David Rooney

Action scenes are serviceable enough but rarely exciting, pumped up with Snyder’s usual tool kit of speed-ramping and slo-mo. But there’s a grimy aesthetic to the movie that becomes ugly and tiresome (the director took on the DP role himself), and the episodic plotting seldom builds enough steam to stop you thinking about other things.

As Kevin recalls in voiceover, Fritz instilled a belief in his sons that if they were the toughest, the fastest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt them. The dismantling of that belief in the face of all-too-human physical and psychological vulnerability is ultimately what makes the uneven but heartfelt film affecting.

Without a more psychologically insightful script and less predictable story developments, Our Son shows that gay couples’ problems can be just as uninteresting as any other couples’ problems. Welcome to post-marriage equality humdrum!

Young audiences may well be enchanted, but I’m sad to report I found the whole confection sickly sweet and hopelessly twee.

For all its brawn and atmosphere and robustly choreographed combat, this is a distended historical tapestry too sprawling to remain compelling, particularly when its focus veers away from the central couple.

The contestants just lack dimension. And Lawrence’s journeyman handling of the more character-driven drama provides sputtering momentum at best.

Unlike Green’s Halloween trilogy, which served up diminishing returns with each new installment, Believer condenses that downward trajectory into the first chapter.

The film is saved to some degree by the unstinting commitment of Ronan and Mescal, sweating it out in an environment that’s stifling both physically and psychologically. But the screenplay becomes so overwrought that it smothers any emotional connection to them.

This is a movie that, its many strengths notwithstanding, seems split between the desire to do something original and an imagination tethered to better movies from the past. That makes it a nostalgic patchwork, not the bold new vision it aims to be.

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.

If you come to this film looking for a brisk overview of his achievements in couture, you might find High & Low more than serviceable. . . But if you’re expecting the definitive closing leg of the redemption tour, it’s unlikely you’ll find this a persuasive argument for separating the art from the a-hole.

The movie contains no non-diegetic music and even limits major camera movement to a relatively small handful of scenes. Nothing distracts from the tender wisdom of its unimpeachably unsentimental gaze and the vividness of its very specific New England milieu.

While hope is a quality not readily associated with the Mexican auteur’s work, it keeps surfacing here to extend a lifeline, even as we wait for the other shoe to drop. In that regard, Franco’s latest represents a slight departure, without surrendering the director’s signature austerity and intensity. He’s helped considerably by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, two riveting leads who hold nothing back.

It’s full of flashy technique and ostentatious stylistic flourishes but has almost nothing of note to say about the supposed burdens of privilege.

The Promised Land is a terrific story driven by skillful writing and strong performances. There’s an art to bringing vitality and modernity to historical drama, and Arcel shows a firm grasp of it.

The film could be read many ways, but fundamentally, it plays like a heartfelt depiction of resilience in the face of conflict and grief, a gentle call to find friends and trusted allies, to move forward and bring humanity and understanding to the world.

Rotting in the Sun ultimately feels slight and overstretched. But with its freewheeling handheld camerawork and characters grounded in skewed reality, it whips up a compelling kind of 21st century madness as it reflects on the solipsistic nature of artists and gay men in a world consumed by shallow pleasures.

As a penetrating study of character and milieu, it’s the work of a mature and enormously talented filmmaker not afraid to take chances.

It elegantly upgrades a key player in the Elvis legend from the sidelines, and anyone attuned to Coppola’s distinctive wavelengths will find it a pleasurably emotional experience.

Fennell is adept at pastiche, and at least she goes for sources worth plundering. But this is a movie that’s all surface cleverness, with nothing terribly insightful to say about its rarefied milieu and those gazing in longingly from the outside. Even so, Saltburn is juicy stuff, a revenge thriller that’s often wickedly funny and wildly enjoyable.

Amplifying its force with thrilling use of the subject’s music, this is a layered examination of a relationship that might be grossly over-simplified today as that of a closeted gay man and his “beard.” But Cooper and co-screenwriter Josh Singer dig deeper to depict a unique union, fraught with conflicts yet unbreakable — even when it’s broken.

Stuffed with rude delights, spry wit, radical fantasy and breathtaking design elements, the movie is a feast. And Emma Stone gorges on it in a fearless performance that traces an expansive arc most actors could only dream about.

While it unfolds in a hazy dream state rooted in Adam’s loneliness and the emotional suspension that has blocked him from moving forward, it’s by no means a downer. It’s a thing of beauty, heartfelt and unforgettable.

Ferrari is unlikely to go down as canonical Mann, lacking the glimmering, hard-edged stylishness of his best work. But admirers of the director’s high-intensity, muscular filmmaking will not go unrewarded.

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.

Aided by the dynamic cinematography of regular Ari Aster collaborator Pawel Pogorzelski, a pulsing electronic score by Brit musician Bobby Krlic and sturdy effects work, Soto brings an assured hand, balancing action with character-driven scenes and comedy with suspense throughout. The pacing is brisk, infused with youthful energy, but never so frenetic that it doesn’t allow intimate exchanges time to breathe.

The Monkey King is no exception. It mines rich source material for a widely accessible episodic adventure laced with rowdy martial arts clashes and fantastical detours. Even if its Americanization follows a standard template, the movie maintains a flavorful sprinkling of the material’s cultural specificity.

It gets the job done and is sure to pull solid numbers. It doesn’t hurt that Gadot has appealing chemistry with co-star Jamie Dornan.