Peter Debruge

I’ll admit that Karam’s camera strays down one too many empty hallways for my taste, but I love the patience with which he lets things unfold, the respect he shows this family, and the way these characters don’t feel like characters at all, but real people — fellow humans.

Ruthlessly entertaining ... Lane is a master archive digger, unearthing priceless artifacts, some damning, others endearing.

Drowning in style but shallow in substance.

McDonagh’s characters are more complex than the initial caricatures make them out to be — perhaps, in the end, even pitiful — leaving audiences to decide how they feel about their ultimate fates.

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.

The affectionate cine-memoir is rendered all the more effective on account of young discovery Jude Hill and its portrayal of a close-knit family (Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench and stay-put grandparents) crowded under one roof.

Gyllenhaal’s impressive, but The Guilty almost certainly would have been more effective if he’d dialed down the intensity a bit.

Dever is the best thing about this adaptation, which feels slightly less creepy in the lied-about-knowing-your-brother-to-worm-my-way-into-your-heart department, if only because Dever’s so good at balancing Zoe’s strength and vulnerability that the situation doesn’t read as a nearly 30-year-old creep manipulating a minor.

Although the director cut his teeth working in commercials and on more comedic material, he has no trouble orchestrating the breath-catching suspense of Dogs, depicting violent confrontations with a certain chilling detachment, then reveling in the gruesome result.

Yes, Sundown is a mystery, but it’s also a Rorschach test. No two people will see the film the same way.

Don’t miss this strange, special little film.

Through it all, Gyllenhaal assumes an unfussy, practically invisible non-style that conveys the essential (like that missing doll, visible in the background of a key scene) while privileging the performances.

With its swooping cameras and beyond-dazzling production design, Wright’s style is more alive than ever, giving new meaning to the word “panache.”

The beauty of Zach Baylin’s script is that while the arc is familiar, hardly a single detail could be described as clichéd, seeing as how the specifics are virtually unprecedented.

C’mon C’mon proves plenty poignant, but it’s less entertaining than it might have been.

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.

Here we have seven escape routes, each one reconnecting us to a world inevitably transformed by the pandemic — a world where art lives on.

Like virtually every stand-alone MCU movie to come before, “Shang-Chi” does a fine job of presenting its hero as a relatable everyman during the first half before spiraling off into bombastic, brain-numbing supernatural mayhem for the final act.

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.

There’s plenty of fan service (including a whole new list for Elle and Lee to exhaust), but also a late-arriving sense of identity that gives this junk-food sequel just enough nutritional value to help its young audiences reconsider how to determine their own post-high school priorities.

I confess my incapacity for his particular strain of slow cinema for two reasons: First, to let audiences know that it’s OK to be frustrated by the experience — you’re not alone. And second, so you might appreciate what it means that Days worked on me. Instead of leaning in, as I’m wont to do with challenging movies, I settled back into my chair and let the rhythm wash over me, lull me into its relaxing embrace.

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.

Free Guy is a lot of fun, despite the fact that Levy and the screenwriters seem to be changing the rules as they go.

It’s intriguing to see Filomarino experiment with the formula and exciting to imagine where his career might go from here.

Vivo is strategically contrived to hit audiences’ pleasure spots, blending a grown-up-friendly story of a Latin-music couple whose careers took them in separate directions with all the hyper-caffeinated comedy action the kiddos expect from the medium. Plus, the songs build on one another, hooking in your head and snowballing as the movie develops.

Dumont has studied the media enough to get in a few genuinely effective jabs, though it’s hard to engage with the half of France that concerns itself with her private life since she’s such a cold and inscrutable character.

It’s not one of those filmmaking-as-therapy grudge sessions, but a wrenchingly fair-minded look at complicated family dynamics.

A silky, soulful black-and-white tapestry of single millennials seeking connection.