G. Allen Johnson

The movie is predictable at times, but also winning, with a thumping soundtrack and smartly written characters. Ortega, with his Peter-from-“Office Space”-deer-in-the-headlights look, is the movie’s appealing center.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Amoo’s direction is strong, and his film moves in unexpected directions. Stil Williams’ cinematography is divine. Adewunmi and Ikumelo are excellent, and kudos to Pinnock, Tai Golding as young Femi, Denise Black as the foster mom, Demmy Ladipo as a gang leader and Ruthxjiah Bellenea as a potential love interest who shares Femi’s love for the Cure.

Even worse, Deerlaken, Wis., is supposed to be the “real” America, but Stewart has little interest in depicting an honest version of Midwesterners, or their problems. No actual issues that affect the town are discussed. (I have no idea what the economy of the town is, if people are struggling or what.)

Athlete A gives us the story behind the story. It’s a terrific journalism movie, but it’s also a story of young women who persevered and found justice against the odds.

A mostly absorbing but strangely inert espionage drama that could have been a heart-pounding thriller.

Even though the movie’s engine sputters at the end, it’s beautifully shot, the actors are fun to watch, and the story is decent in fits and starts.

It is so narrowly focused on neurotic obsessions that the quest for finding that fundamental nature of ultimate reality is sidetracked. What kind of approach is that for a Buddhist? Ferrara takes the easy way out.

It is quite simply one of the great “making of” documentaries of all-time — a short list that includes the George Hickenlooper-Eleanor Coppola documentary “Hearts of Darkness.”

For the most part, The Painter and the Thief seems authentic, a very real portrait of two unique individuals. It not only explores the artistic impulse, but also issues of relationships, addiction and rehab. It also provides an interesting glimpse into the Norwegian prison system, which is geared toward rehabilitation rather than punishment.

Lucky Grandma isn’t a feel-good comedy at all, but has a parched-dry dark comic approach, keeping Grandma Wong at an emotional remove.

Scooby-Doo, where are you? The real one, I mean. The rest of this mess is just a series of nonsensical action sequences.

After watching Spaceship Earth, which was completed before the coronavirus pandemic, one can’t help but think about the current experiment conducted by Biosphere 1. As smog clears across urban landscapes due to stay-at-home orders, the vision — and the warnings — laid out by Biosphere 2 remain relevant.

Most of Arkansas — Duke’s home state, by the way — just falls flat, despite individual scenes here and there that work.

On its own, Driveways would be a sweet, understated masterpiece, simply told, of human connection. But with the death of longtime distinguished stage and movie actor Brian Dennehy on April 15, director Andrew Ahn allows us to say a proper goodbye to the big fella, who gets the final six minutes of the movie all to himself.

With a sense of eccentric macabre that recalls Roald Dahl and Charles Addams, The Willoughbys arrives on Netflix with a winning, eclectic energy that should have kids — like the animated moppets in the film — bouncing off the walls. In a good way, of course.

In watching The American Nurse, I saw myself not so much in the nurses but in their patients. It occurs to me the nurses are always there, from our birth to death and in between. That in the current pandemic they would need to beg for personal protective equipment is on us as a society. They are our better angels.

Overall, Dolphin Reef is spectacular. The filmmaking team does an excellent job of detailing the delicate ecosystem that supports these creatures. Although Echo and his fellow dolphins are the stars, there is a vast supporting cast of humpback whales, sharks, razorfish, sea turtles, mantis shrimp, parrotfish.

Bolt tries mightily to make this weighty subject digestible to the average civilian, with some fancy, intricate animated sequences to show us how CRISPR and DNA manipulation work, and while I can’t say I came away from this film being able to coherently explain it, Human Nature works as a glimpse into possible futures and a moral dilemma that doesn’t have easy answers.

Because there’s nary a situation that seems reality-based and uncontrived in this movie that has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, filled with over-the-top cardboard characters that seem sneered upon by their creator. If Mirabella-Davis doesn’t believe in his characters, why should we?

Director and co-writer/producer Gavin O’Connor’s meticulous drama feels authentic all the way around. The basketball feels real. The high school kids seem real. Jack’s relationship with his estranged wife Angela (Janina Gavankar) is very believable.

A quite interesting and irresistible movie, a sort of cross between Paul Schrader’s recent film of spiritual crisis, “First Reformed,” and Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can.” An impostor as anguished priest.

Even if the film seems slow at times, there’s always something to look at, including Miroshnichenko and Perelygina, who are able to find grace and dignity in two such odd, hollowed out characters. Maybe, just maybe, these two veterans working in a hospital can heal each other.

This is a funny and moving crowd-pleaser — a South by Southwest and Sundance selection, it won the audience award at the Napa Valley Film Festival and was an opening night film at S.F. IndieFest — and it goes down easy.

The biggest betrayal of The Traitor is its crime against the usually compelling Mafia movie genre. This is an offer you can refuse.

Chinese Portrait is a great art installation, but a thoroughly unsatisfying film.

That’s a strength in this documentary. It becomes clear that it’ll take a strongman to bring down a strongman, at least in this case.

Color Out of Space is a trashy, ridiculous science fiction/horror film. It is silly, poorly written and, well, I liked it.

It’s essentially an animated film, fronted by a live-action Downey and Michael Sheen’s one-note villain. Only Antonio Banderas, in a small role, truly seems to be having a great time.

The best part of the film is early on, when Innis Dagg’s story is enlivened by beautiful color 16mm footage she took in the 1950s and ’60s.

Just an odd mess of a movie. That you feel anything at all is a tribute to the acting talent of Dinklage and Goggins, who occasionally make us care.

Feels like a regifting of previous action adventure favorites, lifting elements from the “Mission: Impossible” series, “Skyfall” and, most of all, “The Incredibles.” It’s fast-moving, entertaining, kinda clever and instantly forgettable.

I found “Cats” pretty bland, but it has its moments of catnip, and as a holiday movie option that anyone could see, it might be just the ticket.

Bannon is an intriguing figure, a former liberal who went to Harvard Business School and did a hitch in the Navy. His turn in philosophy is worth exploring. He can undeniably hold attention — American Dharma is not a hard watch.

The brilliance of Dark Waters is that it is able to lay out the case against DuPont without getting too wonky.

Waves is a movie that tears itself apart halfway through with an unspeakable act of violence, then miraculously heals itself. Whatever your reaction to this ambitious, boldly original and hard-hitting family drama, you could never accuse writer-director Trey Edward Shults of holding anything back. He leaves it all on the floor, as they say in basketball.

The fact is that too much time is spent with the British characters in the film, time that could have been spent really getting into Rani’s story. She was fighting for the independence of India, but the filmmakers lost their own colonial battle.

Ultimately, Marriage Story celebrates life and the journeys all of us are on. Noah Baumbach is the writer-director, and to watch such an incisive, deep-feeling script be given life by actors — Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and those around them — at the top of their game is to rediscover movies as a powerful medium of personal expression.

Eventually, the imperfect Honey Boy — it could have used more from the older Otis; Hedges is almost wasted — achieves a raw, hard-won honesty.

A soul-killing sequel that gets its kicks torturing and murdering children and offers little hope or redemption. King has long wanted to commit “Redrum” on the reputation of Kubrick’s film, which he openly despises. Nearly 40 years later, this adaptation of King’s 2013 book “Doctor Sleep” doesn’t so much tarnish Kubrick as embarrass itself.

It’s like a Syrian “MASH,” except real.

It becomes somewhat pleasantly watchable because the muddled script and dangling story lines are delivered and explored by truly charismatic actors who can, at least for a while, breathe life into something where none should exist...Even if they’re moping in a corner.

Sure, Black and Blue is a minor film, but it’s irresistible.

Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s latest masterpiece and the best film I’ve seen so far this year, is about two families of four at opposite ends of the economic spectrum, and how the one on the lower end systematically takes over the lives of the other.

Yes, there are funny lines, but nearly all of them are familiar to fans; it’s almost like a greatest hits of “Addams Family” quotables.

Midnight Traveler gets the bulk of its humanity from little Zahra and Nargis. The resilience of children is often amazing, and near the end of the film, when they play in the snow for the first time, you get a glimpse of hope for their futures.

Sarsgaard and Jones are good actors, and both are fine. The real star, though, is sound designer Ian Gaffney-Rosenfeld and his team, who bring a depth and dimension to the story that sorely needs it.

It’s a probing, searching movie by one of the medium’s best American directors whose reach, like his protagonist’s, exceeds his grasp.

The movie is nonetheless strongly written, with a game cast. Wu is especially a revelation, with a layered and often moving performance that shows off dramatic chops not seen by many of her fans.

Call it Buñuel meets Blumhouse, a film that is flawed but so full of ideas that it doesn’t matter.

What makes it brilliant is that it demonstrates how universal this distinctly Jewish musical has become, how it has been embraced by many cultures and how it is still influential today.

Calaizzo’s script is sharp, funny and honest, and nicely avoids movie cliches about obesity. Bell’s performance is very good, both physically — the actress herself lost 40 pounds for the role — and emotionally.

How much of it is true? Well, all of it. It happened, at least in the inner life of an imaginative boy, whose boundless curiosity served as the launching pad for a unique and productive life.

Late in the extraordinary new Netflix documentary American Factory, Cao DeWang, the Chinese CEO of the Fuyao Group, wonders aloud, “I don’t know if I’m a contributor or a sinner.”

So just showing a glacier breaking off, or a hurricane in full force, doesn’t prove there is climate change. Perhaps if Kossakovsky had provided some context — something to indicate this is happening more frequently, for example — Aquarela might have had more impact. Then it would have been more than just a series of pretty pictures.

Especially terrific is Rieger, who is a 25-year-old rising star in Israel. She displays a fierce intensity and an appealing vulnerability, and here’s betting that if she chose to, she could follow Gal Gadot’s path from Israel to Hollywood stardom.

The problem with Ready or Not is that directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (“V/H/S”) don’t know what kind of movie they want to make, or what to do with their heroine. There are constant shifts in tone — is it a comedy, like the trapped-in-a-mansion “Murder By Death”? A satire on the rich? A kick-ass revenge picture?

Price has given us Yelchin’s most complete performance: himself. It is a cinematic gift to contemporary film fans everywhere.

The film finally gets into gear around the midpoint and zooms to a satisfying finish.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, a sure-handed but predictable adaptation of Garth Stein’s best-selling 2008 novel, is a sloppy wet-kiss of a movie that demands nothing more from its viewer than to engage and empathize. Awww!

What a talent Waad is. For Sama is a film made with the instincts of a journalist, the passion of a revolutionary and the beating heart of a mother.

This utterly tasteless crime film about Tokyo’s top madam, a drug dealer and a serial killer is one of the worst films of the year.

Leonard & Marianne suggests that these were two immensely intelligent and talented people who never found happiness. The total love each person sought over the decades may have been right there all along. Or at least, it was there, in decades past, on Hydra.

Shot almost entirely within a hotel, the film operates as a low-budget answer to “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón’s much-lauded film that also centers on the life of a domestic worker.

Diamantino is one of those movies that looks super fun to make but is mind-numbing to actually watch.

Asako’s only appeal seems to be that she’s very pretty. Her depth of character she apparently keeps to herself.

So politics and social commentary aside, we are left with a crime film. One that isn’t very suspenseful or particularly clever.

John Lithgow and Blythe Danner make an offbeat and winning combination, with total belief that they’re in a really good movie. Unfortunately, they’re not.

What we have here is a small, delicate mini-masterpiece, and bright new talent behind the camera.

The most passionate love affair in The Souvenir is with film. Hogg utilizes an almost cinema verite style, with a visual look of the grainy kind of 16mm film an ’80s film school student would work with. Her style is reminiscent of early Olivier Assayas or Éric Rohmer’s “The Green Ray” (1986), an acknowledged influence.

Aniara has an intriguing premise, and it’s even fascinating at times, but despite an excellent production design, it never gets off the ground even as it speeds through the cosmos. The characters are not fully formed, so we’re not invested in their futures.

Climate change is never explicitly mentioned in the documentary The Biggest Little Farm, one of the year’s best films, but it hangs all over the deep, rich story of the Chesters, a pair of hardscrabble idealists who move from the concrete jungle of Santa Monica to start a 200-acre, sustainable farm from scratch.

As corny and illogical as Poms is, it does have heart and a positive message about aging that is lifted (barely) above the level of cliche by the great cast, especially Keaton and Weaver, who provide a level of complexity that the script can’t.

UglyDolls is a mind-numbing, low-rent version of “Toy Story,” with saccharine songs and a plot with echoes of, no kidding, the Holocaust. If you’re under 10, you might like it.

Visually, Bi is already a master. There are amazing shots that recall Tarkovsky (especially “Stalker,” an acknowledged influence), or early Wong Kar-Wai.

White, who has done documentaries about Serena Williams, Beatles secretary Freda Kelly and the Netlfix series “The Keepers,” is an efficient storyteller who keeps things moving. There is a wealth of archival material, and clips from her 1980s television life. He neatly makes the case for Westheimer; openly talking about sex is now commonplace, but not when she started.

The joy of discovery is at the heart of Penguin Highway, a delightful new anime that is about the mysteries of life, both scientific and personal. Oh, and it’s about penguins, too.

Girls of the Sun has an air of authenticity and grit that’s convincing, and Farahani, an Iranian-born actress, makes us care.

The story is well-told, but what makes it interesting is that each character confronts his or her own crisis — even Tommie, the paramedic who rescued him. It also drives home the point that a seemingly small tragic event can affect an entire community.

It’s hardly a masterpiece — it’s a fairly simple tale, well-told, with a silly, derivative climax and rather disappointingly brief depiction of the Yeti culture. Yet it is blessedly devoid of the manic, ADD pace of many animated movies, with a winning trio of characters. As Commander McBragg might say, “Jolly good show!”

Peterloo, despite top-notch set and costume design, is this claustrophobic, interior movie. And despite the wall-to-wall dialogue, there is little character development — everyone seems to be a “type” rather than an actual person. So when the massacre does come at the end of the film, it is oddly underwhelming.

Isn’t bad, but it seems unnecessary. It’s even a little bland.

This doesn’t have the budget or the marketing push of “Pet Sematary,” the other horror film out this week, but The Wind has a boldness and imagination that transcends such limitations. This is indie horror at its best.

The Hummingbird Project — is at once an offbeat comedy and a satisfyingly weird thriller.

It’s a slickly made piece of entertainment that’s a good time out at the movies.

Wonder Park, frankly, isn’t very much fun. It becomes so enslaved with its nonsensical plot that it forgets this is supposed to be about coming to terms with the possible loss of a loved one. It gets lost in its own Rube Goldberg machine.

Like the best noirs, The Wedding Guest is an efficient crime thriller that clocks in at around 90 minutes. It’s a B movie with style — the stuff that dreams are made of.

An invigorating and inspiring viewing experience. The mission was indeed a giant leap for mankind, and now we have a documentary worthy of its subject.

Pleasing, it is. Good, solid stuff. But one wonders how much better the film would have been had von Donnersmarck honestly explored the life of his inspiration, artist Gerhard Richter, rather than the fictional “Kurt Barnert.”

Welcome to Marwen does not work as a drama of addiction, and frankly it doesn’t work as a celebration of Hogancamp’s creations, which work best as stunning still-photo images.

Bathtubs Over Broadway rediscovers the forgotten world of industrial musicals through rare recordings and film clips, and it is as smoothly entertaining as showbiz set piece, and at times flat-out funny.

What makes the movie smart is its refusal to cast Troy, a difficult role well-played by Epino, as strictly a villain. Instead, Mendoza delves into the cycle of violence that can be passed down through generations.

Bergman fans will love this film, but the great thing about Searching for Ingmar Bergman is that budding cineastes who are curious about his work will find much value in it as well.

Chef Flynn seems more suited for an hour-long show on the Food Network. Its 82-minute running time, although short for a feature film, seems too bloated for this story.

The second-half of Burning is allegorical and intentionally obtuse. It’s intriguing, even. But it all leads to an ending that satisfies no one, especially after 2½ hours.

Obviously, sports fans will get the most out of In Search of Greatness. But there are self-help tropes for everyone.

Directed with restraint by Craig William Macneill, Lizzie never quite gets to what made Lizzie Borden tick, but it’s possible no film ever could. But it remains an entirely watchable drama thanks in no small part to the charisma of its two lead women.

A fascinating guide to its subject and her work, but the emotional wall Kusama lives behind remains unbroken. She is a loner and a mystery.

The already confusing story loses all hope of clarity as day turns to night — the second half of the movie is in near-darkness, making even the stylish visuals hard to decipher. What little interest you have in the characters is effectively extinguished as well.