Leah Greenblatt

Much like the book, the plot is essentially a wisp, and Byrne is far too luminous for her sad-sack role. But Juliet still feels winning; the small, sweet grace note on a familiar melody.

Cave has a smart, stylish way of storytelling that somehow makes a film built on bone saws and grotesqueries feel almost breezy.

Is Annette a farce, a metaphor, a noir meditation on fame? Only God and maybe the Maels know for sure. But like so many of the best and strangest moments that festivals like this bring, it's nearly impossible to witness it all and not walk away feeling altered (irrationally, emotionally, chemically) in some way.

What the movie doesn’t do, until it’s nearly over, is make any real case for why so much of America continued to put their faith in Kennedy long after the facts of the case were revealed.

The script, which Davidson co-wrote, is rooted in his own childhood loss; his father, too, was a fireman, killed on 9/11. In its best moments the movie resonates with those realities, though it also comes packaged, like so many Apatow films, in a kind of incurable ramble — some two-plus hours dotted with pleasingly random cameos (Pamela Adlon, Steve Buscemi) and odd tonal shifts.

At just over 120 minutes, though — a blink in Marvel time — this Ant-Man is clever enough to be fun, and wise enough not overstay its welcome. Who better understands the benefits, after all, of keeping it small?

Amidst all his meta tricks — the winky callouts to Wikipedia, the deliberately kitsch sets and incongruous soundtrack — Tesla’s own story ultimately fades; a small, bright light lost in the bigger spectacle.

An unabashedly heady romance, rich in pretty costumes — when they're wearing them — and lush, lusty atmosphere.

There's a better, weirder story in here somewhere — about teenage desire and social Darwinism, gender and perception — but the movie seems happy enough to settle for familiar, goofy jokes and jump scares; a freak flag half-flown.

If the 
story’s outcome is hardly a 
mystery — the landmark case was affirmed by a 5–4 margin in June 2015 — and the look of the film itself a little docu-drab, it’s also a shrewd and frequently moving testament to the true nature of change.

While a Black Panther without Boseman is undoubtedly nothing like the film's creators or any of its cast wanted it to be, the movie they've made feels like something unusually elegant and profound for the multiplex: a little bit of forever for the star who left too soon.

What it does have in happy excess is Souza’s affable presence, and his remarkable trove of images.

If the plot tends to outline its intentions in Sharpie — and veer into pure silliness by the final third — their presence pulls all that ridiculosity over the finish line: hardly a home run, but still a brittle, nasty bit of fun.

It helps immensely that the film has an actress like Amy Ryan (Birdman, Beautiful Boy) to play Mari Gilbert, whose years-long battle to get anyone at all — the press, the police, the people of New York — to care about her daughter Shannan forms the emotional core of the story.

A film literally made from thin air, the French thriller Oxygen (on Netflix starting Friday) is a neat little sci-fi nightmare; a cool-toned exercise in claustrophobia that nearly pulls off the innate improbabilities of its high-concept nonsense.

Even when it falls short of its aim to get every last Beyoncé joke and Big Idea onscreen, the movie still offers what any barbershop worth its repeat customers provides: An hour or two of good company, and the feeling that you’re leaving a little sharper than when you came in.

Directors Nick Johnson and Will Merrick sometimes strain the credulity of what shooting in-screen can do — June's laptop camera does a lot of heavy lifting — but the movie rarely feels forced or claustrophobic; it's just a whizzing, cannily of-the-moment spin on a familiar genre, reupped for the Genius Bar age.

Conceived by the conjoined comedic minds of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Evan Goldberg and baked (in more ways than one) for more than eight years, the movie looks like Pixar but plays like "Pineapple Express" unleashed among actual pineapples.

It's the smaller moments shared by the movie's flawed, humble characters — Loren twirling to old samba records in magic-hour sunlight; Karimi's Hamil teaching Momo how to reweave a rug — and its immersive Italian setting that make Life worth its sweet, meandering time.

Powell and Majors, both born with surfeits of natural charisma, strain mightily to imbue their scant dialogue with deeper meaning, but Devotion, earnest and determinedly earthbound to the end, never really captures the air up there.

Whether its stronger rating and more somber tone will translate to a home-bound family audience, only time and streaming revenues will tell; in the meantime, Mulan might be the closest thing to a true old-fashioned theater-going experience the end of this strange summer will see.

John Cena is top billed, and though his brick-jawed military man doesn’t actually get many scenes, he does get a disproportionate share of the script’s best lines. He gives good muscle, but Bumblebee brings something even more important — and actually transforming — to the series: a sense of humor, and a heart.

It's nice to see actors like these do such subtle, sympathetic work for a gifted young director — and to find an outlet for storytelling that doesn't demand neat redemption, but still allows for grace.

The real draw is Dinklage: with his mournful eyes and crooked smile, he's the tender, towering soul of Cyrano.

McAdams, whose comedic skills have gone unsung for way too long, is dizzy fun. The whole movie is, actually, even if it pretty much evaporates on impact — a kooky, vicarious loop of Mad Libs meets Cards Against Humanity, where whoever’s holding the popcorn last wins.

If the blond, marathon-lean Zellweger hardly seems like a natural doppelganger for Garland, she subsumes herself completely in the role, without ever tipping over into some kind of gestural Judy drag.

In sweetly calibrated moments — a downtown drug deal gone wrong; Falco alone under strobe lights, swaying ecstatically to Donna Summer — Landline finds the analog joy it’s reaching for.

It falls on Pattinson's leather-cased Batman to be the hero we need, or deserve. With his doleful kohl-smudged eyes and trapezoidal jawline, he's more like a tragic prince from Shakespeare; a lost soul bent like a bat out of hell on saving everyone but himself.