Natalia Winkelman

It’s an earnest look at the collateral damage surrounding addiction, and the movie is at its strongest when it homes in on the experiences of Ethan and Derek. But as the main characters of the movie learn, compassion alone isn’t always enough.

Consistently intriguing and occasionally hilarious, the movie does not depict sex itself. Instead, the characters eat food items that become objects of titillation, lust and pleasure: the sticky goo around soybeans, chili oil sizzling in a wok.

There is something insincere in this movie’s manner, an aloofness that masquerades as satire but repels inquiry or emotion. “Dual” takes a worthy idea and throws a smoke bomb in its middle, leaving the audience to squint through the haze.

Conventional but genuine, Metal Lords comprehends the riot of adolescent emotions and the many ways teenagers manage them.

This sensational documentary feels bankrupt at its core.

Fendt is more interested in tracing the architecture of their ennui than considering its cause or consequences, and the movie observes their leisure with a warm gaze.

Had Atlantide granted deeper access to Daniele and Maila, these images might have lent a moody complement to the characters and their struggles. As is, any sense of meaning is cast adrift in a sea of pretty pictures.

Blissfully under two hours, The Adam Project is no modern classic. But it does benefit from an affecting finale that pays special attention to Adam’s strained relationship with his father.

Here is a documentary that invites us to delight in the unexpected pairing of a famed funny lady and a hunky musician — but without analysis or nuance. Better to flip on a few “I Love Lucy” reruns instead.

Ostrochovsky often begins shots with characters frozen in place for several seconds before they launch into action, as if they were chess pieces moved by God across the bare lines of the seminary’s crumbling stone architecture.

More than anything else, Diwan seems interested in exploring how, at many points in history, young women had no choice but to bear this particular burden alone.

Too many works aimed at younger age groups ooze with sentimentality or buckle under a condescending tone. Here, in figurative voice-over full of imagery, we receive Lennie’s unbridled imagination and worldview.

When, and in which picturesque city, Henry and María will acknowledge their mutual affection is the burning question of this romantic comedy trifle, which offers a few laughs and many more exasperated groans.

A misfire that’s as stilted as it is inert.

Of all the movie’s sins, [Scrat's] omission is unforgivable.

Cave has an imaginative sense of camera placement, and she’s an expert at inserting ultra-close-up shots at precisely the right moment to induce a laugh, gasp, or shiver. Her camera is always in service of the story, rather than distracting from it with artifice.

Here’s a tragic tale: Once upon a time, an action-adventure drama began production. Nearly eight years, a title change and a new distribution plan later, the movie finally sees the light of day. Nothing about it feels worth the wait.

Brazen occasionally scratches the same itch as does a cop procedural, or a Lifetime drama so formulaic you foresee every beat.

However generic this movie is in premise, there is wit to be found in its details, and warmth in its message.

Wolf may lead with an open curiosity, but in tackling big ideas about identity, openness is not always enough.

Magic abounds in A Boy Called Christmas, Netflix’s first prestige holiday movie of the season, but pulsing through this winning adventure tale is something even stronger: the immersive power of storytelling.

There is a contagious thrill to the movie’s portrait of its subject’s achievements, especially his whirlwind romance with the Israeli supermodel Tami Ben Ami. But when it comes to Perry’s moments of struggle, Aulcie trips up.

Genuine sweetness can be found in Emily’s fidelity to her rowdy new best friend. Still, naturalism is hard to fake, and it’s difficult to divorce Clifford from the lines of code that animate him.

Directed by Amy Koppelman and based on her novel of the same name, A Mouthful of Air aspires to show how depression can sully even the loveliest of scenes. The scenes the movie chooses, however, play like a parody of white privilege.

Malta’s views are arresting, but the images Camilleri chooses would never be found in a travel brochure. In his subtle, vérité approach, he captures something special — not one man’s crisis, but a community’s culture.

It’s fine that nothing major happens in this charmless quaran-com; it is concerning, however, that neither the audience nor the actors, sitting stiffly behind their screens, are given reason to care.

Its devotion to frights makes it memorable.

Among the countless iterations the story has weathered through the ages, this Cinderella (streaming on Amazon), starring Camila Cabello as the orphaned maiden, is forgettable. It is oddly transfixing, though, as a study in the semiotics of the modernized fairy tale.