Owen Gleiberman

Inside Out 2 is a transporting fable about the desire to fit in, to be validated by the Cool Culture that’s, more and more, our collective seal of approval and success. And while the movie is an enchanting animated ride of the spirit (be prepared for it to help save summer at the box office), it may also be the most poignantly perceptive tale of the conundrums of early adolescence since “Eighth Grade.”

For a while, The Watchers is a reasonably well-made lost-in-the-woods horror movie, one that draws you in like a puzzle whose rules you need to learn (just as the characters do).

Let the Canary Sing does an excellent job of tracing how Cyndi Lauper came to be…Cyndi Lauper. Yet it’s sort of an idiosyncratic movie, because that’s all it does.

These two actors, with nothing matching but their goatees, have a spiky bromantic chemistry. They don’t just ping off one another’s lines — they lock and load each other.

Taking Venice is a very good documentary, though with a hint of pearl-clutching. There’s a “We were shocked, shocked…” undercurrent to the whole thing.

The underlying integrity of “Ezra,” what makes it an honest film despite some formula devices, is that its message about how to help children with special needs is that there’s no magic way. Beyond celebrating them for who they are and showing them who you are.

The movie, while elegantly photographed, is mostly a shambles. It keeps throwing things at you in an oblique and random way, and it’s constructed like a puzzle with no solution.

As The Shrouds goes on, it becomes more earnest and more nutty. I think Cronenberg thinks he’s making movies that audiences will experience as feature-length versions of his own dreams. Here’s the difference: When you’re in a dream, you believe what’s happening.

For its first half, “The Apprentice” is kind of a knockout: the inside look at how Trump evolved that so many of us have imagined for so long, and seeing it play out is both convincing and riveting. Yet I have an issue with the movie, and it all pivots around the mystery of Trump. I don’t think “The Apprentice” ever penetrates it.

The Substance is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us.

There’s a hallowed place in cinema for multi-character dramas. But “Horizon,” simply put, doesn’t feel like a movie. It feels like the seedbed for a miniseries. Much of what happens is wispy and not very forceful; the film doesn’t build in impact, and it seldom seems to aim in a clear direction.

The film is trying for something, but it’s also sketchy in the extreme.

After all the despair, the piling up of glitzy delusion, there’s a feeling of redemption to it connected to what a good movie can do.

The film is Arnold trying to have the integrity of her severity and eat it too. Bird is a feel-bad movie that turns into a feel-good movie. What it never feels like is a totally authentic movie.

“Furiosa,” like “Beyond Thunderdome,” wants to be something loftier than an action blowout, but the movie is naggingly episodic, and though it’s got two indomitable villains, neither one quite becomes the delirious badass you want.

It’s a lean, tight, and stylishly clever B-movie about a bank robbery gone wrong.

Though the movie is too long, I was more gratified than not to sink into its relatively old-fashioned dramatic restraint.

While broadly based in reality, the entire movie is a put-on, a wackazoid tall tale, a comedy that uses the breakfast wars as the jumping-off point for a high-camp exercise in nostalgic lunacy.

Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver is a storytelling mediocrity, but as spectacle it has tumult and rhythm.

Abigail was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who made those last two “Scream” films, and though I was impressed, to a degree, by what they brought off there, this movie feels like a step backward into overwrought generic schlock.

At its best, Back to Black, the forthright and compelling movie that’s been made of Winehouse’s life, takes that light/dark balance and digs into the drama of it, making it sing.

The director, Adam Wingard (who made “Godzilla vs. Kong”), knows how to choreograph a beastie battle so that it does maximum damage in a way that appeals to your inner toy-smashing seven-year-old.

There may be a lot more going on “Blood and Honey 2,” but let’s not kid ourselves. It’s mostly a shambles.

Sleeping Dogs, starring Russell Crowe as a retired cop with Alzheimer’s disease, is a half-rusted scrap heap of a detective mystery. It’s patchy, it’s badly lit, it’s glum, it’s overloaded with suspects, and it’s almost proud of its contrivances. Yet in its logy, booby-trapped way, it keeps you watching.

You might say that “Frozen Empire” has to work even harder to invent a reason for itself to exist. Yet it’s a livelier movie than “Afterlife.”

In “Shirley,” John Ridley’s sharp and lively inside-political docudrama, Regina King plays Shirley Chisholm with a quiet force you can’t look away from.

The first-time director, Sam Yates, working from a utilitarian script by Tom Bateman, slathers on mood, yet there’s a primitive charge to the film’s no-frills staging.

As a rom-com, Irish Wish is more than willing to kiss the Blarney Stone. Yet the chemistry of Lohan and Speleers makes it watchable enough to get by.