Richard Whittaker

It's the final act that takes that final twist of the knife, as the thriller becomes a grand guignol horror, yet still based within the world and the rules established in that grounded opening.

While Greengrass' Texas is a place where naivety can get you killed, he still finds a place for trust and healing, expressed through the growing interdependence of Kidd and the kid. Our trauma, News of the World tells us, is not something we can box away. We cannot simply turn the page and pretend it never happened. But we can decide which stories we continue to tell.

Jenkins had an opportunity to build on the flawed but rousing headlining debut of DC's greatest woman warrior. Instead, she delivered the modern DC Extended Universe's Superman III. It's a lumpen mass of half-ideas and glaring fan service, topped by a horrendous montage ending that is clearly designed to inspire hope, courage, and kindness, but will more likely make everyone wonder if that was why they waited two and a half hours.

The aliens look better than ever, Morgan delivers just the right kind of dry-witted action heroics, and Skylines takes the trip to the stars that the franchise has been promising.

It's all peak Anderson, which sadly also means his inability to put a story together.

What really keeps Wander Darkly together is yet another convoluted, conflicted, and honest performance from Miller.

Mortimer, coming off his critically-acclaimed and award-winning debut Daniel Isn't Real, never quite strikes a tone or a pace that suits his tale of a (potentially) fractured mind.

The Mystery of the Pink Flamingo is not about flamingos, but about how people imbue an abstraction with value, which becomes an exploration of kitsch. But then it's not really about kitsch, no matter how many pink knick-knacks are on display. Meneo's quest becomes the purpose, in a ludicrous, adorable, playful story of finding yourself.

While understated and deeply personal, Mayor cannot avoid the current conflagration in the region.

Insert Coin doesn’t tell gamers anything they didn’t already know, and non-gamers won’t care – so unless you're a hardcore fan, maybe just save your quarters.

Somehow All My Life seems oddly lacking in stakes, which is so weird considering the story (the main symptoms of onscreen Chau’s deadly but photogenic disease seem to be a little tiredness and sweatiness).

In its quiet, apolitical observation, 76 Days points to a complete failure – not only of the Trump administration to get a handle on this public health disaster, but of the American press.

It's a finely-crafted puzzle box that speaks as much to the heart and the head, with a simple but poignant message that we are only ourselves if we are complete.

Uncle Frank revolves around Uncle Frank, and Bettany's career-great performance as a man who knows where the gaps are in his life, and how much his whole relationship with his family is about holding his breath.

It's challenging not to see shades of Robin Williams, who was not just Belushi's equal in talent and predilection for pharmaceuticals but also his friend. Williams admitted more than once that it was Belushi's death that made him get sober, the ultimate wake-up call.

Most importantly, Marder gives the audience one of the most illuminating glimpses into deaf culture to date. Working with actors who are deaf is only part of it: The rest is in details and understanding.

"Write hard. Aim low," Mank is told. Instead, Fincher filmed low, aimed for the brain, and hit a deadly shot.

There's an extraordinary immediacy to Luxor, born of director Durra's unromantic but loving view of the environment.

At some levels, there is nothing new here: Everyone knows about the casting clashes, the abandoned score, and even Friedkin's take on it all. But it's the immediacy that comes from Alexandre O. Philippe's decision to leave everything to Friedkin that makes its so important.

That it has so little new to say, and replaces spirited fantasy with an overbearing glumness, is just disappointing.

Howard, mercifully, dumps most of Vance's political cant in favor of a maudlin, slow, rehab drama, carried on the backs of a cavalcade of wafer-thin characters.

Freaky hilariously modernizes the high school bloodbath for laughs.

As far as revisionist takes on the Santa story go, Fatman is a long way from the whimsical charm of last year's Oscar-nominated Klaus. Yet for all its bizarre Spaghetti Western nihilism, sporadically going full Franco Nero Django bloodfest, Fatman has an oddly warm heart under its brutal exterior.

So many strands, and when the full tapestry is unfurled, its captivating, beautiful, thrilling, and entrancing patterns are revealed. Wolfwalkers stands proud as a new classic.

The Dark and the Wicked pulls no punches, either in its sense of perpetual unease, its occasional moments of understated yet truly stomach-churning gore, or in its emotional heft.

Gu keeps her camera on how the community he helped build thrived and flourished without him, even as it acknowledged his role. As Asian Americans face increasing racism, its closing message about how immigrant communities – like the Cambodians who came over in 1975 with guns at their backs – help define America has only become more timely.

Gloriously gonzo Appalachian creeper Spell makes one big change – having both the urban family in peril and the horrifying hicks with malicious intent be Black – and that's a refreshing change to a genre that's felt moribund since about "Wrong Turn 2."

Horror is built on moms wanting to protect their kids, and Come Play falls down because Sarah just never really seems to connect with Oliver.

There's still too much punching down, but especially too much peddling in stereotypes and xenophobic clichés.

This is not some whacked-out drug trip movie, or scolding afterschool anti-drug special. This is anti-psychedelia, grounded in the strangeness of true life.

It proves that value of the journalist as record keeper of horrors.

One of the most extraordinary debuts of the year.

Sometimes charmingly fantastical, Over the Moon definitely doesn't have the fairytale elegance of Keane's earlier work.

It all comes back to Sorkin's core idea, implicitly and expertly expressed: that the tactic of violence and provocation, then making the victims seem like thugs, is still performed in Portland and St. Louis and New York, just as it was in Chicago. It's also a reminder that there was no Chicago 7 until the establishment brought them together.

Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response?

First-time feature director Kapsalis understands that the best way to capture a performance like this is to just leave the camera on her as Holly leans in to her worst instincts.

Save Yourselves! isn't completely toothless, although its softball targets are only lightly lambasted for their silliness. It's a comedy of manners of sorts, in which puffball personalities are outwitted by barely-sentient spheres of fur. The ending may waft away, but at least it stays true to the story of two people with no tools to make an impact.

Even with all the conflations and simplifications, and a middle act that verges on an extended montage of guerrilla warfare and undercover intrigue, A Call to Spy is undeniably a heartfelt take on a fascinating and heartbreaking true tale of heroism.

If what you want is a fancier episode of The Great British Baking Show, then you'll "ooh" and "ah" at all the right moments as Ottolenghi assembles his kitchen of world-class patisserie chefs and jelly experts.

It's another tour de force performance from Jenkins, in the same week as his headturning performance as the pater familias of a clan of grifters in "Kajillionaire."

Dead, the latest from the Land of the Long White Cloud, is closer in tone and subject to last year's phenomenal low-key Irish exorcism comedy "Extra Ordinary" – just without its charm or gentle silliness.

With a story built around the need to bring everyone, all the oddballs and weirdos and lost friends and new friends together with peace, understanding, and a lack of judgement, maybe now is the time we really, truly need Bill & Ted.

Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.

Max Reload isn't for everyone, but it's not trying to be. It's a pizza-and-soda Saturday night gamer film for serious gamers - not the kind that just grind through bug releases, but can name a developer other than Hideo Kojima.

Brutally honest, startlingly insightful, and poignant when it could have been bizarre, Dead Dicks earns its tragic, purposefully misleading title and reframes it with dire meaning.

If von Boehm adds anything to what's known of Newton's life, it's to explore his iconography, about which he was very honest. His dismissiveness of photography as insightful, his enigmatic storytelling, and the great contradiction of his work, of how a young Jewish boy who was almost murdered during Kristallnacht absorbed so much of the imagery of the Reich's most artistic propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

Sporadically, the deliberately organic, semi-improvised tone doesn't quite gel, and there are momentary longueurs that could derail the story. But Myrick's decision to keep the narrative simple, and instead concentrate on the characters, means there's always a thick strand of sympathy and tragedy at play.

A tedious mix of Reno 9-1-1 awkward humor and the queasy provocation in Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job!, it felt like Dupieux was trying too hard, and Deerskin feels like the injection of the leather obsession just never quite meshes with the rest of the story.

Fascinating as the The Infiltrators is, it remains a beginner’s primer to the for-profit immigration system with an oddly jaunty narrative over the top. Like the NIYA activists, its heart may be bigger than its head sometimes, but that’s not the world’s biggest sin.

Yuasa entrances the eye, but he also know how to make your heart soar with this deft, delicate, and highly entertaining story of loss, of coming to terms with grief, of moving on without ever forgetting.

What could have been a worthy tribute becomes a by-the-numbers melodrama.

The joy and grace of Weathering With You is in how Hina and Hodaka don't reject a world that rejects them.

The only term is relentless, and for a lot of viewers Uncut Gems’ third act has been stressful, even traumatic. My response was more one of sheer awe – of the Safdies’ brilliant balancing act, of Sandler’s swirling dance of a performance, and of Howard’s sprint through a minefield.

Tokyo Ghoul: S is at its best when it embraces its high weirdness (Shu setting up a cannibalistic threesome is hilarious) but it's never sure what it wants to be.

Rapid Response is a celebration of behind-the-scenes heroes, and their dedication to medicine and science as a way to save lives. Its microfocus, anecdotal structure, and reliance on archive footage and talking heads, undoubtedly makes this one for the true devotees of motorsports, but they'll not want to miss it.

Singer has great inspirations, and the multilayered approach to edits and sound design within the hypnosis is ingenious and excellently executed. But it doesn't add up to much.

When Nothing Stays the Same is best is when it's about what it takes to survive, rather than indulging in handwringing: the flexibility, the raw business savvy melded with artistic vision that makes for great booking, and innovations like early evening residencies.

There are flashes of what made the franchise work. Turner, after stumbling through the part in the rocky terrain of X-Men: Apocalypse, finally gets to grapple with the emotional complexities of a woman whose gifts are the most constant curse.

Modigliani's fly-on-the-wall documentary verges toward the hagiographic, but that's not the most damning criticism, because he makes the case of O'Rourke's quiet charisma.

What's best about Markus and McFeely's script is that they understand the characters.

As the energy-beam projecting, space-flying defender of the underdog, Brie Larson has captured the pugnacious, charming, steely Captain Marvel in the ways she deserves.

FP2 is all stupid surface, held together by Trost’s surly charm. It may be filled with dumb “beat off” puns, but it’s just smart enough to be all heart.

It does not reinvent the wheel (or, more aptly, sled runner) but it's a tale that survives the retelling.

The underlying narrative theme of sons who become greater – and better – men than their fathers is underdeveloped. Meanwhile, the animation feels oddly dated, as the decision to give visual continuity to three and a half decades of storytelling re-enforces this as fan service.

Unfortunately, what should have naturalistic depth seems oddly superficial, and an attempt to dispose of traditional structure becomes episodic. As with many failed experiments, there are still, at least, some interesting takeaways.

Funny, vibrant, insightful, tragic, achingly timely, and yet with an underlying message about empathy that is timeless, Blindspotting may be the summer's most essential movie.

Adapted by Katsuhiro Otomo from his sprawling, post-apocalyptic cyberpunk tale of government conspiracies, street gangs, and psychic powers that can save or destroy the world, it's still an all-time classic, and has never looked better.

It's that rare horror-comedy that is both comedic and horrifying.

As a narrative work, it undeniably drags: but then, that's not really its intent. This is a spectacle to be absorbed and analyzed.

What's most fascinating is that there's no self-indulgence on Medak's behalf. It's a filmmaker coming to terms with a deep bruise in his life, and the realization that time may heal all wounds, but will still leave a scar.