Christy Lemire

Bonjour Tristesse works best as a sustained mood, as an evocation of long summer days that might not actually exist outside Eric Rohmer films and fashion magazine photo shoots.

Eventually, though, the whole effort feels chaotic, crammed as it is with uninspired pop culture references and way, way too many fart jokes, even for a movie aimed at kids.

It’s all weighty, serious material with huge stakes — emotionally, culturally and financially. But Roach, working from a script by Charles Randolph, finds a tricky balance of portraying these events with a sprightly tone while crafting a steadily building tension. Bombshell is both light on its feet and a punch in the gut.

XX feels unusually frustrating in its inconsistency, given its inspired premise.

Ready Player One is at once familiar in its fabric and forward thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI. It’s an ambitious mix that can be thrilling while it lasts, and yet it fails to linger for long afterward, leaving you wondering what its point is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom.

Everything about “The History of Sound” is restrained to a fault—until it’s about the music. And then it bursts with passion and pure emotion.

At the very least, The Bad Guys encourages kids not to judge a book by its cover—and maybe even read an actual book about these characters afterward.

Rich in atmosphere but short on substance, director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’ film has the look and tone of a serious, original work of art, but it ends up feeling empty as it recycles images and ideas from many influential predecessors.

It's a pretty standard story of sports uplift, a familiar tale of triumph over adversity.

The ending — with its revelation of what these girls were really after all along — is so frustrating, you’re likely to wonder: Is that all there is?

Damsel is a sly feminist manifesto disguised as a shaggy, amiable hangout movie. It’s a quirky, comic Western with bursts of startling violence. And it calls for a bit of a high-wire act from its gifted cast.

It’s a slow burn, but even as events turn more than a tad preposterous with twists that seem not just predictable but inevitable, Farr keeps a handle on the tension and tone, which keeps us hooked.

Danish documentarian Janus Metz — making his first feature, and working from a script by Ronnie Sandahl — feels the need to hold our hands and oversimplify these two titans of tennis.

The makings are all there for a fascinating character study, which Stowaway more closely resembles than a sci-fi thriller. But the fact that we know so little about these people beyond a few basic traits makes it difficult for us to feel as emotionally invested as we should in their fate.

This is the kind of solid, grown-up drama we don’t see very often anymore. In a world of superhero blockbusters, this low-key throwback of a Western is the stuff of timeless cinema, but it may as well be a unicorn.

Director Steve Gomer approaches dire and potentially devastating situations in understated fashion, allowing the purity of their prevailing humanity to shine through.

Split is more lean and taut in its narrative and pace than we’ve seen from Shyamalan lately.

The documentary This Changes Everything synthesizes all that data along with interviews from a truly mind-boggling array of A-listers both in front of and behind the camera to create a damning portrait of Hollywood’s systematic sexism and discrimination. In between, we see clips from both movies and television that illustrate the film’s points in amusing and often striking ways.

So much works so well for so long in “The Good House” that it’s frustrating when the film casts its eye elsewhere and begins paying way too much attention to the town’s peripheral figures.

If anything, the horror element of this horror movie is the weakest part, but Totally Killer is spry enough to remain enjoyable throughout.

The first feature from the longtime music video director has a ton of style, and signals from the beginning her confident use of framing, texture and color.

Young Woman and the Sea doesn’t reinvent the genre in any way, but it keeps us engrossed for every strenuous stroke.

Zany and zippy as you’d expect, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water remains true to the surrealism of its animated television roots.

It’s almost too pretty in a self-consciously artful way, and that overriding aesthetic suffocates the underlying truth of the lead actors’ performances.

Tim Burton’s Dumbo feels like one of the big-eared baby elephant’s early flights: It’s adorable and earnest but it causes a lot of commotion, and it only sporadically, haltingly soars.

Jagged rides the wave of that excitement, but avoids opportunities to explore deeper below the surface.

For better and for worse, Joshy believably creates the sensation of a low-key weekend hang with a bunch of bros. You probably wouldn’t want to spend that much time with these people yourself, but at least they’re never boring.

It’s an auspicious debut from this up-and-coming filmmaker, who once worked as a receptionist for J.J. Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot.

Cuckoo gets more confusing the more it explains itself. The further writer-director Tilman Singer goes in articulating the strange goings-on that drive this stylish, unsettling thriller, the less compelling it becomes.

A Million Miles Away is an inspiring movie based on an inspiring story told in an inspiring way. It’s a tale of literally astronomical success in the face of daunting adversity, and it’s important as a reflection of hard-won representation.

While we do indeed see the normalcy of her home life with her parents and younger brothers and the regular, teenage-girl instincts that exist alongside her courage, we never get a glimpse into her deeper feelings.

Fair warning: If a romance about beautiful, miserable people is your least favorite indie subgenre, this may not be your cup of tea.

Secret Headquarters is as bland and forgettable as its title would suggest. It’s so generic, it almost sounds like the name of a better movie translated awkwardly from another language into its simplest terms in English.

Before You Know It shifts seamlessly from quirky to sad to mysterious to wacky to surreal within just the space of a few days, so much so that you’d never know it’s director Hannah Pearl Utt’s feature filmmaking debut.

An impressive team comes together in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the heist thriller Triple Frontier, but the results are frustratingly uneven.

Lingua Franca isn’t a screed. Far from it. Sandoval pulls us in gently with long, single takes which are often static, immersing us in the quiet rhythms of the lived-in environment she’s created within the Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

It’s about both fellatio jokes and falling in love all over again, but it’s so rushed and the characters are so underdeveloped that the film feels frustratingly slight.

Not to sound derisive, but there’s definitely a target audience here. What they’ll get will be mildly satisfying: a film that’s well-acted but tastefully restrained to a fault, with gentle humor about aging and a central mystery that isn’t all that engaging.

It’s structurally awkward, jumping around in time needlessly and sometimes confusingly, rendering Nureyev’s story weirdly inert until the final 20-30 minutes.

Slickly paced and radiating sexy glamour, “Ocean’s 8” moves with the swagger of a supermodel prancing down the runway.

As They Made Us is clearly a personal debut effort for Bialik, but she shows enough confidence behind the camera to make you curious about whatever other stories she has to tell.

Back and forth The Oak Room goes, without ever building the tension it ostensibly seeks. Instead, it meanders from tale to tale, and the writing isn’t sharp or specific enough to sustain this kind of complex framework.

Moving from in front of the lens to behind it, the former ‘80s sitcom star clearly has something personal and piercing to say. Her film will surely resonate with so many others who hear their own nagging voices in their heads.

An update of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” set in the mid-aughts, “Saltburn” is deliciously, wickedly mean—seductive and often surreal—with lush production values and lacerating performances.

From its lively and vibrant animated opening, Yan’s film is a complete blast, filled with zippy energy and irresistible girl power. And Robbie, in her seemingly endless versatility, is up for every challenge in a role that’s as demanding physically as it is verbally. She is positively infectious in the candy-colored chaos she creates.

Guillermo del Toro would love “Stitch Head.” This animated, family-friendly take on the classic “Frankenstein” tale has a soft spot for its monsters, most of whom are soft and squishy themselves.

Even at a brisk 79 minutes (including credits), “Glorious” feels like an intriguing idea that’s been stretched thin to feature length.

Dazzlingly impressive from a technical perspective but frustratingly dull from a narrative one, Medusa Deluxe is an ambitious but uneven experience.

While the premise eventually grows thin and the jokes turn repetitive by the third act, the chemistry between the movie’s three stars is both lively and substantial enough to keep the antics enjoyable.

It lacks the verbal punch of a pulpy film noir. Its pacing is too slack to serve as a gripping romantic thriller. It even rings hollow as a cautionary tale, because everyone is scheming and duplicitous and so no one has been truly wronged.

The Whale is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

Ultimately, the cacophony of all these plot lines converging and the weight of the messaging being conveyed is almost too much to bear.

Gadot remains a winning and winsome figure in “Wonder Woman 1984,” and she retains her authentic connection with the audience, but the machinery around her has grown larger and unwieldy. Maybe that was inevitable, the urge in crafting a sequel to make everything wilder and brasher, more sprawling and complicated. In the process, though, the quality that made the original film such a delight has been squashed almost entirely.

Eventually it becomes a half-baked, sci-fi horror flick, and even a bit of a drama. Like “I Feel Pretty,” it uses its high-concept premise to explore notions of feminine power, at least superficially — and similarly, its execution ends up being problematic.

Isn’t It Romantic tries to have its red velvet cupcake and eat it too, and though it’s tasty and enjoyable while you’re watching it, you’ll realize how hungry you are for something heartier soon after you’ve come down from your sugar high.

It ultimately results in a cold, unsatisfying experience.

If only the dialogue and visuals matched the daring of its ideology.

For the film to be about more than just wildly outrageous behavior (although those moments are the one that provoke the biggest and well-earned laughs), these have to feel like real people and we have to care about them too. And we do, thanks to a strong cast of comic actresses who have an easy chemistry with each other.

The sequel (which is also a prequel) features a bigger cast, a longer running time, extra subplots and additional romantic entanglements. But it’s emptier than its predecessor and has even lower stakes. It’s less entertaining, and for all its frantic energy, it manages to go absolutely nowhere.

Too often, Kane and Koury don’t seem to trust entirely what they have, and they needlessly pad Voyeur with miniatures, re-enactments and an overall light, playful tone. It all seems at odds with the story’s fundamentally disturbing — yet gripping — content.

Pacino dials down the manic, wide-eyed “Hoo-ah!” that has defined his screen presence over the past couple decades, and often rendered the Method master a parody of himself.

The debut feature from Australian writer/director Mirrah Foulkes eventually provides enough of a revenge fantasy to satisfy, even if the road there is a bit windy and bumpy.

McDonagh’s film is well-crafted throughout but ultimately has nothing fresh or insightful to say about the ugliness of white privilege.

Director Ruth Paxton puts you on edge from the beginning in “A Banquet,” and holds that unsettling mood throughout. But because the sound design is so vivid and Paxton’s eye for disturbing detail is so creative, it’s even more frustrating that the payoff is so unsatisfying.

In terms of underwater worlds, once you’ve been to Pandora, you can never go anywhere else. But the fictional Caribbean island where The Little Mermaid takes place is certainly a pleasant escape.

While “Superior” has a rich style and a couple of intriguing ideas, it ultimately doesn’t add up to much, leaving you with the feeling that you’re watching an inferior homage.

The Glorias is consistently a visual treat, as you’d expect from Taymor.

Playing Banks over the course of more than a decade, Hodge consistently makes the movie compelling, even when it veers toward a safe, faith-based uplift.

It Chapter Two can be a sprawling, unwieldy mess — overlong, overstuffed and full of frustrating detours — but its casting is so spot-on, its actors have such great chemistry and its monster effects are so deliriously ghoulish that the film keeps you hooked.

A coming-of-age drama that’s as beautiful and brutal as the remote, rural landscape of northern Iceland where it takes place.

The scratchy, VHS-quality visuals and cheesy graphics of the film’s opening suggest that we shouldn’t take any of this too seriously, but rather enjoy the lo-fi, ‘80s nostalgia trip. And a scrappy, underdog enthusiasm is unmistakable throughout.

All the pieces would seem to be in place—on paper at least—for a rich and gripping grown-up drama. So why does the result feel so elusive and unsatisfying?

As in other recent female-driven raunchy comedies like “Bridesmaids,” “The Heat” and “Spy,” the force is strong in this one.