Julia Cooper

Floating in between the dramatic and the campy, Novitiate doesn’t tell a straightforward story of love and sacrifice, of faith and its crises. Betts’s film is ritualistic and enthralling, with a complex feminism woven into its cloth, and it’s something of a blessing.

Beach Rats stands on its own merits as one of the boldest, most original films of the year. It does that incredible thing of making you miss it before it's even over, like fireworks that turn to smoke before you're ready.

Home Again is a tight, witty script from a first-time director with a long list of hits ahead of her – and, of course, the golden age of Hollywood dynasties lighting her way.

Tulip Fever is a film a-swirl in what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. The years-long anticipation of its arrival has only heightened the stakes for what is – and what maybe always would have been – a harmless historical romp through some flowers.

The movie, which banks on the popularity of the rest of the series rather than concern itself with details such as motive, doesn’t add up to much. Annabelle: Creation is a series of slowly opened doors and close-ups of a truly ugly doll whose makeup must have been done in the dark by a deranged artist similarly possessed.

There is no raunchier, more raucous, filthy and truly crass movie out this summer than Girls Trip – and I loved every minute of it.

The Beguiled is Coppola’s bloodiest, most visceral movie to date, and it is also one of her best.

No character goes unscathed in this brutally violent movie, but Amirpour is especially careless with her black subjects – a painful misstep in an otherwise clear-eyed, unflinching critique of American despotism.

Engrossing and not too sugar-sweet, Meghie’s movie is slightly paranoid, surprisingly fantastical and superb at translating the overwhelming stupor of first love with big, bold shots and a banging soundtrack.

Gould’s excellent documentary captures this elasticity, stretching the spectator to consider why bearing witness to a life collectively is so very worth the trouble.

Unforgettable presents a surprisingly conservative view of mental illness, one that would feel more at home in the pearl-clutching milieu of Leave it to Beaver rather than modern day SoCal.

I hope that in the name of her decades-spanning career and six Academy Award nominations (plus one win), we might do MacLaine the small courtesy of forgetting that this pedestrian and dull comedy ever happened.

It goes without saying that the American public’s relationship to the NSA has changed dramatically since the first xXx movie in 2002 – a sea change that this film seeks to play up – but the script, written by F. Scott Frazier, doesn’t quite know what to do with its critique of the NSA’s unchecked power.

Antibirth follows in the tradition of "Alien," "Prometheus" and "Rosemary’s Baby" rejoicing in an abject fear of childbirth. Lovers of horror will likely be into this fertile homage and will appreciate Perez’s new takes on horror’s tried-and-true tropes and plot twists.

Mottola’s film is the unfortunate result of too much talent met with a clunky script – and the movie crumples under the weight of the cast’s star power.

So despite the conventionalism of the film’s final minutes, I’d like to raise a glass of Chardonnay and toast Bridget Jones’s Baby on its (mostly) hilarious, and long-anticipated, homecoming.

Although all these actors prove the shrewd casting choices of Bad Moms, it is Hahn who makes this unassuming summer blockbuster something close to stellar.

Despite its $20-million budget, Me Before You is cheap; and just like a person who has more money than he knows what to do with, this film equates wealth with value and vulnerability with death.

Clumsy and erratic, Lolo is a slapdash comedy of errors that slips on its own banana peel but gets few laughs.

Trapero reveals the ways in which truth can be much stranger, more tragic and confused, than fiction.

This film is many things at once: It is didactic but ambitious, affecting but satirical, absurd but also poignant.

Try as I might, I cannnot activate your interest in this bloated excuse for a movie.