Jude Dry

Though the inimitable Colman can’t help but muscle an admirable performance out of the overly sentimental material, her immense talent dwarfs the melodramatic surroundings.

Unfortunately, Framing Agnes gets too wrapped up in the questions surrounding storytelling to do any actual storytelling.

Artfully told and tenderly performed, Bantú Mama maps the history of the African diaspora in the Caribbean onto a tightly focused and compelling human story.

Taking an observational approach, the film rarely explains the customs and culture it so intimately captures, only addressing an outsider perspective when Sherenté is seen leading educational tours. Instead, viewers are let in on sacred rituals and community gatherings, following Sherenté’s lived experience closely.

By turns engaging and flashy, the film probes the narratives propping up the multi-billion dollar diamond industry and posits that it’s all a house of cards. With a peppy original score, a flurry of colorful characters, and a disruptive subject matter, Nothing Lasts Forever is an invigorating study of how myths are made.

It’s refreshing to see two stars who could have easily phoned it in for the rest of their careers push themselves to try new things. Even more thrilling, they really can sing!

The story of Eternal Spring deserves to be told — but Loftus’ film falls victim to the kind of insidious propaganda members of Falun Gong once tried to fight.

It takes truly terrible script to make such charming and accomplished comedic actors seems so wooden and lifeless.

With its bisexual lighting and hyper-designed oddball aesthetic, Please Baby Please looks a lot more polished than its messier camp influences. Aesthetically, the film cobbles together its many cinematic influences with admirable swagger. But film isn’t solely a visual medium — it’s a storytelling one as well.

Jones clearly has valuable insights about being a Black woman in entertainment and has the chops to tell a captivating story. What any of that has to do with the sex industry is a total mystery.

Aided by a dynamite performance from newcomer Laura Galán, Piggy uses the tension of a slasher thriller to weave a painfully relatable tale of adolescent angst gone terribly awry. As body shame and self-loathing morph into a disturbing complicity with violence, Piggy pushes the torments of youth to their naturally wicked ends.

Along with a few bouncy numbers from “The Greatest Showman” duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Bardem is the driving force behind “Lyle,” and the train loses major steam without its kooky conductor.

It’s perfectly entertaining, using Barker’s inventive tropes to tell a solidly gory nightmare, but it’s a pale vanilla shadow of the original.

The fun continues with a totally satisfactory sequel that brings the Sanderson sisters back to life one more time. OK, so the plot is basically the same and the jokes mere updates to the original. Why mess with a good thing when you can simply recreate it?

The juicy teen drama of Do Revenge is a contemporary riff on an age-old classic. It’s nothing if not of the moment, and at the moment, teenagers are reading the same panic-inducing headlines as everyone else. If they want to do a little revenge on a world that seems hell bent on driving humanity off a cliff, Do Revenge offers some clever entertainment for the ride.

Coming out as a bold filmmaker with a fearless voice, prolific alt comedy editor Vera Drew’s mixed media dystopia is an experimental trans coming of age story wrapped in a scathing critique and confident rebuke of mainstream comedy. Fiercely original and deeply personal, it’s too damn good not to be seen.

Spare but poignant, "Monica" is a pensive family drama that’s loaded with the empty space of things left unsaid.

Though the original novels were written in the ’70s and ’80s, at times Confess, Fletch feels like a ’50s farce, with good old-fashioned misdirection and mistaken identities doing the leg work. Unlike James Bond, Fletch doesn’t need gadgets or fast cars to untangle this mystery, just a few Negronis and heaps of charisma. The formula works.

With a chillingly relatable Airbnb setup, Barbarian mines multiple real-life scenarios and fears to unleash some truly unhinged terrors. It’s no “Get Out,” but it’s a hell of a lot of fun — with a little something to say as well.

See How They Run packs a lot of characters into a thin story that leaves little room for the considerable talent to stand out. It may be inspired by the greatest mystery writer of all time, but it’s an uninspired copy at best.

The pace picks up when the slashing finally begins in the third act, but it’s too little, too late to get the blood going.

Taking an empathetic and respectful approach, the film follows Baker as he weighs the professional benefits to delaying transition against the joy and relief of fully embracing himself.

With a PG-rated humor that parents can enjoy too, Secret Headquarters feels like the movie equivalent of the fun uncle who speaks to you like an adult, but also drives a mean Mario Kart.

Blurring the lines between past and present, Memory Box floats in and out of two parallel stories, never quite allowing either one to take hold. As the focus shifts from daughter to mother, the audience is caught in the middle. Much like memory itself, the threads never fully coalesce until the very end.

Aside from not being very scary, the movie is littered with missed opportunities.

Unfortunately, in its valiant effort to avoid cliches, the story falls flat. By focusing on what not to do, there’s just not a lot there.

Costa Brava, Lebanon may be a fantasy memory of Lebanon’s past, but it’s alive and well in the hearts of its people.

“Mrs. Harris” goes down like a sugary amuse-bouche of entertainment — it won’t make a lasting impression but it’s the perfect thing for the moment.