Katie Walsh

What director Caryn Waechter does best is artfully and lyrically capture moments of teenage abandon where the girls feel free, self-possessed and full of friendship love.

Directed by Stephen Williams with a sense of momentum and fluidity, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this version of Bologne’s life story glides over the most interesting parts.

With a highly stylized form, and thick, syrupy ribbons of blood splashing everywhere, Sun Choke evokes a creepy, eerie vibe, but it’s difficult to muster more than a passing interest in the story, because we don’t know who this girl is, or why she does these things.

There's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance when it comes to the material and the approach that the filmmakers take, and much that doesn't get covered in this short, 80-minute primer.

The outlook of The Happys is reflected in its title — even when things are dark, Tracy maintains her sunny outlook. It might be a bit too spit-varnished shiny, but her happiness is hard-won.

This dark and dreary monster movie is indeed horrific, but it’s also undoubtedly a downer, for more reasons than likely intended.

While the experiment itself is fascinating, the approach taken by Almereyda in using distractingly peculiar storytelling techniques only succeed in distancing the audience from the film's inspiration.

The Hustle nods to its predecessors and feels at times like “To Catch a Thief” meets “Absolutely Fabulous.” But what makes “The Hustle” work is its stars.

Galifianakis steals the show as the friendly fussbudget in a performance we've come to expect from him. The enormous potential on screen is tantalizing, which is why the disappointment of failed execution stings.

The central relationship of “The Valet” is the weakest part of the film, and much of the comedy is a bit tiresome, though a few bits do pop.

The last third of the film descends straight into a combination of "Dynasty" with shades of cult classic "The Room." It's fantastic because it's complete and utter silly madness. Helicopter crashes! Slaps! Drinks thrown in faces! Fully clothed shower sex! A framed "Chronicles of Riddick" poster! All the makings of an instant cult classic.

The film is a feat of maximalist and moody production design and cinematography, but the tedious and overwrought script renders every character two-dimensional, despite the effortful acting, teary pronunciations and emphatically delivered declarations.

The focus of The Aftermath is in all the wrong places, spending time with characters in which we are unable to gain an emotional foothold. This misplaced attention makes for an erotic drama that feels cold, and a political thriller that feels empty.

The film wants to speak to some kind of old school, lone-ranger American hero type (as portrayed by a man from Northern Ireland), but it’s too vague, shying away from any controversy, to say much at all.

Unfortunately, the cast and a few sweet tunes by Armstrong are the only things going for this delayed coming-of-age dramedy.

Like many music documentaries, this film suffers from the tendency to reiterate its point too often.

Deakins’ work is beautiful, Colman is incredible, and the role of Stephen proves to be a breakout for Ward. But the story is too scattershot and contrived for an audience to be swept away and moved in the same way that Colman finds herself swept away by the experience of the Peter Sellers classic “Being There.”

A sweet if underwhelming documentary with plenty of character, but told in such a simple and gentle way, it doesn’t quite grab audiences as it could.

The films are bad, but they are entertaining. Fifty Shades Freed, the final film of the trilogy, just might be the most competently made yet — which is a shame for those expecting the high camp factor of "Fifty Shades Darker."

If he is trying to say something (and it’s unclear what that might be), all of the fuss and muss obfuscates any message, and even worse, any emotional connection to the film. This latest dispatch is indeed a profound disappointment.

The willingness to let Stephanie be human and react as such brings a sense of reality and authenticity back to the action-spy genre, which has become too slick.

Though the commentary is incisive, the film’s loose structure often leaves the viewer feeling adrift watching a bunch of beautiful teens bicker and get busy. But if you can stick around long enough, Slut in a Good Way pulls through with the love story and the message, to boot.

The unstructured and rather amateurish documentary Citizen Clark …A Life of Principle, directed by Joseph C. Stillman, depicts the compassionate Clark’s remarkable life in his own words and the memories of those around him.

Despite the juicy details and fascinating topic, it’s disappointing that the stilted tone makes it so difficult to connect emotionally with this important story.

Fuller demonstrates a strong command over his visual domain, but the pat allegory he presents about the monsters with whom we have to learn to live feels a bit muddled.

There are a few inventive battles on a frozen pond and atop the tiled roof of a temple, but they are so CGI-enhanced as to seem cartoonish, not marvelous.

The film’s affable nature and the sheer charisma oozing off Pine and Grant is intoxicating, but overall, there’s a sense that it doesn’t quite gel, the engine revving but never hitting the speed of which it seems capable.

Writer-director Anders Morgenthaler's conclusion comes far too hastily and haphazardly, with a disregard for plot details or plausible storytelling.

The protagonist's unlikable routine is too high a degree of difficulty to execute flawlessly.

The film, while well-intentioned and informative, is a somewhat unfocused piece.

The Current War: Director’s Cut is an interesting yarn. But one just can’t shake the feeling that it’s just a Wikipedia article jazzed up with a lot of fun camera tricks and some cinematic wizardry, though Westinghouse and Edison would have to be proud of the amazing movie magic.

Louder Than Bombs never quite comes together. You keep waiting for it to gel, but it just drifts along until it drifts away.

The Little Hours gets freaky, but it never feels truly subversive, or even that titillating.

The character and Qualley’s performance is so beguiling that it would be a delight to watch Honey O’Donahue solve any manner of mysteries of the week, “Columbo”-style. It’s a shame, then, that the particular mystery at hand in Honey Don’t! is so convoluted and nonsensical.

An unprecedented take on the holiday film, but not an entirely successful one.

What comes through loud and clear in “My Mind & Me” is Gomez using the film to declare her priorities, and her carefully controlled revelations are a chance to write her own story.

Bacon’s performance as well as Finn’s detailed craft manage to hold tension, and the audience’s attention, for the hour and 55 minute runtime of this horror curio, which is as opaque and somewhat silly as the smiles that drive it.

While it will likely amuse its target audience of geeks and the terminally online, Deadpool & Wolverine is a whole lot of hot air and not much else.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent knows that what it has going for it is Nicolas Cage, and Nicolas Cage is what makes this otherwise forgettable comedy worth the watch. It’s not necessarily only for super fans, but super fans will be richly rewarded by this love letter to Cage, who, remember, never went away.

It succeeds as a comedy but not quite as a horror film, the genre merely a setting and style for sending up insidious character stereotypes.

Ultimately, it feels irresponsible to remain unwilling to take a stand on this extreme abstract rhetoric in support of an all too real and immediate threat.

All the excellent acting and sumptuous style can’t cover up that the culmination of this tête-à-tête is disappointingly hollow with an ironic bow on top.

The maximalist approach isn’t necessary to enhance the wild tales, but the film does reflect its subject in its messy yet invigorating approach.

Though the film eventually gets to where it needs to go, it feels scattered, stumbling over true crime tropes on the way.

Blink Twice is a big, bold swing, even if its message becomes muddled along the way. It’s clear Kravitz wants to make a statement with this film. What’s less clear is what exactly that statement might be.

It's a fairly serviceable animated feature, with a few inspired elements, and more than enough gnome puns to go around.

Henry is such an earthy, captivating presence that he holds the center of gravity in Causeway — when he’s not on screen, the film drifts, rudderless, as Lynsey does.

While undoubtedly a uniquely creative and singularly emotive film, it can be all just a little too, too much.

It is a worthy, if somewhat abbreviated, toast to the woman behind one of the most iconic Champagnes in the world.

The film itself is a bit rudimentary, with amateurish titles, and editing choices that bloat the already extended length, but the interviews with band members and fans are insightful and engaging, with archival footage that truly rocks.

Though it is faithful, Where the Crawdads Sing is lacking the essential character and storytelling connective tissue that makes a story like this work — an adaptation such as this cannot survive on plot alone.

Stearns grapples with notions of gender, violence and identity. But in this mannered, ironic take, his punches don't land hard enough to leave a mark.

It’s faithfully formulaic, but the cast makes it appealing.

The smart premise is muddled with far too many tangents — bumbling romances, rivalries with old classmates, troubled cats, precocious teens, angry dance sequences. When focusing on the central relationship, the film is at its best.

The film is a slickly-executed piece, an enjoyable but almost unbearably twisty puzzle box of narrative fun, but once everything slots together the box is unfortunately empty.

The low energy pace and performances strive for naturalism but just don't achieve compelling tension or suspense.

The brawny Enforcement doesn’t shy away from brutal action, but the film is more in line with recent police thrillers like Deon Taylor’s “Black and Blue,” and Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables,” which fuse overt sociopolitical commentary with genre thrills.

Goth holds MaXXXine together through the sheer force of her charisma, despite the bumpy plot, an underwritten character and the plodding, perfunctory kills that arrive like clockwork.

While the mocking tone mostly undermines any trenchant commentary, the strongest impression Ready or Not leaves, thanks to Weaving’s eye-rolling, primal-screaming, evil-giggling performance, is of the cathartic, transformative female rage at the center of it all.

While the rest of the film feels slightly juvenile, Quinn, who costarred in “Landline,” keeps Good Girls Get High afloat, with her wide-eyed combination of pathos and humor that vacillates from deadpan to goofy.

Carruth’s troubled performance holds the piece together until it loses the thread on its own tenuous mythology, descending into incoherent cacophony.

The cinematic execution of All Saints is serviceable at best. It's stilted at times, with too much dead air hanging around, and the stakes and roller coaster of ups and downs in the script often seem out of step with the emotion on-screen.

The irony and meaninglessness of the violence rankles, especially when Ulysses is presented as such a nice guy who is prone to de-escalation and community care in his day-to-day work.

It's sweet, really, to imagine the kind of devotion Alpha might inspire, a film that's very simple, kind of strange, but will melt any dog-lover's heart.

Bone Lake offers up an appealing surface, but it’s just too shallow to get very far.

If Thanksgiving had to be any specific dish on the holiday table, it would be stuffing: disparate chunks tossed together and baked. Stuffing is a dish where old bread goes to shine — a cheap and easy crowd-pleaser. But this particular serving of it is missing a crucial element, the binder.

Though the film is politically and culturally urgent, it’s too much of a challenge to connect with the void of character at the core of this screenplay. We may all have the power to be Jane, but the image of Jane remains frustratingly hazy in Nagy’s depiction.

Certain qualities are undeniable, such as Keaton’s command of this character and O’Hara’s unique wit. Ryder has the heaviest performance lift, transitioning her character from teen to mom, but she finds her groove in the back half of the movie. But there’s something a bit bland and manufactured about this version.

Roseanne for President can’t quite decide what it wants to be: a political farce underlined with John Philip Sousa-esque military marches, a deep dive into the electoral workings of various third parties like the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party or an intimate portrait of a fascinating, wild and influential cultural icon. It’s all of these things and therefore not quite enough of each of them.

The unpredictable nature of this thought-provoking tale and its unusual execution is laudable for its originality, but the ending of “Armand” troubles its strong start, with the sense that Tøndel’s assured direction at the outset has slipped as he makes his way to a strange climax and a questionable conclusion.

Alex Strangelove is a deeply annoying failed experiment at melding a sensitive LGBTQ love story with the ethos of raunchy teen sex comedies.

Reynolds is a bit too glib and smug to buy as the romantic lead. It’s actually a relief that the movie salvages the romance by relegating it to the game world. But the whole film remains a bit too glib and smug anyway.

It’s at once talky yet emotionally remote, and while posing a risky set of questions about sexual abuse, power and relationships, the experience is an unsatisfactory and draining slog.

Abigail is at times a bit too flippant, over-the-top and even protracted in its ridiculous Grand Guignol of exploding “meat sacks,” but it’s very much in line with the unique Radio Silence sensibility, en vogue with audiences right now.

Thompson’s directing is serviceable, if slightly scattered and derivative, using every rom-com trope and flourish available. “The Year of Spectacular Men” feels a bit long and self-involved — and a lot like the men whom Izzy dates, it’s fun but far from spectacular.

Where “The Raid” films used a thin story to efficiently showcase the rapid-fire lethality of silat, Headshot attempts to wrangle an emotional back story into the proceedings, which is a hard combination to stomach when the characters are brutally beating one another senseless.

It’s a charming and quirky New York tale, if a bit disorganized, finding its voice when it quiets down to just listen to the three women at the center of the story.

Despite the narrative elements that are part of Michael’s coping mechanisms, Aldridge and Field effectively salvage the emotional core of “Spoiler Alert,” bringing us back to the heart of the matter, and giving space to the feelings that should flow freely in a film like this.

The characters make such unrealistic, outlandish choices at almost every turn that it’s hard to buy into their journeys. The pace is so measured as to be stultifying, and at the end of the film, you have to wonder where all of this is going, and ultimately, what is it for?

Krauss digs into the murky, uneasy morality of wartime, but The Kill Team doesn’t quite convey the brutality of these crimes with the same power that news accounts or even Krauss’ own documentary have.

As far as family-friendly, faith-based holiday movies go, you could do worse than “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” though it might not quite connect with all young audiences, as the film leans more toward poignant than playfully riotous.

Miller asks the audience to level up its existential exploration, posing questions about the purpose of storytelling and, perhaps, about the lack of magic in our technological, science-driven world. But the film doesn’t offer any concrete answers, leaving us adrift in a sea of provocative queries. For a film about narrative, it meanders, and loses focus.

Anything wants to be an unconventional love story but gets distracted by other subplots, and McNeil doesn't take the time to develop what becomes the central story line. Still, it's a fine showcase for a softer side of the always excellent John Carroll Lynch.

While it is fun to reconnect with Big Nick and watch him try new foods, there’s just something missing in this rote “Ronin” ripoff — a danger. It seems Gudegast and his cast of characters alighted for Europe with only a few ideas in place, and the tapestry of this world is not woven as tightly as the original.

There are a few chuckles to be found in Bill, but this is decidedly more "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" than "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

All the elements are there — writing, performance, themes — but there’s not enough plot to sustain a nearly two-hour feature, and as the situation escalates, it becomes clear that they don’t quite know where or how to end things, and it lands with a thud.

The respect for Lizzie means that film almost denies drama, rendering some moments almost inert. It could use an operatic high note, or even a truly deep dark night of the soul, some oscillation in the levels. But the film reflects the evenness with which Sevigny portrays the unflappable Lizzie.

This flick isn’t a masterpiece, not even a vulgar one, but it’s cheeky and entertaining enough in its giddy hyperviolence, thanks almost entirely to the star turn of Josh Hartnett, who has proved in his recent renaissance that he’s especially great in bozo mode.

Despite its audacious premise and style, Riot Girls feels at times underwritten, a few of the performances under-baked. Kwiatkowski and Iseman carry the film, but such a sprawling world is heavy lifting. Nevertheless, Vuckovic ably showcases her fetchingly energetic aesthetic.

That the structure consistently undermines its own storytelling is frustrating when the story to be told is a vital and interesting one.

It’s easy to take for granted what’s good about Dalíland, namely Gala and Dalí as played by Sukowa and Kingsley. Sukowa’s depiction of a Russian woman with a taste for drama and the finer things in life is over the top, but deadly accurate; Kingsley balances imperiousness and vulnerability beautifully and with an ease only he seems capable of achieving.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come feels behind the ball, not ahead of the game, and unfortunately, this is no escapist, or even cathartic, horror romp. Read the news instead if you’d like a real scare.

Fisk and Hoffman (the younger) make a fine pair on screen with a natural chemistry; it’s nice to see her back in a romantic leading role. You just wish the two had more substantive material to work with. In fact, the Hallmark holiday version of this film would likely have been more entertaining, or at least shorter.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a one-joke movie, relying on the subversion of physical stereotypes, but thanks to impeccable casting and fun performances, that joke is very well-executed.

The entire film feels like an exercise in dashing expectations, for both our heroine and the audience.

Morgan’s arch script about the doomed love lives of the young, rich and idle in L.A. is at times a Whit Stillman-esque social satire. There’s a whiff of a whip-smart, acid-tongued Jane Austen heroine in Annette, but she’s lacking an essential ingredient: empathy.

The comedic actor makes his directorial debut with a politically charged comedy that's sort of a satire, designed to wring wry laughs out of our deeply divided political state. But in this climate, it's just frustrating and unpleasant to watch.

The film is a moody and lyrical contemplation of grief and the connections that can be found within the void of loss.