Katie Walsh

Keshavarz spins a lot of plates in The Persian Version and we can see the effort, but she keeps them all in the air.

it is a boring paint-by-numbers ghost movie, a jumble of tropes borrowed from movies like “The Ring,” and a poor facsimile of its influences.

Everyone here really wants to make something good and moving, but they’re all working so hard to make something out of nothing.

The Exorcist: Believer is an exhausting affair, an unrelenting film that attempts to cover up its lack of shock and suspense with a kind of cinematic bludgeoning: a battering delivered via smash cuts, jump scares, overlapping sound design and chaotic camerawork.

Throw in a whole heck of a lot of puns and sand all the edges down so everything is gently charming, inoffensive and just silly enough but not too silly to be annoying.

It’s almost unbelievable that Carney pulls off films like this, which could easily tip over into maudlin. Instead, the winning Flora and Son is an utterly irresistible emotional ear-worm.

The action is messy, the geography indiscernible, and a few shots seem stitched together with but a single pixel and a prayer.

Cassandro’s maximalist image invites a big, outlandish treatment, but Williams keeps the tone quiet and grounded, centering García Bernal’s moving performance and keeping the focus on Saúl, the real person behind the celebrity.

The stories of growing up and finding yourself remain the same, but it’s the moving performances and specific details embroidered on this one that make it so special.

Reaching for meaning in The Nun II is as fruitful as a wander down a dark and dusty old hall. You’ll find things that go bump in the night but not much else underneath all the doom and gloom.

Cooke and her character, Paige, inject some life into the proceedings, but the central mystery feels forced, the twists implausible. The screenplay strains for topicality, stuffing too many elements at once into this sad story in a bid for relevance that never quite resonates.

Fuqua goes for operatic style and pulp poetics, strung together with a strangely paced and structured plot that’s about as floppy as a spaghetti noodle (the script is once again by Richard Wenk). But the film is not unenjoyable on a purely impressionistic level, as Fuqua and Washington bring the audience along on their Euro trip and ask us simply to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride that is Robert McCall inflicting terror and mayhem on very bad people.

If it’s imperfect, or certain narrative turns are rocky, you forgive it because Bottoms is just so audacious, and most important, the jokes are nonstop. Perfectionism is a trap, anyway.

The script is standard sports movie fare without much subtext — in the mouth of anyone other than Harbour, some of these motivational lines would be real clangers, but he sells the material with his rugged soulfulness, and there’s true chemistry between him and Madekwe, as the unlikely sports star and his demanding coach.

In teasing out the complex relationship between life and death in relationship to birth and “Frankenstein,” Moss presents a provocative existential quandary and reminds us that horror stories have been women’s stories all along.

It all makes for an appealing blend of flavors and influences, and despite its minor flaws, “Blue Beetle” combines family, history and culture with an upbeat tone to introduce a character who offers an exciting new direction for DC.

Klondike is certainly not an easy watch, but it is a profound one — a film that feels both prescient and retrospective about Ukraine, locked in what seems a never-ending existential conflict with its neighbor.

It’s an odd viewing experience, to have the second half of a movie not necessarily redeem the bland first half but rather find its sea legs, leaning into the slippery silliness of a summer shark flick. With a blue drink in hand and movie theater air conditioning blasting like salty sea air, there are worse ways to spend an August afternoon.

Talk To Me isn’t just a splashy debut for the Philippou brothers, who prove their filmmaking chops in making the leap from the small screen to the big. It’s also an incredible introduction to a remarkable actress in a role that will undoubtedly prove to be an instant classic horror movie heroine.

This madcap mockumentary works beautifully because Gordon, Lieberman, Platt and Galvin take care to imbue this setting with a real sense of culture and place, populated with wonderfully eccentric characters.

The intersex movement is about living fully without fear, shame or trauma, to live life on one’s own terms, and the brightness and vigor that Cohen applies to the tone follows the energy of the activists themselves.

There simply aren’t enough female dirtbags in cinema, so Lawrence’s Maddie Barker — Uber driver, surly bartender and pissed-off Montauk townie — is a refreshing character.

Hilariously daring, deeply moving and stereotype-busting in equal measure, Joy Ride is also the raunchiest movie to make you shed a tear.

Anderson hasn’t just delivered his best film in years — he’s also managed to capture the zeitgeist in his own unique way.

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.

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.

She’s spunky and hot-headed, he’s sweet and adorable — if they touch, it could be a disaster, but somehow, their chemistry just works, bringing the charming “Elemental” to a lively roiling boil.

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.

Unable to rise above this internal conflict, it’s a film that’s both dull and disposable. Though it sets up the opportunity for more interconnected franchise filmmaking, this is a beast that needs to be put down.

A breathlessly beautiful achievement not just in animation but also comic book movie storytelling, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is willing to shred the lore from top to bottom and weave it back together again in new, surprising and wildly entertaining ways. It’s simply spectacular.

It’s a pleasure to see Butler do his thing opposite a talented array of international performers — Fazal and Fimmel are standouts — and stretch his specific set of skills into more complex contemporary storytelling, making “Kandahar” worth the trip

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.

Leterrier and Momoa bring an energy and excitement to Fast X that juices the engine to deliver the goods that fans want. But the jumbled lore and odd treatment of characters may leave audiences with more questions than answers, and wondering whether the franchise is running on fumes.

What emerges from the electronic noise and fussy aesthetic of “BlackBerry” is a compelling portrait of a company that flew too close to the sun.

The love story that is The Eight Mountains expresses this ineffable relationship between those who know us best and the places in which we find ourselves with a rough-hewed grace and profound knowingness.

It’s fun to see [Rodriguez] color in new shades of film genre, but the script and performances in “Hypnotic” are too laughably absurd to take seriously.

It may be treacly and unrealistic, but “Book Club: The Next Chapter” has heart and soul, and it’s as sweet and quaffable as an Aperol spritz on a hot day.

Gunn exhorts the audience to embrace the quirky, the messy, the flawed, to strive for connection, not precision in this world and beyond. It’s a resonant message at the center of all the din.

What a wonder that the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved 1970 young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is as lovely, heartfelt and, indeed, deeply radical as the original text.

One can’t help but feel that the man himself — grill and all — is so much more fascinating than this rote representation.

It’s the best film he’s made in years.

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.

This high-concept romp demands an over-the-top and facile narrative, and some of the bits are a bit hackneyed, but Mafia Mamma is much more wacky, funny and violent than the too-tame trailers would have you believe. Collette goes for broke in her performance and Hardwicke juggles the tone, style and genre play with ease.

The stylish Renfield is a bit of frothy fun. It may be too flip for some, but flippancy isn’t the issue — it’s the flimsiness. Hoult and Cage sell the toxic odd-couple dynamic well, but a sturdier story is required to fully support their performances, especially Cage’s operatic Dracula, who delights in terrorizing his foppish familiar.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is mildly amusing, swift, noisy and unrelentingly paced, which is par for the course considering this is the studio that brought us the Minions.

The style is busy, Affleck laying a heavy hand on the ’80s references and music cues, Robert Richardson’s cinematography mimicking the amateurish style of someone with a brand-new camcorder. But the pace flies, and the actors make the film wildly engaging.

The film is utterly absorbing, anchored by the unpredictable performance of Taylor, playing a hopelessly complicated, but deeply caring woman.

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.

It’s a film that calls into question our own biases and accepted notions and encourages one to get out there and find the truth — it could be an adventure after all.

Katsoupis poses these probing and provocative questions about humanity but doesn’t offer any clear answers or messages. Rather, he lets his muse, Dafoe, simply inhabit this harrowing journey with his strange magnetism and sense of timelessness, in a performance that is simultaneously primitive and transcendent.

It may be a shoddily made Skittles ad masquerading as a superhero riff, but it’s Levi’s performance that sends it into the stratosphere of cringe.

For the most part, it is warmly amusing without diving too far into the realm of the maudlin or treacly; and it side-steps anything insensitive while still enjoying some bawdy humor.

OF: RDG is classic recent Ritchie: star-studded, snarky, and ultimately grating, lousy with weird glasses and bad accents. This thing is so slight, a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of a “Mission: Impossible” that it’s barely a movie.

Writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick keep the blade sharp, while directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett bring a brawny, bruising and bloody style to this “requel sequel.”

Coogler and Baylin’s screenplay isn’t all that innovative with the sports movie formula, and it unfortunately tends to rely on characters plainly spelling out their inner monologues, rather than leaving it to subtext. But Jordan’s steady direction elevates the material, keeping a strong hand on the tone and emotional tenor.

The premise of My Happy Ending is somewhat slight, but there’s nothing insubstantial about a woman coming to a profound realization about her life thanks to a surprising encounter with unexpected new allies.

Unfortunately, despite the interesting history, the film itself is a dry, scattered slog, neutered of all the thorny, contradictory details of the real story.

Impeccably written and beautifully performed by Anton and Green, Of an Age is a profoundly moving film about the beauty and the horror of what it means to be seen for the first time, to love for the first time, and how the past and future are constantly informing each other.

This final installment finds Soderbergh and Tatum toying with audience expectations to disappointing results. There are a few flashes of the original magic, but it’s lacking in the energy that made the first two movies a thrill.

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.

Full Time . . . depicts the never-ending sprint that is Julie’s life as a struggling single mom, rendering this social-realist drama as a gritty, heart-pounding thriller, with breathless, naturalistic handheld cinematography by Victor Seguin and an adrenaline-pounding electronic score by Irène Drésel.

The comedy isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, and the story beats are almost painfully predictable, but the picture hangs together thanks to this group of legends and the loose, absurdist humor of the screenplay.

Deadliest of all, Fear is just not scary. The jump scares don’t land, the fears themselves are all a bit silly and it feels like Taylor is holding back for the majority of the run time.