Marya E. Gates

While Glob took exception with the assessment that Apolonia’s personality was more interesting than her work, her surface level portrait of her as both an artist and as person ironically upholds that very statement.

The directors never quite find the right symmetry between scenes of life and art with those that uncritically glorify violence.

There is surely an audience for this kind of feel-good quote-un-quote feminism. But a book of such richness, with a heroine as complex as Birdy, deserves much more than this genial Renn Faire romp.

Dancing the Twist in Bamako remains a voyeuristic journey through the era, the filmmakers so enamored with the style they don’t bother with any substance.

While the filmmakers certainly have their heart in the right place, aside from maybe a plea for more compassionate medical professionals, nothing about Peaceful is very original or even entertaining.

Two decades and half a dozen films later, everything that made his debut film feel fresh has now curdled like bad milk with his latest pitch black comedy Riff Raff.

Bloated at nearly 140 minutes with Cooper clearly miscast in the lead, it struggles to maintain urgency. Dreary and overly saturated with a CGI patina, this new take on Nightmare Alley adds more gore and f-bombs to the source material but ultimately remains emotionally inert and unclear exactly what it wants to say about these characters and the world they inhabit.

Ultimately, “Roofman” is a slick but incurious film that is so preoccupied with showing the what of Manchester’s story that it doesn’t bother to examine the why.

Although the changes in tone don’t always work, and the third segment towers over the rest of the film, there is something to be said for filmmakers willing to approach history as something malleable.

It’s clear that the irrepressibly charming Sedgwick and Bacon love to share the screen, and it is an absolute joy to watch their effortless chemistry. I just wish it were in a better picture.

Destined to make audiences weep, The Swimmers is no doubt a crowd-pleaser with an important message about the growing refugee crisis worldwide, and Yusra’s story is one worth telling. It’s a pity the filmmakers couldn’t take the time to see her life as more than just a vessel for this message.

There’s no denying the weight of The Persian Version’s final sequence. Yet, it’s an ending that feels rushed, both because of the sequence’s continual tonal shifts between heartfelt drama and slapstick comedy but also because Leila’s final bout of emotional maturity feels unearned.

No One Will Save You is at its best when it marries the tension of a home invasion thriller with the thrills of an alien abduction film, and Kaitlyn Dever proves she has the chops to carry a whole movie on strength of her facial expressions alone. However, the film ultimately fumbles when it becomes both a convoluted action film and an on-the-nose parable about overcoming grief and guilt.

Wearing its influences on its sleeve, the rom-com aims to show where arranged marriage traditions and modern dating habits can fit in a multicultural modern Britain. Unfortunately, it can’t shake the screenwriter’s white gaze.

Ultimately Spin Me Round is like a bad vacation where even the gorgeous Italian seaside isn’t enough to make the time spent feel worth it.

In his bleak film, Guðmundsson combines the kitchen sink drama of growing up in a cycle of violence and/or poverty and the magical realism of teenage fever dreams, with mixed results.

What the script thinks is unique about itself is all surface level, resulting in a film that feels like a copy of a copy of something that maybe once had been original but now feels as fake as a wax figurine.

Highly ambitious, dark as midnight, and often hilarious, Griffin’s debut film Silent Night doesn’t always work, but her insightful look at the inherent selfishness of humanity and our absurd need to cling to hope no matter what is spot on.

Based on the 2018 Spanish film “Campeones,” Bobby Farrelly’s Champions follows the basic plot of every other inspirational sports movie about a hangdog coach in need of redemption. But it has the added cringiness of using its team of Disabled basketball players solely as a method towards this redemption while completely failing to see their humanity.

Unfortunately, aside from the always reliable Hawke and Okonedo, there isn’t much to praise about this deadpan dark comedy, which is miscalculated on almost every level.

Lasse Hallström‘s latest film, The Map That Leads to You, has the makings of a Gen Z “Before Sunset” meets “Eat Pray Love,” but unfortunately, it also has the depth of a mediocre beach read weepy. That is to say, I enjoyed it as I watched, but it has had no lasting effect on my memory or, even worse, my heart.

By keeping the film’s emotional core at a distance for most of the film, the only catharsis the audience feels during its denouement is from the relief that this bleak, miserable slog is finally over.

A morality play wrapped up in gothic horror tropes, “The Dreadful” is definitely committed to the bit, and its darkly medieval setting is a refreshing change of pace. I just wish it were a medieval tapestry that worked as a whole, rather than just in fits and starts.

It’s nice to see McCarthy and O’Dowd in roles that showcase their emotional range; one just wishes it were in a project worthy of their talents.

Mildly diverting from time to time due to its beautiful production design, The School for Good and Evil is mostly an unmitigated slog, filled with underdeveloped characters, absolutely terrible dialogue, and a world that feels both completely ripped off from better things and unnecessarily complex.

Allen’s mawkish performance aside, the rest of the cast do the best they can within this all too easy structure.

Whatever it is that Mizrahy finds interesting about this subject remains frustratingly oblique, ultimately leaving "Space: The Longest Goodbye" a muddled bag of contradictions and underdeveloped threads and themes.