Katie Walsh

Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigate the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors.

It is a bold, stylish and dynamic adaptation that makes big choices that may have one puzzling through both the characters’ and filmmakers’ intentions — or maybe not. It is a mirror after all, and the moral of the story is left up to us, which is perhaps the most daring move of all.

If you go into it expecting nothing more than to enjoy watching a sweaty Butler manhandle some bad guys while Colter manhandles him, you’ll be more than satisfied with the ride Plane offers — a well-executed hunk of pulpy entertainment.

The comedy waffles between nonsensically heightened and realistically grounded, often alternating between the two modes at random, never landing on a tone.

Treviño’s effervescent and empathetic performance as Marisol keeps A Man Called Otto on track, both actress and character proving to be the saving grace for this curmudgeonly fellow, and film.

The jump-scares in the fun, funny thrill ride that is “M3GAN” elicit more giggles than groans, but there are also intriguing connections being made on “M3GAN’s” motherboard, behind the glossy surface.

It’s a film that ultimately feels less like a celebration and more like further exploitation of the star, leaving us all with much more unsettling questions about Houston’s life and legacy. Sadly, the disappointing “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” doesn’t let Whitney rest in peace.

With an excellent cast and style, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is one gorgeous and dynamic fractured fairy tale.

Retaining the creative forces behind the successful musical is the key to the movie musical’s success, as “Matilda the Musical” maintains the mischievous humor and the uniquely oddball sensibility of the stage production and book, delivering a wonderfully rousing screen adaptation anchored by superb performances.

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.”

The result is amusing enough, but it’s as cinematically substantive as a sugar cookie.

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.

Tonally, Devotion remains steady, never going for over-the-top emotion or sensation, simply seeking to express something authentically moving and human. It unmistakably achieves that, delivering a stirring story of friendship during war, and beyond, that is both rare and real.

With care, thoughtfulness and rigor, Schrader and the filmmakers of She Said craft a film that shows the process of building this paradigm-shifting piece of journalism in a manner that is simultaneously thrilling and grindingly methodical, aided greatly by Nicholas Britell’s score.

The Menu is a tightly wound, sharply rendered skewering of the dichotomy between the takers and the givers, or in this case, the eaters and the cooks.

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

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.

It’s the faces that stand out in Retrograde, a stylistic and thematic motif that offers an empathetic power to the film as well as an aching poignancy.

Using a variety of filmmaking techniques, Chukwu asks us to look at Deadwyler’s performance as Mamie in many different ways — to study her grief, her herculean poise, the polarity between her power and vulnerability — and to truly understand and feel the enormity of what she accomplished.

Despite the somewhat bland nature of the storytelling — it’s not like this documentary is pushing the boundaries of the form — it’s an incredible true story told with care and skill.

It’s not funny, it’s not satirical, and it’s not worth your time, or Toni Collette’s

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.

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.

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.

While the film does feel cobbled together out of spare parts of other superhero movies, and it’s almost instantly forgettable, Collet-Serra manages to hold it all together out of sheer force of will and an inherent sense of style. If there’s any superhero to write about with Black Adam, it’s him, and it’s a good thing to see he still has some lightning coming out of his fingers.

It is an elegy wrapped around a true-crime story; an observational social-justice movie intertwined with an historical retelling that finds the universal in the specific. In braiding these strands together, Brown crafts a film that isn’t one thing or the other but instead dares to contain multitudes.

Jones sets out to find out if sex work is empowering, but what she discovers, and what we are reminded of over the course of Sell/Buy/Date, is that vulnerability and sharing your story, in whatever form that takes, is the most empowering way to be in the world.

Halloween Ends has the feeling of dour obligation, and it’s clear that no one’s heart is really in this anymore, the limits of narrative possibility in Haddonfield stretched beyond their max.

Pasek and Paul’s songs end up having to do much of the emotional heavy lifting, and the rest of the film feels cobbled together from random parts scavenged from other kids’ movies and pop culture ephemera.

Though the messaging is a bit flat-footed, it’s nonetheless effective, and clearly deeply felt, and it brings a sense of significance to this otherwise wacky real-life story, one that really does have to be seen to be believed.

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.

The filmmaking craft on display and the control over the storytelling and suspense is exceptional.

Catherine Called Birdy is Dunham’s best writing and directing work yet; it’s an easy breezy, emotional good time, and an instant teen classic.

Thavat’s harrowing, moving film doesn’t necessarily offer justice for Bunny, but instead regards the small pieces of justice that Bunny, as misguided as she may be, ekes out for herself and her loved ones within a system that is trying to keep her down.

It is a beautiful blend of unforgettable physical performance and visual lyricism brought to bear on the tragic life story of the Gibbons twins, their wildly imaginative writing woven throughout like a sparkling thread, offering a brief glimpse into their realm of existence and imagination.

It’s not just one film, or one election, or one win — it’s a movement, as the energized subjects keep repeating. “Justice is not a destination, it’s a journey,” is one of the many resonant quotes shared by one of Booker’s advisors and friends, and it’s a reminder that the fight is never-ending.

At the center, the true general, Prince-Bythewood, marshals every aspect of The Woman King in concert, conducting action, thrills and emotion beautifully. It is a remarkable, powerful film, and not to be missed.

The 1990s framing device keeps pulling us out of the 1950s love story, sapping its power.

Medieval is a film with an identity crisis, caught between its lowbrow sword-and-splatter charms and grander ambitions. As a quick and dirty 90-minute corker, it could have been a nice and nasty slice of genre filmmaking, but Jakl aims for something more epic in scope, and the film drags, easily 30 minutes too long.

Cregger slowly builds bone-chilling and suspenseful sequences up to screechingly operatic moments of face-melting horror, and then swiftly cuts to a different chapter, making a hard left into a completely different mode, taking us all on the roller-coaster ride. His facility with comedy also aids in these jarring tone switches, and Barbarian is as funny as it is terrifying.

It’s brutal and exceedingly bloody, as one would expect from this kind of lean genre picture. But “Burial” also is packed with meaty philosophical questions about gods, monsters, and men at war, and it’s exceedingly well-executed.

Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut Funny Pages is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey.

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.

A horror film that’s a true triple threat: stunning, smart and wildly entertaining.

The Immaculate Room tests the audience’s patience as much as it does the characters’.

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

It is indeed harrowing to watch — to bear witness — and while the film is inevitably heavy with existential dread, Pritz delivers an emotionally engaging story filled with heart, heroes, and a bit of hope to hold onto. There is no more urgent film that demands your attention this year.

Aselton has a light touch as a director, and she wisely trots out an all-star parade of comedy heavyweights to distract from the script issues.

In 95 minutes, Ford unfurls a gritty and suspenseful L.A. noir that also serves to examine the structural issues that uphold wealth inequality in this country. But Emily the Criminal isn’t trying to be preachy or political, it’s just authentic, and urgent, and Plaza’s performance keeps the emotional and physical honesty at the forefront.

A glib, slick and shallow slice of Japanophile action entertainment that offers a very bright, shiny surface but has absolutely no interest in revealing anything beyond that.

In Vengeance, Novak sets his sights on lampooning the big-city media types who go chasing stories in middle America and return with observations from the “flyover states” that are usually condescending, preachy, or inauthentic, and in doing so, he finds the humor, and something honest too.

While the plot following Krypto finding his pack and saving the day is exceedingly formulaic and slightly tiresome with its predictable turns, Stern and Whittington fill the space around the structure with a plethora of absurdist humor and sharply written jokes, as well as the teasing self-awareness.

Calamy delivers a beautifully open performance at the center of an utterly winning comedy about the most important journey a person can take: toward finding themselves.

The story is fantastical, predictable and utterly delightful, allowing the audience to engage in familiar generic pleasures that have been cut and trimmed to fit every curve neatly.

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.

It’s a breezy, funny, highly self-referential flick steeped in movie history.

In remaining present, with the past and future swirling feverishly, the film is a deeply poignant and moving love letter to those that remain, who “rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” as Dylan Thomas once wrote. Someone’s got to make a stand for the last vestiges of the soul of New York City, and “Dreaming Walls” beautifully captures their fight and their dreams.

These references, and the relentless assault of ‘70s needle drops, are fun, to a point, but the movie itself is 87 minutes of pure chaos, a hallucinatory, cacophonous fever dream of nonsensical subplots and Minion gibberish.

Thames delivers a searingly authentic performance as the young Finney, and when he’s all alone in the basement with ghosts, “The Black Phone” is at its best: suspenseful, emotional and filled with jump scares.

While Grappe ultimately finds an ending that’s a bit pat, the power of the Ukrainian spirit comes through beautifully, underscoring the stakes of what is, and always will be, at hand for the country, now more than ever: identity, safety, and freedom.

At the center of Baz Luhrmann’s sprawling pop epic Elvis, a film as opulent and outsize as the King’s talent and taste, Butler delivers a fully transformed, fully committed and star-making turn as Elvis Presley. The rumors are true: Elvis lives, in Austin Butler.

Jones’ debut is stuffed to the brim with the sharp dialogue and rich costumes that bring us back to the period romance genre again and again. Her direction is serviceable, and the pacing never lingers too long, keeping the laughs and romance coming.

The Lost Girls gets stuck somewhere in the middle of magical realism and a gritty psychological exploration of what it means to believe in Peter and still live in the real world.

It’s a war cry that’s simultaneously a galvanizing call to action, a message of hope and a reminder that a different world is possible.

Downton Abbey: A New Era is a chaste, mannered soap opera that feels like a relic of another time in more ways than one, but perhaps, that’s the entire appeal.

Block Party is a lightweight comedy that frustrates because there’s the potential for it to be great, to resonate beyond its blandly formulaic charms.

This beautifully crafted jewel of a throwback thriller signifies Okuno as a talent to watch, but furthermore, it pushes the viewer to question what, and who, we choose to believe and why.

The antics are wacky, the jokes are dense, and “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” is both nail-bitingly tense and genuinely moving. It’s a story that demonstrates the powerful force of family unity, and that small businesses are tantamount to preserving the fabric of a community. But most importantly, it’s hilarious, and it’s likely to make you crave a burger too.

Carpignano once again uses a tight, intimate character focus to take a wider look at larger political and cultural issues in this region. In the poetically, humanistically crafted A Chiara, he also manages to flip the Mafia movie on its head, and in doing so, challenges the mythology that keeps these shadowy systems in power.

Like a weaver on a loom, Hansen-Løve loops these moments together, threading small moments of thought-provoking social commentary throughout, revealing the larger picture only once the process is done, offering a snapshot of a moment in time, a profound and captivating portrait of love, lost, found, and ever-remaining.

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.

This is a definitive statement of what Carmichael can do as a director, transcending the small scope of the film into something grander and more epic.

The film maintains a quiet dynamic even throughout the most horrific moments, and while you might expect, or even want, the film to climax more operatically, the understated tone is a radical choice.

Bourgeois-Tacquet’s script is loaded with witty bon mots and carefully-constructed insights.

Like many great monster movies, Hatching uses its creature as a metaphor for repressed emotion, and the one at the center of this film is one of the most uniquely grotesque creations seen on screen in a long time.

Memory has a decent director in Campbell (“Casino Royale,” “Vertical Limit”) and a great cast (yes, that’s Ray Stevenson as a corrupt cop), but a crippling case of a bad script that can’t manage to make us care about any of these characters.

Marvelous and the Black Hole proves to be a small marvel of an indie gem and an assured debut for Tsang.

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 feels like a bad parody, a shadow of what a film is, not an actual film itself. The color palette is a dreary mud puddle of grays and browns, and there’s no sense of space or geography. It has no weight, no heft, no texture, no color, no sense of magic or wonder in the least. The story itself has no sense of stakes or resonance, and the actors vary in affect from lifeless to dutiful to pained.

It’s a remarkable story, but “Father Stu” is a broad, somewhat brutish film.

What Arnold manages to make tangibly cinematic in Cow is the soulful spirituality of these animals, their beauty and their emotions. It is as moving as it is devastating, and although this film requires patience and fortitude, it rewards with a singular and perspective-shifting cinematic experience.

It is startling, and sometimes disturbing, but hits a place that is intensely human — bittersweet and bloody and beautiful at once, and unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

The Contractor is decidedly Pine’s film. His performance is as efficient as the script, which Saleh mirrors with a crisp, smooth aesthetic. There’s nothing particularly showy about the style, but it serves the story of this professional warrior working his way through an unfamiliar place.

This one rolls right over any doubters, powered by Bullock and Tatum, in a film that lets them play to their strengths.

It’s a profound love letter from daughter to mother, an expression of a desire to remain close to her, and in fact, a love letter to all mother-daughter relationships that persist in spite of and because of all the flaws, foibles, and fallibility that comes with being human.

They don’t often make them like this anymore, a story cut, folded and stitched together with care. So “The Outfit” is worth slipping into and savoring.

The first half is the more intriguing as older and younger tussle with each other and ask the tough questions, figuring out their mission together. But it all falls apart in a hackneyed third act.

In its uncompromising vision, it may not be for everyone, but it’s definitely the movie that Batman needed.

It’s an utterly fascinating, mysterious, and often experimental character study of someone who is hard to understand because they fundamentally don’t understand themselves.

The jokes are stale, the energy is stilted, and the whole thing feels like a misbegotten vanity exercise cooked up in the pandemic to keep them occupied.

Typically, movies about dogs are unrelenting tear-jerkers, but Tatum and Reid resist sentimentality, resulting in a film that’s refreshingly frank and surprising when the emotional moments do hit (and do they ever).

Uncharted is fine, and entertaining enough, but while some moments are inspired, others are completely inert. It’s oddly neutered and bloodless, the stakes negligible. It feels like a project with so much potential that never fully achieves liftoff, stumbling when it should soar.

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

Though the situation is far from realistic, the dynamically directed and swiftly paced Marry Me remains emotionally grounded, which is crucial to the execution.

Jackass Forever transcends the body horror to achieve a kind of nirvana: The crew invite themselves to laugh so they don’t cry, and ask the audience to do the same. It’s a reminder that pain is temporary but friendship is forever.

Clean is so lean, it’s as if the story itself was sacrificed for atmosphere. Clean brings the cold, moody vibes and extreme violence, but narratively, it’s a mess.

There is potential to say so much more about sex, love, partnership, feminism and shifting sexual mores across cultures, but Simple Passion lets the bodies do the talking, and after a while, they run out of things to say.

Greis-Rosenthal delivers a fantastic and fierce performance as Maggie, and it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her, even when she shares the frame with Coster-Waldau. Thanks to her compelling screen presence, and Boe’s dramatically dazzling aesthetic, A Taste of Hunger is a delectable cinematic treat, one that deserves to be savored.