Michael Nordine

The problem, then, is that too much of this is dispiriting without also being enlightening — the view Gallardo takes is almost that of a bird’s eye, showing much from an emotional remove but revealing little beyond surface-level horrors and characters so numb to it all that we’re left with little choice but to feel the same way.

Too bad the filmmaking never rises to the level of its subject.

The animation itself is striking — an early sequence in which the sky is filled with dragons is an early sign of the visual treats to come — and ends up being the film’s highlight.

Don’t Breathe makes a striking first impression but overstays its welcome.

There’s a fine line between watching someone toil and feeling as though you’re toiling yourself, of course, and “Makala” doesn’t always land on the right side of it. It can be edifying at times to watch this, as the film is clearly a labor of love — even if the actual work depicted is not.

Keaton was an ahead-of-his-time innovator, and though Bogdanovich honors that legacy he doesn’t always live up to it: You’ll leave the film knowing more about its subject than you did when you walked in, but there’s little here that feels like it couldn’t be found in one of the many other accounts of Keaton’s life and work.

Schlesinger seems in such a rush to guide us to the end unscathed that she sometimes loses sight of the small details that make this journey unique.

Hathaway makes Gloria feel familiar and unique all at once. The same can be said of Colossal itself, which lives up to its title without losing sight of small-scale human drama.

Sin Alas matches the half-awake feeling evoked by Luis's ruminations — on love, on Cuba's history, and on himself — well enough to feel authentic even when it meanders too far from what makes it most compelling.

Before, Now & Then moves with its own dreamy cadence, with narrative developments washing over the film like waves. Closing your eyes once it’s over, you might even experience the sensation of having been in the water all afternoon as those gentle waves lapped over you — and longing to return to them.

The director’s control over the material is such that, even when this all feels like a bit of a joke, it’s one you’re happy to be in on.

The writer-director's ideas about our connection to the land and the many other animals roaming it may well be profound, but they're buried under layers of superfluous storytelling devices. A better title would have been Adrift.

There’s ambition exceeding your grasp, and then there’s Lumina.

For all its aspirations toward movie magic with an activist bent, The Mermaid’s potential implications for the film industry are ultimately more noteworthy than the movie itself.

Kill Me Please is as much a teen movie as it is a horror movie, vacillating between the genres in such a way that you’re reminded from one scene to another how similar the two really are.

If it’s easy to wish “Idea Man” were as bold as its subject, though, it’s just as easy to be won over by this deservedly heartfelt tribute to him.

An airy, low-key drama that doesn’t suffer for its lack of narrative tension, The Passengers of the Night further proves the old adage about the journey mattering more the destination.

Though full of anger and grief, the film is more than just a screed. Greengrass’ docu-real aesthetic doesn’t allow for grandiosity even when he gives in to more heavy-handed impulses. He’s on a soapbox at times, but his message is worth hearing.

Few movies swap genres halfway through, and even fewer do so successfully. “Bloody Oranges” does both.

As ever with Aardman, the cleverest moments are also the most fleeting.

The story... could have worked well as a pitch-black comedy, but first-time director John Slattery (Mad Men's Roger Sterling) takes the material so seriously that the mood never changes much after leaving the funeral home.

Little of what happens will come as a surprise, but Corbet's narrative restraint coupled with his formal daring makes for a gripping experience. It's a slow burn, but the fuse attached had me holding my breath.

A film about the vital importance of speaking truth to power needn’t be so concerned with dressing up its own frightful truths, but Nobody Speak still compels as an opening statement on journalism’s dubious future.

[Michelle Monaghan's] at her best as Army medic/staff sergeant Maggie Swann in writer-director Claudia Myers's Fort Bliss.

There’s nothing particularly new or inspired about Zippel’s decision to simply train a camera on Friedkin and let him riff, but the man is such a captivating speaker that it ultimately doesn’t matter much.

Sagawa is disturbed and alienated, but that doesn’t make him a compelling documentary subject in and of itself. Maybe that’s the point: Demystifying Sigawa takes away some of the near-mythic power that’s been attributed to him over the years.

Fear Street Part 3: 1666 isn’t just the best of the Netflix horror trilogy; it also recasts the prior two entries, “1994” and “1978,” in a more favorable light by deepening the mythology and underscoring just how crucial it is to watch all three chapters consecutively.

The single-minded simplicity of its plotting can at times be an asset rather than a hindrance; in a summer even more bogged down by needless sequels and remakes than most, Crawl is, at the very least, a lean thriller that isn’t based on an existing property.