Jeannette Catsoulis

Best enjoyed as a sampling of Ms. Zorrilla's combustible energy and still dazzling screen presence.

Knowing but never jaded, Hollywood Dreams is driven by Ms. Frederick's no-boundaries commitment to her broken character, a performance that's as startling as it is touching. In Mr. Jaglom's maverick hands, the appeal of illusion over reality is both fatal and irresistible.

What’s left is a strange, sour tale that’s neither origin mystery nor journey of self-discovery, but a vexing gesture toward damage and delusion that never permits us to peek under its broken heroine’s hood.

A moody thriller with more emphasis on mood than thrills.

The Little Bedroom is a gentle, melancholy drama so pale and tentative that its very colors appear washed away by grief.

An exhausted pileup of rock-movie clichés, The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll presents artistic self-destruction with the solemnity of a movie that has invented a spanking-new genre.

Oppressively dark and unrelentingly intense, Blood on Her Name packs down-and-dirty performances, and a few surprises, into a tight 85 minutes.

The movie is too juvenile and too timid to acknowledge the real-world chill of its online cabal of murderous social misfits.

Mixes method and madness to chart the evolution of a counterculture phenomenon.

With its oversimplified emotions and dumbed-down depiction of the creative process, this inoffensive time-filler dissolves in the mouth like vanilla pudding.

It’s all just empty calories; what this movie desperately needs is conflict.

What should be a volcano of betrayal and acrimony never fully erupts; even Moore’s brief meltdown feels staged, and Isabel is so irritatingly tranquil that Williams has no room to breathe in the role.

Leaving aside its cheesy, colorized dramatizations, Jon Brewer’s movie offers a strangely bifurcated portrait.

This smart but uneven horror movie has little interest in fun.

Like a feature-length version of the television sitcom “My Name Is Earl,” only Canadian -- and not funny.

Relies less on the novelty of its premise than on the positioning of solid actors in minor roles (including Melissa Leo and Martin Donovan as the tortured parents of a murdered child) and the intelligence of its star.

Harks back to the drive-in classics of yesteryear with unapologetic nostalgia and undisguised affection.

A documentary that yearns to be an adventure movie, Stolen Seas can't resist drowning its invaluable insights in thundering, drum-heavy music and flashing visuals. Magnificent in its thoroughness and nuance, this dense, multifaceted study of Somali piracy really needs to settle down.

Bereft of chuckles or even a substantial story, this maudlin musical fable never escapes the drag of a lead character with supporting-player energy.

While much of this is muddled and repetitive, it is also now and then slyly amusing.

It may leave many bases uncovered (a section on groundbreaking European legislation is inadequately explained), but it will also leave you looking a lot more closely at what you put on your skin, in your mouth and underneath your sink.

A circular firing-squad of full-on crazy, Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come barges into American counterterrorism tactics with sledgehammer satire and a numbingly repetitive plot.

In stark contrast to their furry, blundering star, the makers of Paddington have colored so carefully inside the lines that any possibility of surprise or subversion is effectively throttled.

Exhaustive and exhausting, the new energy documentary Switch is so monotonous it makes "An Inconvenient Truth" look like "Armageddon."

This brisk reimagining of the 1984 slasher "Silent Night, Deadly Night" delivers the seasonal goods with admirable efficiency and not a little wit.

A stylized stab at pandemic filmmaking, Malcolm & Marie, is at once mildly admirable and deeply unlikable. Beneath the film’s Old-Hollywood gleam and self-conscious sniping, serious questions are raised, only to lie fallow.

An old-fashioned wartime romance whose plot highlights are recognizable from outer space, this gleaming dollop of prestige comfort food is neither logically coherent nor emotionally satisfying.

Though the themes of Burden feel uncomfortably current, their execution is leaden and dismayingly artless.

Predictable to a fault, the movie coasts pleasurably on Neeson’s seasoned, sad-sweet charisma — an asset that’s been tragically imprisoned in mopey-loner roles and generic action thrillers.

More curious and combative than the movie around her, Kennedy is as much anthropologist as chef, her deep love for her adopted country palpable.

Margolin’s empathy for Thelma (he based the story on a scam perpetrated on his own grandmother) lends the film a sweetness and occasional poignancy that help mitigate much of the foolishness.

Despite some snappy ideas (an aggressive advertising drone pushing products as answers to the family’s every problem), Bigbug is overdressed, overlong and diminishingly amusing

What could have been a very funny short film about self-control and befriending your id instead becomes a rambling commentary on father-son dysfunction and the limits of proctology.

Bathed in a nostalgic glow that just avoids maudlin, the group’s problems — a sexless marriage, an unexpected job loss — bark but don’t bite. Scenes flirt with cliché, yet the writing has spark.

A minor chiller and major downer from the talented Alexandre Aja.

This admiring yet sluggish movie mostly drowns its political revelations in sticky sentiment.

Falling with a thud between two stools, it has neither the zip nor the zaniness of farce nor the airy vivacity of the best romantic comedies.

Hectic and harebrained, this galloping French thriller tosses a potpourri of plot points - crooked cops, sleazy gangsters, stolen drugs and an underage hostage - into a packed-to-the-gills nightclub, and stirs. Repeatedly.

Alternately tedious and illuminating, this deeply honest and scattered movie revels in its lack of purpose.

Willets Point may not be the slickest of movies, but what it lacks in polish it more than makes up for in heart.

While the movie is rightfully more interested in lauding her bravery than highlighting her sometimes abrasive personality, these small moments help to humanize a portrait that can at times seem more awestruck than enlightening.

The plot matters only inasmuch as it allows the returning director, Chad Stahelski, to stage his spectacular fight sequences in various stunning Roman locations, where they unfold with an almost erotic brutality.

Good Ol’ Freda celebrates an intensely private witness to four of the most public lives in pop-culture history.

Belaboring the cartoon connection, the director leaves the family struggles that enrich Mr. Suskind’s 2014 book of the same title stubbornly veiled.

Vividly depicting the indignities of the flesh, Porfirio offers a harshly sensual portrait of a man imprisoned by paralysis and the callousness of the state.

The template is familiar, but Quarantine delivers the heebie-jeebies with solid acting and perfectly calibrated shocks.

Quaintly old-fashioned in style, plot and special effects, this familiar tale of female derangement and institutional abuse is too tame to scare and too shallow to engage.

With a little more shading and originality, 13 Minutes might have pushed beyond its familiar Nazi tropes to shape something more immediate and infinitely more potent: an ominous portrait of radicalization.

In “Chapter 3,” the violence has been supercharged, and so has the virtuosity. At a certain point, though, the carnage becomes deadening, its consequences no more than soulless tableaus of damage that encourage disengagement.

What we need is for the writer and director, David Pomes, to wallow less in aimless dialogue and lowlife sordidness. What we need is a point.

Such an uncommon artist warrants a less conventional survey than this one.

Korean director Hong Sang-soo unleashes yet another emotionally stunted antihero in Night and Day, a rambling study of male arrested development.

Depending on your age, sex and mechanical inclinations, Tales of the Rat Fink will convince you that Mr. Roth should either have been canonized or smothered at birth.

The effect is by turns comical, maddening and endearing as Escobar reaches for more ambitious ideas about the political appeal of the authoritarian hero; but “Leonor” is finally too mired in its film-within-the-film frolics for more serious themes to gain traction.

To enjoy The Devil’s Candy, then, one must tolerate slapdash writing (by the director, Sean Byrne) and profoundly irritating adult behavior. Yet Mr. Byrne...somehow whips his ingredients into an improbably taut man-versus-Satan showdown.

A muddled mélange of black comedy, revenge thriller and feminist lecture, Promising Young Woman too often backs away from its potentially searing setup.

Lawrence’s commitment to authenticity may be laudable (he filmed almost the entire project on the move in Canada), but it’s clear that he was so busy honoring the book, he forgot to entertain the audience.

Woods, remarkably comfortable in her first film role, gives Goldie a steel spine and a feisty resourcefulness, her moments of vulnerability rare, but essential.

Unfortunately, in keeping its inflammatory subject matter at arm’s length, Provoked does exactly the same to its audience.

By ignoring Israeli voices and focusing only on the immigrants, Mr. Haar has produced a documentary filled with immediacy but free of analysis, a fascinating but ultimately unenlightening record of their plight.

Sarah Silverman burns through the indie drama “I Smile Back” without making the slightest move to gain our sympathy.

Brooklyn 45 is overlong, repetitive and at times wearyingly stagy. The actors, though, can’t be faulted, convincingly turning unappetizing characters into broken people trying to move on from a war that keeps pulling them back in.

This disorienting, dippy documentary makes one thing abundantly clear: for the Hubers, the toughest climb may be into their own heads.

Making sadomasochism appear less erotic than stamp collecting, Leap Year is a slow flare of emotional agony.

Despite a female-empowerment theme and an adversary fairly bristling with fancy weaponry, Prey never builds a head of steam.

Ms. Basinger commits to her disturbed character. But the script (by the director, Anders Morgenthaler) makes Maria’s behavior so reckless — at times, she’s practically begging to be mugged or worse — that we have no chance of sympathizing with her.

This is screenwriting by numbers. Unlike, say, Ken Loach’s marvelous “Bread and Roses,” Under the Same Moon is too busy sanctifying its protagonists and prodding our tear ducts to say anything remotely novel about immigration policies or their helpless victims.

Love + War chooses to go wide rather than deep, resulting in a movie that, while pleasingly dynamic, offers less psychological insight than the photographs she has gambled everything to take. And perhaps that’s as it should be.

Torn between the maternal and the cosmic, the tactile and the unearthly, Proxima feels as unsettled as its heroine.

It’s all a little silly, but Mr. Mickle’s restrained gravity stifles the impulse to laugh.

After setting up a potentially powerful study of damage and delusion, Pearce (whose 2018 feature debut, “Beast,” signaled an unusual talent) remains torn between science fiction and psychological fact.

Though in many respects an exemplary piece of filmmaking, “Part II” remains hobbled by a script that resolves two separate crises while leaving the movie itself in limbo. At least until Part III.

A sedate chronicle of the highs and lows of the environmental movement, Earth Days is less a rousing call to action than a bittersweet stroll down memory lane.

Hounddog is never more than a sluggish dawdle from shack to swimmin' hole and back again.

Directed with extraordinary empathy by Aaron Katz (who also wrote the story), Dance Party, USA is an admittedly slight movie, but one that is given heft by a yearning tone and a camera fascinated by the emotional shifts and shadows on a young person's face.

Cam is more successful as an oddly feminist tale of gutsy self-reliance than as a fully developed drama.

Before our eyes, Laura’s lengthening limbs and deepening introspection become the point of a movie that begins with a child and ends with a young woman.

Now and then, brisk restaurant visits and slow strolls through a cemetery (an unnecessary foreshadowing, given the movie’s title) ventilate the film, but Final Portrait (adapted from Lord’s 1965 book, “A Giacometti Portrait”) is pretty thin on drama.

There may be little to give you the collywobbles, but there’s quite a lot to enjoy, with Ms. Morton heading the list. Swaddled in thick cardis and shapeless scrubs, she makes Katherine a well of overanxious care and castrating comments.

The movie’s biggest entertainment, however, is not the market-share rivalry between MakerBot Industries, in Brooklyn, and the younger Formlabs, in Boston, but its fearless dive into dweeb-culture head space.

There are no fresh ideas in the French creepy-crawler Infested, yet this first feature from Sébastien Vanicek scurries forward with such pep and purpose that its shortcomings are easily forgivable.

The inescapable impression is of a picture buckling beneath the weight of its subject’s achievements. Yet there are moments when the focus shifts and the movie shrugs off its hagiographic shackles.

A homage of sorts to the low-budget trash of the period — and a mordantly humorous jab at its excesses — Censor gazes on movie history with style and commitment, but little apparent purpose beyond simulation.

The Little Hours is saved from ignominy by two brief standout performances.

Without these balancing voices, I Am Jane Doe coalesces into a steamroller of pain that squashes our ability to see beyond its wounded families.

As a sales pitch for an undeniably popular program, Q Ball (filmed in 2018) builds a crescendo of hope and good will. Anyone seeking a more substantive conversation on life beyond the basket, however, will have to look elsewhere.

This disordered portrait seems heavily influenced by its equally jumbled setting.

Augmented by a trove of archival footage reaching back to the 1930s, Jesse Feldman's buoyant cinematography merges political history and sports mania into a triumphant timeline.

Programmatic and groaningly trite, What They Had, the debut feature from Elizabeth Chomko, would be impossible to swallow without its star-studded cast. Even so, it requires all their considerable skills to stop this soapy family drama from sliding into complete banality.

The Milk of Sorrow is constrained by a rarefied screenplay and a near-mute central performance.

Even the most ardent fan could find its bluntness uncomfortably timely: In our build-that-wall moment, a story about a government-sponsored plan to cull poor minorities feels less like political satire than current-affairs commentary.

A numbing torrent of largely unidentified film clips and poorly labeled commentary, Rob Garver’s overstuffed tribute to the life and work of America’s best-known — and most written about — film critic is at times barely coherent.

A movie that feels more like an encomium than a thoughtful probe of a brilliantly mutinous mind.

Though the directors, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush, smartly choose examples from among the working poor — reframing obesity as chronic malnourishment in areas where it’s easier to find a burger than a banana — they’re reluctant to get down in the political dirt.

Claiming inspiration (in the film’s press notes) from Terrence Malick and others, Nash has attempted an ambitious blend of art house and slaughterhouse whose rug-pulling ending will polarize, even as its moody logic prevails.

The role played by her camera in exacerbating Avery’s natural, adolescent self-absorption continues to nag; in the end, I was less concerned for the wildly indulged Avery -- whose own narration reveals a charismatic and extremely fortunate young woman -- than for the hearts breaking around her.

Ms. Howe is frequently riveting: a scene in which she repeatedly, and with waxing abuse, drunk-calls her former husband (an excellent Keith Allen) may make more than a few viewers squirm in recognition.

Placing sex and gender identity at the center of almost every conversation, the writer and director, Eric Schaeffer, is so keen to demythologize that the film’s potentially most affecting moments are too often smothered by the hackneyed characters and setups that surround them.