Lovia Gyarkye

The film flaunts the talents of its promising director, while playing plenty of homage to the predecessors. Gore, blood, jittery perspectives and strong performances from Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan make this film a worthy franchise entry.

The film pushes against the expectation of queer narratives to follow the same dolorous beats by prioritizing fun and crass humor. But there’s just not enough substance to get us to care about reaching the finish line.

More absorbing than your average streamer fare, but it also makes you wish the film went farther in exploring its ambivalence about the relationship between creative expression and greed.

The jokes keep coming, but without a meaningful foundation — fleshing out the motivations of the group’s members would have helped — they start to wear thin.

A sense of play pulses through the film, which, with its bracing special effects, detailed production design and propulsive music, seems determined to activate viewer imaginations.

In the spirit of its predecessors, Creed III gears audiences up for a fight of the century: The battle between Adonis and Damian is billed as one between an underdog and a man with nothing to lose. But the implications of those categories are murky and unsettling.

It aims for maximum entertainment, reveling in farce and gnarly killings to create an experience that keeps you on your toes even if the details get murky upon further reflection.

Performances are what ultimately sets Bruiser apart as a debut and signal Warren’s potential as a director.

Punchy delivery styles, shimmering personalities and kaleidoscopic perspectives make up the soul of D. Smith’s gutsy documentary Kokomo City

It’s a breezy charmer — the kind of movie these obits have been mourning over the years. The film returns to the genre’s blueprint and sticks with it. There are a couple of instances of subversion, moments when Your Place or Mine winks and pokes fun at itself. But for the most part it doesn’t want to surprise or be more clever than the viewer; it aims to please, and in doing so helps re-energize the romantic comedy.

Somebody I Used to Know, written by Brie and her husband Dave Franco (who also directs here), is a sharply conceived and smart romantic comedy — the kind of film that might inspire hasty accusations of trying too hard to be different. It takes the narrative skeleton of the genre and enhances it with its own subversive elements.

This is a film best experienced in a group setting, among friends, the kind of project that fosters conspiratorial thinking and could inspire multiple watches — if only it got out of its own way.

But the film is so baggy, so preoccupied with its own ambitions — re-establishing its support of women’s desires, addressing a new generation, etc. — that it deflates into flaccid fluff.

The film struggles to maintain the verve of this opening sequence (which nails a specific anxiety of liberal middle-class Black people), subsequently becoming a series of set pieces — some more energetic than others — in search of a thesis.

While Body Parts is a smart film and a useful primer on big questions about filmic representations of sex and desire, one wishes its conclusions were more nuanced.

Where Going to Mars undoubtedly succeeds is in spotlighting the poet’s blazing personality, her unwavering confidence and her commitment to community without ever sacrificing herself.

Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama is a melancholic story transformed into a precious portrait by the director’s generous and nurturing eye. She digs into the familiar landscape of a Black mother facing an oppressive legal system and pulls from it the most unexpected and humanizing details. She observes them with a loving curiosity, and then asks viewers to do the same.

Sometimes I Think About Dying, then, is a graceful treatise on how challenging — but liberating — it can be to make connections.

A hair-raising third act adds an unusual coda — one that I, after only one viewing, am still processing. The relief, however, is in the filmmakers’ approach to these tense scenes: Fogel and Ashford loosen their grip, at last trusting us to sit in our discomfort, draw our own conclusions and sharpen our tools for the discourse.

Missing succeeds at maintaining a propulsive, nail-biting atmosphere and overcoming the boredom of its conventional narrative beats by treating each tool — Gmail accounts, iPhone photos and company websites — as a deeply layered puzzle, one that gathers and offers more information than most people realize.

Directed by Brian Vincent, the documentary situates its subject within the context of more familiar characters and tries to understand why Brzezinski, a charmingly aloof painter, is not readily considered among this cohort. The answer to this question is less interesting than the shocking journey it takes Vincent on.

Mars One revels in the lives of its characters, taking a leisurely and scenic route to understanding their dreams and realities.

With a refreshingly diverse cast and a compelling premise, there’s a lot to appreciate about Darby and the Dead — even with its muddied execution.

A timely reminder of the legacy of voting rights in the U.S. and an inspiring testament to the power of community organizing.

A sense of admiration and responsibility courses through the doc, an orientation that eventually curdles the narrative.

The drama feels flimsy when it strays from the swamps, rendering the politics of the time as almost secondary to the visual spectacle of a harrowing escape.

The People We Hate at the Wedding doesn’t stray too far from the formula of our streaming-dominated visual landscape, but a witty screenplay from the Molyneux sisters and strong performances from Janney, Platt and Bell make it reliably diverting.

The end of Strange World comes together as one would expect of a Disney offering, but there’s a sweetness to it that may move even the most committed cynic.

Disenchanted lacks the charisma and curiosity of its predecessor.

Scenes with her family members — especially her younger sisters — reflect a people growing more disenchanted with the state of affairs. The interviews with the Taliban — which grow repetitive and often feel like part of a different project entirely — contextualize the group’s ambitions and increased brazenness. In Her Hands starts to resemble a high-stakes drama in tone and style.

As Joyland heads toward its end, the film grows increasingly moving. Secrets and their attendant lies collapse under pressure. The weight of what’s left unsaid strangles interactions.

Rare is the reflection on Black cinema that even tries to address all these critical points. Still, it makes digestion, especially on the first watch, overwhelming. Is That Black Enough for You?!? is layered and informative but, like a scholarly thesis, requires a bit of work to unpack. It’s a challenge worth accepting.

Dig deeper and Huesera reveals itself to be a wilier film — an astute study of desire and self-deception.

Despite its uneven patches, this absorbing experimental film (which includes documentary elements toward the end) seemingly conjures the voice of its deceased subject to tell a gripping and painful story of dislocation and belonging.

Unlike other music documentaries (a popular format, as of late, for recalibrating celebrity images), Gomez’s project operates at a rawer, grittier register. It’s textured by the 30-year-old star’s relative youth and her attempts to communicate honestly, instead of perfectly.

Enola Holmes 2‘s shortcomings don’t wreck the film — it’s a serviceable sequel — but the tension between the topics the film tackles and the soft-pedaled approach is one that hopefully won’t haunt future projects.

The film — based on their book of the same title — is sensible, dutiful and, thanks to key performances, more engaging than the average newsroom procedural.

Luckiest Girl Alive struggles to balance its dual aspirations: delivering an emotionally wrought tale about survival and wrapping its gravity in the cheeky breeziness of publishing comedies like Freeform’s The Bold Type.

Recycled plot points, jaunts down memory lane and knowing winks at the broader fandom are rolled into the type of sleek CGI package that’s typical of Disney offerings these days. The result is a thin but satisfactory piece of entertainment.

Reginald Hudlin’s documentary about Sidney Poitier should be considered the beginning, not the end, of appraising the prolific actor’s career.

The latter half of Chevalier obediently fills the holes of its familiar puzzle. The cast — a wonderful bunch — sustain our interest with their congenial performances. Harrison is especially spry as he balances Saint-Georges’ confidence, jovial comportment and rumored temper.

One of the most absorbing parts of Alice, Darling is watching Alice, Sophie and Tess interact with each other throughout the weekend — to witness the frustrating moments of misunderstanding and the triumphant ones of clarity. Kendrick, Mosaku and Horn sustain a natural rapport, which makes investing in their friendship easy.

With her angular face and penetrating gaze, Mackey commands the screen, confidently shepherding us through Emily’s mercurial moods. Her eyes — darting nervously at one moment, squinting suspiciously at another — tells us what dialogue can’t.

A Jazzman’s Blues is overindulgent, a narrative feast of twists and turns. The formidable work of the cast paces us, helping viewers digest the plot and saving Perry’s screenplay from the collateral damage of its broad scope.

Saint Omer might be fiction, but Diop does not stray too far from her documentary roots. The film maintains a sense of naturalism even during its most tense moments. Diop’s directing style leans observational, as if she is watching and recording her screenplay’s effect on her performers.

This is a vengeful dark comedy that probes percolating class anxieties (a popular theme in cinema lately). It indulges in opportunities to strip the emperor of his clothes, and while that doesn’t necessarily translate to the most revelatory social commentary, it does make for an amusing ride.

Energetic performances and technical precision come together to glorious effect in Prince-Bythewood’s rousing action film. It’s a lush, prime piece of entertainment in many respects.

Isolation, emotional distance and (mis)communication are all on display in Love Life, though these subjects are approached with a disorienting but welcome lightness, underlining the absurdity of family life.

All elements of this arresting documentary work together to push an urgent thesis: What we are attuned to hearing, to seeing and to thinking about the U.S. and what the country can and cannot afford to do is by design. It’s better to realize that now before it’s too late.

Katrina Babies is an assertion of presence, a proclamation that the devastating hurricane is not simply a past story, but a present one too.

If we take a step back, we can see the faint outlines of another, more urgent, narrative thread in Kaepernick & America — one that encourages an all too rare kind of integrity and commitment to creating a more just world.

A rambunctious, strange and occasionally humorous action-thriller-comedy.

Luck’s sweetness comes from the details of Sam’s story and subsequent adventure.

Free Chol Soo Lee vibrates with this broader understanding of incarceration.

It’s a restrained rendering of the events, a drama that plays, at times, like a documentary. But if Howard’s decision to spotlight the Thai characters in this harrowing narrative is a sound one, there’s an unfamiliar stiffness and self-consciousness in the director’s approach — an inability to marry the fast-paced, no-nonsense heroics that are his strong suit with more emotionally textured storytelling. The resulting awkwardness prevents the movie, for all the surreal tension and bravery it depicts, from feeling urgent or surprising.

It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but Nope offers up a glutton’s feast for Peele disciples and fans of brainy sci-fi thrillers, ushering the director into an intriguing new phase of cinema that’s as rhapsodic as it is demanding.

It’s a clear-eyed, but by no means exhaustive, documentary that investigates this underreported crisis without losing sight of the people processing the depths of their loss.

The film, like the novel it’s based on, skirts the issues — of race, gender and class — that would texture its narrative and strengthen its broad thesis, resulting in a story that says more about how whiteness operates in a society allergic to interdependence than it does about how communities fail young people.

Throwing a woman in front of the camera and a few feminist quips into the script does not make these films any less conventional, or necessarily any more empowering.

In lieu of a throughline, Beauty offers beautiful, indulgent vignettes — aesthetically pleasing and immersive episodes lacking in ideas but full of vibes.

By focusing on the students’ stories, honoring their choices and leaving considerable room for their ambivalence, regret and uncertainty, the doc provides a sobering and emotional look at what, if any, options exist for those who aren’t white or wealthy in an unequal system.

Civil often feels more like an infomercial than a documentary.

Predictable but sweet.

It’s a concert film wrapped in biography and an appreciation for a sacred and beguiling genre. The power of gospel music comes alive here, and the doc’s subjects, the practitioners of this fervent form, keep it engaging.

With its stellar performances, dramatic orchestral score and rich costume and set design, Illusions Perdues is a worthwhile, sweeping narrative of love, lust and literary ambition.

Halftime includes moments of disarming sincerity, when it seems like the doc and its subject, despite their cautiousness, are genuinely reaching for the truth.

It’s a slow-burning film, one that pulls you in with its steady observations of the minor triumphs and major pitfalls [of its two protagonists].

Silence is Atef’s strength. The director impressively uses quiet moments to great effect.

Léonor Serraille’s film Mother and Son contains moving strokes, but struggles to make a lasting emotional dent.

It’s a sweet but oddly circumspect film, ruled by a friction between warring demands: the allure of wistful memories and the rigor of complex appraisal.

With a formidable cast, assured direction and skillful camerawork, Nostalgia proves to be a surprisingly absorbing film.