Owen Gleiberman

The Woman in the Yard never musters the imagination to horrify or even jolt you. It’s a tale of one-note inner demons.

As it turns out, this is one of the better live-action adaptations of a Disney animated feature.

The director, Andrew Patterson, has a vision — of life, and of how to tell a story — that he enacts with so much confidence and verve that even when what he’s doing doesn’t totally work, you may find yourself going with it, because this is what independent filmmaking is about: unfurling a story on the high wire.

You might be wondering if “Clown in a Cornfield” is at least scary. No, it’s not, and it’s not trying too hard to be.

These people all look and sound so important that the message that blankets every moment of The Age of Disclosure is: They’re official. And what they have to say is official.

The Accountant 2 is an agreeably loopy hyperviolent good time.

The Simple Favor films fill a niche, one that they helped create: the knowing synthetic thriller rooted in the angst of contempo motherhood. But this one both diverts and drags on.

“CHAOS” ends up suggesting that the Manson murders were a grand plot, orchestrated from on high (by the CIA? the Deep State? Nixon?) to turn America against the counterculture. I don’t believe that theory for a second, but there’s one way I think it stays true to the spirit of Charles Manson: It’s pure madness.

Last Breath delivers every incident with so much specificity that it’s like a cinematic piece of journalism. Yet it leaves you with a minor tingle of the uncanny.

It’s a ham-handed, lurchingly obvious mess, without the glimmer of human interest that even a sensationalist horror film needs.

It’s superhero meatloaf and potatoes served with just enough competence and dash not to feel like reheated leftovers.

It’s not another unhinged Bridget bash — more like a hearts-and-flowers finale.

The rare rock doc that’s a must-see.

The whole thing is oppressive and, in an odd way, not very interesting.

Ricky is a movie that plunges into the depths and also lifts the spirit honestly.

A tight, nifty, and unsettling little parable of the pathology of fame in our time.

I defy you to see It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley and not fall in love with Jeff Buckley’s voice. By the time the film is over, you want to find a way to go back and rescue him to let him live the life he should have.

Audiences should have fun with Together, a body-horror movie about a serious thing — love — that never takes itself too seriously.

I was touched, at moments, by O’Connor’s woeful countenance, but as written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman, Rebuilding has no motor.

In its tiny-scaled staged-documentary way, Peter Hujar’s Day is exquisitely done and arresting to watch.

Questlove confronts the life and legacy of Sly Stone, investigates it, holds it up to the light, tears it apart, and puts it back together like the bravura mixmaster he is.

Midas Man is never less than watchable, and it does capture something about Brian Epstein that’s honest and affecting.

The two actors are appealing; they’ve got marriage-as-domestic-fight-club chemistry. And when Glenn Close shows up as Emily’s British mother, a former superspy herself, the film calms down for a bit ­— and perks up.

Palmer, though she has the “straight” role, is so witty in her attack that she commands the screen. And SZA, in her film debut, simply sizzles. She’s a volcano of camp fury. The director, Lawrence Lamont, is a helmer of hip-hop videos making his feature-film directing debut, and while it might seem his main task is to keep the comedy crackling, the film’s secret weapon is the visual and rhythmic flow he imparts to it.

Gudegast, for all his casualness toward plausibility, is an energizing filmmaker. He keeps the mano-a-mano standoffs humming, and he’s got a sixth sense for how to showcase Butler as a glamorously disheveled schlock version of Dirty Harry–meets–Popeye Doyle-meets– “Lethal Weapon”-gone-lone-wolf.

It’s a portrait that’s really a meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, the question of her guilt. And one of the things it does is to remind you of what a singularly provocative and insidious and mysterious figure she was.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is wired-up synthetic fun. It’s a trivial kiddie flick that moves at the speed of your mind playing video games.

The action in Kraven the Hunter is fine as far as it goes, but it rarely incites or bedazzles you.