David Rooney

A powerful account of self-actualization spanning 20 formative years, Liesl Tommy’s biopic is also an intimate gift of love, rich in complexity, spirituality, Black pride and feminist grit rooted not in didactic speeches but in authentic experience. The ageless music, of course, is the galvanizing force, but it’s the personal struggle behind it that makes the story so affecting.

The film is measured yet forceful, never strident in making its point.

Directed with a workmanlike lack of style by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino and written by Kevin A. Rice without the required ambiguities to feed the protagonist’s paranoia, this pedestrian wrong-place-wrong-time manhunt through Greece never really sparks. And the jury that’s still out over whether John David Washington is movie-star material gets shaky evidence to support that case.

Juiced up with nods to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and to classic David Cronenberg bug-outs, much of it set to insidious techno beats, this is commandingly creepy psycho-horror, even if its forbidding narrative loses momentum.

The absence of a light touch here means that even the teasing banter and sexual tension between appealing leads Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt is a bit stiff.

Lamb is a disturbing experience but also a highly original take on the anxieties of being a parent, a tale in which nature plus nurture yields a nightmare.

It embraces the strange remoteness of myth and Middle Ages lore on its own terms and creates something quietly dazzling and new.

Wrapping up his stories is never Carpignano’s strong point and at two full hours, this one could have used greater economy. But the slow-burn power of the drama is formidable and there are moments of separation that pack searing poignancy.

Nitram is an uncommonly tough, taxing film with an aftershock that’s hard to shake.

The beautiful closing landscape shots of the jungles and mountains suggest that memory extends even beyond the human dimension.

There’s enormous heart behind Justin Chon’s drama, and wrenching performances full of feeling from the writer-director and his co-star Alicia Vikander. But those strengths don’t obscure the problems of an overdetermined screenplay, with too many plot points competing for focus and too many moments of strained melodrama.

Bursting at the seams with hand-crafted visual delights and eccentric performances from a stacked ensemble entirely attuned to the writer-director’s signature wavelength, this is the film equivalent of a short story collection.

At a little over two hours, Red Rocket suffers mildly from prolix stretches, and just like The Florida Project, it could have used some tightening. But it’s a pleasure to put yourself in Baker’s capable hands as he ambles through his loose story with its affectionate, slyly humorous character observations and immersive sense of place.

As dour as it often seems with its reek of stale booze and cigarette smoke, there’s joy here for patient audiences willing to find it, and to forego the easy consolations of a more conventional outcome.

Making ingenious use of split-screen, experimental montage and densely layered images and sound over two fabulously entertaining hours, Haynes puts his distinctive stamp on the material while crafting a work that could almost have come from the same artistic explosion it celebrates.

Considering the subject matter, Everything Went Fine is not the most affecting drama, but its honesty and intelligence keep you glued.

It’s just too bad there’s not more of a personal stamp on the material to rescue it from its indie-film clichés. Flag Day is not a complete misfire, and if a no-name director had made it, the movie would probably get a pass. But considering the emotional stakes involved it’s neither terribly memorable nor moving.

The distinctive British filmmaker is at the height of her powers in this semiautobiographical work.

This is a film of transporting grace and compassion, cerebral but never cold. It’s no small compliment to say that After Yang seems almost like an American sci-fi movie that Ozu or Kore-eda might have made.

Unfurling over a sluggish two hours plus, Stillwater is least convincing when McCarthy attempts to build suspense, with most of that work being done by Mychael Danna’s score. The late plot twists become almost risible, once Akim (Idir Azougli) enters the picture.

Carax’s trademark bonkers magic elevates many of these scenes, to be sure. But there’s also a nagging naiveté, even a silliness to the storytelling that kept bumping me out of the sluggish drama.

Whether the narrative is in amped-up overdrive or idling, the director and her magnetic cast keep us fully invested in their cautious reconnection and their ability to survive a series of life-threatening encounters.

Fairrie doesn’t attempt to rewrite history and make a case for Collins as an underappreciated literary genius. But she paints a stirring picture of a gifted storyteller and a brilliant female entrepreneur, who shrugged off the cultural snobbery and the misogynistic backlash sparked by her “scandalous” work and laughed all the way to the bank.

It’s a chilling psychological inquiry that holds your attention for the duration.

As each new wrinkle comes to light, Soderbergh keeps the action wound tight, zigging and zagging like a well-oiled machine.

Director Lee, who co-wrote the screenplay with Glazer and was a frequent Broad City collaborator, doesn’t quite sustain that bold stylistic stamp, even if the perturbing intimacy and insidious angles of the visuals go a long way toward masking the uneven tone.

The film trades the agreeably limber storytelling and seeming spontaneity of Leon’s previous work for a narrative both aimless and inert.

The film might be conventionally structured, but the singular ebullience and warmth of its resilient subject make it highly entertaining.

It’s not canonical Pixar, but it’s as sweet and satisfying as artisanal gelato on a summer afternoon.

Infinite is a soulless grind. Juiced up with a succession of CG-enhanced accelerated chases and fight action interspersed with numbing bursts of high-concept geek speak, Antoine Fuqua’s sci-fi thriller isn’t helped by a lead performance from Mark Wahlberg at his most inexpressive.

The maturity of the directorial voice is evident in its clear-eyed, rigorously unsentimental assessment of a shattering situation.

This one offers plenty of lurid fun and some genuine scares. But the grounding in dark spirituality that made the previous entries focused on the Warrens so compelling gets diluted, despite the reliably dignifying double-act of Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson.

An engrossing, unfailingly lucid account of a momentous political breakthrough that interrupted a decades-long impasse. Few will be unmoved by its sorrowful timeliness.

The very personal nature of Taylor’s involvement with these magnificent creatures makes this quite an affecting account of their threatened survival.

This is a stirring valentine to a neighborhood and its people that, as the film tells it, stared gentrification in the eye and stood their ground, staying true to their cultural identity.

It’s another breathless chamber piece, expertly crafted to pack dread into every nerve-rattling sound.

The well-crafted film’s principal arcs may be largely predictable, but it’s an emotionally satisfying and gripping watch.

There’s no shortage of excitement, suspense, jokey camaraderie, sorrowful losses, satisfying comeuppances, twists and turns to fill the generous running time, with plenty of variation in the bloody encounters.

Buried somewhere deep inside this phony, flashy movie there are thoughtful questions of racial identity, ingrained social perceptions, environmental conditioning and codes of masculinity. . . . But any thematic coherence is sacrificed to stylistic showboating that keeps taking us out of the story.

There's enough here to keep you engrossed, particularly once the camera pulls back in a majestic reveal of the environment surrounding the pod. The visual effects are slick, but the most indispensable effect is the human element of Laurent's performance — by turns distraught, desperate, tough, determined and resourceful.

The result is a solid entry in the Clancy screen canon — gritty, briskly paced, laced with vigorously choreographed fight scenes, explosive weapons action and twisty political intrigue that seems prescient as it taps into the most strained period in U.S.-Russian relations since the Cold War.

Ultimately, this is an original adventure that feels stitched together out of a hundred familiar film plots, often freely acknowledging its pop-cultural plundering, as in the family's obligatory slo-mo power strut away from a building exploding in flames. But for audiences content with rapid-fire juvenilia, the busy patchwork of prefab elements will be entertaining enough.

The brisk pacing and capable cast still can't quite mask a certain routine feel in a movie without much heart.

The conflicts feel just a tad too routine and the characters too thinly drawn to get the blood flowing.

After an intriguing setup that takes its time building atmosphere and characters, declining to rush the first death, the film becomes progressively more overwrought and hokey. It also loads up on derivative tropes that worked better everywhere from Ringu through The Conjuring Universe.

Despite an undernourished thread connecting key characters by their experience of loss, seldom have the human figures and their interplay been as peripheral to the headline action in a popcorn blockbuster. The good news is that even if the convoluted kaiju mythology tends to trip over itself in a plot that only barely makes sense, the Monsterverse face-off delivers plenty of visceral excitement.

Admirers of old-fashioned British war drama should find this passably entertaining, and the dazzling green Welsh countryside and seafront locations that stand in for England's Southeast coast are certainly pleasing to the eye. But handsome production values can't disguise shaky storytelling that relies almost entirely on composer Marc Streitenfeld's agitated orchestral score to stoke suspense.

An interrogation of Australia's history of racial violence that also takes on gender, identity and domestic abuse against a backdrop right out of an archetypal high country Western, the engrossing thriller is admirably ambitious but choppy, at times eluding the director's grasp.

What's most notable about Todd Stephens' heartfelt salute to a real-life local legend is that the campiness of its outrageous plot becomes secondary to the soulful poignancy.

A stirring requiem of rage and resistance.

An amusing, accomplished debut on its own modest terms, Next Door works best as tart meta comedy, becoming increasingly cramped in scope and setting as it spirals into an obsessive revenge thriller.

The directors allow ample space for somber reflections without ever detracting from the fact that Tina, fundamentally, is a celebration, a unique survival story.

The requiem-like heaviness of the music at times risks pushing Ted K into overwrought territory, but this remains a haunting vision of vengeful obsession carried out by a criminal who makes some provocative points.

Language Lessons, which comes from the Duplass Brothers indie production stable, is a small-scale debut but one graced with charm and genuine heart.

The characters are uninvolving, the emotional stakes never fully take hold and the physical action invariably promises more than it delivers.

It's the integrity of the performances by Hovig and Skarsgard that keeps the classy drama so engrossing, with the director making neither character entirely saint or sinner but giving them both infinite shadings in between.

The frenetic plot makes about as much sense as it needs to within this world of slapstick insanity, random detours, crazy chases, gambling fever and a talent quest for "the coveted Campy Award." You'll either give in to it, or you won't.

Walker's story no doubt is grounded in a very real milieu that reflects the grim existence of countless Americans returning from active duty to a country blighted by economic downturn, shrinking opportunity and substance abuse. But the only reality Cherry reflects with numbing insistence is that of co-directors getting high on their own high style.

Day mesmerizes even when Lee Daniels' unwieldy bio-drama careens all over the map with stylistic inconsistency and narrative dysfunction, settling for episodic electricity in the absence of a robust connective thread. It's a mess, albeit an absorbing one, driven by a raw central performance of blistering indignation, both tough and vulnerable.

An unapologetically delirious frolic in which lifelong friendship is tested by romance, adventure and the mass-extermination plan of an archvillain, this disarming escape to turquoise waters and a seafood buffet will be just what many folks need right now.

Its freewheeling storytelling often feels slapdash, its hippy-dippy earnestness a touch simplistic and its central allegory is lifted straight out of X-Men. But there's a nonstop fusillade of imagination at work here that commands attention, even when the balance of art-school inventiveness and child-like fantasy threatens to topple into chaos.

The plotting is haphazard and laced with meandering detours that don't always pay off, but there's a distinctive voice in the deadpan humor and poignancy in the story's collision of aspirational self-delusion with blithe resignation.

It transitions from tender romance into penetrating sorrow before taking on notes of mordant humor and unexpected quasi-thriller elements.

It's pleasant enough, but lacks the vitality to be more than mildly funny as comedy as well as the insight to build emotional heft as drama.

Though the movie is never unengaging, ultimately, it doesn't quite deliver.

Sisto has an arresting visual style, a firm command of tone and an impressive ability to steer his fine cast onto the same rigorous wavelength, all of which makes him a talent to watch.

Whether this is a one-time passion project or the beginnings of an ongoing move from acting into directing in her career focus, Hall has crafted a work that's thoughtful, provocative and emotionally resonant.

Led by sensational performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as William O'Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated his inner circle, this is a scalding account of oppression and revolution, coercion and betrayal, rendered more shocking by the undiminished currency of its themes.

It's a harrowing watch, but a cathartic one, with each of the four superb principal actors delivering scenes of wrenching release.

Even when accessing the situation remotely via camera operators and citizen journalists on the ground, Wang deftly balances factoids with first-hand experiences to show the emotional cost, both for people unable to say goodbye to their loved ones and front-line health care workers and funeral home staff, absorbing the trauma of unrelenting losses.

The cluttered plot keeps surging forward while providing too few illuminating insights, instead loading up on mystical mumbo jumbo and flashes of gore.

It's a powerful and poetic memoir of personal struggle and self-discovery that expands the definition of documentary.

If the director's generally taut original screenplay settles on an ending too cryptic to be fully satisfying, the performances of Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as cops from the old school and the new who end up having more in common than they anticipated supply enough glue to hold everything together. Add in Jared Leto as the taunting weirdo who becomes their prime suspect in a series of brutal murders, and you have a suspenseful crime thriller with a dark allure.