G. Allen Johnson

With “After Yang,” the distinctive filmmaker Kogonada has made a movie that is at once ambitious yet timid, asking big questions but providing no answers, not even clues. It’s a thought experiment, but a thought that meanders.

Ellis’ story could have used a little fleshing out, no pun intended. Instead, a terrific cast is left floundering in the dark, searching for the film’s human dimension. Cursed, indeed.

Decker proudly revels in Lennie’s scattered uniqueness, even as Lennie navigates the minefield of her choices and says some truly kooky things (“I wish my shadow could get up and walk beside me”). YA movies might not be your bag, but if they are, perhaps the NorCal vibe of “The Sky Is Everywhere” will strike a weepy chord.

So it’s not my bag, but I went into Jackass Forever with the best intentions.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is provocative and irritating — and intentionally so. That makes it particularly annoying, because even as you’re provoked and irritated, you are also aware that writer-director Radu Jude wanted you to feel that way.

It’s as if someone made a backstage musical without any musical numbers, just the backstage part.

Swan Song, of course, belongs to Ali. He conveys Cameron’s vise grip of moral dilemma, fear of dying and concern for his family visually, often wordlessly, and it is a complex, layered performance. Let’s just say this is an unusual way to confront your inner demons.

Like Yûsuke’s beloved classic Saab 9000 that Misaki drives ever so carefully, Drive My Car moves ahead with smooth confidence and a fine-tuned reliability.

Writing With Fire, directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, tags along with these remarkable women as they go about their work. Viewers sit in on editorial meetings and training sessions, and go out in the field...It’s well worth seeking out.

To imagine the future, one must consider the past and be active in the present. C’mon C’mon is about the present, and how precious it truly is.

Every character, even minor ones, is well thought out and cast; the eye-popping visual design is not only inspired and mesmerizing but also functional; and memorable songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and others complement the story perfectly.

The first film seemed a fully formed, lived-in world. The sequel leaves Julie on her own; an interior monologue that Hogg, and Swinton Byrne, can’t quite externalize.

The “Paranormal Activity” films, to their credit, build slowly, backloading the chills in the second half. That means, to get through that first hour, the characters have to be interesting, but these self-absorbed Gen Z wannabe filmmakers are anything but.

This is the kind of made-for-cable-level movie where a pedestrian script (by Richard D’Ovidio) with the usual horror cliches is elevated by strong acting, no-nonsense direction and a couple of neat twists.

As the documentary was produced by National Geographic with the cooperation of the Cousteau Society, Garbus has access to some fabulous, colorfully restored footage, some of it never before seen, that makes this an eye-popping experience — in theaters especially.

One of the most playful films about cinema in recent memory, and even with its angst, is more joyful than any film Bergman made on the island.

So while Fuqua’s The Guilty is not much different from the original, his direction is crisp, Gyllenhaal’s performance grows on you and Riley Keough (Zola), as the voice of the woman who is abducted, is terrific.

The absorbing rags-to-riches-to-rags story — a must for any classic film fan — is told in The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, directed by Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri.

Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which credits the documentary as its inspiration, recreates some of the doc’s scenes almost verbatim. But while imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, Abe Sylvia’s ambitious but shallow script has something spiritually missing — namely, a point to it all.

But Eastwood is undercut by the unbearably weak screenplay by Nick Schenk, who adapts a 1975 novel by N. Richard Nash. Schenk has turned in good work for Eastwood before, including “Gran Torino” and “The Mule,” but here his strategy seems to be having his characters explain everything that they’re doing and feeling, much of which should be delivered visually. Action is character, after all.

One wonders how a master of truly twisted movies — say, a David Lynch or a Brian De Palma — would have approached “The Voyeurs.” One suspects they would have a bit more fun and taken us further down the moral rabbit hole. And the sex would have been better too.

The strength of Fauci is its underlying theme, which is really not about Fauci at all. Hoffman and Tobias jump back and forth in time, from the AIDS to Ebola to the COVID years, and surreptitiously a portrait emerges of the uneasy relationship between the scientific community, the general public and the political establishment.

Reminiscence is never not interesting, but Joy leaves a lot of the intriguing issues unsatisfactorily explored.

Aided by the star magnetism of Yen and Tse, and back in his element on the colorful streets of Hong Kong, Chan goes out with both guns blazing.

Like practically every other animated movie meant for mass consumption, the movie gets lost in the chase — the point where story flow is interrupted so that characters get lost as they try to achieve their objective and a manufactured villain is trying to keep them from their goal.

The film’s writer-director is British-born Sabrina Doyle, who is making her feature debut after spending the past decade in Los Angeles making short films. Her touch is nearly perfect: authentic, patient, guiding — giving her actors plenty of space. And they respond.

There’s one big problem about No Ordinary Man: The Billy Tipton Documentary: It’s not really about Billy Tipton. Instead, it’s about how transgender representation is perceived in the media, chiefly between 1989, when Tipton died, and current times.

The Val Kilmer we meet has been in the arena, realizes he has been lucky despite the hard knocks, and has now achieved what we hope is a lasting peace. His physical voice might be gone, but his inner voice still has much to say.

The original Space Jam was an out-of-nowhere delight, and Jordan gave space to his fellow live action co-stars, such as Bill Murray, Larry Bird and Wayne Knight. It was also in and out in 87 minutes; Space Jam: A New Legacy, directed by a good filmmaker, Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip, The Best Man), is a bloated 115 minutes, its mayhem and madness wearing pretty thin as it goes along.

Directed by Everardo Gout, The Forever Purge is non-stop action, which is fine because the script by series creator James DeMonaco, who directed the first three films, never plumbs the depths of its clever concept. The intense, appealing performances by the lead actors get us through.

Even as everyone’s plans unravel, the film does not. The script, by Ed Solomon, is sharp, as is Soderbergh’s direction.

While False Positive has lapses in logic and could have a quicker pace in the second half, it fully embraces a bizarre sense of the macabre that is irresistible.

There are some rumblings about the sea monsters wanting to express their true selves and being accepted by humans even though they are different, yadda yadda, but it’s not very well developed and Luca, like its charming village at low tide, is a shallow dip in the water.

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It has a lot of star power: Spielberg, Gloria Estefan, Eva Longoria, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Whoopi Goldberg and her Electric Company co-star Morgan Freeman. But none outshine the feisty subject herself.

Poysti’s subtle, layered performance conveys Tove’s complex dilemma with sweetness and pain. This is a portrait not of a lady on fire, but of a woman struggling to strike the match.

Although much of the footage is unseen, perhaps the freshest part of Apocalypse ’45 is hearing the veterans debate whether the U.S. should have dropped the atomic bombs, and how America has progressed in the decades since.

At its heart, it’s a darkly comic drama about a man trained to be a killing machine who must rediscover his own humanity before his daughter loses hers. Along the way, a family of quirky characters is formed.

If nothing else, The Human Factor demonstrates the tall task that awaits President Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken. Good luck.

As a woman struggling to define her own narrative, Yeo delivers a layered, heartbreaking performance. But she is ultimately ill-served by both the inertness of the story and Chen’s awkward approach to the material in the final half-hour (no spoilers here).

Demon Slayer is sharply paced, colorful fun.

Anyone wondering what 1960s TV show Ironside would have been like if Raymond Burr had been a dirty cop gets their answer courtesy of Morgan Freeman in the dreadful new thriller Vanquish.

Jeffrey Wolf’s exceptional documentary Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts seeks to tells its subject’s story in a deeply personal way, while also pulling back when needed to contextualize his work.

So while director Evgeny Afineevsky practically makes the case for Francis’ sainthood — immersing the viewer in a nonstop barrage of swelling violins and inspirational music, featuring interview after interview of people who have been touched personally by the pope — his bloated two-hour film leaves many unanswered questions.

It’s nothing groundbreaking, just good-humored bloody action directed at a frenetic pace, clocking in at about an hour and a half. Sometimes you need a little bit of fun, and Boss Level delivers.

Sure to be an instant animated classic as it expertly balances emotion, humor and social politics amid a backdrop of surreal, eye-popping visual beauty.

A movie that seems to have been made by people who don’t understand the history, true nature or appeal of their iconic characters.

There are so many rich, colorful scenes that it’s a worthy watch just as an ethnographic record of our planet in a moment of time.

Using movie clips, animation and news footage, Ascher creates his own alternate universe in A Glitch in the Matrix and explores phenomena such as the Mandela Effect, a real-life wonder in which masses of unconnected people claim to “remember” something that is simply not true.

Wright is perfect, and Edee is an interesting character for her to play, but it’s fair to say that when Bichir first appears he livens up the film considerably. They work well together, and there is an economy of words between the characters that tests both actors’ ability to communicate visually.

It is not just about the American dream; it is a search for America’s soul.

Despite the terrific set design in The World to Come, the characters don’t feel at home in it; they do very little farm work, for example. Still, Waterston and Kirby do achieve an intimacy that operates as a warm fire warding off the chilliness around them. It’s too bad we were left out in the cold.

Twilight’s Kiss is a fragile film of quiet moments and tender feelings, and although it runs out of gas near the end, it takes us on an engaging journey.

Naomi Kawase’s films don’t hammer toward arbitrary plot points but flow like water, so “True Mothers” doesn’t unfold like a Hollywood blockbuster, or indeed, even most arthouse films. It courses along softly and confidently, with unexpected ebbs and estuaries.

It’s slam-bang action adventure that pretty much answers the question, “What if Christopher Nolan made a James Bond film?”

So there’s a lot going on here, and director Joel Crawford and his teams efficiently keep the story moving along. There’s a wonderful “Flintstones” versus “Jetsons” vibe, the characters are, as usual, appealing.

A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time.

A tense, nail-biting thriller featuring powerhouse performances.

Freaky is, dare we say, soul-sucking?

An exquisite achievement.

Adams, a six-time Oscar nominee, is likely headed to a seventh for an admittedly showy but nuanced turn that manages to bring Bev’s humanity bubbling to the surface even as her ugly side dominates — as Thoreau might say, a life of not-so-quiet desperation. Close is terrific as usual.

I Am Greta does show why she is a powerful voice. The key to her appeal is her honesty and her “innocence,” or as some would say, naivete.

Fortunately, director Thor Freudenthal (“Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters”) eventually finds some truth, thanks to an exceptional cast headlined by two rising dynamic young actors, Charlie Plummer and Taylor Russell.

Bloody good.

Ultimately is less a horror film than a valentine, from a daughter to a father, and a sweet portrait of a man going gently into that good night.

The watchable LX 2048 certainly gets an “A” for effort, including a creative take on Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. I’m not sure how good a movie it is, but it would be an excellent basis for a streaming series, in which its ambitious ideas would have time to develop.

The issues of aging and familial relationships and the appealing nature of this family would make “Our Time Machine” worthy of a look in any case, but what puts it over the top is Maleonn’s fascinating visual inventions.

Still, I Am Woman, while it doesn’t roar, effectively tells Reddy’s story and speaks strongly about the women’s movement and the struggle that continues.

What makes Chemical Hearts so good is it’s unafraid of its feelings. It tackles complicated emotional issues such as depression, suicide, sex and love with a straightforward honesty. For once, a film about young people is completely free of snark and irony.

The One and Only Ivan has within it a much more interesting film waiting to break out that really could have been for the whole family, but alas it is trapped within the cement walls of Disney’s cookie-cutter formula.

Hawke is effectively brooding, which recalls his first collaboration with Almereyda, a 2000 adaptation of “Hamlet” set in modern-day New York City.

It’s a well-made film in many ways but also frustratingly skin-deep for a news junkie like me.

The best parts of Ai WeiWei: Yours Truly include the scenes at Ai’s studio in Beijing, as he conceives the project and we get a glimpse into how the sausage is made; and the titular focus on political prisoners.