Noel Murray

Like its predecessor, it is enjoyably episodic, jumping from one comic vignette to another. Some of these connect, while others land with a thud. But so it goes with Christmas. Not every present is a winner.

Garcia and Prinze are so likable that it’s satisfying to see them spend an hour or so of screen time figuring out what the audience knows right away.

The overall mood is warm and cheery, and Lohan brings a spontaneous sincerity to even the corniest scenes. The movie’s wrapping is shiny and plastic, but its star quality is genuine.

Overall, this picture is a refreshing alternative to the synthetic, simplistic Christmas movies that proliferate this time of year. Ditch the mistletoe and holly and it would still be a well-crafted, well-balanced character sketch, following two lost souls as they discover what they’ve been missing.

At its best, Taurus captures the tumult of the artistic process, where happy accidents and unpleasant truths are perpetually in conflict.

The lingering trauma of Morton’s upbringing is an ongoing challenge for him, even with all of his success; and this quietly moving movie examines how the right opportunities or the wrong expectations can make all the difference in who a person becomes.

We don’t learn much about how the government or politics work in Afghanistan; and there’s very little in the way of historical background. But by giving a voice both to Ghafari and — in a few scattered scenes — her fierce opposition, In Her Hands does capture with direct immediacy how hard it can be to loosen up a culture with a tradition of rigidity.

What makes this film so fascinating is that its subject remains an enigma: a pioneer who did a lot of good and inspired a lot of people, then faded quietly away, leaving questions about who he really was.

This film has a worthy goal: to change the perspectives of people who might be hurting right now. For those willing to go with its flow, it has a real power.

Adams is still an absolute dynamo as Giselle, fluctuating between preternatural cheeriness and storybook meanness. As in the first film, the actress strikes a graceful balance between the silly and the sincere, embodying and even humanizing everything people love about fairy tales.

The result is a fairly cerebral genre hybrid that still connects on a gut level.

Anyone gripped by “The Good Nurse” won’t be surprised to learn that the film followed what actually happened pretty closely. But whether dramatized or presented as journalism, it remains shocking to hear how the problem of Cullen kept getting passed from one institution to another.

The stars can’t save it.

Bar Fight! is so low-stakes and small-scale that at times it feels more like a TV sitcom pilot than a film. But this would be a pilot worthy of a pickup.

The result is something visually dazzling and emotionally resonant, though likely to appeal primarily to youngsters and genre buffs.

This doc is a welcome reminder of how Mays’ very presence in American popular culture was a game-changer, given that only the most virulent of racists could deny his superiority to nearly everyone on the field. It’s also a gift to hear from Mays himself, still kicking at 91.

This is a tumultuous and ultimately tragic tale about the exploitation of athletes.

There’s a tear-jerking moment roughly every five to 10 minutes in this movie, as Gomez reveals her essential dilemma of being someone who loves making fans happy and loves being creative but lives in fear — as many people do — of disappointing their benefactors and loved ones.

Viewers who can endure the at-times tediously dour first hour of “Next Exit” are rewarded with a tense and emotional final stretch, with a lot to say about what gives life meaning.

The leads have a wonderful chemistry, with Bell hitting the right notes of anger and confusion and Morales maintaining the alien’s comic deadpan. Everyone involved has clearly thought through how such a wild fantasy situation might play out — and more importantly, how it would feel.

Yankovic diehards will likely enjoy this movie since — like his parody songs — it takes self-serious pieces of pop culture and changes the words to something silly. Those songs though are usually under four minutes. This picture runs 108.

The story’s a bit convoluted, though no more than most detective plots. Ultimately, it’s a solid mystery, explained well by Enola in her fourth-wall-breaking chats with the audience. The pairing of actor and role here is just about perfect, and as much a star-making turn for Brown as her breakout performance in “Stranger Things.”

For the first 90 minutes or so, there’s remarkable vibrancy and spontaneity to this picture, as its creators and stars seem to be coming up with their story on the spot, with the cameras rolling. They seem inspired and excited. The mood is infectious.

Director Tommy Boulding and screenwriters Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines do deliver a lean, effective action film, with lots of shooting, stabbing and clever traps. It’s ideal for anyone who enjoys the sound of tortured screams in a bucolic English countryside.

The Lair doesn’t finish as spectacularly as it starts; but that just means it’s a good genre picture and not a great one.

Lee structures the film like a mystery, which gives it a sharp hook in the early going but leads to an inevitable letdown in the final stretch when the answers prove less interesting than the questions.

“Black & Blues” isn’t a straightforward biography so much as a collection of engaging anecdotes and keen observations, meant to spark a renewed appreciation for someone too often misunderstood.

Feste handles the action and horror in Run Sweetheart Run well; and for those who can handle its more preposterous twists there are trashy pulp kicks to be had here. But given that this movie is also trying to say something honest and angry about how the powers that be protect abusive men, its silliness is a setback.

As offbeat and personal as the director’s best.

The teen-targeted fantasy-romance The School for Good and Evil is an exhaustingly long, overstuffed movie that probably would’ve worked better as a TV series.

Each segment runs too long; and none of them has the kind of killer ending an anthology film deserves. But they do all deliver what they promise: a 1999 look and vibe, with moments designed to make audiences squirm.

It’s the moments of more personal observation — about how the girls relate to each other, to their elders, and to a culture that’s a sometimes uneasy blend of Canadian and Indigenous — that gives this picture its spark of originality. There are lots of genre movies like this. None are this one.

Garcia holds back too much, perhaps trying to avoid any phony epiphanies. As a result, his two main characters are too preoccupied with re-litigating old grudges to do or say anything notable.

Like Ari Aster’s similarly slippery “Hereditary,” Steiner’s film shrewdly shifts back and forth between the real physical threat of dark supernatural forces and the more elusive harm done by a lifetime of bad parenting.

This profoundly moving movie covers a different kind of success, as a great musician takes pains to make sure her idol receives some proper respect — the only currency that always matters.

This is a movie for adrenaline junkies who want to watch as many slapstick fights as can fit into about 90 minutes of screen-time.

Even with the Gen Z-friendly touches — and Dever delivering a winning performance — Rosaline still feels frustratingly stale.

Despite a clever premise, decent special effects and an amiable tone, the horror-comedy The Curse of Bridge Hollow never makes the jump from “mildly pleasant time-killer” to “entertaining.”

This film is a superior example of how flavorful dialogue, talented actors and excellent staging can make something familiar really pop.

There are set pieces scattered throughout Dark Eyes that are as strange — and as strangely beautiful — as the best of Argento, starting with an unnerving opening sequence that sees a group of people in a park gazing at a solar eclipse.

Piggy is a masterful mix of dark comedy, social commentary and raw suspense.

It’s not scary; it is instead an alternately touching and haunting story.

It’s more a feel-good recap of an impressive championship run. But the game analysis is keen, and the arc of this story is undeniably inspiring, arguing that victory is sweeter when it springs from a common purpose.

Based on Jessica Knoll’s best-selling mystery novel, the Mike Barker-directed Luckiest Girl Alive — with a script by Knoll — falls into the trap of trying too hard to capture not just the book’s flashback-heavy plot but also its distinctive voice.

It’s a story often told, but this movie tells it well, energetically dramatizing the in-the-moment experiences Leslie has and showing how they inform the choices she makes. And Riseborough is a dynamo, making sure that even at her worst, Leslie has enough personality and humanity that the audience roots for her just to get through another day.

For all the flayed flesh and impaled skin in the picture, this Hellraiser isn’t sharp enough.

Vesper is on the arty side of science-fiction, more focused on character and setting than in plot-driven thrills.

Nothing Compares stays confined to the six-year whirlwind when O’Connor was at her most famous, and steers clear of the decades of scandals that followed. This is clearly a conscious — and astute — choice by Ferguson, who means to show that even at the peak of her commercial powers, O’Connor was questioned, mocked and belittled.

Mona Lisa’s story is at first bizarre, and then tense, and then genuinely moving as the escapee figures out what she actually wants from the outside world.

Co-directors Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis (who previously collaborated on the excellent mood-piece “The Fits”) create a strong sense of rhythm and texture, capturing the feel of this town and how it holds its inhabitants tightly.

At its best and its sharpest, this film is less about supernatural monsters than about the common fear of drifting apart from the people you love.

This is not an epic; nor is it meant to be. It’s a snappy story about a bunch of violent men — and one particular woman, anxious to get clear of them.

By letting the archival material carry most of the weight, Pettengill creates an instructive kind of time-travel experience for viewers of all political persuasions, transporting them to a past hauntingly similar to our present.

Me to Play doesn’t make some grand pronouncement about living with illness or theater as therapy. It’s a small slice of life about a couple of guys trying to exemplify that classic Beckett quote: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

This is an unapologetic advocacy doc; and as such it’s likely to rub some viewers the wrong way. But even those who want to watch it just to argue should find that “The American Dream” is a worthy opponent.

Carmen relies too much on coincidences to keep its story going; and Buhagiar threads in a few too many impressionistic flashbacks to the heroine’s youth and to the romance her family forced her to abandon. But McElhone strikes a fine balance between humor and pathos.

Meet Cute falls into a rut fairly quickly, because it lacks the breadth of imagination that makes the best time-loop stories work.

The plot races from one tense outdoor confrontation to the next, as “Lou” tells a simple but effective story about two women enduring the harshness of the elements and the machinations of violent men.

While the material here is thin and largely predictable (aside from one great jump scare), the cast is outstanding and the dialogue is snappy, delivered at a brisk pace.

The deep strangeness of Drifting Home can take some time to adjust to. But in this quirky and boisterous picture, the surreal predicament is ultimately just an offshoot of these kids’ common fears about growing up.

Mendes and Hawke bring a lot of depth and pathos to these characters, who gradually begin to wonder why they and their classmates are so fiercely dedicated to punishing each other.

Fans of the first Goodnight Mommy may find it a pale, pointless copy. Newcomers, though? They should be suitably creeped out … but, alas, not wrecked.

The film is a unique kind of procedural, with fascinating information about how the FBI cracks cases, combined with an admission that some crimes may never be explained.

More than anything, Our American Family gets across how exhausting this kind of life can be, as loved ones waver over whether they should be hands-off in their relationships or if they should be intensely involved.

Herbulot and Diop have made a movie that is bold and exciting, combining bits of reality with outsized myth, in a tale of crime, revenge, and literal monsters, set in a wonderland where it seems anything can happen.

Ruth Wilson gives an outstanding performance.

It’s as though the filmmakers couldn’t decide on one complication to set the action in motion, so they picked six. That much narrative congestion keeps the story from really moving.

This kind of movie can easily become ponderous and pretentious, but Putka keeps everything wide open, in the spirit of his befuddled protagonists.

The film is a case study in why critics say “show, don’t tell.” It’s 90 minutes of people talking about routine gangster stuff, peppered with occasional gunfire.

What really gets under the viewer’s skin in Surrogate is Natalie’s particular predicament — well-played by Morassi — of a parent who right down to the film’s shocking ending feels pushed past her limits, judged by others for troubles she didn’t invite and can’t explain.

Julie and Charlie make a winning couple, which goes a long way toward making Love on the Villa watchable. But they’re so boxed-in by the movie’s clichés, their love affair rarely gets the chance to breathe.

Whenever the energy starts to flag, Anvari can always come back to Bonneville, who is magnificently oily as Blake: a man who has convinced the world he’s a nice guy, though every now and then the mask slips and we see the anger and bigotry bubbling beneath.

The real point of “Since I Been Down” — and what makes the movie so powerful — are the scenes that show these still-incarcerated men and women today.

By the end, Maneater has walked right up to the edge of being a fun, silly, “so bad it’s good” time-killer. But after taking way too long, it never really arrives there.

Buckles’ greatest asset is his subjects, many of whom have never spoken before about the trauma that the adults and authority figures in their lives have expected them to endure, bravely and stoically.