Chris Vognar

It’s a juicy subject, and it might be too big for this particular storytelling approach.

Night Swim eventually runs out of places to go, but not before it weds some sneaky character development to a few good, solid jump moments. It might not find an audience, but it deserves one.

The Boy Who Lived lacks the complexity and frisson that might have set it apart in an increasingly crowded documentary field, or pushed it beyond its feel-good parameters.

You Don’t Know Me, directed by Ursula Macfarlane (who made the 2019 Harvey Weinstein exposé Untouchable), doesn’t quite know what to do with this tension, saving much of its complexity for the waning moments rather than giving its heroine’s story deeper shading from the start. But it remains a visually engaging portrait that depicts Smith as more than just a little girl lost.

These are movies for those who find the Knives Out franchise too sophisticated and droll, red meat for the Sandler faithful. It’s a movie of small ambitions tailor-made for the small screen. It is exactly what you think it is.

Persuasion is a handsome film, but it doesn’t have much trust in its audience to think or feel for itself.

It’s an innocuous and cuddly film, even with Caine holding forth. It’s hard to tell if he transcends the role as written, or if he merely seized on the one shred of the screenplay worth showcasing. In any case, Caine brings his own shine to this rather dull affair, and shows again that he’s not ready to go gentle into that good night.

The new Netflix documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed, produced by husband-and-wife team Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone, paints a picture of naked opportunism that shattered Ross’ legacy. It’s the story of how a man became an industry, and how his family was gradually, systematically left out in the cold.

It takes a little while, but Fatherhood eventually becomes exactly what you expected. It will make no converts, nor will it push away the faithful. It’s a Kevin Hart movie, after all.

Based on Elizabeth Brundage’s 2016 novel All Things Cease to Appear, Things Heard & Seen is a slow burn, and it spends a fair amount of time strewing elements of other ghostly tales throughout the premises. But then it takes a turn, those elements gel, and the characters come into sharper focus.

Boogie has some hops. But its all-around game could use a little work.