Kate Erbland

You may think you know your sports movie tropes, but you’ve never seen them used quite this way — that is, within a queer cheerleading drama firmly focused on complex female characters — and Waterson’s Backspot delights in skewing such expectations for often (but not always) new ends.

It’s good enough, rousing enough, compelling enough.

It’s like cinema made by Mad Libs, but worse, because we do realize actual people made this, not just randomized choices in a studio head’s office somewhere.

Call it a case of the Mondays, but this kitty needs to go way back to the drawing board.

In a documentary landscape rife with both star-fronted documentaries and other hagiographic entries, Howard leans into honesty. The film is so much better for it, even as it can’t quite capture the full magic and scope of Henson’s life and work. What could?

Tonally, IF never finds a happy medium. Story-wise, it doesn’t bridge the gap between pure imagination and basic narrative flow. We don’t know what’s happening most of the time, and worst yet, we don’t know how to feel about it, no matter our age. That’s much more than a failure of just imagination.

Scene by scene, Marks’ film plays like a traditional high school-set rom-com, but things take a turn as Aza’s illness becomes more obvious.

It’s a slice of life, surely, but a meager one at that.

While the moments focused on the kids’ lives are the best part of the film — James and Ramirez have natural chemistry and are compelling to watch — Baig occasionally falters on that front too.

This franchise might not be entirely dead just yet, but its latest resurrection doesn’t make nearly enough good arguments to keep pumping life into it.

Benson, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, knows his way around heartbreak, and despite the elevated nature of the story — she time travels, for chrissakes — always finds room to add genuinely relatable elements to Harriet’s incredible plight.

Lowe finds ways to make it all feel if not wholly original, at least quite fresh. You’ve heard this story before, but you’ve never seen it quite like this.

We never get the chance to see what inspired Chisholm’s political fire or her personal problems — mostly, that’s left to exposition-heavy dialogue from other characters — and even the machinations and calculations behind her presidential run are left far to the side.

What follows is misdirection, flashbacks, visions, and wooden dialogue. At least the action is good, and Brown is game as ever.

Even in this vision (this panorama!), Lopez only goes so far when it comes to excavating her own heart and its mysteries. Perhaps that’s why she eventually kickstarts that heart with a magical pink rose, the most expected piece of romantic paraphernalia, a symbol, but not an actual story.

There’s a tenderness here, not just between the Sasquatches (and even then, not always just tenderness!) but for nature itself.

O’Sullivan and Thompson gently fold their story together, finding humor and heart at every turn . . . leading to the kind of ending that somehow inspired the film’s very first audience at Sundance to laugh and cry.

Lindy’s passion for and connection to the material is obvious (how could it not be?), as is her desire to twist a sad story into something fresh and often funny. Sweet, even! But an unhinged final act, plus a jaw-dropper of a finale, seems at odds with everything else she’s revealed, and this genre-spanner goes from, well, spanning to something else: not being able to hold onto any of its many spinning plates.

While some of the film’s more under-baked narrative elements might distract at times, Park and her cast still use them to build to an authentic, well-earned final act, one that should resonate with asses young and old.

It doesn’t look or feel or move like much else, all those other cinematic comparisons aside, and the sheer scope of its ambition is enough to inspire awe. Maybe the most obvious answer is the best one: love itself is a drug. So is cinema.

As familiar as much of this will feel — and as easy as it will be for even causal fans of the original to toss off word-for-word line readings of iconic scenes — the new stars that line Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.’s film add fresh dimension to the “Mean Girls” mythos.

It is very silly and often strange, but it’s also sweet and funny, and damn it all if you don’t start to really care about this odd little family.

There’s so much to see in The Color Purple that this critic made the rare choice to see the film twice before reviewing it. The experience deepens, in both good and bad ways, with a second watch. The performances are better — Barrino’s subtleties are easier to track, Brooks’ absolutely star-making turn is even more dazzling and heartbreaking — but the overstuffed story sags more often and more obviously.

It’s only in the film’s final moments that Diana realizes the power of the team, but “Nyad” would have felt just that much deeper if the film itself recognized it earlier. There’s more to “Nyad” than Diana, and there’s more to this story than swimming.

Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future.

Tellingly, the most pleasurable moments in Nia DaCosta’s “The Marvels” don’t hinge on the audience having an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Marvel. . . . They’re just solid pieces of blockbuster filmmaking: charming stars (like the full-force charisma of Iman Vellani and the appealing vulnerability of Teyonah Parris), sprightly action, and zippy humor.

Despite the understandably emotional and deeply personal nature of Plan C’s work, Tragos’ film remains startlingly clear-eyed and concise, letting the stories she shares from abortion organizers, healthcare ambassadors, doctors, clinic workers, and patients speak for themselves.

While the initial perimeters of The Re-Education of Molly Singer are simple and perfect for some laughs and character growth, little of that happens here.