Mick LaSalle

In essence, Sorrentino thought his way up to the middle of The Hand of God and assumed the rest would take care of itself. He started filming too soon. His screenplay needed work.

Benedetta continues Verhoeven’s strong run with as good a movie as he’s ever made.

Not counting no-budget movies with casts of nonprofessionals, The Humans is one of the worst-directed films in recent memory. It plays like a wicked practical joke or a deliberate act of sabotage.

Scott is having a remarkable year. To be exact, he’s having a remarkable season. Less than two months ago, “Last Duel” was released and it was Scott’s best film in years. Now the even-better House of Gucci is his best film in years — and it’s different from his previous work.

Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, the team behind the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary, RBG, the film makes the case for Child as an instinctive feminist and a profound cultural influence, who transformed how and what Americans ate in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Power of the Dog is a beautifully composed work by a filmmaker at the height of her powers. It deserves our attention.

It provides unvarnished behind-the-scenes access to a presidential campaign, showing aspects of the process that we would never see otherwise.

Once the focus switches to Venus, whatever is going on with Richard becomes secondary. In her scenes on the court, Sidney is able to convey the double quality of a killer in embryo and a vulnerable kid.

Clifford the Big Red Dog brings a warm feeling every time I think of it, and I’m really glad I saw it.

Everyone has a story from childhood that remains vivid in memory, and that feels important enough to immortalize in art. But few people have the ability to get their story out from their minds and onto the page, the stage or the screen. Yet when that does happen, and when it’s done right, you can get something original and heartfelt, such as Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical Belfast, one of the glories of this year’s cinema.

It takes one of the most gifted screen actresses of her generation and casts her out to sea with nothing to hold onto but a hideous script that’s all attitude without depth or understanding.

Without the sheer watchability of Johnson, Reynolds and Gadot, Red Notice would have been intolerable. It also would have been pointless. But with them, it’s a pleasantly lousy movie that some people, if they look at the screen and squint really hard, might mistake for something decent.

But there’s not enough in “Finch” to sustain an audience’s interest for a full 115 minutes. At 85 minutes, it might have been a touching and eccentric novelty. As it stands, “Finch” is something of a slog. A slog in good company, but a slog all the same.

Eternals is like a movie about a horse race that concentrates all its attention on characters that neither own a horse nor like to gamble.

Last Night in Soho is full of color and darkness, and its melange of past and present evokes one of the world’s great cities. It never lets up.

It’s a sophisticated piece of work, slightly haunted, with an underlying sorrow that can’t be resolved or remedied.

A documentary that doesn’t have the stomach to tell the story of what happened on Jan. 6 explicitly, and to express the real threat to American democracy that that day represents, is of no use to anybody.

The artistic signature is unmistakable — 30 seconds in, you’d know you were watching a Wes Anderson movie. But Anderson’s human connection seems to have short-circuited, so that his irony now bypasses the world and becomes an ironic contemplation of his own work. This is a dead-end, and it’s just not interesting.

It’s average. If you like this sort of movie, knock yourself out.

The movie’s length is, at times, a challenge, but Dune is so original and contains so many strong scenes that the length mostly isn’t a problem.

The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott, gives us the texture of life in 14th century France, so much so that we feel that we are there, in this place that’s desperate and foreign and yet human and familiar.

If you ever liked Madonna, this concert film will remind why you weren’t wrong. Madame X is somewhere between a success and a triumph.

The narrative doesn’t generate much interest; the nature of the ultimate ending is discernible from a distance, and the movie’s message about nature and the natural order seems forced. Still, there’s a lot here that’s impressive. Lamb is too vivid and original to forget.

The story is the story, and you’ll either connect with it or you won’t. But no matter how you react, Titane has the integrity of sincerity and the authority of a filmmaker’s real skill and vision.

To say Venom: Let There Be Carnage is not worth seeing is not enough. It’s not worth admitting into your life, even as an option. You’ve read a review of it. That’s enough. Now, never think of it again for the rest of your life.

Craig leaves the series in a mammoth, 163-minute extravaganza that audiences will be enjoying for decades. It’s a lovely thing to see.

Director Stephen Chbosky needed to bring this stage musical into greater balance with the film medium. He needed to make Dear Evan Hansen less grandiose. He needed to pick up the pace and chop 10 minutes from the running time. It’s still possible that wouldn’t have saved it, but it might have made it less awful.

If you know the world of “The Many Saints of Newark” — maybe you’re Italian American from the East Coast, and have at least a dim memory of the late 1960s — this prequel to “The Sopranos” TV series is both accurate and oddly hilarious.