Courtney Howard

This true-life tale about perseverance, compassion and second chances cuts right to the quick. While it doesn’t stray from a predictable path, the journey is rarely dull, making our travels and these characters’ travails feel worthy of the big screen.

Frenetic, repetitious and simplistic, it relies heavily on the stylized spectacle of the song numbers and lyrics to bolster the disappointing drama.

Instead of finding the perfect balance of humor as the other films did, jokes outweigh and occasionally undercut the few resounding sentiments on personal evolution.

Gunn adeptly exercises a necessary modicum of visual dexterity to emphasize character drive.

The result is a genuinely moving, absurdist autobiography of a dynamic persona in flux that’s as campy as it is charming, ridiculous as it is rapturous, preposterous as it is profound.

Trish Sie’s middling and at times mawkish film not only makes us hate the game, but also its players.

Director Carlson Young and screenwriters Christine Lenig, Justin Matthews and Luke Spencer Roberts ground sharp, soaring sentiments in a reachable reality, innovatively remixing the genre’s familiar formulas to create their own meaningful and rather endearing movie.

It stretches credulity, as well as our patience.

Society Of The Snow may be the best version of this saga told so far. Still, it feels incomplete and doesn’t dig deeper even as it hints at greater pathos beneath the surface.

The movie is often darkly funny as the characters lob barbs at each other. Nevertheless, the story feels a tad truncated in spots. An elongated run time would service the action and narrative a bit better—and, as Mann fans know, he does love releasing a good director’s cut.

For those who choose to take this riveting journey of discovery, they’ll find this picture gets them to a place of inspiring enlightenment and keeps them in that mindset far beyond the end credits scroll.

In King and company’s capable hands, the care package delivered is a soul-warming cup of cocoa. Sweet yet never saccharine, cute yet never cloying, their hyper-stylized portrait of an iconic literary and cinematic figure is not only powered by the pure imagination that inspires the songs’ spectacle, but it’s also filled with audacious flourishes of charm, whimsy and poignancy.

The handful of explicit scenes feel like they’re included solely for shock value, coming across as schlocky and inert. That’s not to say the performances are at fault.

Lambert and screenwriters Todd Calgi Gallicano and Charles Shyer turn in a multi-faceted tale that blessedly never devolves into a one-dimensional story about two competitive, smart women sniping at each other while their clueless families watch from the sidelines.

Meg Ryan not only dazzles before the camera in What Happens Later, but behind it as well, as director and co-writer. Through the prism of one former couple’s relationship woes, this effervescent, enlightened romantic comedy explores our innate need for reconciliation within ourselves and with each other.

It’s a precise study of how strife and conflict metastasize if left unresolved. And by grounding these fine-tuned dramatics in the guise of a genre picture, it works to profound effect.

For a property that not only held unlimited potential for sequels galore, but also spin-offs (an all-female Expendables was briefly bandied about), it’s disheartening to see it face such creative bankruptcy. That’s not to say that, in the future, the right marriage of innovative directors and screenwriters can’t revive this flailing corpse and return it to its former glory. Unfortunately, recruiting those miracle workers seems more difficult than any mission any Expendable ever faced.

While not as subversive as its predecessor, it delivers on the promise of a smart and salient sequel with bolder action, bigger stakes, and deeper resonance for all ages.

This threequel is surprisingly lifeless and almost laugh-less.

These filmmakers have trouble finessing their shenanigan-laced setups into anything but frequently frustrating, unsatisfactory conclusions. This title urges us to choose love, but audiences should choose to not play along.

Director Sammi Cohen and screenwriter Alison Peck bestow this hilarious, heartrending adaptation of Fiona Rosenbloom’s novel with an uplifting, effervescent vision and vitality, giving voice to a young Jewish girl’s struggle to figure out who she is before the most important night of her life so far.

The story’s core strengths are undervalued in the translation from book to screen.

What’s there demonstrates a modicum of decent world-building, from which filmmakers can hopefully spin-off better, more capably crafted capers.

The world-building in Barbie is exceptional.

The filmmakers’ renewed vigor is our reward as, similar to its unfussy title, this sequel deals in clean-lined action and suspense, removing much of the excessive weight that bogged down the original.

Despite its efforts to present a well-rounded portrait of this determined starlet, the film ultimately feels like a glossier, slightly less salacious iteration of an “E! True Hollywood Story,” appealing primarily to those who relish tragic tales of the rich and famous.

It’s decent but a tad too restrained for its own good.

Jacknow’s genuinely disturbing imagery crawls under our skin, lingering long after the tense, bleak finale.