Robert Daniels

An empty muddle of social commentary with little intensity.

When combined, the diametric halves form a charming diptych whose thematic and emotional profundity make for Miyake’s most accomplished work yet.

Most of the best portions of “Ricky” are hard-earned enough to look past moments of inconsistent tone and approach. Because when this character study hits, it can often feel divine.

Antoine Fuqua might’ve had some cameras and microphones on hand to produce moving images and sound for this estate-approved King of Pop biopic. But make no mistake about it: “Michael” isn’t a movie. It’s a filmed playlist in search of a story.

Told in 71 minutes, the breezy melodrama moves through reality and happenstance with a winking glee that recalls the gentle works of Bill Forsyth—albeit with less thematic heft.

Alice Winocour’s captivating fashion drama Couture is a quiet, observational picture about creative women finding solace in one another.

Leaning toward unrelenting shock, “Newborn” as a whole becomes something worse in the process: dishonest.

[Borgli's] mealy-mouthed timidity in addressing genuinely controversial and provocative subjects, especially those that require a radical kind of empathy, not only renders his supposedly edgy provocations dull. It also makes one wonder if he’s at all interested in women as people.

Visually evocative and uniquely conceived, Cristian Carretero and Lorraine Jones’s “Esta Isla” (“This Island”) is a lovers-on-the-run narrative unafraid to pause for emotional and thematic effect.

BenDavid Grabinski’s time-twisty, sci-fi gangster comedy Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is brimming with hair-brained schemes and hilarious gags; the kind of unruly one night adventure that isn’t about logic, it’s about stoking delirium.

The film’s simple premise is supported by smart plotting, nimble editing and evocative sound, and lands with frightening force. An engagingly frigid performance by Scott furthers the film’s keen ability to conjure overwhelming anxiety from its many punchy jump scares, combining to make Hokum an exceptionally chilling horror film.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come delivers short-term thrills in an emotionally hollow gore fest.

While “The Gates” itself isn’t a total smash, it’s a more than sturdy final effort from a beloved actor.

Though its many narrative twists and amusing turns might wear down less adventurous viewers, this film will be embraced by those who enjoyed the director’s dystopian critique Sorry to Bother You and his equally scathing series I’m a Virgo.

The harder the film tries, the more one feels pulled along rather than effortlessly transported.

Such blunt messaging reduces the onscreen carnage, which relentlessly occurs via this mute machine’s searing lasers, barrage of bombs and kaiju breath, to little more than the human toll required for this particular military man to feel again. Worse yet, the film concludes with hawkish intensity, fashioning itself into a tasteless recruitment video.

The film’s sci-fi tone holds best, not when the McManus brothers try to explain the technological components, but when these characters’ find solace in their shared trauma.

There is a good movie lurking within writer/director Cinqué Lee’s survivalist coming-of-age thriller “Last Ride.” It’s just suspended between two half-told stories.

This is an enchanting film. At every moment, one feels spellbound by its earnest aims and its heartwarming excursions.

It’s very easy to dismiss a film about a hapless loser. But it’s nearly as difficult to ignore a performance like the one Rios gives.

A high-strung, faith-based hood drama, Moses the Black has admirable intentions but lacks precision.

If there’s one misstep to “The Bone Temple,” it’s the ending, which features a cameo that alters the tenor of the picture’s emotional hostility.

All That’s Left of You, a multi-generational Palestinian epic, is the kind of accomplished, immaculately rendered film that’s indicative of a director who’s learned much and is ready to seize more.

Ric Roman Waugh’s movie is a notable step up from the first film. The Garritys’ traversal across the treacherous North Atlantic Ocean and dashes past marauding bandits in Europe make for real human stakes.

Inspired but overwrought, “Scarlet,” an anime adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, begins with stunning style before falling off a major cliff.

It’s a profoundly Catholic work, whose slippery sense of sin and living instils great confusion and consternation to those occupying the narrative’s solemn monastery setting.

In Endless Cookie, Seth and Pete Scriver’s kooky, grotesquely animated documentary, a rich oral history poetically blended with oddball comedy invites surprising political revelations.

By fashioning a kinetic work that pulls together references and sources from Black literature, music, politics, and meme culture, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” stands as a seismic intellectual awakening.