strength from the discomfort associated with watching it. As the son of a showbiz family, the fact that Arquette is reduced to this cry for attention more than anything reflects the enticing lure of the spotlight.

Fatima largely works as a drama, in part because it's so earnestly presented, and unexpectedly timely in dealing with loss. If that adds up to something less than a miracle, given the aforementioned challenges, it's not an inconsequential achievement.

The heartbreaking aspect of Robin's Wish lies in the fact that Williams died without knowing what was happening to him, while there's uplift in Schneider Williams' determination to set the record straight. How well that works translating that specific mission into a stand-alone documentary is, to some extent, another matter.

Mulan is big, sumptuous entertainment. It's good, but not great, transforming the story associated with the 1998 animated musical into a song-free, live-action movie that's more adequate than transcendent -- a perfectly reasonable family-viewing investment that's worth seeing, but not necessarily a must-buy.

Another adventure in nostalgia that nobody really needed and yet, if not excellent, manages to be good-hearted and reasonably fun.

The film simply lurches loudly from one mundane action scene to the next.

The closing kick of The One and Only Ivan is somewhat stirring -- and certainly works hard at being so -- but it's pretty tepid until then.

A small-scale movie with a throwback drive-in feel that loses nothing in an at-home setting, and based on its minimal merit, has little to lose in any event.

The undercooked plot works just well enough to fuel this vehicle for Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, mashing up old movies in a fast-paced package.

One of the year's best documentaries, Boys State presents a fascinating look at teenagers brought together for an exercise in government, which somehow manages to unerringly encapsulate partisan divisions in the US right now. An opening medley of past participants -- including Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Cory Booker, Rush Limbaugh and Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito -- only stokes curiosity about where these youngsters will be 30 or 40 years from now.

Makes puzzling choices in harvesting the material, mostly providing an incentive to go back and watch the last one again.

Howard serves as a fitting celebration of that life and career. It's a chance for those who knew him to pause and fondly look back, in a way that merely adds to an appreciation of the parade that he helped start.

This adaptation of Simon Rich's novella has some fun contemplating how the modern world would like to a 20th-century immigrant, before scraping the barrel for deeper themes.

The Secret: Dare to Dream at best feels like a tepid distraction even for those receptive to its blueprint, far from the stuff that dreams are made of.

The American Civil Liberties Union battles the Trump administration on multiple fronts in "The Fight," an excellent documentary that captures the heady political moment for which the organization was born. Presented in a taut, tense way, it's a glimpse into what makes the ACLU tick with the pacing and stakes of a dramatic thriller.

The Go-Go's has pretty much everything you'd want in a rock documentary, presenting an oral history of the chart-topping all-female group with sex, drugs, music, money, and the intramural squabbling and wounded egos great success tends to unleash. Hard to believe it's been 40 years, but anyone who remembers the band should fall head over heels once again.

Tesla even more aggressively incorporates documentary-style techniques and weird anachronisms into the drama. His story is essentially narrated by Morgan's daughter, Anne (Eve Hewson), in a way that gives the movie a decidedly off-kilter spin. At one point, Hawke even sings a few bars of the 1980s song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," recorded decades after Tesla's death.

Neither film is especially memorable, which is too bad, squandering Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie and Ethan Hawke, very intense and brooding as Nikola Tesla.

The Outpost manages to be both harrowing and less than completely involving, a movie that can be admired for its visceral portrayal of war while leaving the characters underdeveloped.

Playing an aging star estranged from her daughter might not seem like a major stretch, but Deneuve and Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda (whose "Shoplifters" took top honors at the Cannes Film Festival) spin that premise into a cinematic breath of fresh air.

Lewis -- who is battling pancreatic cancer -- was not much more than a kid when he marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and has seemingly lived three lives since then. That's why despite the documentary's uneven aspects, his legacy is ample motivation for any student of history to see Good Trouble as a good investment.

A central takeaway is not only about the man but the warm nostalgia that he represents -- the memories, as Miranda and others recall, of grandmothers hushing them during the minutes he came on each day, running through the Zodiac with horoscopes filled with a persistent sense of hope.

Directed by Brett Harvey, Inmate #1 has a few minor flaws, including an overly sappy musical score. Still, its subject is so inherently likable that a feature-length dose of Trejo's boundless energy feels like the kind of adrenaline shot we can use right about now.

The film turns out to be a fun but thin construct, fostering a sense of itchiness to see how and if it's going to pay off.

Greyhound is kind of an odd duck -- another World War II tale courtesy of Tom Hanks, who wrote and produced the film through his company in addition to starring in it. Old-fashioned and relatively small in scale, it's a sturdy if unspectacular depiction of the Battle of the Atlantic, streaming ashore via Apple TV+ instead of a planned theatrical release.

Granted, nothing can fully replicate the unique qualities of a live theatrical experience. But if anyone doubts that Hamilton can still deliver a Broadway wallop to the comfort of one's couch, well, just you wait.

Jon Stewart resurfaces with a politically savvy directorial effort, Irresistible, that's a bit too heavy-handed to live up to its title. Delving into the corrosive influence of money on politics, Stewart's second film exhibits passion for its topic and cleverly registers an important point before it's over, but labors too much getting there.

It is, frankly, a lot to absorb — and would risk crumbling under the weight of Lee’s ambition were it not for the second gut punch to the region that BP’s horrifying blunder delivered.

It's also a terrific showcase for star Nicole Beharie.

What sets Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn apart is the personal connection for director Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

There's an unintended kick, in the current moment, watching a movie designed to make you want to flee the confines of a house.

Artemis Fowl isn't an unqualified good egg, but it's perfectly adequate, and the best of the kid-friendly movies redirected to streaming by coronavirus -- a low bar, admittedly, after "Trolls World Tour" and "Scoob!"

It's another timely, thought-provoking message from a filmmaker known for them, in a movie that piles so much on its plate as to fall short of Lee's best.

Shirley was clearly intended for the film-festival circuit, offering a narrowly pitched story where it's easy to admire the performances without feeling like the journey adds up to much. While Moss captures the complexity of Shirley's personality, the movie sheds scant light on the underlying why of it all.

The High Note is a breezy way to kill a few hours. Granted, it's more an opening act than a headliner, but that simply makes its digital, on-demand residency feel like the venue where the film rightfully belongs.

Watching Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani riff off each other is intermittently fun, but that's all there is to recommend The Lovebirds, a dark, somewhat chaotic romantic comedy.

Granted, Scoob! appears more into recycling than reinvention -- it's more a snack than a meal -- but it does endeavor to make an old concept fresh and cool again in children's eyes. That might answer the question why the movie exists, but based on the results, nothing here merits an exclamation point.

What Spaceship Earth makes clear is that before booking a ticket, the devil is in the details.

The inherent contradiction in Becoming, Netflix's documentary about Michelle Obama, is repeatedly articulated by the former First Lady herself: How can someone reclaim a semblance of a normal life when you are one of the world's most recognizable figures? The latest project under the Obamas' Netflix production deal doesn't fully answer that riddle, but it's an interesting contemplation of the question.

With Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney as a can't-miss combination, Bad Education joins a juicy true story somewhere in the middle, drags before getting into the meat of it, and then rallies solidly in the second half. While smaller in tone and topic than most HBO movies, it's a solid exploration of greed and corruption, where the ultimate hero is, of all things, a teenage journalist.

Far more interested in stunts than story, Extraction is a simple-minded action vehicle for Chris Hemsworth that should benefit from providing a theatrical-style adrenaline rush when the spigot for such fare has closed. Basically, Netflix is serving up an old-fashioned B movie, at a moment when the A-list blockbusters have been postponed.

Slay the Dragon does an extraordinarily good job of taking a complex issue and connecting the dots, which seems particularly appropriate for a documentary about gerrymandering.

The film is alternately funny and heartwarming, but more than anything, eye opening, covering a chapter at best underreported in history books, if not outright overlooked.

Vin Diesel doesn't drive that fast, but he's plenty furious in "Bloodshot," and with good reason. Adapted from a comic book, the movie casts the heavily muscled star as a zombie killing machine, in what amounts to a superhero origin story with more twists than expected, but ultimately a simple-minded excuse for lots and lots of action.

A thinly sketched out, wildly violent satire, one that rather cynically uses the current backdrop of partisan tribalism as the hook for an old-time exploitation piece.

The story chronicles a fascinating moment in the civil rights movement, without yielding quite the returns that it should.

Pixar's enviable track record with original animation is a mixed blessing, creating sky-high expectations for each new movie. Onward, an undeniably emotional and imaginative concept, joins that rich tradition, without reaching the upper rungs of the ladder set by its predecessors.

Moss, whose gift for speaking volumes with purposeful stares is well-documented on "The Handmaid's Tale," perfectly captures the sense of invasion Cecelia feels, and at first, helplessness. Her growing strength, in the face of such an overwhelming threat, is the movie's most empowering element.