Monica Castillo

It may not come together as smoothly as the best feel-good movies of its kind, but there's an unwieldy charm to Joyride that makes the trip memorable.

Lady and the Tramp scratches an itch for dog lovers and may satisfy the young viewer’s curiosity when digging through the family’s new Disney+ subscription. However, so much of the movie is just fine when not feeling rushed or stilted, but doesn’t offer new surprises to stand on its own.

Whittaker’s performance finds a balance between the tragic and comic scenarios her character experiences.

For a movie so driven by music, it’s unfortunate that its final number is somewhat of a mess, its lyrics weaker than the performances that led up to it. Tense situations quickly resolve themselves, and everyone in the makeshift group conveniently has a part to play. I only wish it felt more like music to my ears.

Throughout To the End, there is a clear sense of urgency to the call for action.

Right to the end, Música becomes more than just another bland romcom. It’s about finding love when living with a disability, it’s about finding music wherever it may be, and it’s about our connection to our culture and our family.

While “Cleaner” may not be one of the most refined action movies this year, it has a bit more to offer than most, especially when it comes to Campbell’s thoughtful direction and Ridley’s committed performance.

Tim Fehlbaum’s The Colony has many ideas about the future, and while not all of them quite stick together, there’s a few interesting aesthetic and narrative choices to make it something of a curiosity. There’s enough going on to capture your notice for brief stints before trailing off into dense plot details or well-worn sci-fi tropes.

While “Eleanor the Great” never quite recovers from the moral issue at its center, Squibb’s lively performance makes it memorable.

Although the title is confounding and perhaps the movie’s worst misstep, it’s Byrne’s digitized and stilted delivery that earns the biggest laughs.

Written and directed by Mikko Mäkelä, “Sebastian” plays like a cautionary tale about toxic ambition.

The Banker remains only serviceable.

No One Gets Out Alive builds its suspense through scares both real and supernatural. While I’m less satisfied with its ultimate execution, Jon Croker and Fernanda Coppel's script has a lot going in its favor.

Though the story that Lee reconstructs in Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club is fascinating, it's given a limited visual presentation here, often using talking head-style interviews of the various members of the group.

The Cuban pulls together music, romance, loss, and memory into an emotional tale that spans cultures and generations. One thing connects them all: Cuban music.

Visually, Chenillo’s film doesn’t stand out, but it’s a pleasant enough story with a hopeful tone, celebrating each of Lucca’s victories, from holding on to the sides of the tub with both hands to kicking a ball for the first time to taking his first steps.

Although Trust gets off to a shaky start, once the players are introduced and the flirty game’s afoot, it’s a mostly fun ride.

Even the slow-motion crumbling of the love triangle between the mentor, his wife and his mentee isn’t that thrilling. Leto had the potential to be so much more lively—this is rock ‘n’ roll in the Soviet Union we’re talking about—that its stylish malaise feels much more disappointing.

The result is sometimes dizzying, enchanting or confounding, but it is certainly never boring.

While the documentary has the feel of a scrappy passion project, the message itself remains powerful. Given the chaotic times, There’s Something in the Water also serves as a stark reminder that not all governments have their citizens’ best interests at heart.

It’s a simple, stripped-down premise that transcends cultural specificity.

It’s not always clear what the movie is trying to say, but even its misfires are more interesting than most because of what Reeder and her stars bring to their characters.

Conners’ first narrative feature is a rocky start but not without some promising notes.

Although the film’s premise is based on a true story, Luis Ortega’s El Angel is not a faithful biopic. Somehow, the facts are darker than their fictional counterparts.

The visual bonanza cooked up by Rodriguez, cinematographer Bill Pope and editors Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein is enough to power through any narrative bumps with quickly paced action and bleak, yet colorful, imagery.

The film gets teasingly close to bringing up some hefty conversations about women in the music business, but in the end, those notes stay flat, playing more like a melody that doesn’t stick around for long.

Despite its shortcomings, “Saturday Night” works as a crowd pleaser for those who watched Chevy Chase take command of the Weekend Update desk, John Belushi tear up a stage with his intensity, or Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner crack up the audience with their absurd characters.

The Moment is something different, a big swing into the mockumentary genre satirizing the pressures of pop stardom and the struggle for creative control. It doesn’t always work, but Charli xcx, as ever, throws a wild party.

Written and directed by Giovanni Tortorici, “Diciannove,” which means “nineteen” in Italian, plumbs the depths of young adulthood in that strange transition year, from the dizzying highs of feeling invincible on the dance floor to realizing just how much about the world you still have to learn.

Despite its rough edges, Fisher Stevens’ Palmer is a gentle drama. It doesn’t go as deep into Palmer’s emotions or mindset, but instead keeps them closely guarded in Timberlake’s gruff performance.

While Cassandro is not a winner, Williams and his cast put up enough of a show to make things interesting.

We’re seeing a then-17-year-old Eilish change her style, come into her own and demand control of her image, right down to directing her own music videos. We’re watching the birth of a star, an exhilarating and sometimes excruciating experience.

The documentary connects his present day work ethic to his past, and contrasts yesteryear’s heartbreaks to the large, family-filled parties he still enjoys. Jones did so much more than just unleash some of pop’s most successful records of all time.

It’s not an unenjoyable ride, but there’s a lingering sense that it could have been made a bit more fun and campy along the way.

The coming-of-age story in “Sweetness” is less sugar than spice and very little nice.

Poms is strongest when basking in the infectious enthusiasm of its cast. Keaton and Weaver could have easily phoned in their performances, but they do look like they’re having fun together with their crew of Golden Girls.

What really sets The Burnt Orange Heresy ablaze is the chemistry between Bang, Debicki and Sutherland. Each of their characters functions as a sort of walking puzzle, their motives slowly revealing themselves only as the story develops.

Fortunately, Mr. Spicer’s earnest performance bolsters many of the weaker spots in Mr. Shoulberg’s script.

While zine-style animated sequences and VHS taped interviews enliven the pace, the documentary is burdened by too much minutiae. Not every scar earned at a concert deserves to be immortalized in a documentary.

Alison closely resembles Jennifer Lawrence’s character in “Winter’s Bone,” another self-sufficient young woman whose family and community turn against her. This movie is not as tense, but it gets close thanks to Ms. Agron’s resolute performance and the movie’s hostile small town setting.

This is a movie I’ve grown to admire more than I enjoy. Landes’ and Wolf’s imagery is stunning to watch at even if his script with Dos Santos leaves off much of the text.

Despite its gorgeous views and a pair of strong turns from veteran Cuban actors Perugorría and García, the film doesn't connect to the heart of its central character.

Tragically, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil does not give Jolie and Pfeiffer nearly enough time to face off against each other.

Such a dynamic personality as Mr. Turner’s could use a more dynamic documentary to illuminate it. As it is, “Dealt” remains a pleasing — if inoffensive — portrait.

Some of the tougher interviews suggest that Mr. Milewski would like Dream Boat to be more substantial, but that impulse is mostly kept at bay in favor of lighter scenes.

Thanks to Mulligan’s electric performance and Fennell’s packed script, the movie never feels as if it lags, but it doesn’t go far enough to smooth over the choppy changes between the film’s witty moments and its stomach-churning dramatic scenes. However, there’s still a lot of promise in Fennell’s film, both in its message, its rape-revenge-influenced riff, and the boundaries it wants to push.

Despite the film’s few imperfections, it’s still enjoyable to watch the cast of older actors refuse to age out of a young man’s genre.

It’s a letdown for a movie that has its heart in the right place to resort to so many clichés.

Were it not for Byrne’s endearingly optimistic performance, most of the charm of Juliet, Naked would be swept away.

A sweet but ineffective comedy that cashes in on drag culture’s new mainstream fame. While the movie brings up a handful of important topics, the way it handles issues like drug addiction and physical abuse ultimately feel superficial and hollow. Fortunately, a few sparkling performances salvage the show from becoming too maudlin.

Its lack of visual cohesion and bizarre finale get in the way of enjoying the whirlwind of fists, bullets, fantastical fights, and a sword with katana-like powers of cutting bodies in half. No one can accuse this film of becoming boring, but its over-stuffed narrative never quite delivers on its promising start.

In a strange way, War Machine kicks off when it proverbially jumps the shark, introducing something so ridiculous as a big killer robot to jolt the movie awake from its ho-hum military recruiting motions. It’s not a movie built to withstand big questions, but for a high-octane action thriller, it’s a lot more fun when it goes off the rails.

It’s also an odd time to release a movie that embraces collaborating with the Russians and painting bad and good guys with such broad strokes. This puts Hunter Killer in murky geopolitical waters I don’t think it knows how to navigate. Neither the movie or Butler is nearly entertaining enough to distract us.

Although charming, the slight “I Don’t Understand You” struggles to sustain its spark. It’s a series of silly events that get progressively ridiculous and bloodier.

Sticky racial politics aside, there are a few inspired moments in Madeline’s Madeline, and most of them belong to the fiercely talented Helena Howard.

While Bloch's emotions and thoughts about the Holocaust and the Israeli occupation are deeply felt, the documentary’s finer points are a little less clear.

As a Latina critic who has been writing about my community’s stories for as long as I’ve had a career, I want better for us and our storytellers. While I enjoy some aspects of this movie, I’m not sure the means justified the lackluster result.

Not all the pieces of Boogie fit neatly together, but it’s a film about a family that doesn’t fit inside the box of a standard inspirational immigrant story.

It’s as if the film doesn’t trust Frida’s images to speak for themselves.

The Mexican film now has a Hollywood remake, one that adds new elements to the story but is less coherent in its message.

Verow, who wrote the script with his writing partner James Derek Dwyer, incorporates many familiar queer narratives and supernatural elements for a story with many twists and turns, some of which work better than others.

Ultimately, the threadbare quality of Constantin Werner’s screenplay cannot be smoothed over with gobs of CGI effects (impressive as some of these sequences look) and the star power of Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista.

At least the movie features a few solid performances to make it a worthwhile diversion for some viewers. Others less inclined to easily resolved romances may want to book some other excursion.

As played by Renée Zellweger, this Judy is painfully and visibly anxious. Or, perhaps this is her idea of drug-induced twitching. Either way, there are spots in the movie where Zellweger’s affected manners become too distracting and overshadow everything else around her.

Based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, Paul Ireland’s Measure for Measure is filled with drama, although perhaps not the kind you’d expect from the Bard. No, this is a modern-day adaptation—one grappling with xenophobia, drug addiction, and gun violence. There are no period costumes here, but there’s a stone-faced Hugo Weaving to make up for it.

Mr. Warth, who wrote the screenplay with Miles Barstead, creates a flawed tale of female friendship and the artist’s everlasting struggle. Unfortunately, Dim the Fluorescents can’t keep its story together.

Quivoron, who co-wrote Rodeo with Buresi, often switches gears between character study and a heist movie, creating an uneasy whiplash.

At a time when it seems like women’s representation seems to be regressing, the intention of the film feels more timely now than when the film ends in 2019, before the pandemic, and the fondness for dating apps starts to wear off. But it was the user experience of the film—where its simplistic narrative design leaves no surprises and plenty of shallow characters—that felt unsatisfying.

By the end, “Find Me Falling” lands on uneven ground. It’s as if this lighthearted romantic comedy has its frothy bubbles burst by the sudden encroachment of dramatic interruptions and uninspired pop music and lyrics.

The film’s narrative simplicity can be charming or frustrating, depending on your feelings about awkward dialogue and overreacting actors.

Carnaval is like Girls Trip by way of Brazil, but the acting and many of the comedy’s punchlines are fairly over-exaggerated. The four leads are just a step above stock characters.

While “Night Call” delivers in the thriller department of the narrative, it stumbles when trying to tackle the politics of the day.

Because of the movie’s uneven story and characters, it’s a bumpy ride no matter which route you take.

[Papushado] creates a world that’s so strange, in both a visually striking sense and one that doesn't always work, that even when a performance sputters out or a line of dialogue rings false, it doesn’t tank the movie. However, that level of spectacle through eye-catching production design and visual style means that sometimes the movie’s vivid colors and bullets outshine the star-studded cast.

As a whole, “What We Hide” has the feeling of an old after-school special, a melodramatic lesson about a topical issue.

Jordan Weiss's feature debut, "Sweethearts," has its charming moments but feels uneven overall.

Though it's a well-done family drama, White Boy Rick is a half-told story that only lightly incorporates the deeper issues of systemic injustice. The black characters feel shortchanged in comparison to their white co-stars; even Rick’s closest friend, Boo (RJ Cyler), feels unremarkable. Despite these flaws, the performances in the movie are strong.