David Rooney

As a glimpse of a distinctive world and what happens when a young man who thrives within it gets uprooted, the film will yield low-key charms for patient viewers.

M3GAN might be too frequently funny to be terrifying, but it’s never too silly to deliver tension and vicious thrills. It seems a safe bet that the killer doll will return, not to mention become an in-demand costume next Halloween.

Bong’s adventurous new film barrels forward with chaotic plotting, as is often the case with the director’s work. But thematic coherence remains frustratingly elusive.

The film lacks the accompanying media spotlight that boosted the Moore release and therefore appears unlikely to reach beyond a liberal audience with an already vehement aversion to Fox News' partisan coverage.

It's full of wry observations about the confusion of relationships — female friendships in particular — along with droll insights about a writer's inspiration and whether drawing from real life constitutes a license or a betrayal. In addition to wonderful performances from an ace cast, especially Bergen in divinely flinty form, the production is a technical jewel.

The real stars are the magnificent black and white images shot by Dweck and Kershaw. The co-directors’ eye for composition allows them to find visual magic and an arresting sense of drama in every frame.

Cronenberg’s new film is less formally inventive and icy than Possessor, more narratively straightforward if no less disturbingly weird and grisly. But the go-for-broke extremity lacks the substance to make it more than an aggressive but shallow provocation.

The Outrun — the title refers to tracts of outlying grazing land on arable farms — is slightly overlong and at times feels cluttered. But it depicts the protagonist’s brutal struggle with enough distinctive elements — in every sense of the word — to make it more than just another draining addiction story.

While staccato dialogue and edgy confrontations have always been the wordsmith's forte, the precision-tooled mechanics of an elaborate crime caper have not, and the physical direction here could use some muscle.

While Woods' brash vitality is the movie's motor, it's in the moments when Goldie drops her bravado and reveals her vulnerability that the story becomes more than a reckless adventure.

Smart casting is the movie’s greatest strength; the entire ensemble shines.

Had all those assets been funneled into a movie with some tonal consistency and a script that built credible relationships, the result might have been a nasty bit of fun. Instead, it wobbles awkwardly between creeping mob menace and scrappy sitcom, inching toward a violent climax that still doesn’t acquire cohesion.

While Campos' tone and storytelling are not always the smoothest, and some of his choices are perplexing...he slowly builds a detailed mosaic of his central character and the environment she's so determined to conquer.

Blending sensitive drama with musical fantasy and a heart worn unapologetically on its sleeve, Saturday Church is a modest charmer that plays almost like a narrative response to last year's feature documentary Kiki, about the New York voguing scene.

In Queer, Luca Guadagnino meets William S. Burroughs on the iconoclast’s own slippery terms and the result is mesmerizing.

Stone and Plemons are both in top form, clearly vibing with the director’s idiosyncratic sensibility and upping each other’s game. And newcomer Delbis is a sad-sack delight, a sweet-natured naïf caught in Teddy and Michelle’s ferocious battle of wits.

Nutcrackers is not exactly robust as uplifting family comedies go, but for audiences willing to get in sync with Green’s free-flowing groove, the emotional payoff will be affecting.

What really distinguishes Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, however, is the depth of feeling it brings to the protagonist’s grief and her gradual emergence from it. That goes double for Zellweger’s performance.

Director Nia DaCosta, working from a script she wrote with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, uses Bernard Rose’s 1992 film as a jumping-off point for bone-chilling horror that expands provocatively on the urban legend of the first film within the context of Black folklore and history, as well as the distorting white narrative that turns Black victims into monsters.

If not every detail of the band's fluctuating fortunes and lineup is chronicled with crystal clarity, the punchy scrappiness of Jarmusch's film — stuffed not only with electric concert footage but with a cornucopia of amusing visual references, plus cool graphics and some droll original animation by James Kerr — is an appropriate fit for the subject.

While the investigative midsection slumps just a little, El Conde remains a spellbinding and mischievously spry spin on a deadly serious subject from a director who, in his tenth feature, continues to come up with audacious surprises.

In the film’s exquisite handling of death as the ultimate – or in some cases the only – conduit for love, it arrives at an unmistakable final note of hope and renewal.

A stunningly crafted work from first-time feature director Nicole Kassell.

As compelling as the life-and-death situation is, it becomes a bit of a drag in a movie pushing two-and-a-half hours that could definitely benefit from a tighter edit.

Ramsay’s film is hard to love, but that beautiful visual casts such an intense glow it pulls the whole unwieldy thing together.

It’s an unassuming comic drama that sneaks up on you, its emotional honesty fueled by gorgeous performances of unimpeachable naturalness from Will Arnett and Laura Dern.

A sweetly subversive dig at the constricting codes of teen hierarchies, the sheep-like mentality of youth and the failures of the education system.

Rippling with sly humor and a bold command of the tropes of classic Hitchcockian suspense, this is a twisty and beguiling original, led by contrasting but expertly synced performances from Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway.