Jocelyn Noveck

A movie as frothy and insubstantial as the foam on a nice cappuccino. It’s also about as believable as some of the woefully stereotypical Italian characters here.

Jittery, tense, fast-talking and always on edge, this is a Hamlet, above all, in a rush.

It’s hard to pinpoint why this next level of Grace’s very bad wedding night, again directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, feels darker and heavier — and hence, less enjoyable — than the original, which managed to maintain a bouncy feel, even with bodies combusting at an absurd rate. But if we have to blame someone, we’re gonna go with the doctor from “The Pitt.”

Unlike Robert Eggers’ 2024 “Nosferatu,” which was beautiful but bleak to look at and featured an ugly, fearsome vampire, Besson imbues his main character with a swashbuckling sexiness that suits his star’s craggy appeal.

This sequel may be focused more on emotion and character — since the whole comet thing happened long ago — but the problem is, none of this is compellingly rendered, and is forgotten when convenient.

No matter how you feel about the history here, it’s a visceral performance that simply demands to be seen.

[A] nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothée Chalamet.

A deeply felt film about one teetering marriage, and a work whose power sneaks up on you slowly.

It’s hard to understand how “Ella McCay,” the first original feature from writer-director Brooks in 15 years, goes so utterly haywire.

Zhao, co-writing with O’Farrell, goes straight for the tear ducts, with crucial help from a superb cast led by Buckley — who, like her character, seems to have an extraordinary ability to dispense with artifice and access a wildness simmering beneath the surface.

Certainly the film has a fascinating premise, one that would have worked well enough were it totally fictional — but works better with the knowledge that it’s based on fact.

The mashup of genres may feel a bit tonally rough, but it ultimately works, not least because of its unifying factor: Sweeney, who imbues her no-holds-barred portrayal of Martin with both sweetness and rage, with brio and real vulnerability.

There are some sweet kisses (otherwise, it’s very chaste) and some nice declarations of motherly devotion (credit to Williams for doing her best) but the cheese factor is regretfully high.

Usually a cinematic heist is spectacular — in its success or its failure. Reichardt has removed all spectacle, telling instead a moody tale of a man who makes a dumb mistake and slowly loses everything, like a tumble down a mountain in slow motion.

The film is a wonderful collaboration between [Byrne] and writer-director Bronstein, who drew inspiration from her own experiences with motherhood. It also has given Byrne, an actor of effortless appeal in lighter films, a chance to display versatility and grit in surely the toughest dramatic role of her career.

The first and most important thing to say about “Anemone,” a bleak, somber, absorbing but also sometimes frustratingly opaque collaboration with his director son Ronan, is that it’s brought Day-Lewis back.

This final movie will give loyal Downton fans what they want: a satisfying bit of closure and the sense that the future, though a bit scary, may look kindly on Downton Abbey as long as Mary is in charge.

In the end, we’re left to ponder not only grief but loneliness, and the lengths people will go to fight it. Shakespeare had a line about that, too, referring to “the mystery of your loneliness.” In Sweeney’s disturbing but also oddly satisfying tale, that essential human condition retains its mystery.

The script could certainly be sharper, the comedy more clever. But for two hours on Netflix, Coopers Chase is rather a comfy place to be, with some moments to cherish.

The chief weakness of “Freakier Friday” — which brings Curtis and Lohan back for an amiable, often joyful and certainly chaotic reunion — is that while it hews overly closely to the structure, storyline and even dialogue of the original, it tries too hard to up the ante.

Nobody’s perfect, though Bobo may think she is. But in Venter’s performance, Davidtz has found something pretty close: a child actor who can carry an entire film and never seem like she’s acting.

A smart rom-com that tries to be honest about life and still leave us smiling — that math seems to add up just fine.

The early scenes in this wacky place high in the mountains are the best part of “Ballerina” — they actually contain deft surprises and even a glimmer of humor, which is hardly something we expect in a John Wick film.

A vivid presence despite her dry-as-dust tone, Threapleton makes a splendid Andersonian debut here as half the father-daughter duo, along with Benicio Del Toro, that drives the director’s latest creation. Their emerging relationship is what stands out amid the familiar Andersonian details: the picture-book aesthetic.

Some people hate horror films of any kind. They’re not the intended audience here. But for those who don’t, or are mixed, it’s true: You may watch “Final Destination Bloodlines” through fingers covering your face. But chances are high you’ll be smiling, too.

Yes, the cinematography is what stands out here. There are also several compelling performances, though Baldwin’s somewhat halting, somber turn is not among them.

How Coogler pulls everything off at once — and makes it cohere, mostly — is a sight to see.

What’s never quite fleshed out here is why this all should resonate with us — or how these haphazard moments, albeit compelling, weave together in the cohesive way the filmmakers seem to promise.

The Alto Knights, despite its pedigree, doesn’t rise anywhere near the heights of its glorious predecessors. It is, rather, an enjoyable if choppily paced look at a relationship between two men, where unfortunately we’re arriving pretty late in the game.

In an extremely physical, committed, even exhausting performance, Pattinson takes what could have been an unwieldy mess and makes it much less, well, expendable.

Not all of it works, but it’s never uninteresting or uncreative — especially when it comes to finding inventively horrible (or horribly inventive) ways for people to die.

What makes “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” especially enjoyable, then — and the best since the 2001 original — is not that Bridget finds a way yet again to triumph over doubts and obstacles. It’s that she still makes us care so darned much.

Kudos to Hancock for making the film crackle along wittily, drawing in even those of us prone to shudder at movies with a fast-rising body count.

The action comes fast and furious, and the banter is pleasant enough. Diaz, especially, makes the proceedings decently enjoyable and some of the sillier lines believable.

“Let me entertain you,” Williams seems to be screaming through every scene. Mostly, he succeeds.

Bring your hand warmers, toe warmers, heart warmers and soul warmers — this update of the 1922 silent vampire classic will chill you to the bone...But it may not terrify you. Everything in Robert Eggers’ faithful, even adoring remake, from his picturesque 19th century German town to those bleak mountain snowscapes leading to that (brrr) imposing castle in Transylvania, looks great. But with its stylized, often stilted dialogue and overly dramatic storytelling, it feels more like everyone is living in a quaint period painting rather than a world populated by real humans (and, well, vampires) made of flesh and, er, blood.

Though not for everyone, it’s a film that can justifiably be described as “epic” in ambition and design. And, wouldn’t you know, ambition and design are precisely what the movie’s about.

Somewhow Adams, who also produces here, makes these things seem, if not quite natural, then logical.

If people breaking into song delights rather than flummoxes you, if elaborate dance numbers in village squares and fantastical nightclubs and emerald-hued cities make perfect sense to you, and especially if you already love “Wicked,” well then, you will likely love this film. If it feels like they made the best “Wicked” movie money could buy — well, it’s because they kinda did.

It’s quite a journey for one film. All credit to Eisenberg, and his superb co-star, for making the road trip so thought-provoking.

A film that’s as heart-tugging as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and great physical detail using only clay, wire, paper and paint.

This film’s biggest lack is the connective tissue — we don’t ever really understand, alas, how young Trump became President Trump.

[Ronan] gives one of her finest performances in a two-hour study of addiction that is poignant, sometimes beautiful but always painful to watch — and would likely be too draining if not for the luminous presence at its core.

Yes, there’s a lot you can predict from the outset, not to mention lines you could have pre-written, word for word. But that doesn’t mean your heart won’t be caught up in this deeply felt, poignantly told story from Navajo country, especially when the last player takes that last shot in those final seconds — never mind some heavy-handed moments.

It’s an absorbing ride, and Schimberg works with confidence and brio.

Director James Watkins and especially his excellent troupe of actors, adult and children alike, do a nice job of building the tension, slowly but surely. Until all bloody hell breaks loose, of course. And then, in its third act, “Speak No Evil” becomes an entertaining but routine horror flick, with predictable results.

In the Burtonian spirit, let’s just say it took a long time to bake it, yes, but the director has recovered the recipe — at least enough to make us smile, chortle, even guffaw, for 104 minutes. And we can be happy with that.

This is a 135-minute film that demands a lot more depth. And, so, to co-opt a political phrase from Bill Clinton, whom Quaid also has played: It’s the script, stupid.

Kravitz almost pulls it off. With the help of a terrific cast, she offers strikingly confident, brashly entertaining filmmaking, until everything seems to break down in a mess of porous storytelling.

This is a very big, very (very!) loud, very jumpy horror flick, and the screams will come, and they’ll be audible. Which is precisely what “Alien” fans are surely waiting for.

For all these characters, something about being subjugated by someone else provides a perverse sense of comfort.

The story here is simple and heartfelt. It’s a coming-out tale, but with the twist that the person coming out is 32, a decade (or even two) later than in most stories we see.

Atlas, an often ridiculous sci-fi epic with dialogue cheesier than a Brie wheel but also an old-fashioned, human heart o’ gold, is a J.Lo movie. Through and through.

The issue is simply that with all the artistic resources and refreshing ideas here, there’s a fuzziness to the storytelling itself.

All these elements, wacky or not, come together in a charming mishmash that adds something ultimately very important to the childbirth comedy genre: the message that childbirth is profound, yes, and full of wonder. But also, like life, it can be funny — and a bit of a mess.

Something about the detail and clarity with which Jane Schoenbrun evokes ’90s suburbia in “I Saw the TV Glow” makes you remember growing up there — even if you didn’t.

With flashy, colorful and user-friendly graphics, the film traces industry consolidation: the few companies who have 70% of the carbonated drinks market, for example, or 80% of the baby food market. Such realities violate the spirit of antitrust legislation, they argue.

Assuming it’s true, the film is a poignant and moving coda to a career spent chronicling personal indignities amid broader social ills like poverty and unemployment.

The emotional payoff takes a while to arrive, but once it does in the last act of this film, you’ll have a hard time forgetting Hopkins’ face.

It’s a pleasant and occasionally mesmerizing ride, thanks in no small measure to Sandler’s skillful empathy and yet another absorbing turn by Mulligan, who never disappoints. In the constellation that is Hollywood, her star continues to be one of the brightest.

Despite the compelling source material, “Ordinary Angels” is one of those movies where you can predict developments with certainty.

If the plot feels truly chaotic, blending (deep breath here, please) mythology, astrology, autobiography, confessional, modern romantic comedy and Old Hollywood glamour (still with us?), it is so J.Lo — so very, very J.Lo — that it feels logical, too.

A slick, fizzy bit of entertainment that’s occasionally delightful and usually fun, even if the translation to 2024 definitely has its rough spots.

Çatan and co-writer Johannes Duncker, who in fact attended school together, are making the point that even a middle school is a microcosm of society and all its tensions and ills.

There is not much “edge” here, but Clooney and team prove that sometimes, slow and steady — or should we say, pretty and pleasing — can still win some races.

It’s a film that tells its stunning tale with heart and conviction, yet seems somehow reticent about pointing a truly critical finger at either the brutality of a sport that broke this family, or the man who seemed to give his sons no choice in the matter: family patriarch Fritz Von Erich.

In his meticulous and harrowing film The Zone of Interest, writer-director Jonathan Glazer has found a way to convey evil without ever depicting the horror itself. But though it escapes our eyes, the horror assaults our senses in other, deeper ways.

Make no mistake, the clever writing is here, as is the style, the sleek technique, and some terrific performances (Rosamund Pike is especially delicious in a supporting role). What’s missing, or muddled, is the message — and perhaps even more, the heart.

We walk away from this funny, sad, scary film acutely reminded that if fame has two sides, one of them is pretty darned horrible.

Ultimately, Pain Hustlers feels like a retreading of the same ground covered in other recent works, bringing nothing especially new to the table and, in splitting the stylistic difference between slick/breezy and poignant/authentic, succeeding fully at neither.

The rebelliousness of each of the strong women here — mother and daughter — somehow coalesces into understanding. Such moments can be sappy, but here, as with her lovely opening shot, Keshavarz does it well. She sticks the landing.

[Scorsese] has called his work an offering to the Osage, and to other Native peoples. It also feels like an offering to those who love cinema, allowing us to watch a master of the craft continue to force himself, unlikely as it seems, to stretch and learn. May he keep stretching — himself, and us.

The celebrated folk singer and activist was singing about civil rights, of course. But what we learn in the thoughtful, thorough and sometimes harrowingly intimate Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is that Baez was also seeking to overcome much on a personal scale: anxiety, depression, loneliness and, late in life, troubling repressed memories about her own father.

The dialogue is head-spinningly mundane. The flow of testosterone is, well, head-spinning.

Richardson, throughout, gives an empathetic and endearing performance, and Hardy matches her for charm, even if he doesn’t convince as a self-described “maths nerd.”

If “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” felt like a pale imitation of the buoyant original, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” feels sorta like a pale imitation of that pale imitation. Or, to analogize with a favored franchise food item: like a thrice-warmed piece of baklava.

There’s a lot of gross, both kinda and mega, over this film’s 93-minute running time. Also a lot of poop jokes, and penis jokes, both canine and human. You get the picture.

At a certain point, somebody says “I just hope this goes better than last time.” It’s a cheeky reference to the first film, but also a rather dangerous line to include in a sequel, because they almost never go better than last time. This one doesn’t either, but at least it’s upfront about what it’s doing: just making stuff bigger and crazier.

The neatest trick is how Barbie, starring a pitch-perfect Margot Robbie — and after a minute you’ll never be able to imagine anyone else doing it — can simultaneously and smoothly both mock and admire its source material. Gerwig deftly threads that needle, even if the film sags in its second half under the weight of its many ideas and some less-than-developed character arcs.

The plot — outlandish and sometimes contrived as it is — offers plenty of room for comic possibility. And more. Screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao explore themes of identity, assimilation and anti-Asian racism both overt and casual — and within the Asian community itself.

By the end of this illuminating film, we’re forced to confront something much deeper and more insidious: society’s need to divide humans into a binary system, and the sometimes disastrous results for those born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that isn’t neatly “male” or “female.”

At one point in this 184-minute drama, I started wondering if I was seeing a bunch of disco balls trying to destroy each other. But maybe this was a moment of sensory overload.

Time and again, Song, who both writes and directs here, makes the unflashy, understated choice — and in so doing, darned near breaks our hearts, with a tale that feels universal yet rich in detail, urgent yet unrushed.

Despite some satisfying moments, by the increasingly cringe-worthy last third of the movie you’re just annoyed that it seems to want to cover all bases — to have its, er, cannoli and eat it, too.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, hotly awaited by devotees of the decades-old role-playing game, makes darned sure to be fun, and funny — enough to laugh at itself. And that’s the thing that makes it work.

The sequel, again directed by David F. Sandberg, feels less breezily funny, less fresh, less fleet of foot.

It’s an odd paradox that this movie feels both high-minded and also at times frustratingly pedestrian.

Luckily we get to look long and and hard at this Emily, brought provocatively to life by O’Connor and her star. Strange or not, it’s hard to look away.

Parallels to “My Best Friend’s Wedding” come early and often.

All the charm and style in the world, and J.Lo has more than anyone, can’t make up for the bizarre tonal imbalance of “Shotgun Wedding,” a movie too violent to be funny and too funny (in the odd, weird sense) to be fun.

Most crucially, it’s a film so original in approach that one feels only Diop could have made or even conceived of it.

The destination may be startling but, thanks to a magnetic star turn from Krieps, the voyage is never boring.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is clearly not aimed solely at kids, but rather is banking on the fact that adults, too, will be drawn to the striking visuals and mature themes at play.

At times Spoiler Alert feels like an edgy, clever film that plays wittily on the main character’s lifelong obsession with TV. At others, it feels like a more formulaic, holiday-themed tearjerker — the passing years are marked in a Christmas card montage! — that wrings our tears in unsubtle ways.

Lawrence’s novel may have been shocking when it was published — most famously, it was the subject of a major obscenity trial in Britain — but it is not shocking now, no matter how frank the sex scenes. So any adaptation needs more to distinguish it than heaving bodies, however attractive.

Disney’s pleasantly entertaining, gorgeously rendered but slightly heavy-handed meditation on climate change and father-son dynamics.

She Said, a worthy entry to a film genre that includes “Spotlight” and of course “All the President’s Men,” isn’t just about the power of journalism. It’s also about courage, from the women who suffered sexual harassment or assault at Weinstein’s hands and came forward at personal risk — to their careers, reputations or well-being.

Guadagnino gives us a lesson in the history of Hollywood itself, not to mention the birth of the “movie star” and the role fashion has played in that. (It’s great fun.)