Kate Erbland

The only thing scarier than Prey at Night is the possibility that we might have to wait another decade for more of its very special mask-faced chills.

Jason Clarke opts for a more low-key approach to Teddy Kennedy, eschewing a big accent or showy mannerisms, and fully disappears into the role. It’s his finest work yet, and proof of his ability to excel given the right material.

Set aside the contrivances and creepy plot twists, and Michael Suscy’s Every Day offers up a timely message about acceptance and the nature of love that’s especially welcome at the moment. Unfortunately, the movie falls short of doing justice to that idea.

The formulaic approach to presenting each story — which ostensibly track different people Julia herself has studied, though she never interacts with them — is predictable, static, and wholly clinical.

Anderson does add some style to the film, doing wonders with an indie-sized budget for a film that requires a specific period setting.

Initially it seems as if Sidney Hall will just be another film about lone geniuses trapped in worlds where they’re misunderstood or undervalued, but the film then unspools into nearly two hours of baffling narrative choices, weak character development, and so many offensive cliches that it would be funny if it wasn’t so, well, offensive.

Paddington’s ability to positively impact people is so profound that it can’t help but stretch out towards the audience, too. We may know that being kind and polite doesn’t always set the world right, but damn if that little bear doesn’t make you want to try.

Some of the goofier bits from Pitch Perfect 2 has been excised, and this latest entry focuses more firmly on the bonds between the ladies after its somewhat mean-tipped predecessor, though it never hits the girl-powered highs of the original. But mostly, it’s yet another unholy mashup of disparate tones that’s never as fun or frisky as the original material.

The cheerless, choppy nature of A Bad Moms Christmas keeps each storyline feeling oddly singular, and it’s worse for it.

Olin, at turns daringly open and frustratingly restrained, makes Maya entirely her own, the focal point and reason for the film itself.

A rich, rewarding documentary that digs deep into major questions without being afraid of the answers.

When Landon moves away from the darker parts of the film, opting to play up the campier elements of a mostly silly story, Happy Death Day is the kind of dizzy fun as slasher horror can possibly be. Too bad then that all that goodwill has to reset every night, pushing everything back to square one just as it was getting good, murderously so.

Few films this year offer up such lush and beautiful formal components as Jane (Glass’ score is, to be noted, also very lovely), but Morgen has also made a film of deep emotional beauty, the kind of satisfying, stick-with-you fare that any filmmaker would love to make.

It’s fun, but it’s blockbuster overkill after an already-crowded summer season.

Bolstered by sterling turns from stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, and Miranda Richardson, the film is a showcase for what Green has always been able to do so well, and what his actors continue to excel at.

Evans, Hall, and Heathcote exhibit major chemistry (in every permutation) possible, but they also don’t wink at the storyline, playing a provocative story totally straight.

Despite the focus on such a fertile period, it suffers from a meandering narrative and a jarring pace, particularly as it pushes on into his later years without bothering to age star Nicholas Hoult in the slightest.

It’s an amenable enough ramble of a romantic comedy, and Witherspoon is as charming as ever in the genre in which she excels.

Love makes people do crazy things, and as overwrought and silly as Tulip Fever is in both execution and aim, the film embodies that sentiment in an unexpectedly compelling manner. It’s unfortunate that it takes 107 minutes to get there, but a final twist offers the film’s sole play for emotional resonance.

Both introspective and entertaining, Betts never forgets that her young nuns are still teenage girls, and Novitiate rings as true as any other film about coming of age.

While shoving big messages inside animated offerings isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, The Nut Job 2 is uncomfortable with its most ambitious concepts, bookending them with gross-out nonsense that doesn’t seem engineered to appeal to anyone.

Columbus is a feast for the eyes, but its more lasting impression is on the heart.

King’s Dark Tower universe is rich with cultural reference points and is always totally unpredictable, but in cutting it down to consolidate its highlights, The Dark Tower can’t even shoot the most necessary bullets straight.

The film is at its best when Dieckmann slows down the action and revelations for its real charm: two ladies, on the road, talking.

Throughout the film, Noxon refuses to offer up easy answers and feel-good conclusions to Ellen’s journey, even when it ratchets up into a literally overheated final discovery.

Girls Trip nails laugh after laugh even amidst — and oftentimes because of — dramatic issues that wouldn’t be out of place in a Lifetime movie.

The whiz-bang joy of the first film is wholly absent, and Despicable Me 3 limps along for nearly an hour before finding its footing.

Boom’s film (penned by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez, and Steven Bagatourian) initially reads as a timely rallying cry around Shakur’s legacy, before devolving into a paint-by-the-numbers biopic that unspools with as much energy as a Wikipedia entry.

Mark Cullen’s ruthlessly boring and decidedly dismal Once Upon a Time in Venice marks a new low in Willis’ still-trucking action career, one that even Cage would likely flinch at, even if it does feature an entire sequence dedicated to naked skateboarding.

Wonder Woman is as much about a superhero rising as it is about a world deserving of her, and Diana’s hard-won insistence on battling for humanity (no matter how frequently they disappoint) adds the kind of gravitas and emotion that establishes it as the very best film the DCEU has made yet. There’s only one word for it: wonderful.

Pairing up talented comedians like Hawn and Schumer with a wacky plotline to match should spell comedy gold, but Snatched is about as cheap and disposable as a tourist trap tchotchke.

Russell and Karpovsky are a winning pair, and if they ever want to hit the road for more big jokes and even bigger revelations, any director would do well to let them take the wheel.

The in-between moments when Mine is simply a guy stuck in the desert, trying to use his own wits to save himself, is when the film is at its very best, but that’s precisely what makes Mine such a disappointment: those moments are the in-between ones, not the bulk of the film.

Evans and Grace are exceedingly appealing together, and their charming chemistry keeps the film afloat even when it doesn’t seem to know which direction to move in.

Spencer and Alush turn in the film’s best performances, and Spencer’s natural warmth and Alush’s deep charm keep The Shack hammering right along.

Whipping up a proper tone for the big screen versions of E.L. James’ wildly popular novels was always going to be the films’ biggest problem, and while director James Foley might not quite nail it, wily injections of humor prove to be an unexpectedly helpful addition to the kinky franchise.

While Lovesong fails to coalesce, Malone and Keough emerge with two of their best performances yet, bolstered by an on-screen bond that deserves far richer material that what is offered up here.

Almereyda’s feature is rich in acting talent, but this stagey, flat drama can’t match the wattage of its leads.

Bolstered by a strong performance from Teresa Palmer (who only gets better with each role, and seems happy to mix things up when it comes time to pick them), Berlin Syndrome doesn’t break much new ground in the genre, but it’s certainly a worthy entry into it.

With his intimacy drama Golden Exits, Perry strays from his typical fare of people behaving badly to, well, people behaving not quite as badly and certainly with more believable motivation.

Too heavy-handed and clumsy to land with a real knockout punch, Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson’s second feature benefits immensely from the quietly moving work of its lead, Besty Brandt.

Passengers refuses to really wrestle with the compelling questions at its core, instead opting to lean on Lawrence and Pratt’s collective charm to keep things ticking amiably along.

Allied can never settle on a consistent tone, bumping along from smooth spy adventure to stylized war picture to treatise on marriage, all peppered with stilted attempts at humor for an added dash of incomprehensibility.

A soaring, sweet documentary that welcomes its audience into an unexpected new arena, The Eagle Huntress offers up a movie-perfect story with a leading lady who has something to share with everyone.

“Ouija” is genuinely frightening and smart, the rare horror prequel able to stand on its own merits and deliver a full-bodied story that succeeds without any previous knowledge or trappings. However, in outfitting this particular haunted house with monsters to spare, Flanagan loses the thread of what’s really scary: Everything we can’t see.

Angelou’s life and work was rich, significant, influential and hugely varied, and yet “And Still I Rise” is hobbled by unimaginative delivery and direction. In short, it’s limited, and Angelou’s own history proves that limitations must be fought against at every turn.

It’s every cheap, fast, loose, pointless joke in the book, and barely any of them can clear a solid laugh.

As a 92-minute commercial for a deeper look at the case, Amanda Knox is unquestionably intriguing; as a standalone offering, it makes one hell of an airtight case for something bigger and better.

Bolstered by real events and true emotion, A United Kingdom opts for genuine, hard-won feeling, and the film studiously backs off from cheesy moments or over-the-top revelations.

The film mistakes stiff, literally buttoned up acting — you’ve never seen so many starched and fully done up dress shirts in one film in your entire life — as somehow being clever, but there’s scarcely a moment of Morgan that is genuinely shocking (though the undercurrents with Amy are at least unnerving).

The beautifully lensed drama is, like its protagonist, compelled and often obsessed by the human shape and form, and Ahn’s film artfully uses the physical to tell a mostly standard issue coming-of-age story with style.

That’s where the film truly succeeds: Frears doesn’t treat Florence like a joke, and neither does Streep.

Clearly a dynamo in both her life and work, observing the juxtaposition between pre-cancer Jones (the film is filled with excellent performance footage of her over the years) and the still-mending Sharon is profound; Kopple resists making cheap comparisons between the two, instead opting to let the footage speak for itself.

Although it often stumbles in service to delivering yet another foul-mouthed joke, its heart remains firmly in the right place.

Sandberg unquestionably has an eye for a great horror motif — and, given the frequent use of absolutely gut-churning ambient sounds and hair-raising scratching noises, an ear for it, too — and he’s assembled a strong cast to tell Heisserer’s expanded story, but even those smart decisions and clear talents can’t push Lights Out to brighter heights.

As much a film about crises of faith as it is the powerful friendships between women, The Innocents steadily unfolds over its nearly 120-minute runtime, revealing new secrets and new surprises (most of them, but not all, appropriately gut-wrenching) at every turn.

At nearly 105 minutes, Microbe and Gasoline runs out of steam in its second act, but the majority of this sweet, sensitive ride is a real treat.

By the time the entire town discovers that Clint is trapped in a weird hole and Lucy has fallen for Chatwin’s Rydell White, No Stranger Than Love picks up some serious steam, balancing its bizarre tone with actual charm. Sadly, however, it’s too late to pull the production out of its own gaping void: The inability to treat its characters with respect.

It’s a coming-of-age tale for the stunted set, and one that deftly navigates conventions at every turn. Although Tracktown lacks edge, it’s just so relentlessly sweet and Pappas is so effervescent on screen that those missteps in tone are easy to forgive.

Although The Witness functions just fine as a true crime documentary in the vein of such en vogue offerings as “Serial” and “Making a Murderer,” the film makes its mark when it leans in on the deeply personal connection between its subject and its storyteller.

Princess is an arresting and taxing film experience, and although Ezer’s execution and vision are clear-eyed and she’s portraying experiences that still (tragically) occur in the real world, it’s difficult to wonder what the film itself is hoping to accomplish.

Although Farr layers on the creepy until the last frame of The Ones Below, the film's ultimate reveal is hardly shocking, and that the film spends a gratuitous amount time unspooling it long after it's clear what has gone down feels indulgent and unearned.

Despite being rife with crime, sex and darkness, Manhattan Night feels increasingly like a cheap ripoff of the genre it so very much wants to fit into.

Love & Friendship may not be traditional Austen, but it's pretty stellar Stillman.

It's a true winner and a genuine crowdpleaser, a human story told well through one incredible animal.

The charm of The Meddler isn't the kind that benefits from big pushes forward in narrative or massive plot movements, but it revels in heart-warming humor, vibrant characters and what's clearly a deep affection for its story.

The film's narrative is both plodding and predictable, and after the third or fourth battle sequence that leans so heavily on loud, thudding noises and swirling leather topcoats that it's impossible to see who is actually hitting who (and, moreover, why), audiences may be in danger of remembering just which "reimagined" fairy tale they're watching on screen.

I Saw the Light doesn't just fail to illuminate Williams' complicated life and his prodigious talent; it can't even capture the dark corners of a man with more than enough to peer into.

It really is charm that drives the feature, with Walken pleasingly zipping around on screen while the rest of the cast gamely rally around him, particularly Heard and Garner, who would likely still be plenty of fun in even a Walken-less feature.

Filled with considerable dread and mystery, 10 Cloverfield Lane functions just fine as a standalone genre title. But as a spiritual sequel to the original, it builds out the so-called "Cloververse" far better than could be expected from even the most straightforward of tales.

As is often the case with such violence, it eventually becomes numbing. By its midpoint, once the novelty of a superhero movie showing super levels of violence wears off, the thinness and lack of spark in the fight scenes becomes more readily apparent. By the film's end, they are hard to distinguish from any other superhero fare. Similarly, lack of imagination keep the film's prodigious swearing and occasional nudity from feeling like anything original.

Tumbledown strikes a delicate, moving tone that hits more high notes than lows.

Dunn plays around with perspective and style, but all the flash doesn't obscure the film's emotion and heart, which are deep and true.

Although no one comes off looking especially good, an acceptable alternate title for the film could be "The Ugly Americans," because Mitch Glazer's script takes some of the worst stereotypes about ex-pats and blows them sky high.

Long-time fans of Joplin's music will likely not find much new material to relish in "Janis: Little Girl Blue," and if the film earns any new acolytes for the songstress, it will be the result of Joplin's own charisma, not of the presentation of the film built so shakily around her.

Trumbo works well enough as a general survey of Trumbo's life and career, a primer on a complicated man who endured a terrible injustice, but it fails to really engage with the material, to dig deep for significant themes and salient meanings

Fine performances by Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth and Judy Davis help matters a bit, but the final product is so oddly cobbled together that the entire thing should be left hanging on the rack.

Prophet’s Prey is a skin-crawling chronicle of one of America’s biggest criminals and the community that allowed him to flourish.

Demolition spends its goodwill early on, eventually giving itself over to cheap-feeling twists and a problematic final act.

At its heart, Welcome to Leith is about change and how toxic decisions and beliefs can irreparably ruin bystanders’ lives.

McNamara attempts to keep the movie ticking right along, and for all its half-cocked plotlines, Ashby is able to maintain a consistently humorous and light tone.

The bone-crunching action and relentlessly blood-letting feels out of place, and as those sequences start appearing with more frequency, the film loses much of its rangy charm.

A superhero film with no power and worse special effects that attempts to rewrite a story that's yet to be told effectively.

Clocking in at a slim 85 minutes, the whole thing flies by quite pleasingly, a warm and funny feature that reasserts the value of high quality visuals and attention to detail.

It’s biopic syndrome, this impulse to condense events to hit the high notes, to provide fans with recognizable stories, to essentially act as a greatest hits album, and it sinks the second half of an otherwise compelling, funny and extremely entertaining film with a beat all its own.

Unexpected doesn't take such a rosy approach to its conclusion, however, preferring to leave things more up in the air, a narrative choice that is more contemporary in its telling and more genuine in its feel.

Even the best routines can’t entirely raise the film from its shambling, directionless feeling, and nothing is nearly as tight as Tatum and crew’s dance moves.

There are weeds here, thorny stuff to slash through, but when A Little Chaos stays on course, there’s plenty of beautiful work to admire.

Vikander is the main event here, and if Testament Of Youth is a testament to anything, it’s to her ability to embody great women with grace and battle-ready precision.

As good as Ruffalo and Saldana are, the best parts of the film are the lovely, unpretentious performances by Imogene Wolodarsky (Forbes’ daughter) and Ashley Aufderheide as Cam and Maggie’s daughters.

Kitted out with colorful and creative scenes that aim to depict Chagall’s dreamy, expressionist work within the film’s framework, Chagall-Malevich shoots high, though it often comes crashing down to Earth.

The whole thing is overstuffed with enough narrative threads that it should require a feature film-sized outing to answer them all, but Entouragemerrily skips over whole chunks of vital narrative in order to give it a glossy Hollywood ending, the kind that would seem forced, well, even in the movies.

It’s obvious from the start what’s going to happen, and although San Andreas occasionally makes some interesting moves (the swift offing of a character who pops up simply to be annoying is one of them), it’s mostly a paint-by-numbers affair bolstered by jaw-dropping CGI and a desire to completely flatten as much cityscape as possible.

Fowler is not a terribly charismatic subject, but the matter-of-fact manner in which he delivers important information and the stunning depth of his knowledge compensates, as does the steady way in which McLeod reveals pertinent personal details about his life and work.

The film is a true two-hander—and Astin and Mulkey are mostly up for the task—but inept storytelling sinks the picture faster than anyone can bail it out.

Branaman’s script piles on low-level drama, bad decisions, and enough misdirection to make the film’s baffling ending feel not just unearned, but entirely unbelievable.

Planetary’s message is repetitive without being enlightening, and the film and its assorted participants insist on hitting the same beats without pause, until the concept loses all meaning.

The film leans heavily on well-trod “most dangerous game” territory, but the insistence on inscrutable characters and cheap twists never lets it feel actually dangerous. It just feels vacuous.

Apartment Troubles consistently finds opportunities to subvert expectations and tropes in an appealing fashion.

Although the film is supposedly about movement, Growing Up And Other Lies frequently stalls out, and whole patches of it grind on without momentum or purpose.

Although the film appears to be aiming for pitch-black humor, it’s all so mirthless that the result is genuinely ugly.

Shatkin is trying hard here, but Whaley’s overwrought script keeps the young actor from utilizing his charm; Reggie is simply difficult to be around, even as Meester’s Eleanor is expected to act charmed by all his quirks and issues.

The stakes of All The Wilderness aren’t high, because Johnson never directs his attentions to the real issue at hand: James is ill, and gallivanting around Portland for a few nights isn’t going to fix that.

Grant specializes in bastards, but he makes them so charming that viewers can nearly forget, and even forgive, their consistently bad manners. It’s a good skill, and it’s put to heavy use in Marc Lawrence’s otherwise charmless, vaguely offensive The Rewrite.

Unfortunately, the film frequently relies on telling over showing, and Rosie and Alex’s bond is rarely demonstrated through palpable on-screen chemistry.

Bolstered by strong performances and a tight narrative, Son Of A Gun is an admirable debut film from Avery, and a worthy new entry into Australia’s burgeoning class of crime features.

Not content simply to make a finely tuned undersea action film, Macdonald reaches for something more significant and comes up short, trapping his own treasures under a tidal wave of thwarted ambition.

Appropriate Behavior is very funny, even while it’s also being real and heartfelt. It’s a raw story with refined production values, and Akhavan is so open and true in the lead role that what could be an overly insular story instead feels relatable and amusing.

The plucky DIY spirit that pervades small-scale organizations might work when it comes to launching movements in real-time—and Free The Nipple ideals have already bled over into the non-cinematic world—but it makes for a slapdash and slippery movie experience that never comes together.

Yeh’s charm and compelling story keep things moving along, even as the documentary struggles to find the kind of evocative creativity that she conjures up with her own work.

Cohen’s insights into relationships are sharp, however, and Red Knot is an auspicious start for the budding filmmaker, one rife with good instincts, smart direction, and crisp writing. Kartheiser and Thirlby are the main attraction, however, and when these two ships pass on their own icy seas, the result is more than worth the plunge.

While a defter touch could have made the marriage between fizzy romance and domestic drama work, All Relative fails to engage because the emotional connection between all parties—Harry and Grace, Harry and Maren, Grace and Maren—is weak to nonexistent.

Though Decker pumped up the salaciousness for the ultimately icky Mild, its connections run shallow, and most of its action—particularly in the over-the-top third act—feels spectacularly unearned.

Decker’s style is experimental, but not abrasive, and Butter demonstrates her ability to retain an audience’s attention even when refusing to give them a clear story told in a traditional manner.

Twist cinema at its most brainless, Rowan Jaffé’s blunt-force thriller Before I Go To Sleep appears to have forgotten that films about amnesia don’t render the audience incapable of recalling what’s happened from one scene to the next.

Gone Girl is a rare bird: a tricky, weird mystery that benefits from people knowing its twist from the outset.

Frank’s film is much more of a noir outing than a straight action feature, and Neeson slips right into the tone and feel of the hard-boiled detective offering. Neeson may have been treated to a big career resurgence thanks to his knack for big action, but he’s great as Matt Scudder, and the darker charms of the film suit him wonderfully.

For a genre that so often sacrifices character development and smaller narrative developments, the majority of The Maze Runner feels quite refreshing and worth the navigation.

Tusk is revolting, but that’s entirely the point of Kevin Smith’s admirably imaginative and utterly disgusting latest feature, a twisted fairy tale that trades on gross-out gags and visual shockers instead of actual story.

A truly entertaining and dizzyingly wild horror film.

Embarrassing and weird.

Kabbalah Me is most satisfying as a personal artifact that traces Bram’s quest, bumps and all, and it stumbles when it attempts to lay on educational aspects.

The film is confusingly and sloppily put together, edited down to the point that the few genuine jokes of Let’s Be Cops are given precious little time to breathe, before zipping into the next sequence of increasingly irrational events.

An amiable cast and a satisfying enough story make The Hundred-Foot Journey stick to your ribs, even if it’s hard to swallow early on.

Taylor’s film so egregiously picks and chooses from Brown’s life that the result is a holey and unsatisfying document that fails to give due respect to much of the singer’s life (especially the more unsavory stuff).

Romantically uninspiring and comedically unstable, And So It Goes is a poor excuse for a rom-com, even one that continually plays by the rules of the genre and has two major stars to keep it bouncing along.

Even Besson’s most bold choices – and this is a film that goes weird, and then just keeps getting weirder – don’t seem so revolutionary when packaged in such well-tread trappings and increasingly shoddy writing.

It’s not exceedingly original, it is well-made and a solid entry into the subgenre.

For all its darkness, [it] never really scares up anything new.

Baena takes a well-tread road, leaving behind the guts of his promising story and never capitalizing on the charms of either romance or his leading lady.

It’s all, quite strangely, boring.

Test is a slow burn that builds to an impressive end, although the rest of film is in need of that same kind of forward-driving energy.

The film has enough charm and humor to keep it appealing to a wide audience, and dumbing things down doesn’t feel particularly smart or canny, and proves to be a minor distraction to an otherwise majorly entertaining feature.

Despite its slim 79-minute runtime, Emoticon ;) is crammed with a startling number of subplots, which mostly struggle to address some of the large issues they present and subsequently abandon.

A relentlessly unfunny, charmless send-up of better films with better ideas.

Sound nonsensical? It is.

This is a film about a journey, and while the destination – baseball’s major leagues – is continuously dangled in front of its protagonists, it’s getting there that counts. Oh, and also how fast you can throw a ball. That counts, too.

Plainly unfunny.

An essential entry in the cinematic canon of Spider-Man, complete with new villains, new questions, and new heartaches.

The film is brisk, funny, smart, and artful, a strong pairing of high concept and relatable storylines.

The Other Woman eschews plenty of standard genre expectations to make an unexpectedly friendship-friendly film.

Unquestionably the work of both a newbie director and a green screenwriter.

A relatively high-flying adventure, injecting the always-entertaining airplane-set thriller with some fresh thrills and a cadre of characters worth getting invested in.

Gans isn’t especially concerned with the outcome this coupling, instead reveling in overwrought and often bloated storytelling, lush details and some of the year’s most unnerving CGI.

Swanberg’s most mature and satisfying film yet.

While the final act might not surprise or stun, it does feature some classic le Carre movements, some trademark Corbijn ease, and a terrifying Hoffman bellowing at the sky – not so bad for just another spy film.

Despite the specificity of its story and the manner in which its told, the issues at hand remain universal, including David’s struggle to connect with his child and the way paranoia can make even the best friends into the worst enemies.

As Burden, Garrett Hedlund astonishes in a nuanced portrait of a man resistant to change, until he finally comes to understand that hatred is literally killing him.

The Rape of Recy Taylor works as both artifact and indictment.

Repetition grinds Lizzie to a halt, and the film lacks anything resembling energy, cycling through the same beats until something happens only because it has to.

Utilizing a cast of non-actors — most of whom are tasked with playing versions of themselves, in a story pulled from their lives — Zhao’s film derives its power from the truth that both drives it and inspires it, and the final result is a wholly unique slice-of-life drama.

It’s Riseborough who holds the film fast, rooting its seemingly wild twists and character developments into something haunting and, quite often, eerily understandable.

At every turn, Fisher is honest and open, relatable to the point that you feel as if you’re actually watching her own life play out.

The film is smartly assembled, making the most of a limited indie budget and building a compelling world to boot.

Puzzle toes a tough line, managing to stay relentlessly good-hearted and deeply humane, even as Agnes herself plunges into deeper, more dramatic waters. It’s the kind of mid-life crisis story that so rarely centers on a woman and Macdonald shines in the role, riveting even in the quietest of moments.

While Mantzoukas and Revolori charm – consider them your new, unexpected go-to buddy comedy duo – The Long Dumb Road soon runs out of gas, chugging through a series of increasingly unbelievable contrivances.

By its final act ... “The Lost King” picks up enough steam ... yet even this last 40 or so minutes highlights how plodding the rest of the film is, how dull this story about literal grave-digging feels, when nothing less than elemental truth and a singular mission in life are reduced to, well, just a story, and not even an altogether real one at that.

For a film that chronicles the rise of a creator obsessed with reanimating the dead, Mary Shelley is utterly lifeless. It contains a sparkling and startlingly raw performance by Elle Fanning, but Haifaa Al-Mansour’s disappointing followup to her remarkable “Wadjda” doesn’t push beyond paint-by-numbers biopic posturing

On Chesil Beach offers up so many tricky tonal changes, enough that Cooke eventually gives them over to a single note: limp.