Clint Worthington

To be sure, the concept of Spike Jonze directing a Beastie Boys documentary conjures up flashier results than this. But taking it for what it is, Beastie Boys Story remains an entertaining, insightful, and unexpectedly fun look back at three of hip-hop’s most iconic voices.

Even as On the Count of Three tumbles toward an ending as unpredictable as it is slightly unearned, the bones of its central performances and unabashed embrace of its concept keep you glued to the screen.

There’s something, well, deliciously appetizing about Bones and All’s oddball romance, from Guadagnino’s sensitive approach to the material to its staggering work from both leads.

Formally, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel ... But this straight-shooting approach mostly works, even if it doesn’t pin Davis down as concretely as some would like.

Whether the result of the film’s brisk 90-minute runtime, or a lack of desire to investigate some of its subject’s greater desires and fears, Love, Gilda feels breezy to a fault.

For all its comparative lack of insight, there’s something intriguing about the ride, due chiefly to a pair of fascinating lead performances and a fatalistic sense of humor.

There’s a lot unexplored about fandom, queerness, and the ’90s indie movie scene in “Chasing Chasing Amy,” focused as it is on one filmmaker’s adoration of the subject at hand. But what’s left out of “Chasing”—and what the filmmaker decides to do, or not do, when faced with moments of clarity—can inform our own relationships with the art we love.

There’s something particularly galling about the laziness of this one — its flimsy gestures toward topicality, the piecemeal nature of the whole thing — that makes its failures acutely horrifying.

If someone decides they don’t like you, there’s nothing you can do about it. If enough people share that opinion, they can absolutely destroy you. Combine that with an always-fantastic Cage, thoughtful and buffoonish in every gesture and tic, and it makes for a delightfully mixed bag.

Its essential components touch on the valuable insight that the white imagination often can’t wrap its head around what Black music is actually saying, and the ways it says it.

It’s brassy, breezy and gut-bustingly fun; unfortunately, it’s at the expense of the film’s drama and pathos.

Coppola sends us on a light, frothy father/daughter adventure, to be sure, but one suffused with the tiny tragedies of misogyny, and the excuses men make for their selfish behavior. Even the sweetest dishes need a little salt to bring out its complexities, and On the Rocks is no exception.

Wrestling, at its best, is a mythic art, an extension of the traditions of ancient Greece — with all the grand pageantry and theater that turns mere mortals into titans. Durkin knows this, and uses all that bigness to startling effect, transforming the tragedy of an American family into a bittersweet legend.

While the Fyre Festival was infamous for its crowded venue, poor infrastructure, and slowly devolving sense of social order, Woodstock '99 feels like the OG version of that kind of entertainment trainwreck.

What the doc explores [is] the divide between the personal and business halves of Bob Ross, and which one should be allowed to occupy his legacy. Is he a face on a logo that sells increasingly kitschy merch of the man? Or is he the father of a son who loves him and wants to determine how he's remembered?

The combo of Eilish’s stagecraft and Cameron’s filmmaking tools makes for a simply electrifying concert experience.

One wonders whether Fincher sees something of himself in The Killer — a man obsessed with process and precision, constantly tamping down the emotionality that he fears might violate the perfectionism he’s sought his whole career. In this way, it’s a perfect match of director to material, with a phalanx of great artists at the height of their powers aiding him in that mission.

As legal dramas go, it’s quite good; as a Todd Haynes film, you struggle to see the talent for which he’s known.

Maybe the formulas we’re so used to will be exactly the vehicle to introduce general audiences to the lived experiences of a community criminally underserved in media.

When it focuses on Eichner and Macfarlane, and the ever-complicated mores of queer masculinity, it stays charming and light on its feet. If it were a little less self-conscious about that homonormativity, it’d have a more cohesive identity, and be more of a slam dunk in the process.

Some people will think it’s a bizarre mess, others an unconventional masterwork. If there’s any justice in the world, the latter group will win out.

If Robinson’s style of humor puts you off already, rest assured that Friendship doesn’t break his existing comic bold. But for those shirt brothers in the Tim Robinson cult already, the Dan Flashes buyers and zipline pullers among us, Friendship offers next-level cringe packaged in something far more Kaufmanesque than his usual fare.

Always Shine is a fantastic thriller for two-thirds of its runtime, ending with a ballsy third act as admirable in its ambition as it is narratively frustrating.

The concept, in classic King fashion, is simple but alluring, and designed to explore the kind of adolescent male bonding the author honed in works like Stand by Me and IT.

It doesn’t always work, and the results are more than a little misanthropic (especially given the cruelty of its opening and closing moments). But if that’s your jam, and the prospect of body-swapping assassins coated in guts, gore, and neon appeals to you, Possessor‘s Argento-soaked atmosphere ought to fill that need.

For as choppy as Sirens can be in its too-short 78-minute runtime, it’s easy to chalk that up to the difficulties of filming during COVID. But what we do get is certainly crowd-pleasing, a riotous doc that combines likable personalities with thrumming guitar licks and its subjects’ relatable yearning to find their voice and their power.

It may feel like damning with faint praise, but “LifeHack” is easily one of the more tolerable screenlife thrillers of recent vintage.

Gunn keeps throwing enough inventive kills and comic-book antics at us (aided by the wildly disparate skills sets of our antiheroes) to keep the R-rated mayhem from getting too repetitive.