Peter Debruge

The Fall Guy is funny, it’s sexy, and it features the boy toy version of “Barbie” MVP Ryan Gosling — which is to say, this time around, he embodies the ultimate action figure.

With Adlon there to spot them, Glazer and Buteau trust-fall into their respective parts, potentially unlikable qualities and all. At times, the pair get so filthy, you may not believe your ears. But strength, as the saying goes, comes from the mouth of babes.

What matters most is whether we believe Brown in the role, and the “Stranger Things” star has no trouble embodying the kind of quick-thinking independent mind it takes to survive such an adventure.

Cena makes it impossible to imagine another person in the part. He’s game to go big, which fits Rod’s frustrated-actor persona, while also having the capacity to play vulnerable and sincere.

With Crossing, writer-director Levan Akin wants to open our eyes to the easily overlooked.

Villeneuve treats each shot as if it could be a painting. Every design choice seems handed down through millennia of alternative human history, from arcane hieroglyphics to a slew of creative masks and veils meant to conceal the faces of those manipulating the levers of power, nearly all of them women.

We’ve all seen movies like “Lousy Carter” before, and this one’s adequate, without being particularly insightful or memorable.

A chaotic symphony of nearly two dozen characters, this black-and-white indie confection (garnished with sparing touches of color) mixes biting social critique with stylistic bravura.

Madame Web feels like a cross between an extended soda commercial and a teaser trailer for still more spinoffs.

Kaufman’s innovations all make Orion and the Dark less predictable, potentially engaging young viewers in the storytelling process. But they also make for a more stressful experience overall, as if Orion wasn’t high-strung enough already.

While common sense and good taste may be inclined to resist Vaughn’s garishly over-the-top style at first, the movie eventually finds its groove.

It can sound like a cliché to say that any given movie is what the world needs now, but “Will & Harper” earns that distinction.

Wang does a nice job of balancing his naturally comedic sensibility with serious insights into how he triangulated his own identity at Wang-Wang’s age.

Sasquatches may not exist, but miraculously enough, this movie does, and like the creatures it depicts, it must be seen to be believed.

Capitalism, as depicted here, is inherently sociopathic. As the murders continue to claim ordinary middle-class folks, audiences can’t help but find themselves on edge, bracing for the sniper’s next attack.

Any critic sitting through their show probably wouldn’t have much patience for all the characters’ personal catharses, but seen from the right distance, as beautifully told as this, the experience amounts to something special.

With A Different Man, Schimberg attempts — and mostly succeeds, with deliciously awkward results — to cram a lifetime of thoughts about beauty and ugliness, attraction and disgust, identity and performance into a postmodern meta-film mold that few (apart from Charlie Kaufman, perhaps) have managed to make tolerable.

Mopey to a fault, with a missed opportunity for an ending, Your Monster amounts to an intermittently amusing, grubby-looking pity party.

To its credit, this future classic is honest about adolescent desire, self-questioning sexual identity issues and all kinds of other behavior that sends worried moms and dads into meltdown mode.

Thelma may bill itself as an unconventional action movie, but it’s more of a sitcom, really.

Freaky Tales takes nearly 40 minutes to find its footing, but once it kicks in, there’s roughly an hour of grindhouse glory ahead (assuming streaming audiences make it that far).

The Zucheros’ creation is audacious and original, but also suffers from some of the same ADHD issues that afflicted “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (both are movies made for multitaskers with brains wired for constantly switching between screens).

The Beekeeper is the best kind of bad movie — which is to say, it’s the sort that puts entertainment ahead of pretentiousness, embracing the laughter sure to accompany such an unapologetically stupid, ultra-violent premise.

Levy’s funny-sad contemporary drama acknowledges the supportive dynamic that Marc plays in Thomas and Sophie’s lives, even as it centers the gay best friend for a change — not so different from the one he played in “Happiest Season.” All three characters feel well rounded and real, especially in their imperfections.

At least the backgrounds are eye-catching, as a waddle of mallards crack jokes amid beautiful fall foliage.

Barrino’s soul-felt R&B sensibility lends itself to the role, and the patience it took to reach this point mirrors Celie’s long path to finding herself. Barrino may have embodied the character on Broadway 15 years earlier, but the moment is now right, and everyone else in the terrific ensemble seems to have fallen into place around that choice.

Dumas was a master of the serial form, and this version of “The Three Musketeers” manages to preserve that thrill-to-thrill sensation. The experience leaves you wanting more, though it’s probably better suited to binge-watching in its entirety.

Silly as it might be, Silent Night gives audiences reason to get excited about the Hong Kong innovator once again, ranking as one of the few bloody Christmas counterprogrammers since “Die Hard” that feels worthy of repeat viewing down the road.

However immature Sandler’s sense of humor may have been in the past, he seems to have a pretty good handle on what makes kids tick. The movie can be making potty jokes one minute and delivering practical advice the next, wrapping with the sensible suggestion to “find your Leo.”

Dense without feeling rushed, then done without ever having really sprung to life, Napoleon seems determined to cover a great deal of ground over its not-insignificant running time.

The whole matter seems so morally ambiguous that it makes for an unpredictable ride, right up to the film’s abrupt but darkly poetic smash ending.

Kanagaraj hails from the Michael Bay school of excess, using dramatic camera moves (like the oft-repeated trick where he pushes in on a character’s back as that person turns to glower toward the audience) and clever cutting to give the entire feature the energy typically reserved for a 2½-minute trailer.

Journey to Bethlehem is first and foremost a family movie, and though its music sounds a little too early-aughts to become a classic, it fills a crèche-shaped niche in the current theatrical landscape, with nearly six weeks to clean up before Christmas.

We all know where this is headed — Snow’s destined to become Panem’s authoritarian “president” — but there’s still enormous room for surprise and debate, even among readers of Collins’ prequel.

It’s easy to form an opinion about the subject of a great many docs, but unsettling to realize how little we know about how they were treated.

So many movies are either mindless or completely disinterested with engaging the intellect of their audiences that Freud’s Last Session offers a welcome bit of brain stimulation — but does far less for the soul.

Per Howard Hawks’ too-easy rubric, “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes,” this one’s a keeper. The best scene may be the last.

So heavy until now, the movie ends on a soaring note of optimism.

Scripted by “Chicken Run” alums Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell, along with newcomer Rachel Tunnard, the sequel doesn’t offer many surprises plotwise, but is consistently amusing in its dad-jokey kind of way.

It’s emotionally exhausting, but audiences come away with a sense of her legacy, as well as an appreciation for the adversity she faced (and, to a lesser degree, a sense of the criticism that has been leveled against her).

Every aspect of Daddio is designed to spark conversation. But it’s sweeter and more satisfying than you might expect, especially as Hall pays off ideas introduced early in her script.

If you choose to focus on the family connections, then it’s clear that Helgeland has something to say.

Taken literally, The Successor is a chilling thing to watch. Step back and imagine what it’s saying on a metaphorical level, and it’s clear that writer-director Xavier Legrand has crafted one of the most damning depictions of patriarchal power imaginable.

The emotional core of The Creator rests on the shoulders of a star who has just one gear: angry. The rest wants to be “Blade Runner,” but plays more like a cross between “Elysium” (with its floating futuristic fortress and specious political message) and “The Golden Child” (about an all-powerful Asian kiddo in desperate need of protecting).

The film is most successful when it finds Brynn in survival mode.

Audiences want to see Diana Nyad succeed, but the pleasure of the experience comes from watching actors become these characters. No matter how tricky such feats must have been to re-create, you get the impression that everyone involved was having a blast.

Pain Hustlers takes an off-putting mock-documentary approach to this tragedy, focusing on a handful of sleazebag salespeople who bent the rules to incentivize doctors to prescribe Lonafin (the film’s fictional Subsys substitute) first for treating cancer pain, and later for conditions as mild as migraines.

Director Maggie Betts has a rousing old-school crowd-pleaser on her hands with this truth-based (albeit strategically embellished) drama featuring the most entertaining performance yet from Jamie Foxx, who makes a day in court feel like going to church.

It’s striking proof of an original sensibility.

The idea is to have a good time, and Waititi knows how to give audiences that.

Is this a fantasy? A fable? A new kind of horror movie? Actually, Dream Scenario is all of the above and then some, for it also shares a certain postmodern DNA with two of Cage’s most boundary-pushing movies, “Adaptation” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”

The helmer trusts his audience to bring themselves to the material. Ultimately, that’s what makes reading “American Fiction” so rewarding.

Memory invites debate, rather than imposing a specific interpretation. It’s also a film that lingers, shifting and expanding in significance, even as the details start to blur.

One can sense what Costanzo’s trying to do, but he’s made a fatal miscalculation: Mimosa is not leading lady material, and 140 minutes is far too long to spend pretending otherwise.

"Dicks” is an unapologetically puerile, hard-R novelty that’s just lo-fi enough to maintain its underground cred.

The film will get people thinking and talking. The way DuVernay directs it, Origin is a swirling tornado of ideas.

Better to think of The Boy and the Heron as the bonus round — a worthy but mid-range addition to a remarkable oeuvre that expands his filmography without necessarily topping it.

Directed by George C. Wolfe with the same passion and conviction that defined its subject, Rustin reminds that the pursuit for equality has never been and should never be satisfied with the advancement of a single group.

It goes a long way to humanize figures who’ve been long misrepresented on film, while giving audiences privileged access to this inner world.

Because Korine’s never been one to subscribe to traditional narrative tropes, there’s an insidious sort of suspense running beneath the otherwise-thin plot, like some kind of high-voltage electric current.

The Holdovers is a film about class and race, grief and resentment, opportunity and entitlement. It’s that rare exception to the oft-heard complaint that “they don’t make ’em like they used to.”

Fennell’s debut promised a fearless original voice and style. Saltburn certainly has attitude, but nothing new to say.

The entire journey is not based in logic so much as a kind of emotional intuition, and as such, no two viewers will experience it the same way. What strikes some as manipulative will crack open others, as the film offers a kind of connection that’s all too rare, and maybe even impossible.

Practically all that’s missing is an appearance by Anderson himself, the way Alfred Hitchcock used to present episodes of his television series. Then again, one could say he’s present in every frame.