Jen Yamato

Flee is a work of great empathy for the refugee experience, bringing audiences close up to the fears of violence and repression that drove Nawabi’s family from their home and the abuse and apathy he describes that they faced once they left.

Bold and brutal in shocking spurts, the indie horror drama from writer-director O’Shea is a startling debut that leaves a fresh mark on the genre while celebrating its forbears.

A sneaky tale of savagery in the dehumanizing digital age, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” is as bleak a warning as you’ll find in theaters this year, cautioning against the corrosive combination of late capitalism, the internet and human nature.

It’s an affectionate finale for the character, crafted with such care — from Molly Emma Rowe’s costumes to Kave Quinn’s thoughtful production design to those signature needle drops, monologues and Bridget-isms — it’s a shame “Mad About the Boy” isn’t opening in U.S. theaters.

More than its predecessors dating back to 1979’s lean, brutal “Mad Max,” “Furiosa” highlights the silliness and savagery of toxic men playing “Lord of the Flies” in the rubble of humanity.

Set during the drab 1990s of Clinton-era America, the latest offering from writer-director Osgood “Oz” Perkins throbs with a bone-chilling sense of dread, a marvelous piece of supernatural horror wearing the skin of a serial killer thriller that weaves a lasting, sinister spell.

Buoyed by sensitive and ferocious ensemble turns, “Honey Boy” is a cinematic salve for a tortured soul, in many regards a powerful vehicle for its star-screenwriter-subject and a vibrant narrative debut for documentary and video artist Har’el.

As a character study, Selah and the Spades is more than requiem for a mean girl. Think the stylistic snappiness of “Brick” meets the fastidious world-building of “Rushmore” with a fourth-wall-bending feminist perspective and two young black female leads, and you’ve got “Selah.”

Beyond Glenn-Copeland’s magnetic onstage presence and rich, sonorous, still-flawless vocals, it’s the candid moments in which he dances to the music, riffs on spontaneous beats in between sets and shares meals on the sidewalk with his younger bandmates that leave a hopeful grace note on Glenn-Copeland’s legacy.

Young’s vision of quiet middle-class mayhem, drawn from the three-handed struggle between young Vicki and her tormentors, is bold and unflinching.

Ingrid might be a lying, manipulative stalker, but Plaza also lets us see her humanity, engendering a crucial empathy for the desperation that drives her.

[Kurzel] delivers another warning in the form of a timely American crime story — one that, arriving in theaters a month after the U.S. election, many will deem too late.

The film also suffers from erratic pacing and half-baked reveals, but at its best, it throbs with raw, human, horrific honesty.

An American teen encounters peculiar horrors at a remote German resort in Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo,” a kooky sci-fi genre hybrid that crackles with offbeat turns and creature scares as it unfolds against a backdrop of deceptively serene forests and cheeky Euro-kitsch.

At times a case study in How to Be an Ally, the film is accessible by intention. Yet it remains raw, vulnerable and joyful, even when things get messy, as it charts a road map to empathy and acceptance — the real destination that awaits at the end of their cross-country odyssey.

When the pair’s natural curiosity and humor seep into the film, their scrappy enthusiasm is infectious.

Written and directed by “A Quiet Place” scribes Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, “Heretic” builds suspense through ideas and argument, allowing both sides to score points when it comes to organized religion.

Anderson is radiant playing this daffy optimist who rambles in breathy clips about past glories, as if the world around her hasn’t moved on since the days of Siegfried & Roy.

As the tropes pile up faster than tears in a Nicholas Sparks novel, so do the bodies, dispatched in increasingly inventive and grisly ways.

A fresh pivot that starts out strong before caving to fan service, this femme-centered installment at least doesn’t skimp on visceral horrors and black humor, finding inventive ways to make its audience cringe, cower and cackle as it puts its heroines through hell.

Parabellum excels when it tees up the sublimely inventive and wince-inducing close quarters fights with the lethally graceful Reeves baring John Wick’s psyche and soul between reloads and headshots.

Awash in Christopher Rejano’s neon-hued cinematography and punctuated by Nick Zinner’s eerie synth soundscapes, Reeder’s meandering tale is a fever dream of ideas.

Baywatch...is for those fans who couldn’t resist the show’s soapy charms. New ones who crave a summer blockbuster comedy might enjoy how much it not only owns its dumbness but hurtles itself all the way back around through a flurry of genitalia jokes and F-bombs to splash unapologetically in an R-rated surf of winking postmodernism.

The film reveals its truest self as a cinematic act of negotiation, acceptance and farewell between mother and son.

Mama maestro Andy Muschietti directs this visually splendid but thematically toned-down interpretation with finesse, crafting a world rich in detail where menace lurks in every shadow.

Proving her own star quality, a committed Suri guides Sam through a journey of identity and final-girl heroics that brings satisfying healing to her strained relationship with her mother.

It’s frustrating and distracting when flat direction, inconsistent effects and wooden acting break the spell, making it more and more of a slog to stay interested as Johnny slices and dices his way through the film’s 94-minute run time.

The script by Nick Lepard never quite figures out how to fill its 98-minute run time with new cat-and-mouse (or shark-and-marlin, as Tucker dubs her) twists, and “Dangerous Animals” loses steam treading familiar trope-filled waters en route to an oddly mawkish ending.

Despite a snoozer of a pat ending that strains to bring its themes full circle, the live-action iteration at least proves that the franchise, with its notion of ohana and several films, spin-off series and countless plushies sold to date, hasn’t lost all its heft — just its original spark.

The Amateur may be off to a rocky start as a spy franchise, but it scores one for the IT crowd.

By selectively whittling down the novel’s interwoven time lines and characters, It Chapter Two refocuses its telling of King’s 1,100-plus-page bestseller into not just a scary clown movie — which it also is, thanks to Bill Skarsgård’s demented return as the trans-dimensional titular monster — but an elegy of memory, trauma and healing, minus the more extreme and controversial elements of the novel.

With a patient and unobtrusive eye, filmmakers Lucas and Bresnan paint impressionistic portraits of a quartet of charismatic teenagers over the course of a pivotal school year.

Go For Broke unfolds across Hawaii with lo-fi charm but introduces more characters than it can balance, falling into uneven and overly earnest stretches.

It’s too bad that the premise hints at more of a horror twist than the movie actually delivers. Heller frequently interrupts a thin story with ambiguous dashes of magical realism that only serve to confuse.

This lethargic romantic drama forces chemistry where there is none and, worse, sells out its aspirationally cool, intelligent female protagonist with an endgame that she — and the luminous Dern — hardly deserves.

“FNAF”’ instead spins out of control as it attempts the fool’s errand that has befallen many a video game movie: shoehorning a weird and immersive experience into the bones of Hollywood narrative convention.

We’re left with a nightmare of identity that feels slighter than it should, unsure of where to point its knife.

The sequel is a stab at world-expanding that veers off the rails as it reaches for dazzle over depth, rounding out the hit film series somewhere between a whimper and a bang.

In Deadpool 2, the manic antics fly fast, but the franchise loses its edge as wise-cracking antihero Deadpool goes dadcore, attempting to infuse standard-issue four-quadrant studio blockbuster beats into what was once a revolutionary R-rated premise.

Inspired moments can be found throughout “Eurovision” if you have the patience.

Even with a gimmick engineered to orchestrate endless bursts of Looney Tunes-style hyperviolence, “Novocaine” lives up to its name, all right — a tedious action-comedy so numbingly bland, you feel the pain of its 110-minute run time even as its protagonist can’t feel a thing.

Despite Donahue’s best efforts in a grand finale sleep session with life-or-death stakes, the premise never lives up to its promise.

Try as it does to mash slasher and Christmas picture together into some kind of a yuletide “Scream,” “It’s a Wonderful Knife” so badly miscalculates both genres that you count down the minutes, wishing for a guardian angel to save its likable young stars from the movie they’re stuck in.