Christy Lemire

But because the talent amassed here is so impressive, I wish the film had been more focused.

Working alongside veteran screenwriter Joe Carnahan, who’s made his name with this kind of brash, muscular storytelling in films like “Narc” and “The Grey,” Hernandez Bray tries to get his arms around a lot at once. Quite often, he’s successful.

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

Just you try to resist the impossible adorableness offered up in the latest Disneynature documentary, Penguins. You cannot do it, despite the cutesy anthropomorphizing, the too-tidy nature of the story it’s telling and the knowingly cheesy soundtrack of ‘80s tunes accompanying these creatures’ adventures.

With Girls of the Sun, she handles the action sequences with a deft hand and a feel for tension, but her character development is woefully lacking to the point of empty cliché.

You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro in your life until you see the reboot of “Hellboy.”

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.

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.

So why does Captain Marvel feel like a bit of a disappointment? It’s fine and often quite funny. It fits securely within the MCU but also functions sufficiently as a stand-alone entity. But the character, and the tremendous actress playing her in Oscar-winner Brie Larson, deserved more than fine.

Director/co-writer Chris Dowling infuses his sports drama with a grungy sense of place, making Run the Race feel a bit like a Christian version of “Friday Night Lights.”

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.

While it’s a lot of fun, it isn’t as consistently clever or thrilling as its predecessor.

Terrible and insane, and will surely end up being one of the worst films of 2019. But it’s also such a wildly ambitious roller coaster ride that it must be experienced, preferably with friends, to laugh together at its cheesy dialogue, over-the-top performances and multiple, major plot twists.

It’s a hollow replica of its source material.

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?

It would seem like an impossible feat, but somehow, directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman have breathed thrilling new life into the comic book movie. The way they play with tone, form and texture is constantly inventive and giddily alive.

Hedges’ film is stronger in its first half, when it’s an understated character drama, than in its second half, when it morphs into a contrived crime thriller. But the performances remain uniformly strong and hold the story together, even as it threatens to spin out of control.

The makers of The Possession of Hannah Grace clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty — and mostly scare-free — horror film ends up being.

Damned if it doesn’t work beautifully for nearly the entirety of its two hour-plus running time. Green Book is the kind of old-fashioned filmmaking big studios just don’t offer anymore. It’s glossy and zippy, gliding along the surface of deeply emotional, complex issues while dipping down into them just enough to give us a taste of some actual substance.

A big-budget, holiday-timed blockbuster about…racism, which may not exactly be the joyful, escapist entertainment families are looking for this time of year.

Reitman gets the superficial details of the era right: the pay phones, the big sweaters, the constant indoor smoking. But he’s missing both key insight and satirical bite in his depiction of this pivotal point in American history. Privacy is about to become a thing of the past. In The Front Runner, it dies with a whimper.

A weirdly hideous hodgepodge of images and ideas, as convoluted as its confusing title would suggest.

Suspiria is as striking and severe as the director’s “Call Me by Your Name,” the best film of 2017, was warm and welcoming.

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

So of course, Hardy applies that same intensity to the comic-book anti-hero origin story, Venom. And his fully committed performance is pretty much the only reason to see it.

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

Judy Greer assembled a monumental cast for her directing debut, A Happening of Monumental Proportions. Then she stranded her fellow actors with material that doesn’t even begin to tap into their talents.

Everything gets upended in the film’s final third, when its languid pacing gives way to sped-up plotting.