Robert Daniels

The compositions lack clarity, the score of undulating voices is comically clichéd and the visual effects are a dingy, nauseating mess. There are no stakes in a film that not only takes seven royal lives — it snatches several brain cells with them.

Beneath the gore that ensues is a story about understanding.

Those affected by America’s terrible immigration system need a film explaining their difficult plight. Knowton’s “Split at the Root” just isn’t it.

Bruiser is an anxious film filled with unmistakable beauty and obsessed with conceptions of family, love, growth, the past, and the future.

Despite its name and copious sex, Lonesome is surprisingly wholesome.

In a cinematic landscape where the anxiety of surveillance has been sufficiently explored — with movies like “The Conversation,” “Enemy of the State” and “Kimi” — this simplistically dreary offering doesn’t crack a new code.

The rom-com is a rich and vital love story that breaks the mold with its visual acumen and bright spirit. “Rye Lane” doesn’t gesture toward an awkward cool; it’s an effortlessly cool picture that finds glee in the sights and sounds of these characters’ lush surroundings.

A bundle of taut nerves stretched to their vomit-inducing breaking point, Talk to Me, the directorial feature debut from Australian Youtube brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, is the type of horror film whose effectiveness arises from its barebones simplicity.

While Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project doesn’t wholly breach the bubble surrounding Giovanni, by the end, Brewster and Stephenson, through tender immersion and lyrical invention, inspires viewers who have maybe never read Giovanni to seek out her poems, the one that say everything about the spirit of the woman who cannot wholly be captured on camera.

While A Thousand and One is a breathtakingly beautiful portrait of Black womanhood and is thoughtfully political, the character beats heave with a noticeable unevenness. The fascinating parts rarely add up to a satisfying interpersonal whole.

Sometimes Leaf asks us to see too much. But Earth Mama is grounded enough and empathetic enough to be worth the bleak toll it exacts.

When Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt forms its full portrait, pulling together these seemingly disparate images for seismic import, the film is a treasure of community, a bold depiction of Black life, and a sumptuously crafted piece of personal storytelling that rises above tropes and cliches toward a piercing intimacy.

Magazine Dreams, even with some shortcomings, is dense, deftly composed, yet oddly overbearing. It’s uncomfortable and conflicting and may even prove divisive. And it’s unquestionably unforgettable.

Even for fans of this animated universe, New Gods: Yang Jian can’t turn its viewers into believers.

The sole redeeming quality in this 85-minute swill resides in the makeup and practical effects, which rely on viscous blood and gnarly props that make the kills hard to stomach.

The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but I Wanna Dance with Somebody lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

If These Walls Could Sing never feels as comprehensive as it could be about the subject. It operates as an addendum to better Beatles documentaries like "Eight Days a Week," "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," and "The Beatles Anthology," and that lack of an identity prevents McCartney's film from being a well-earned tribute to one of the world's iconic studios.

The stirring pratfalls and well-placed dirty jokes make It’s a Wonderful Binge a keenly subversive Christmas movie.

“Spaz” works best when, within the film’s fascinating unpacking of cinematic history, Leberecht also interrogates the unfair practice of crediting and illuminates the work of Williams. He’s a man whose behind-the-scenes talent made every scene unforgettable, and it deserves a bolder documentary than this one.

Unlike other political documentaries, “Lowndes County” isn’t afraid to end on a bleak, truthful note. One that challenges our modern perception of what is better and what is merely different. It is, quite simply, one of the best documentaries of the year.

Emancipation becomes an exhaustive, vicious, and stylistically overcooked recounting of a man whose very visage led the abolitionist charge. Emancipation is a hollow piece of genre filmmaking that rarely answers, "Why this story and why now?"

A convoluted conclusion, begot by an unconvincing change of heart, obliterates any chance of “Hunt” offering the clarity it needs to be entertaining. Instead, Lee’s directorial effort wanders toward something unmemorable.

Devotion walks the tightropes between discord and harmony, hard lessons and heroic triumphs, and full-throated allyship and useless white guilt with aplomb.

Ultimately, this film attempts to set up the future through Shuri. Wright is a talented actress with the ability to emotionally shoulder a movie when given good material. But she is constantly working against the script here.

Bitch Ass can lack the grounded political context of the genre, merely wearing the clothes of style for an unfulfilling slightness. Even so, even as each member of the quartet is picked off by Bitch Ass, the revenge plot’s appeal lies on more wholesome ground. Amid an absurd twist, partially and intentionally played for laughs, is a story about maternal love and the ways cycles of generational trauma can lead to greater pain.

Rather than outlining a mere monolithic presence, it displays the multifaceted distinctions of Blackness. We witness and appreciate these works with the same reverence that Mitchell espouses. Is That Black Enough for You?!? is indeed more than enough, and makes you hope Mitchell gives us plenty more documentaries to come (and soon).

Though Till can not rewrite all of history’s wrong, you never doubt the genuineness of Chukwu’s intentions. This isn’t a salacious film. This isn’t taking advantage of Emmett Till’s memory for cheap prestige. Rather Till is an urgent and reverent, albeit flawed, pursuit of justice.

The kinetic, captivating tone disintegrates once the narrative remembers that it needs to tell us about these people.

Sidney functions as a loving memorial to the pioneering Black movie star who passed earlier this year, but it never suffices as more than a tepid first draft of his life. And it is never as groundbreaking as Poitier’s best work.

God’s Country is a film that wants to disarm you at every turn, and it often succeeds with a transfixing, acute spirit of retribution against society’s toxic racial and gender power dynamics.

A Jazzman’s Blues is a passion project that climbs close to the edge of becoming self-indulgent fodder. The film is never as deep as it thinks it is. Nor is it terribly original either. But for Perry, this is a massive change. And while you shouldn’t praise a director for merely trying. Perry does more than try with “A Jazzman’s Blues.” He finally shows that he’s not a one-trick pony.

Lathan’s film is only a pale imitation of what came before it. But while “On the Come Up” is a major miss, here’s hoping that Lathan returns with a bigger and better directorial effort next time out.

Diop’s Saint Omer doesn’t condescend to the viewer by slinking toward black-and-white offerings of good and evil, or broad statements about race or gender. This ripped-from-the-headlines narrative accomplishes a feat far more creative, and a bit less forced. It dances on the surface of these participants, and in their subtle ripples, to reveal the humanity in the seemingly inhumane.

The Fabelmans is Spielberg exercising his vast filmmaking knowledge to compose a story where his entire heart is stapled across the screen. It’s beautiful, evocative, enthralling blockbuster filmmaking, perfectly tuned to remind viewers of the power that can reside within a movie.

My Policeman is surface-level queer representation lacking in visual imagination and begging for better performances. It’s the kind of glacially paced movie that sticks around for two hours and tells its viewer nothing new; a series of moving images without any sense of emotion or wonder. “My Policeman” commits the gravest of crimes—it’s soulless.

When The Woman King works, it’s majestic.

The Inspection isn’t a bad movie. Rather it’s a disappointing slog because the arduous journey it sets up should have offered greater returns.

It doesn’t deal in easy gags or low-hanging speeches. It understands both the thrill and the agony of desperately waiting for your dream to ripen on the vine.

Icarus: The Aftermath is a poignant and powerful document about the unpredictable burdens of heroism.

Emergency Declaration, a piercing thriller from the South Korean writer-director Han Jae-rim, manages to deliver excitement and melodrama out of a ludicrous story line.

If you squint you can nearly see the kind of movie Gutto might be aiming for.

Kelsa and Khal are a winning duo with dynamite chemistry. They move around each other with a palpable physical freedom that softly kindles romance. The twinkle in their eyes, flashing above their knowing smiles, is the kind of awkward, teenage swooning made for comfort viewing.

Nope is an idea more than a story. It’s a collection of individually captivating scenes, as opposed to an intriguing whole. It’s a handsome picture, but Peele is far too impressed with its handsomeness to work on populating it with fully felt characters.

While the nimble Jang holds together the robust action sequences — bloody freakouts often captured in slow motion — no one else grounds any of the scenes with any emotion. Consequently, The Killer fails to land a real knockout blow.

While The Forgiven isn’t concerned with making David a better person — rather to get him to fully grasp his guilt — McDonagh’s methods can’t distinguish the film from the long list of stories about white folks learning lessons at the expense of brown people. There may have been higher ideals in mind, but “The Forgiven” fails to gracefully reach them.

Director Patrick Hughes’ film should be avoided at all cost.

While most sequels invite comfort through the familiar, this film’s best moment arrives through Judge grappling with his signature humor in a modern world.

Elvis certainly works as a jukebox, and it does deliver exactly what you’d expect from a Luhrmann movie. But it never gets close to Presley; it never deals with the knotty man inside the jumpsuit; it never grapples with the complications in his legacy. It’s overstuffed, bloated, and succumbs to trite biopic decisions.

This is a story written and directed by a 23-year-old. That reality defines Cha Cha Real Smooth’s truest virtue (blissful naïveté) and its grandest flaw — a blithering unawareness of reality. It’s a film defined by its myopic, narrow bandwidth.

While you will get sturdy popcorn pleasures from Spiderhead, you’ll also leave wondering what more possibilities Hemsworth holds as an actor once he lays his hammer down.

Between the sincerity shared by Sandler and Hernangomez and the high-level craft, Hustle provides enough diversions to hoist our hearts high, even if we wind up craving more specificity from these characters and their travails.

It’s a collective dream coated in a blue lacquer dancing on the edge of something unrecognizable, something wholly transcendent. And it arrives with an exceptional display of bravura.

The heart behind the familiar rom-com choices: the parting of two flames, the last-second pursuit to save a relationship and the happy ending that follows — cannot be doubted. It’s laughter and it’s loving that Ahn’s “Fire Island” gleefully contains.

It reaffirms the ways the bootstrapping narrative can never be wholly possible in a broken capitalist environment. It connects the RobinHood boom with the rise of cryptocurrency. And it makes one say: it’s time to burn it all down.

It’s so refreshing to see an unhurried, patient documentary, one that trusts its audience to follow along rather than relying on cheap gimmicks to manipulate emotions.

This Italian post-apocalyptic film from director Alessandro Celli angles for child soldier depravity without any of the heart.

A stirring debut by both Thyberg and Kappel and a daring picture that makes you love it, not for tawdry reasons but for all of the truthful crimes, perils and delights it covers.

It’s unsettling how every minute of this 94-minute flick delivers a new level of boredom. You have to feel for the actors.

While what Cline did and the fight his victims took to find justice is a truth worth knowing and learning, Jourdan’s crass documentary isn’t the best vehicle for such weighty material.

Sy and Lafitte still carry the day. They give the story a kinetic energy and a loose rhythm, which makes the narrative’s meandering more palatable, even as it fails to break out of the familiar action-flick mold.

Edralin’s Islands is a patient debut that reminds us that while our parents are important, our own happiness cannot be understated or ignored. In this sense, through its final seconds, “Islands” is a life-affirming achievement.

The creators’ quest for deeper meaning feels strained and overreaching, and it overwhelms the adventurous spirit of the film’s first half. If anything, this is at least a great jumping-off point for Evans, who never wavers, even when everything around her does.

Eggers’ brand of psychological shock is bolder here than his prior works and potent in bursts, but barely works on boldness alone.

It’s all pastiche; all surfaces with nothing below. And it leaves one cold.

The soft-spoken Epps is frustratingly miscast. The editing by Geofrey Hildrew and Scott Pellet limps lifelessly along, and the direction lacks the necessary pulse for a story line with more twists than a low-budget soap opera.

Daniel Espinosa’s Morbius, a misbegotten, artistically bankrupt bid by writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless to fuse a gothic horror edge to the MCU, is the nadir of comic book cinema.

The film struggles from scene to scene, incoherently tying elongated and repetitive montages of Guy and Sullivan performing together to hagiographic perspectives explaining how giving Guy is or the brightness of Sullivan’s future.

Populated by a feverish humor and governed by fatalistic doom, Reijin’s Bodies Bodies Bodies moves with a slapdash pace that belies its sturdy aesthetic construction.

Master of Light is a gentle and graceful film defined by the capriciousness of sight.

Linoleum is difficult to pin down; the obfuscations and slippages that run through it seem just as likely to frustrate viewers as they might compel them.

While West isn’t always operating on the same levels as his influences, his signature flair for tension through simmering slow-burn pacing remains unparalleled.

In Gormican’s uproarious The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage delivers a crowd-pleasing triumph that reminds audiences that he’s always been — no matter the part, no matter the reviews — a star who makes the movies infinitely better just by being him.

The Lost City might not be as majestic or breathtaking as its loftier influences, but it is the swooning stuff that great romance novels are made of.

In Everything Everywhere All At Once, a dizzying and aching bit of popcorn entertainment, in fact, Yeoh has never been better.

Matt Reeves’ The Batman should tell audiences that other superhero movies are possible, and yet more, they can be had outside the formulaic tentpoles filling theaters today.