Peter Debruge

What makes The Gray Man exciting — and let’s not beat around the bush: This is the most exciting original action property Netflix has delivered since “Bright” — are the shades the ensemble bring to their characters and the little ways in which the Russos come through where those other films fell short.

A mesmerizing glimpse into Sarno’s search for a sub-Saharan Walden and the implications of that choice.

Astonishing as his filmmaking can be at times, it’s Mendes’ attention to character, more than the technique, that makes 1917 one of 2019’s most impressive cinematic achievements.

Less stuffy literary biopic than ever-relevant female-empowerment saga, Colette ranks as one of the great roles for which Keira Knightley will be remembered.

Moorhead and Benson may not be movie-star charismatic in the lead roles, but the bond between them is palpable, delivering just the dynamic the movie needs.

Nothing about the circumstances revealed in The Harvest could be called normal, and yet it’s a credit to a fertile imagination that the film proves so terrifyingly relatable.

By approaching Marshall as an idealistic young trial lawyer, the film stands on its own as a compelling courtroom drama, complete with surprising revelations — and while we hope things will go his way, this case could just as easily prove the one that motivated his future crusade.

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

The outcome is widely known, but the backstory proves boisterously entertaining — and incredibly well-suited to the current climate, as King was both fighting for her gender and exploring her sexuality in 1973, when the widely publicized face-off happened.

Though its weak bounty-hunter plot makes almost no sense, After Blue satisfies that thirsty spot in our psyche too few films succeed in tickling, where dreams are born, hormones churn and logic simply doesn’t apply.

As the cases against Cosby, Trump, O’Reilly, Weinstein, etc. reveal, the courts don’t appear to be equipped to correct a gender-biased system, whereas Allred has pioneered a new way of fighting injustice.

Levine’s an emerging talent known only to theater audiences at the moment, owing to his dual roles in Matthew Lopez’s “The Inheritance,” although Minyan makes clear that we are dealing with a performer of uncommon gifts.

While the simple premise recalls certain post-WWII dramas in which survivors recognize the Nazi culprits who once terrorized them, the film’s chilling last scene feels like a call to action.

Neon Bull keeps a cinematic distance at nearly all times, seldom moving in for closeups and allowing most scenes to play out in a single shot. Whether his subjects are shoveling manure or showering down afterward, Mascaro prefers to celebrate these figures in their physical entirety.

Rather than presenting another puzzle with important pieces missing, with this project, Decker provides more material than we know what to do with, and the resulting prism feels intellectually rewarding, no matter the angle from which we choose to approach it.

It’s striking proof of an original sensibility.

In the era when content is king, Sam Mendes still believes in moving pictures. Empire of Light is the proof.

Essential, thoroughly engaging documentary.

There’s never been an animated movie that reflects the world in quite this way.

The result is a welcome return to a form of stop-motion that takes pride in the technique’s inevitable imperfections (such as thumbprints in the modeling clay), while putting extra care into the underlying script, with its daffy humor and slightly-off characters.

John Turturro brings sensitivity and intelligence to a subject that could have gone terribly awry in Fading Gigolo.

Movies almost never deal with the intricacies of marriage: finances, schooling, finding the right work-life balance. By contrast, The Nest burrows into the minutiae, and the rewards of going along with the O’Haras are worth it, at least for those willing to risk the frustration of a movie that plays by its own rules and doesn’t necessarily believe in happy endings.

An affectionate and supremely entertaining celebration of the all-American nerd, Science Fair may look like a straightforward super-kid contest doc, à la “Spellbound” and “Mad Hot Ballroom,” but there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes of Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster’s thoroughly researched crowd-pleaser.

Between Bailey’s wide-eyed urchin and McCarthy’s over-the-top octo-hussy, the movie comes alive — not in some zombified form, like re-animated Disney debacles “Dumbo” and “Pinocchio,” but in a way that gives young audiences something magical to identify with, and fresh mermaid dreams to aspire to.

It proves most daring in the ways the film departs from its more conventionally moralistic source, and especially in Breillat’s refusal to call either party a parasite.

Sure, it’s kinky, but Ozon is having fun with it, to the extent that the entire film rewards that fetish all moviegoers have in common — voyeurism — offering up a kind of equal-opportunity objectification.

The humor springs either from real-world recognition, as Robespierre and her co-writers go where others fear to tread, or in response to the cast’s lively, eccentrically lived-in characters.

Unlike other actor-directors, Jones never seems to indulge excess on the part of his cast. Though the characters are strong, the performances are understated.

Somehow, in the final stretch, Nguyen has transformed what felt like a relatively generic, un-special indie love story into something totally unpredictable, taking full advantage of the gorgeous widescreen lensing to convey the atmosphere and magic of his locations.

Think of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet as a gift: a work of essential spiritual enlightenment, elegantly interpreted by nine of the world’s leading independent animators, all tied up and wrapped in a family-friendly bow by “The Lion King” director Roger Allers.

Scherfig approaches the milieu with shrewd anthropological wit, amplifying Wade’s research with her own keen outsider insights — this on top of an expert grasp of tension and tone as the club’s initial allure turns to anxiety and disgust.

What makes The Farewell so effective is that in delving into such a specific case, the film invites audiences to reflect on the passing of relatives close to them.

With St. Vincent, the chief pleasure is comedy, which typically arises from waiting to discover what Bill Murray might do next.

With low-budget Big Boys, Sherman crafts a memorable outing on limited means, brought to life by an unusually endearing cast.

Because the nimble, genre-hopping movie is set in the world of K-pop, it may not even occur to fans that they’re watching a musical — although it’s kind of hard to deny as you catch yourself singing along.

While the entire project seems to be commenting on all the ways that social pressures try to trap or confine us, the cinematic medium has seldom felt as free as it does in Rowlson-Hall’s hands.

Don’t miss this strange, special little film.

Some will find it entirely too sentimental, others a tad repetitive (Callahan tends to repeat the same stories), but it’s hard to argue with a movie that celebrates the kind of recovery he went through.

For most of its running time, this personality-packed docu is nothing short of absorbing as it recaps the essential role African-American background singers played in shaping the sound of 20th-century pop music.

Where "Elizabethtown" pretends to have the meaning of life, Shopgirl hones in on a few telling details, then allows audiences to fill in the rest.

Exceptionally strong performances from the entire cast draw you into the movie's deliberately provocative world, a "Lord of the Flies"–like realm where parents are noticeably absent.

If there's one thing missing above all else from today's action movies, it's the lost art of the car chase.

Delivers platinum performances, especially Sharon Warren as Ray's tough-lovin' mother, Kerry Washington as his lily-tempered wife, and Regina King as his spitfire mistress.

Ultimately, what happens with the house is not only entertaining, but a marvel of what animation can accomplish in this day and age.

On paper, it may sound like high-level calculus, but on screen, The Last Mimzy is perfectly charming. Like "Cocoon" for the elementary-school set, the box transforms Noah and Emma's lives.

The humor is so satisfying in its moment-to-moment pleasures that it's almost unsportsmanlike to criticize the bigger picture.

With its predictable confrontations and tacky fantasy sequences, you feel writer/director Jane Anderson steering the material toward schmaltzy movie-of-the-week territory at every turn.

With the careful timing and nuance of a master actor, Sharif turns a two-dimensional sketch into the film's most absorbing character.

It's a brisk and lively getaway with genuine personality.

[Csupo's] take on Bridge to Terabithia doesn't pander or misrepresent, but instead illustrates the power of open-mindedness in both its forms: creativity and acceptance.

While you watch, be sure to scour the background for in-jokes, including cameos by Gromit and other DreamWorks characters, and rest assured that Flushed Away gets even funnier on second viewing.

But as Western analogies go, Curse achieves an emotional fervor more in keeping with ancient Greek mythology than Elizabethan theater.

The Proposition leaves you shell-shocked.

Valiant enlists a squad of loveable birdbrains to turn the classic fighter-pilot formula into an upbeat adventure film loaded with laughs.

Kids deserve an adventure movie like this, one that might inspire them to become junior inventors and ignite their interest in the world's many wonders.

Director Dylan Kidd sneaks some pretty profound observations about love and life by us.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a movie obsessed more with the act of telling a story than the story itself, which explains why, when the movie's finally over, less than half the audience will have understood the finer points of the mystery.

A definite crowd-pleaser, Hustle & Flow has all the makings of a massive cultural phenomenon - if only audiences can get past the whole pimp thing.

The result is an eye-opening social portrait in the tradition of "Paris Is Burning," the landmark 1990 documentary that introduced drag balls and ''vogueing'' to the mainstream, but it lacks the earlier film's structure and focus.

Make no mistake, Arctic Tale is a stunning film, full of all the astonishing, even breathtaking nature photography we've come to expect from the folks at National Geographic.

It's like "Lock, Stock" as filtered through the mind of David Mamet, with Craig as the suave middleman holding it all together.

It's the details that make Dummy such a winner. By way of comparison, consider last summer's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," in which each actor put a heartfelt spin on his or her one-joke character (the father who believes that Windex cures everything). Well, here's an entire movie built on nuggets like that.

Mean Girls depicts the kind of traumatic high school experience that might await spoiled rich girls who grow up in two-parent households with designer clothes and Escalades.

As science gives way to science fiction, the movie loses its way, squandering time that might better be spent exploring the ocean's floor, where these alien life forms already among us must be seen to be believed.

What isn't fair is the film's R rating, which makes this charming coming-of-age tale virtually inaccessible to the audience sure to cherish it most.

Slick, well-acted, and smarter than it has to be.

If anything, it's the degree to which the animals differ from us that makes March of the Penguins so fascinating.

Even as Dark Water's horror-movie component flounders, a different, arguably better kind of thriller emerges.

Plays like a modern-day inversion of "Inherit the Wind," highlighting an astonishing shift in the American legal system over the last 80 years.

The movie's politics may miss their mark, but its thrills are dead-on.

An astounding achievement in production design, an original creation so completely in tune with the books' macabre sensibilities that even the movie's (arguably) happy ending can't diminish its satisfying sense of schadenfreude.

Although director Eytan Fox focuses on Yossi and Jagger's specific situation, he also casts a critical eye on the responsibility military service puts on all young people who are still in the process of discovering themselves.

Marshall's Memoirs achieves something few other high-profile literary adaptations do: Rather than simply inspiring us to hunt down the source material, it actually stands alone as a film, rich in drama and star-crossed romance.

Films like this have a way of finding their own devoted fan base, and Gypsy 83 deserves to be discovered not only by Goth and gay crowds, but by anyone who runs screaming from all things average.

A haunting, poetic film, and yet it suffers two major failings. First, Murray provides too blank a slate for the audience to appreciate whatever insights a more expressive performance might have offered. Second, and far more troubling, is the way Jarmusch refuses to take his female characters seriously.

Lee’s use of split-screens and dynamic transitions makes the process of actively interpreting his monstrous vision a fresh and unrivaled experience.

Kids will eat it up, while solid voice work from William Shatner and Wanda Sykes should keep this borderline-feral toon from pushing adults over the edge.

Not since "To Live and Die in L.A" has there been such a raw, cynical vision of living and dying in L.A.

Doesn't always work -- like its title, the movie straddles two separate worlds, landing squarely in the dreaded realm of "dramedy" -- but it's a noble effort.

The most extreme English-language studio release I've seen in years.

This is Gere’s movie, and Sarandon and Lopez graciously let him dance away with it.

Features some of the best fight and chase footage you'll see all summer.

A dark Brothers Grimm-like fairy tale anchored by a terrific child-actor performance.

If Larry Clark had ever found his way onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, he probably would have come away with a film like “War Pony,” which observes its young Native American characters hustling, skating and stealing drugs from otherwise distracted adults.

It’s a shame that the mile-a-minute plot of “Ron’s Gone Wrong” isn’t more focused.

While Premature may seem less professional than your average Sundance movie (much less entry-level studio fare), that doesn’t diminish what’s fresh, vulnerable and true about the film.

In this case, revisiting it half a century later, knowing what happened doesn’t preclude us from wanting to get a better understanding of the specifics. But this movie’s insights are limited to the newsroom.

With a hint of that my-way problem-solving approach, The Living Daylights freshens the Bond series’ cornball formula elements while reprising details that had made director John Glen’s debut, For Your Eyes Only, such a superior outing.

The movie quotes Baldwin as saying, “Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street,” but this one may as well be located inside a snow globe. In deciding how to translate Baldwin’s prose to the screen, Jenkins may as well have made Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” as a Douglas Sirk movie (or put Alice Waters’ “The Color Purple” through the Steven Spielberg filter).

"Soldado” may not be as masterful as Villeneuve’s original, but it sets up a world of possibilities for elaborating on a complex conflict far too rich to be resolved in two hours’ time.

It’s not easy being Ben Affleck, by which I mean, there aren’t many actors who seem so comfortably themselves on-screen, and now that Affleck has reached middle age, he’s capable of bringing fresh depth to his performances.

It’s a genre movie, to be sure, but there’s an impressive sense of authenticity — in the language, the locations and the overall texture —that goes a long way to sell the scenario.

The trouble with Flow is that it already looks dated — commendable to be sure, yet rudimentary at the same time. It’s as if Zilbalodis decided to dump an ocean’s worth of water in the Uncanny Valley. Still, animal-loving viewers will bond almost instantly with the cat and its motley companions.

Despite the inherent perversity of the concept, Mosley succeeds in maintaining a certain sweetness throughout. Even more impressively, she makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity.

Provides pleasures for all ages, but especially for dog lovers.

It’s one of the most daring films ever made, not so much because of anything it overtly depicts as what this controversial classic reveals about the infinitely complicated psychology of human sexuality.

This engaging economics lesson, bolstered by articulate experts and amusing animated sequences, would be right at home in high school and college classrooms. Heck, it would be a nice addition to Disney Plus, breaking up all the hagiographic puff-pieces on offer there.

Hoffman and Wilde’s commitment makes the film feel more important than it is. It’s better to think of this either as pure, irreverent escapism or a guiltless pleasure.

Nichols’ film is seemingly less interested in its own glory than in representing what’s right, and though it features two of the best American performances of the past several years, from Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga (neither of whom are American, hailing from Australia and Ethiopia, respectively), its emotional impact derives precisely from how understated they are.

There’s humor in every detail, much of it skewing to the sordid, if not downright scatological, end of the spectrum, from exploding buttocks to anthropomorphic hairballs.

The songs are nearly all bouncy, look-at-me numbers intended for Jamie and his inner circle . . . . But there’s one new addition that makes all the difference: an original number called “This Was Me,” a terrific ’80s-style anthem (performed by Grant and Frankie Goes to Hollywood lead singer Holly Johnson) that provides younger audiences with some much-needed queer history.

This easily exportable, minority-driven drama has the potential to launch the careers of its young directors and cast.

Gordon uses blockbuster tools — pairing bold visuals with the kind of thundering sound design that makes your joints rattle — to turn his well-organized sociology lesson into a more visceral cinematic experience. More than just a compelling TED Talk, it’s an urgent and engaging call to action.

Conceived with uncommon sensitivity toward the interior lives of its characters, as well as to the shifting codes of trans representation, “Monica” is a film about making amends.

More often than not, effects-driven blockbusters get dumber as the series goes along, but Jumanji: The Next Level invents some fun ideas to keep things fresh.

Somehow, in accentuating Wiseau’s weirdness, Franco overlooks his soul.

Whether dangling characters off the edge of a cliff or zooming around Crusoe’s rickety wooden waterslide, the story is constantly on the go, launching objects and characters along the Z axis — and out over the audiences’ heads.

After nearly two and a half hours of hardcore comicbook entertainment — alternating earnest storytelling with self-deprecating zingers designed to show that Marvel doesn’t take itself too seriously — “Endgame” wraps all that logic-bending nonsense with a series of powerful emotional scenes.

In the end, what makes The Tobacconist effective despite its limitations is the way it focuses on the experience of a “typical” Austrian — that is, a citizen without political convictions.

Six months into 2022, it’s the funniest film Hollywood has produced thus far. Audiences know what to expect, and Illumination delivers, offering another feel-good dose of bad behavior.

When the big tennis finale arrives, Metz finds all sorts of ways to make the match interesting, blending urgent music, creative camera vantages and ridiculously hyperbolic announcer commentary to generate the desired tension. But the real reason we’re invested is far simpler than that: Metz and his cast have made us care about both Borg and McEnroe by this point.

Circus of Books is an affectionate look at one of the most unusual mom and pop businesses in America, directed by the person who knew Mom and Pop best.

While never as gripping as a good piece of fiction, Goold’s treatment actually manages to improve on the book, even if that meant fabricating a few things along the way.

Perhaps the cleverest thing about Barker-Froyland’s delicately contrived debut is how uncontrived she manages to make it seem.

With Microbe and Gasoline, the French writer-director has wisely restrained his usual flourishes, allowing the two teenage leads in his relatively calm summer-vacation coming-of-age comedy to assume centerstage, imbuing them with creative agency rather than forcing them to compete with the film’s own style.

Sure, Moonfall is all kinds of stupid, but it’s a heckuva lot funnier than Adam McKay’s all-star satire. I had a blast, and would gladly saddle up for a second viewing.

It may not be balanced or especially sophisticated filmmaking, suffering from a misty-eyed oversimplification of what relationships (gay or straight) actually demand. But for many, it’s precisely the sort of emotional eye-opener needed for young people to find inspiration and naysayers to reconsider their attitudes.

Anyone who loves musical theater owes it to themselves to see Bathtubs Over Broadway, a delightful deep-dive documentary into one man’s obsession with the obscure world of industrial musicals — corporate-sponsored song-and-dance revues from the golden age of American capitalism.

This isn’t the kind of storytelling that flatters the audience’s intelligence, and yet, spelling things out ensures that viewers who don’t like to work too hard can follow along easily and focus on the film’s other pleasures — namely, Pearce’s performance and the twisty case of the missing “Vermeer.”

A vital expose of American law enforcement carried out with almost reckless zeal.

Much like a work of art, the film invites a range of reactions, though it’s far easier to process than the daubs, doodles and other weird works that now hang all over the country.

The musical finds rare shards of light — and an unlikely connection — in the most despairing of places.

Chances are, if you work in Hollywood, This Changes Everything won’t teach you anything you don’t already know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not helpful to hear it articulately communicated by some of the most respected women in the business.

Basically, Inu-oh is to Noh as spray-painted graffiti is to traditional Japanese calligraphy.

Zulawski maintains such expert control of the film’s look and tone that there can be no question that each choice has been deliberate, whatever the significance.

Give Me Liberty catches us off guard with its sense of humor, which amplifies the sheer absurdity of certain situations while respecting the fundamental humanity of its characters — further reflected in the choice of casting actors with disabilities.

Elio is right at home in the Pixar catalog, but lacks those undeniable signs of intelligent life (wit, surprise and the capacity to expand the medium) that set the studio’s best work apart.

When you’re simply looking for something semi-interesting to stream, stories like these don’t necessarily require great actors, but great actors are the reason some of them still reverberate in our memory decades later.

Though inevitably derivative in some ways (it won’t be hard to spot the influence of “Shrek” and various Disney classics), Animal Crackers asserts its own identity, combining some of the most distinctive voices with an ensemble of personality-rich, sequel-ready characters.

There’s more than one way to get a job done — whether it’s solving a murder, recovering priceless art or repainting an old van — and Fletch’s strategy is guaranteed to be more original than whatever the next guy would try.

The director commissioned Struzan to paint the one-sheet for his debut, “Sexina: Popstar P.I.,” and while this sophomore effort is no masterpiece, it’s far more deserving of Struzan’s talent.

The result looks as much like a Natural History Museum diorama as it sounds: a respectful but waxy re-creation that feels somehow awe-inspiring yet chillingly lifeless to behold, the great exception being Jones' alternately blistering and sage turn as Stevens.

Over-production-designed as the film is, Bening and Bell manage to hold their own within it.

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.

An incredibly precise actor who understands exactly how to play to the camera, conveying volumes via even the slightest microexpressions, Kingsley navigates the tricky mix of humor, horror, and deep-seated regret that make this man, if not exactly ordinary, then relatable, at least.

As the work of one young man bursting with inspiration, the film is a giddy thing to absorb, allowing complete strangers to witness someone performing open-heart surgery on himself.

For a movie in which you can’t follow what’s going on for 75% of the time, Deepwater Horizon proves remarkably thrilling.

While mirthless in the extreme, Cesar Acevedo’s deliberately paced and distant-feeling debut works its way under audiences’ skin, weaving a haunting allegory through painterly compositions.

In addition to being a rather fine addition to the Christmas-movie canon, the film marks a useful teaching tool — a better option for classroom screenings than any of the previous “Carol” adaptations, once students have finished reading the novella.

Brian Cox rages robustly and arrestingly against the dying of the light in The Etruscan Smile, an unabashedly formulaic yet undeniably affecting coming-to-terms drama that may cause as much discomfort as delight for those who recognize bits and pieces of their own fathers (or themselves) in the cantankerous character Cox portrays so persuasively.

Fortunately, writer-director Richard LaGravenese has jettisoned most of the novel and refashioned its core mythology and characters into a feverishly enjoyable guilty pleasure.

For French and art-house audiences, there’s no denying the pleasure of a sapiosexual romance such as this, where the turn-on is to be found in the characters’ intelligence.

Consistently funny if all-around a bit too familiar.

Awful Nice carves out all the touchy-feely stuff that makes Judd Apatow movies run two reels too long in favor of a jump-cut style that eliminates the fat and keeps the jokes coming.

Life’s a thrill when it’s smart, but it’s even more exciting when the characters are dumb — which is ultimately a paradox the film wears proudly, to the possible extinction of the human race.

Courageously sentimental in an age of irony, Victor Levin’s refreshingly articulate 5 to 7 delivers romance of the sort thought lost since the days of Audrey Hepburn, for those who appreciate such finery.

[A] slick, smarter-than-usual conspiracy yarn.

Boychoir may be soft, but it’s not run-of-the-mill TV-movie treacle, offering just enough edge to lend credibility.

It’s kind of a tradition among cooking-themed movies (from “Like Water for Chocolate” to “Chocolat”) for a bit of magical embellishment to sneak into the kitchen. Abe is stubbornly earthbound by contrast, but that’s OK. It’s more responsible this way, and young audiences will devour it with no less enthusiasm.

This is a modest film, well-acted but rather clumsily assembled, that almost certainly would have benefited from an in-person SXSW, where it’s possible to bask in the shared laughter of an enthusiastic first screening.

A robust romantic drama, rich in history and full of emotion, Brooklyn fills a niche in which the studios once specialized, using a well-read and respected novel as the grounds for a tenderly observed tearjerker.

Hanks’ doc mostly shows how great it must have been to know John Candy when he was alive, although Conan O’Brien does a nice job of contextualizing how he inspired others. Amid all that adulation, Hanks might have scrapped the title “I Like Me” and called the movie “Everybody Likes Candy” instead.

In a world where old-timers accuse the youth of being oversensitive snowflakes, Frozen II shows what it means to have one’s heart in the right place.

What Erica Rivinoja, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s script lacks in lingering nutritional value, it compensates for with amusing food puns. If nothing else, the pic’s zany tone and manic pace are good for a quick-hit sugar high.

Eighth Grade shines as, like, a totally spot-on, you know, portrait of Millennial angst and stuff. That may be how Kayla (and all her peers) talk...but Burnham shows a sociolinguist’s ear for the cadence and flow of 21st-century girl-speak, and Fisher...delivers his dialogue so naturally, you’d swear she’s making it up as she goes along.

As played by Sandra Bullock, Our Brand Is Crisis political spin doctor Jane Bodine is easily one of the best female roles of the last 10 years.

It’s naughty, campy and wildly uneven.

The Canadian helmer has created the cinematic equivalent of an M.C. Escher drawing, which bends and breaks and folds back on itself in impossible ways. Brain-shattering as it all is, we can hardly tear our eyes away.

Gu’s to be commended for recognizing that the hollow part of a donut might provide such a rich window into another culture. There’s much to learn about the immigrant experience from her research, even if the movie leaves us craving two things: donuts, obviously, but also a more well-rounded sense of all the incredible personalities she too-politely engages with along the way.

With such an enticing cast, it’s tougher than one might think trying to divine which of these eccentrics might be responsible for the crime, and “Crooked House” keeps you guessing, right up to its shocking conclusion.

Strangely, Louder Than Bombs manages to be glaringly obvious and admirably subtle in the same breath.

The absurdity would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrifying. Your mileage may vary.

Godzilla vs. Kong is most satisfying when it’s at its most simple, which happens either in quiet bonding scenes between Jia and Kong, or else in those deafening moments when the monsters are duking it out.

Tipping embraces the self-indulgent label of “elevated horror,” crafting a tense, trippy, ultra-stylized movie that’s so surreal at times, it might feel like you’re watching an extension of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle.”

A quarter-century ago, such an assured, emotionally satisfying French offering as this could have done significant business in the States, the way films like “Jean de Florette” once did.

Jusu meticulously calibrates the interactions between her characters, revealing a nuanced understanding of race and class relations.

For readers of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, extravagant French adaptation “The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady” packs its share of surprises: killing off important characters, sparing others and reimagining allegiances that have stood for nearly two centuries.

It takes a special kind of imagination to recognize the entertainment potential trapped in such a mundane scenario, and an incredibly resourceful filmmaker to spin it into as much fun as Daly does here.

We Met in Virtual Reality is a warmhearted, often humorous look at the sociology of such spaces. It can’t really be described as vérité — more fly-on-the-virtual-wall filmmaking.

It’s great to see Smith in comedic mode again, and smart of the team to base the Genie’s personality on the star’s brand, rather than imitating what Williams did with the role. Even in cases where Smith is quoting directly from the original, his persona comes through loud and clear as this blue-hued, CG-enhanced master of ceremonies.

[Gracey's] angle is frustratingly familiar, though the execution is downright astonishing — we’re talking Wachowski-level ingenuity as Gracey fashions sophisticated montages where you can’t even spot the cuts.

Van Grinsven is conscious of consequences, but more interested in exploring the newfound freedoms that technology offers queer self-discovery.

These criminals may be out of their league, but Gavras orchestrates it all with a surfeit of style and an irreverent sense of humor that spares no one, no matter their background.

Even at the movie’s masks-on SXSW Film Festival premiere, The Lost City was a breath of fresh air: the kind of breezy two-hour getaway that doesn’t take itself too seriously, delivering screwball banter between Bullock and Tatum — a guilty-pleasure treasure hunt that pretends to be more progressive than it really is by alternating between who’s saving whom.

For audiences cliché-savvy enough to appreciate the movie’s self-skewering sense of humor, this all plays out pretty much exactly as they’d expect, but that doesn’t mean Spirited can’t still surprise.

If “Two Lovers” was a lively New Wave lark, exploding with color and energy, then A Faithful Man is its sober, cerebral opposite, gray and stylistically restrained, an efficient short story of a film that feels more like an intellectual exercise than an emotional experience.

Taken as a whole, All These Sleepless Nights presents a restless, some-might-say-dynamic portrait of characters who seem to be going absolutely nowhere.

With his snowy white hair and moustache to match, Hanks conveys a man confident in his abilities, yet humble in his actions, which could also be said of Eastwood as a director.

Gyllenhaal grounds Davis’ wildly unraveling psyche, finding both the humor and heart in a man who admits to having spent the past 10 to 12 years incapable of feeling.

It’s not an easy sit, nor a terribly entertaining one, but in the hands of writer-director Marti Noxon, it delivers painful insights in a relatively fresh way.

The movie is much funnier than the vast majority of indie comedies, serving as a great audition piece for a career of sitcom directing.

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.

If anyone out there thinks the National Enquirer is merely harmless entertainment, “Scandalous” give them no shortage of alarming reasons to reconsider.

Because Lieberstein is an inherently likable actor, we identify with his plight, even if it takes a while to realize that he’s essentially brought this situation upon himself.

The affectionate reunion of alter-kocker rockers plays like a greatest hits of past laughs, building to a thrilling live performance of songs fans know by heart, featuring guest appearances from several bona fide music gods.

With a title easily confused for Christopher Nolan’s 2012 Batman sequel...Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is at once a glib play on words and a sobering rumination on the mindset of a suburban America simultaneously obsessed with and plagued by gun violence.

A fun, fast-paced and frequently amusing divertissement.

Here, the laughs come not from the silly voices but a blend of snappy editing and clever character bits, including a recurring joke about an inappropriately named sidekick who calls himself White Shadow (Michael Patrick Bell).

Inspired at least in part by stunts Frizzell pulled when she was her characters’ age, this raucous parade of humiliation and embarrassment packs all the appeal of an outrageous anecdote hilariously retold by someone who can scarcely believe they ever did something so stupid.

Brazilian director Afonso Poyart (“Two Rabbits”) proves quite effective at building and sustaining a grim sense of suspense throughout.

Gibson knows how to play to the camera, and Grunberg is savvy enough to maximize what the star gives, spinning a slick package around the crazy scenario.

You may enter a film like this one believing you had some grasp of how gravity works, or the human threshold for pain, or what constitutes a good movie, but the experience is so exhilaratingly mind-altering, so radically untethered from terra firma, you basically have to readjust your basic understanding of everything you know to be true and just go with the flow.

For those who love the thrill of high-adrenaline adventure docs, National Geographic’s Free Solo will be a hard experience to top.

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.

Affectionately captures the tail end of a culture in which specialized dice, character sheets and hand-painted figurines were the gateway to elaborate flights of imagination.

Bercot studiously avoids the sort of catharsis-oriented pop psychology the genre so often peddles.

Frankly, it’s anybody guess why characters do what they do in April’s Daughter, which may be both realistic and admirably nonjudgmental on Franco’s part, but it makes for a confusing and at times clinical moviegoing experience, as the director applies his detached Michael Haneke-like style to material that begs a certain amount of clarification.

In the end, Jenson’s most radical twist on fairy-tale tradition is the belief that a pat “happily ever after” isn’t nearly as helpful as providing an example of how to cope with unhappiness.

In addition to establishing a tangible sense of place, McMullin impresses by putting together such a strong ensemble and eliciting from them the performances he does. He’s a very visual director, jump-starting scenes with an unexpected extreme-closeup of some kind before allowing audiences to get their bearings — a strategy that subconsciously reinforces the notion that we can never get too comfortable in this otherwise familiar genre.

The movie’s razor-sharp visuals leave scratch marks on the back of your eyeballs, liable to burst back into your consciousness in subsequent dreams.

It’s a pleasure to see such a fine actress navigate the nuances of her role.

While its sense of humor takes some gettin’ used to, the sheer spaciness of Liza Johnson’s stranger-than-fiction political satire ultimately proves its greatest asset.

Although García and Moore were born in the same year (under the same sign!), Lelio is more mature now than he was when he made the original film, and he brings that experience to the project in small but crucial ways.

While uneven in places, The Great Gilly Hopkins works because it boasts an actress tough enough for the title role.

The Way I See It mostly feels like a love letter to Obama.

Each of these episodes is well acted, follows a reasonably conventional three-act structure and emphasizes interesting female characters in a compelling situation — which is more than can be said for many portmanteau films, where one segment is markedly more satisfying than the others. But it also suggests an ongoing resistance on Hamaguchi’s part to engage with the feature form itself.

Although Collet-Serra brings creative solutions to each of the action sequences, the project is actually most effective when audiences are honed in on the core characters.

There’s precious little in The Protégé that audiences haven’t seen before in some form or another, but that’s hardly a liability, since the script recombines those familiar elements in such entertaining ways, counting on Q, Jackson and Keaton to make these stock characters come alive.

Fellowes gives us an affectionate group hug, which is effectively what these encore visits amount to.

Bumblebee shows that there’s room for a bit more nuance within the formula, but if you break it down, this relatively enjoyable film is made entirely from recycled parts.

In its own playful way, this tonally astounding, genre-confounding movie offers a variation on the famous chicken-and-egg debate, being a twisted inquiry into the characters’ origins and mankind’s own search for meaning.

Both a natural extension of Fox’s career to date and a complete about-face, The Tale marks her first narrative feature, but only because traditional documentary wouldn’t do justice to this messy, meandering investigation into her traumatic first sexual experience, for the incidents it depicts are true, “at least as far I know.”

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.

An engaging for-kids ghost story whose fantasy elements are thoughtfully grounded by real-world concerns.

This isn’t an easy role, but Lively aces it.

That uncommon and all-too-welcome gift — like some kind of fragile wildflower, emerging tentatively through cracks in the concrete: a film about kindness.

Scored to a beautiful, introspection-oriented saxophone score, Mr. Six surprises by attempting to delve behind Feng’s sometime-inscrutable facade, rather than pushing its leading man toward action.

The movie hardly ever turns its gaze out the windows, but the scenery never gets old, since Bhat has a head for creative close-quarters combat.

If you’re picturing shades of Kubrick’s “The Killing,” but with better clothes, fewer bullets and a self-effacing English fellow quietly trying to defuse the situation, you wouldn’t be far off.

The Accountant is nothing if not a puzzle — not so much a jigsaw as a three-dimensional brain teaser that gets deeper and stranger with each new revelation.

Breaking it down, The Heat has been engineered to deliver the laughs, and the result certainly does, despite coming alarmingly near to botching the procedural elements along the way.

Yes, Despicable Me 3 is unwieldy, but it mostly works, as co-directors Pierre Coffin (who also voices the Minions) and Kyle Balda never lose sight of the film’s emotional center, packing the rest with as much humor as they can manage.

The implication is that Berry’s character, Karla Dyson, isn’t like other parents, and yet, what makes Kidnap so compelling is that she behaves exactly the way you think you might under the same circumstances.

Few and far between are the movies...that actually implicate modern viewers in the evil, which is precisely what makes The Captain such a remarkable film. Not a great one, mind you — the movie starts out with a bang but swiftly falls into a kind of prolonged and distressingly outlandish tedium, and lodges there for the better part of its rather taxing running time — but a brave and uncompromising indictment of human nature, Teutonic or otherwise.

In the end, while the movie’s wit is its most satisfying selling point, “Spider-Verse” proves too clever for its own good. But in this universe, where audiences are suffering from the very real phenomenon of superhero overload, ambition and originality are to be encouraged, especially it broadens the mythology to include women, people of color, and yes, even that hammiest of scene-stealers, Peter Porker.

On the scale that ranges from implausibly entertaining to entertainingly implausible, Skyscraper comfortably falls toward the compulsively over-the-top end, generating thrills by straining credibility at every turn, relying on Johnson’s invaluable ability to engage the audience while defying physics, common sense, and the sheer limits of human stamina.

It’s a big step backward from the likes of “Anora” in terms of respecting sex workers, but at least it scores as many laughs.

Falls squarely in B movie territory but, by virtue of its two lead performers, winds up being far more enjoyable than it has any right to be.

Like any good con-artist documentary, My Old School keeps its audience guessing, delighted to be deceived — although there’s a degree to which relying on animation cheats us of the question on everybody’s mind: How could so many have fallen for Brandon’s ruse?

Innuksuk approaches everything with such a generous, supportive spirit, it seems churlish to focus on shortcomings in a film with so much personality. ... "Slash/Back" seems bound to find a cult following, but it will mean the most to Inuit audiences, for whom standing up to invaders is more than just another genre-movie cliché.

The Hunt turns out to be a good deal smarter — and no more extreme — than most studio horror films, while its political angle at least encourages debate, suggesting that there’s more to this hot potato than mere provocation.

It can be hard to believe that both the sequel and the instant-classic 2018 original were produced by Michael Bay, a filmmaker who has pushed the moviegoing experience to ear-splitting extremes, since Krasinski so effectively embraces the opposite strategy: Less is more, suggestion can be scarier than showing everything, and few things are more unnerving than silence.

In the end, it’s inspiring to see a director of Coppola’s stature back at work, and better this than some impersonal job for hire.

A twisty, action-packed political thriller — one that keeps you guessing even as it spirals into ever-crazier realms.

Spa Night serves as an homage to the sacrifices first-generation immigrants made in order that their children could achieve their full potential in the States, expanding the concept of “pride” far beyond its protagonist’s gay identity.

Is this supposed to be some kind of sitcom? A thriller? A provocative #MeToo statement on sexual dynamics in the workplace? Yes, all of the above, it turns out.

An odyssey audiences won’t soon forget.

Bros is confident enough being about queer characters that it doesn’t have to make them all likable.

Though Respect can feel a little soft in the drama department, it delivers the added pleasure of hearing Hudson re-create Franklin’s key songs, from the early jazz standards she covered for Columbia to her reinvention of the Otis Redding single that lends the film its name.

Celebration doesn’t feel entirely fair, but it’s a priceless addition to our understanding of how Yves Saint Laurent — the man, the myth, la marque — operated: a flawed film whose mere existence makes it essential viewing.

All of this makes for compelling dramatic conflict, and it’s satisfying to watch an impostor shake up the status quo. But there’s also a soap opera-like dimension to Corpus Christi that threatens the more thoughtful aspects of the script.

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.

As directed by Taylor Sheridan, Those Who Wish Me Dead offers a much bigger sandbox for the gifted actor-turned-action maven, whose scripts for “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water” have launched him to the front of a genre dominated by CG robots, superheroes and other IP once associated with Saturday morning cartoons. Such movies are plenty popular, but this one marks a welcome departure — one intended for grown-ups seeking more “realistic” diversion — without shortchanging audiences when it comes to either spectacle or sound.

The result is overlong and erratic, but also frequently surprising for a contemporary riff on the classic greed-doesn’t-pay parable “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

Chronic may be a demanding movie to watch, but it’s also one with enormous potential for audiences to personalize, expanding in the hours and days that follow.

The action sequences are well choreographed and intuitive enough to follow, but romance doesn’t work quite the way we might expect, which proves to be yet another of the film’s distinguishing features.

Set almost entirely in a corrupt cop’s Moscow apartment, Why Don’t You Just Die! is a neatly conceived dark-comedy chamber piece — à la the Wachowski siblings’ clockwork-perfect queer-noir “Bound” or Sidney Lumet’s airtight but otherwise diabolical “Deathtrap” — in which a simple setup spirals into unimaginably twisted mayhem.

The movie’s hella derivative, but still quite entertaining, with an appealing cast and memorable characters.

Writer-director Colin McIvor adapts the true-ish story of how a handful of citizens came to the rescue of a baby elephant into an unlikely family film, one that will delight the kids (who see themselves portrayed as heroes) while leaving parents with a lot of explaining to do.

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.

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

Whether one considers said work to be worthy of a feature-length movie is almost entirely beside the point, since Stephenson and Sharpe have unearthed so much else that’s engaging about Wain’s story.

Lionel’s mannerisms could have gotten obnoxious in a hurry, but Norton calibrates the performance so that the character remains unpredictable without becoming unbearable.

It’s this improv-ready ensemble’s wit and Galifianakis’ own gift for physical humor that account for most of the laugh-out-loud moments, heightened by silly flourishes so eccentric...they could only be found in a Jared Hess movie.

Stylistically, this feels like a young man’s movie. It’s engrossing from the get-go, the palpable tension methodically echoed by Robbie Robertson’s steady-heartbeat score. But it keeps going and going until everyone we care about is dead, dying or behind bars, with nearly an hour still in store.

Cinematically speaking, this high-concept, low-budget sci-fi mind-bender falls into the same category as Shane Carruth’s shoestring marvel “Primer,” relying on creative ingenuity rather than elaborate effects to keep geek auds ensnared by its multi-layered mystery.

Sparkling like a rhinestone in the rough, Ponyboi stands out amid a lineup of cartoon gangsters, tough-guy dealers and gum-smacking prostitutes — lowlifes recycled from a hundred late-night cable movies with superficially similar plots.

Incidentally, the big payoff of this film isn’t what becomes of Lara Jean and Peter’s fates, but getting to see the supporting cast blossom around her.

Whereas Minervini’s previous pics seemed to radiate a warm empathy toward his subjects — perhaps merely a manifestation of his open-minded curiosity toward the extreme cultural difference he found peering into the less explored corners of Southern culture — The Other Side feels far more shocking in its portrayal.

So many movies seek to distract, whereas this one creates a space — like Eva, left behind in a near-empty city — to reflect and reevaluate.

The most endearing quality of Nicholas Stoller and Matthew Robinson’s script — not counting the fact they didn’t try to whitewash their Latina heroine — is the way it permits Dora to remain indefatigably upbeat no matter what the situation, whether navigating treacherous Incan temples or facing an auditorium of jeering teenage peers.

When a movie taps a nerve with the public, it doesn’t need to be a masterpiece to become a phenomenon, which might explain why Matsoukas puts greater attention on the look, feel and musical signature of the project than she does the plot, which feels thin and familiar.

While many of their feelings are universally relatable, it can be hard work trying to follow what these two characters are thinking at any given moment, in part because of Carpignano’s grainy, handheld style.

With Titane, audiences occasionally just have to give themselves over to the movie’s demented momentum, taking whatever perverse pleasure they can from Ducournau’s willingness to push the boundaries

The friends we see on-screen are equally close in real life, and the outing depicted in Wine Country was inspired by similar trips they’ve made together. That explains the second-nature chemistry that makes them so much fun to watch, even when the shenanigans...leave one longing for the outrageousness of an all-female studio comedy like “Bridesmaids” or “Girls Trip.”

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.

Watching Bale and Damon channel those two speed freaks in all of their surly, testosterone-spitting glory is a reminder of how much fun it was to watch Bale play a similar character opposite Mark Wahlberg in “The Fighter.”

It is not a documentary so much as a fan-friendly tribute, designed to celebrate Williams’ legacy without getting too personal or technical in the process.

Big-picture cliches aside, this truth-blurring but thoroughly convincing portrait makes its case via the details.