Lindsey Bahr

Like “Boys State,” this film presents a fascinating microcosm of American teenagers.

Is it a little glossy and sanitized with a jaunty score? Sure. But it also thoughtfully explores themes of redemption, invisibility, pride and sportsmanship without being preachy or condescending.

There were some lofty ideas behind “Immaculate” that seem underserved (about bodily autonomy and such) and she gets several memorable movie star moments, but I want more for Sweeney than whatever this adds up to.

Maybe the movie will direct some eyes toward the existence of the Arthur Foundation, but while the movie goes down easy enough it is, on the whole, a bit unsatisfying.

The one bright spot is Cena, who is quite good. Like his character, who goes above and beyond to adeptly play Ricky Stanicky, Cena really and truly commits and brings a kind of unexpected depth and pathos to Rock Hard Rod. He’s flexed his comedy muscles before and should again, soon. Is it enough to save the movie? Not for me.

Shayda is set in 1995 and yet still feels quite relevant, and not just for Iranian women. In Niasari, we have a brave and distinctive new filmmaking voice and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

It is all very familiar, and yet, in the hands of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke (who co-wrote), this 83-minute road trip caper feels like one of the freshest theatrical offerings of the year.

It’s too bad because there could have been a more fun movie in here — Clarkson imbues it with a distinctly feminine and teenage energy that makes good use of its soundtrack. But it spins itself into a knot trying to justify a silly story instead.

In our world of gross TikTok hacks for one pot meals, it’s a balm to see things slowed down and with many, many beautifully rustic copper pots and cast-iron pans.

For all the freedom and exhibitionism and sexual liberation that might be projected on social media, teens are still teens and people are still people and things still happen, casually and in quietly catastrophic grey areas. These are truths that are conveyed powerfully in “How to Have Sex,” a stylish, assured and moving debut from writer-director Molly Manning Walker.

It is a powerful and artistic interpretation of an academic book that was anything but an obvious candidate for a narrative feature.

The Kitchen may lag at times, but it’s an astonishing and fully realized feat for two first-time feature directors with beautifully raw sequences of both emotion and action.

Though it is not easily categorizable, “Memory” is a thoughtful journey featuring very fine performances from both Chastain and Sarsgaard, who was rewarded with the best actor prize from the Venice Film Festival last fall.

Haigh dares audiences to meet “All of Us Strangers” on its own astral plane as we whiplash between past and present in a dreamy 35mm haze of nightclubs and ‘80s sweaters.

The film is immensely watchable, staged without flash or pretention, that relies on its sharp script and talented and charismatic actors to carry the audience through. Wright is particularly delightful at the center of it all as he navigates a new relationship as well as the consequences of his lie and how far he’s willing to go with it.

It is sickly hilarious to make a movie in which so much consensual sex is had, often so gleefully, that is not the least bit sexy. Though Bella Baxter’s insatiable libido might be her guiding light at first in Poor Things, sexual liberation (or “furious jumping,” as she calls it) is only part of this fantastical, anarchic journey to consciousness.

Walt Disney Animation’s Wish is stunning to look at with textured and rich watercolor-inspired animation and easter egg treasures for audiences nostalgic for the classics. But it is also more concept than story: A strained and forgettable attempt to pay homage to the studio’s 100 years.

Scandalous fun and camp are, you imagine, relatively easy with performers like this. But to give it a soul, too? It makes it monumental.

This seems designed to be a minor Marvel – a fun enough, inoffensive, largely forgettable steppingstone — a get-to-know-them brick on a path only Kevin Feige has the blueprints for.

Nature provides much of the soundtrack to All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, a poised and occasionally transcendent debut from writer-director Raven Jackson.

Payne, working with a sharp script written by David Hemingston, keeps The Holdovers grounded and real. Even absent your own memories of smoking indoors or handsewn outerwear, this is the kind of thoughtful, precisely constructed movie where you can almost taste the cigarette smoke and feel your fingers numbing through drafty wool mittens.

It’s an Errol Morris film, right down to the Philip Glass score. And while the Interrotron and the reenactments might not be the revolutionary storytelling devices they once were, they’re almost comforting at this point and no less effective at creating a mood and an emotional experience around a sharp conversation.

Anatomy of a Fall may not be a film with many concrete answers, ultimately, but the truths it uncovers are irrefutable.

This story is about two older white men fighting about a contract, sure, but Betts and Wright expand its scope with sensitivity and nuance. Like many good courtroom dramas before it, this case is bigger than just these two guys.

The Creator is an original movie too, and even if it is a somewhat convoluted and silly mishmash of familiar tropes and sci-fi cliches, it still evokes the feeling of something fresh, something novel, something exciting to experience and behold — which is so much more than you can say about the vast majority of big budget movies these days.

It Lives Inside is still a welcome respite from the other long-in-the-tooth horror franchises populating theaters this time of year in that it’s just something new – new faces, new themes, a promising filmmaker to watch – but I wish it would have embraced more of the things that make it unique as opposed to trying to fit in with its genre brethren.

Kenneth Branagh indulges in the kind of macabre theatricality that only a crumbling Venetian palazzo on a stormy Halloween night can provide in A Haunting in Venice.

El Conde might stretch its gimmicky premise a little past its welcome, but it is an intoxicating, overwhelming and gruesome cinematic experience nonetheless, which would make a fitting double feature with last year’s great historical legal thriller “Argentina 1985.”

Ultimately, it’s not earth shattering but it’s also perfectly pleasant for what it is and what it knows it isn’t. Red, White & Royal Blue is a beach read in movie form and one that can and should be watched with friends.

The movie on the page wants to romanticize the simple pleasures of race car driving outside of the glitz and glamour of the high-rolling industry, and has been directed by someone who doesn’t actually believe that the driving is enough and that it does need all the trimmings of a “Fast and Furious” spinoff to make it exciting to an audience.

Some have likened Passages to a horror movie (though aren’t all coming of age movies horrors in some way?) Regardless, it would make a fitting double feature with Christian Petzold’s “Afire”. They are both films that let you dabble in the feeling of having had a semester abroad, tumultuous feelings and all, without all the actual emotional fallout or jetlag.

Haunted Mansion is by no means a terrible movie, or even an unpleasant watch, but it’s just missing the magic that makes the trip to the theaters (or Disney World) worth it.

You don’t need to know much about basketball or care about Steph Curry to watch this film, though many probably will. But much like the Michael Jordan doc “The Last Dance,” this beautifully constructed (and much more economical) narrative operates on its own terms, with a beautiful score guiding the viewer through his life.

Fire is in the air this summer, literally, and at the movies. Though the flames in German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Afire aren’t of the nuclear variety, the smoke from his tension-filled chamber piece about a few young adults at a vacation house near the Baltic Sea certainly gets in your eyes.

There is no thrill, entertainment or insight to be gleaned in watching the myriad ways people can die by their own hand. It’s just awful, and this is not a film that is interested in grappling with the trauma in any interesting or helpful way. Instead it is two hours of unpleasant drudgery.

The Lesson is worth a watch as a tightly crafted film made by and for adults unafraid of some rhododendron metaphors and casual Tchaikovsky talk.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny might not be “Raiders” or “The Last Crusade” but it’s solid, swashbuckling summer fare and a dignified sendoff to one of cinema’s most flawless castings.

A powerful, shapeshifting teenage girl and a disgraced knight-in-training suspected of killing a beloved queen are at the heart of Nimona, a vibrant and irreverent animated adventure set in a futuristic fantasy kingdom.

Asteroid City, with its sprawling cast, beautiful hues, mumbled jokes, box-within-a-box setup, references that only the 80+ crowd may truly get and retro-cool soundtrack, actually makes you feel things even if it can’t quite make sense of itself.

Blue Jean is a perfect film to debut during Pride. It’s a reminder of the very recent past and the generational effects of institutionalized homophobia.

It’s a true triumph of storytelling and performance and a reminder that films don’t need to be flashy or big to be great.

For all its pizazz, everything about this Little Mermaid is just more muted.

Like a haphazardly planted garden, it’s lot of ideas that don’t seem to create anything terribly coherent but it has its individual pleasures nonetheless.

The most interesting part of The Mother, a decent if forgettable action pic starring Jennifer Lopez, is the one that is left largely unexplored. The movie is a high-concept thriller that boils down to just a few words: She’s a mother and an assassin.

Within a conventional rom-com package, the ending of which isn’t the slightest of mysteries, tropes are subverted, big questions are asked about marriage and love, and a warm spotlight is shined on Pakistani culture.

Movies like these barely exist anymore, and certainly not in theaters. Tween girls would do well to seek Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret out. It has all the makings of a classic for the next generation.

In the end, Chevalier may be more fiction than history, but it’s worthwhile with effective acting, tension (helped by Kris Bowers’ score) and a decadently beautiful production.

Air coasts quite well on its compelling, funny and self-aware script (which even allows room for an amusing disagreement about who exactly came up with the name Air Jordan) and charismatic movie stars.

This is not a movie that will leave you feeling especially warm and fuzzy – it is often devastating. But it’s also bursting with hope for the future in this deeply human story of how one woman decided to devote her life to ensuring that her son’s would be brighter.

A Good Person seems to belong to a uniquely Dan Fogelman-esque subgenre of hyper sincere melodrama that sometimes clicks (“This Is Us”) and other times does not (“Life Itself”). Braff’s film is worlds better than “Life Itself,” but there are some similarities in how it strives for cosmic significance and ultimate tearjerking within a construct that the film tries to sell as authentically specific. In execution, it’s a bit more strained and contrived.

Moving On is certainly not perfect, but it’s sincerely trying to be something more than your standard octogenarian farce. You might even be surprised by your own emotional investment in this rather trim film.

You needn’t have watched all five seasons of “Luther” to take a chance on Luther: The Fallen Sun. But there’s also a chance that you may find yourself wanting to afterwards.

While there is a case to be made for the final fight to, let’s just say, go a different way than it does, Creed III is still a knockout.

Majors is certainly chilling and captivating, but Kang seems like a mismatched foe for a standalone Ant-Man film and the result is a “Quantumania” that is trying to be too many things.

If there is a quibble, it’s that Hayek and Tatum don’t quite inspire the will-they-won’t-they tension that the movie seems to be asking of them. They work well together when they’re working together, but the romantic chemistry is a bit lacking.

[Anderson] is still that open book, disarmingly funny and candid and uncynical, sitting there beautifully makeup free, letting the filmmakers and audience peer into her soul through many pages of journals going back to her childhood. It is a captivating watch, especially for those who never thought much about her at all.

Close is a crushing story of grief told with grace by Belgian director Lukas Dhont.

Eisenberg, who has already proven himself to be a talented, unsparing writer, shows promise as a director. He has not made a flashy art film, but it’s a smart, biting and occasionally sweet character piece about unlikable characters that you still may want to root for, because, though it may be hard to admit, they’re not so different from us.

This party isn’t worth a trip much further than living room.

Broker is definitely a slow burn that can feel a bit repetitive at times, though the introduction of Hae-jin (Im Seung-soo) as an 8-year-old orphan with Premier League dreams helps get the film over a meandering hump.

Women Talking is not melodramatic or desperate or exploitative. It is astute and urgent and may just help those previously unable to find words or even coherent feelings for their own traumatic experiences. And hopefully it might just inspire more works of wild female imagination.

Directed by Joel Crawford, with Januel Mercardo as co-director, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has enough good jokes (script by Paul Fisher and story by Tommy Swerdlow and Tom Wheeler) to keep anyone amused for an afternoon at the movies.

There is something comforting about the fact that we are capable of intense, collective cultural whiplash. That “who cares?” can turn to uncynical amazement in an instant. Is that the magic of the movies? Of continuing to push the bounds of the big screen experience? Of betting big on weird-sounding stories about giant blue environmentalists instead of superheroes every so often? Maybe it’s just the magic of James Cameron.

Empire of Light may be a love letter to the movies, but it’s a sad one in which one of the parties, the local, independent movie theater, is fading away and possibly already gone.

An intensely personal and truthful, if not entirely fact-based, account of joining the Marines as a gay Black man in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era. It is the type of film — brave, raw and poetic — that will rightly put Bratton on the map as someone to watch, not to mention the standout performances of Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union.

Goldin might not have known it when she started photographing her LGBTQ friends, but her work has always been about looking at the so-called fringe cultures in society, about showing the problems that the masses would rather just ignore and making them so urgent that you can’t look away anymore.

As the title suggests, there are layers and layers to this mystery — even the central murder isn’t revealed until deep into the film, when Johnson rewinds and reframes much of what we’ve just seen. And it’s bigger, wilder and funnier than its predecessor.

Slumberland is not a terrible movie and it may very well spark your imagination or tug at your heartstrings (though sweet kids crying over dead parents is about as low-hanging as the fruit can get). But it also could have been so much more had it not gotten so bogged down in its own superfluous flash, which, by the end, just feels exhausting.

Though Spirited comes up short as a musical, it is still pretty enjoyable. Perhaps that’s because it is just so stuffed with everything else: If one part doesn’t totally work, there’s plenty else in the four-quadrant buffet to sample.

Science and belief clashes aside, The Wonder is a transfixing, transportive film, anchored by the incomparable Pugh.

Gray does a wonderful job painting a portrait of a moment of cultural upheaval through these two boys, their opportunities, their support systems (or lack thereof) and how it was an origin of sorts for the rot that festers today.

Young fathers, especially the single sort, don’t get a lot of love from the movies and “Aftersun” is partly an ode to that very specific, very sweet bond between father and pre-teen daughter that both kind of understand will change into something else soon.

The Banshees of Inisherin is a rich, soulful journey, full of agony, dry Irish wit and big, haunting questions. If it’s answers you’re looking for, however, you’re not going to find them on Inisherin.

It lulls the viewer, along with the protagonist, into a misty, dreamlike delirium until you’re not even certain of what’s right in front of your face.

Triangle of Sadness, which clocks in at almost two and a half hours, is at its sharpest before the symphony of bodily fluids and survival plots arrive.

Directed by Anne Fletcher, Hocus Pocus 2 goes down easy — though by the time the entire town breaks out into a dance to “One Way or Another,” you may be ready for the film to get where it’s going. Still, it’s a fun enough ride for a fall night.

Catherine Called Birdy is an unabashed delight for everyone. It just might run a little deeper for a certain age group.

The film is exactly what you need it to be: An exciting and emotionally true spectacle that required a heck of a fight to simply exist.

Me Time somehow squanders a solid premise, a stacked cast and a seemingly unlimited budget. It didn’t need to be anything great in this movie comedy drought we seem to be in. But considering who was involved, it really should be better than it is.

Miller gets to play in a wide array of cultures as the djinn skips through time, all with their own shimmering palettes and fairy tale hyperrealism.

Dripping in neon, platitudes, sweat and fear, “Bodies Bodies Bodies"...is playful, cutting and never dull.

Johnson and Hart seem to have fun, too, but a fair amount of their charm as a comedic duo is lost without their physical presence — not that the audience of kids will know this or care. Parents might just be wishing they were watching this cast in live-action instead.

Nope has also already had some critics throwing out less than favorable M. Night Shyamalan references. But it is full of vibrant life, too. It goes a long way in forgiving the reveal, which I’d even argue is beside the point. This is a film that offers a lot to chew on, which is more than most big summer spectacles can promise.

It is like an Austen amuse bouche — an entry-level cover version that tries to rev up the humor and speak directly to Gen Z by using its lingo — or at least an advertising executive’s idea of what Gen Z sounds like. But something feels off about the way it is executed.

The Sea Beast is notable for its refusal to dumb itself down for a young audience. It’s anchored by interesting and fairly complex characters who actually have arcs to play.

Luhrmann never does anything by half measures, but perhaps one of the most striking thinks about Elvis is how ultimately restrained it is in the end.

Thompson is truly better than ever and brings to life a complex and evolving person with humor, grace and a sharp edge. McCormack, meanwhile, is a star in the making. And together, the two are magnetic in this wonderfully adult film that is funny, sad, awkward, empowering and illuminating.

Ultimately, Spiderhead just seems a little unsure of what it is or what it’s supposed to be.

It was a Hail Mary to bring back the “Jurassic Park” originals. But their big meeting with the “Jurassic World” cast has the unintended effect of reminding how little we have come to care about the new cast.

It may be more mystifying than illuminating when all is said and done, but it is certainly a uniquely captivating experience with wildly imaginative creations, interesting performances, challenging ideas and one of the best scores of the year.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie feels very easy and lived in thanks at least in part to the fact that its vocal cast has been doing this for over 200 episodes.

If you must reboot an over 30-year-old Disney Channel cartoon like Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, you could do much worse than looking to “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” for inspiration. But it is a high bar and though Chip ‘n Dale might not reach the heights of that Robert Zemeckis film, it is still a pleasant surprise stuffed to the brim with pop culture references that children of the Chip ’n Dale era may enjoy.

There wasn’t a great reason to take another shot at Firestarter. Besides, even if it’s lacking in originality, it’s also lacking something even more important: A personality.

Raimi doesn’t take “Doctor Strange” to an entirely new tonal place, like, say Taika Waititi did with Thor. He mostly sticks to the framework established by Scott Derrickson.

Hatching is an assured and promising debut for Bergholm with a jaw-dropping ending that may just cement it as a cult classic in the making.

Sciamma is able to bring to life essential truths of what it is like to be that strange age and the sometimes frightening, sometimes wonderful vastness of a limitless imagination. And she even does it without a background score to manipulate our tear ducts.

Navalny is so taut and suspenseful you’d think John le Carré had left behind a secret manuscript that’s only just coming to light now.

Though it starts off promisingly enough with Carrey’s character marooned on a “piece of shitake” mushroom planet, it soon becomes evident that this outing is a soulless attempt to up the stakes and cash in.