G. Allen Johnson

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.

If you buy the gross, it's surprisingly funny .

A fascinating documentary that seems to unfold over real time.

A consistently absorbing, often gripping, sometimes muddled whydidhedoit (because we already know whodunit), The Third Murder moves along Kore-eda’s customary careful, incisive pace, yet manages to be, for the most part, a riveting legal thriller.

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.

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!”

A Quiet Place: Day One is about a cancer patient in hospice who hopes to die with dignity. Also, there are terrible monsters threatening humanity. What an odd idea for a horror prequel.

Crime 101 is often smart, ultimately ridiculous — man, that ending! — and mostly absorbing. But as with Davis’ sleek rides, your mileage may vary.

Superman is a mess, but it’s a colorful one. It’s either a terrible superhero movie or an OK parody, take your pick.

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.”

Buoyed by an appealing lead performance by John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a smart, sharply written detective story that, though not without humor, plays it straight and tough.

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.

It’s punctuated by the landscape of the demon slayers’ past, through their memories. Idyllic lakes and streams; gently falling snow; a small village. “Infinity Castle,” then, is a place of potential redemption and reclamation, of souls and reputations and a sense of one’s inner self.

The "coming out" genre in gay and lesbian films is really getting stale - the plots are as by-the-numbers as a Bruce Willis action flick - and Edge of Seventeen is hampered by not only predictability but by its shoestring budget (a coup, however, was getting Thompson Twins composer Tom Baily to do the score).

A horror “comedy” about a deranged 12-year-old boy with a script that feels like it was written by a deranged 12-year-old boy.

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

Bite the Bullet is epic Americana, gorgeously filmed, and a candidate for most underrated film of the 1970s. [10 Jun 2012, p.20]

Freaky is, dare we say, soul-sucking?

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.

A tense, nail-biting thriller featuring powerhouse performances.

Oftentimes da Vinci is pleasantly lost in the cosmos of his mind, what Willy Wonka called “pure imagination.” The target audience of “The Inventor” will surely relate.

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.

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.

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.

Charmingly quirky.

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.

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.

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.

Directed by the Oscar-winning Domee Shi (“Turning Red”), Alameda native Madeline Sharafian and Adrian Molina (“Coco”), the visually appealing “Elio” moves confidently and delicately handles themes of isolation, grief, family strife and friendship.

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.

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 Space Race is an illuminating, absorbing film about an underreported storyline in our astronaut programs.

Barbara Walters Tell Me Everything begins as a fawning “greatest hits” collection. Then, in the second half, it deepens.

Complete with cliches and culturally cringe-inducing stereotypes — poor but happy villagers, sweaty villains — Peruvians will hardly use this film in their tourist advertising.

Stars at Noon has some interesting ideas, and a general fatalistic malaise creates a perversely appealing Le Carré-esque mood. But it’s so vague — perhaps because Denis doesn’t understand Central America as much as she does West Africa — that its impact melts in the heat of its near equatorial setting.

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.

There is a point of view here, a rather strong one. It may sound like slight praise, but Love Jones is a movie that is exactly what it wants to be, and that's an achievement in a homogenized, test-marketed vanilla-movie landscape.

Truth be told, the latest Darren Aronofsky film, which Oakland native Charlie Huston adapted from his own novel, is well made and contains terrific performances. It is a true original. But it’s also depressingly soul-killing and nihilistic, with a plot twist that fairly deep-sixes it for this critic.

The cast is uniformly good, but it’s Bardem’s sly, harried performance that powers this overlong, and more amusing than funny, comedy.

White structures the documentary as an absorbing adventure tale, and that it is.

But after two instant classics in “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Encanto” in 2021, “Strange World,” while pleasing, is a bit of a step down for Walt Disney Animation.

Oh, Canada is about not so much Fife’s artistic growth as his journey to hermetically sealed narcissism.

Directed by Livermore-raised Josh Cooley, an Oscar-winner for “Toy Story 4,” “Transformers One” is for the inner child, and unapologetically so. And for the adults in the room, you can read it as a pro-union tale as worker bots unite.

Phoenix is the perfect instrument for Aster’s bleak and self-destructive view of humanity. Consider “Eddington” a warning.

Rylance is always good, but director Craig Roberts, to use a golf term, lays up instead of going for the pin. In other words, he plays it safe.

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?

Nostalgia, as mentioned, is a factor. But the key to its success is its focus on family and hope.

This is a lean, fast-moving and effective movie, with an undersea world that is as vast and lonely as outer space.

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.

MaXXXine, clearly boasting a higher budget, stands as a bloody valentine to Hollywood. It’s a cesspool, all right, but it’s our cesspool, he seems to say, and guess what? Every once in a while true art comes out of it.

It wears its heart on its sleeve and is a bit too sentimental, but it is sweet and pleasing.

Jerome and Lopez build an undeniable chemistry that powers the movie, and it wouldn’t work at all unless Jerome wasn’t excellent as well. He is.

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?

The best thing about Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things, other than the music, is the way it evokes an era and reminds us that its subject was one of the great voices of the 20th century.

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

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.

In some respects, this feels like two movies, and the filmmakers couldn’t decide which story should be the focus.

The Beach Boys is a breezy CliffsNotes version of the band’s ups and downs and cultural relevance and should interest established fans — even if they know it all already — and younger music enthusiasts who are looking for a window in.

The problem with Fingernails is it takes itself too seriously. Co-writer and director Christos Nikou takes a clinical, dramatic approach to such a high-concept, over-the-top and ridiculous premise. He seems so enamored by the concept of the movie that he forgot that the movie was supposed to be about relationships and not the testing.

Like “Nobody” and “Nobody 2”, “Normal” is a satisfyingly amusing, get-in and get-out (all three films are about 90 minutes) piece of violent mayhem.

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.

A Haunting in Venice is no downer. The script by Michael Green (“Logan,” “Blade Runner 2049”), who also wrote the first two Branagh Poirots, is at times ingenious, and he wrote a great part for Fey. As the mystery novelist Ariadne, a stand-in for Christie, she brings nice comic touches to a performance that threatens to steal the movie.

François Ozon’s Peter von Kant, about a film director toxically obsessed with a young actor, is much more than a remake. It’s a valentine.

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.

Co-directed by Emily Kassie, “Sugarcane” – which won a directing prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January and won the Golden Gate documentary award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April – contains stunning natural beauty and painful revelations.

The problems with Thanksgiving are many, starting with the awful script by Jeff Rendell. Not only is the story — concocted by Roth and Rendell — predictable, but there is not one clever line of dialogue in the whole 107-minute film. The cast and characters are bland.

Still, “Lee,” based on Antony Penrose’s biography of his mother, “The Lives of Lee Miller,” is an interesting look at an artist whose true importance, unfortunately, became apparent only many years after her death.

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.

It lacks the more sublimely simple fun of another recent three-decades-plus comedy-horror sequel, “Hocus Pocus 2.” It’s just so much busier. But Burton does recapture a bit of his youthful verve. So do Keaton and Ryder, both experiencing recent career renaissances.

That Summer leaves me with Beale fatigue. It would seem to appeal to “Grey Gardens” completists only.

Certainly it isn't about to give "Das Boot" a run for its money - but nevertheless it is irresistible entertainment.

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.

Blows an opportunity to be as great as its subject.

It’s colorful and imaginative, but other than Lu, the characters don’t have much depth. Emotional, that is, not oceanographic.

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.

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.

The only inspired part of “Abigail” is the performance of Weir, a 14-year-old Irish actress best known as the title character in Netflix’s “Matilda the Musical.” She brings verve and joy to her vampire ballerina, dancing circles around the rest of the cast.

All this could work, but Perkins never finds the proper tone in what is almost a spoof of the horror genre.

Unfortunately, despite its ready-made storyline and some likable performances, the curiously inert A Million Miles Away never achieves liftoff, even as its hero does.

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.

The new version excels because it makes its teenage protagonist deeper and more mature — and its monsters extra frightening.

It’s impressive how many hot button issues Ansari, making his directorial debut, packs into 98 minutes, especially while keeping the laughs coming.

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.

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.

Remembering Gene Wilder is a pleasant retro journey for fans and an efficient introduction to a comic genius for cineasts who might not know his work. It could have been so much more.

Cameron is such a good filmmaker that even though he seems to be out of ideas, the three-hour, 17-minute running time chugs along efficiently on pure craftsmanship. But is that enough?

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 genius of “Skincare” is how it uses Los Angeles and its image- and celebrity-driven culture as a metaphor for empty lives.

The emphasis is on comedic interaction, not plot - too bad, "48 HRS" had both - but the pair adds spice to the predictable opposites-detract gags.

Dreamy and elegantly filmed.

The Peasants is filled with sniping, fistfights, brutal violence and sexual assaults and becomes unbearable through its nearly two-hour running time. Most of these characters you wouldn’t want to spend more than five minutes with, if that.

It’s a chilling expansion of the franchise, with visually inventive dream sequences and Ethan Hawke returning as the villain.

Kaizo Hayashi's homage to noir B movies, both Japanese and American, is successful as a true labor of love.

A grand, old-fashioned movie of spies and Communist repression.

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

The Thursday Murder Club is solid entertainment, as sweet and sugary as one of Joyce’s irresistible cakes.

Reitman handles the ensemble cast with Robert Altman-esque assurance. “Saturday Night” is bursting with talent and ideas, is sometimes funny, sometimes groan-worthy, sometimes full of it — and even, at times, inspired. In other words, much like a typical episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Directed by veteran British television director Tom George, “See How They Run” won’t impress demanding viewers, but acts as an a rather agreeable placeholder until the next “Knives Out” movie arrives.