Christy Lemire

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.