Robert Daniels

Smart and affecting ... It’s not flashy. It’s not often revelatory for any super fans, or even anyone who watched "Being the Ricardos" ... "Lucy and Desi," however, is still meaty as a standalone work, and an essential, authentic salute to these trailblazers.

Stolevski aims for a life-affirming treatise on the poetics of human existence but strains to be more than a pretty copy of his well-known influences.

Detailed and deliberate, assertive but rarely obvious, Diallo’s Master is a towering, inventive shot in the arm for Black horror.

Through Brown and especially Hall’s fully committed performances, scenes like this and “bless your heart,” which move in both potent and profound ways, gives the ropiness of Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. enough depth to pray for the arrival of Ebo’s next feature.

Hatching, a smartly constructed fright machine, not only introduces a new and exciting voice to the horror landscape but cracks its way through the brain like a beak through a shell.

Linden offers a fascinating premise, but her visual language doesn’t catch the eye, and the potential excitement to be mined from translating Blaxploitation motifs for modern-day audiences is missing. “Alice” could’ve been so much more, but instead, it comes off like a lost opportunity.

The star-studded cast does good, dependable work. There are visual flairs that linger in the mind: For all its faults, this movie has a striking look to it. And Corbin’s best intentions are genuine. The ending comes with a startling bang. But what remains when the dust settles? By the end of the over-tightened 892, unfortunately, a memorialization to Brown-Easley’s plight, we know little about the actual man.

Both Dickey and Studi shoulder the lesser material through a charming naturalism that papers over the script’s artificiality.

It’s the unbreakable friendship between Kunle and Sean, the ways their time together, good or bad in college, will mark how they see the world, and how the world sees them, forever, that makes Williams’ Emergency an elaborate, chaotically hilarious, intensely terrifying journey worth taking.

It’s a meticulously crafted, albeit not totally original critique of internet culture, bursting with color and melodramatic teen angst.

Who We Are, a revelatory, albeit stiff documentary, anchored by Robinson’s personal anecdotes and footage of his 2018 lecture at New York City’s Town Hall Theater, uncovers startling research while surveying the country’s unimaginable racial crimes.

Though The 355 tries to maneuver with the kinetic verve of a globetrotting adventure, the marks of shooting on generic sets are all over this film.

It’s difficult to believe The Lost Daughter is Gyllenhaal’s feature directorial debut. The rhythms of the narrative, the assured visual language, the precise performances she pulls from each actor moves with the confidence of a veteran filmmaker.

Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections, a fun, albeit messy metatextual sequel that struggles to find its narrative footing, soars whenever Wachowski focuses on sci-fi’s best power couple.

If Pearce weren’t so heavy-handed, if were just self-aware enough to know how to connect character with metaphor, then Encounter, a flawed sci-fi flick with a simple premise, could be a great adventure fit for the stars.

Despite a deep ensemble led by a transformative Bullock, Unforgivable moves at a turgid pace, lacking the urgency and pathos required in a redemption narrative with any hopes that the audience will pull for its damaged protagonist.

Being the Ricardos isn’t a total disaster, but it’s not a grand triumph either.

Sometimes Wolf is slight, relying on mystery and metaphor to build suspense, but Biancheri’s sense of narrative adventure imbues this survivalist picture with more than uneasiness. She gives it tenderness.

After the story of the Tulsa Massacre entered the national consciousness because of Damon Lindelof’s “Watchmen” and Misha Green’s “Lovecraft Country,” Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street this Memorial Day feels like the first time that the voices of the victims have finally been heard.

She Paradise is a love letter not only to the autonomy of a young Black woman but the culture of a proud island nation, too.

Berry’s Bruised is a familiar comeback tale relying on the inner-city motifs of 1990s hood films to deliver a melodramatic, barely coherent prestige vehicle with very little to say about MMA itself.

It flourishes as a modest picture, an acute character study of men and women picking up the pieces of a patriotic ideal that seems to have failed them

Featuring a trio of supposed movie stars who lack the panache or charisma of true marquee headliners, Red Notice is another visually ghastly bid at building a franchise on the back of breathtakingly boring action sequences.

Schweighöfer’s prequel fails to offer the same level of excitement or gore as Snyder’s film. The heists are all snoozing affairs, and ultimately, the film succumbs to the script’s franchise ambitions.

The French Dispatch is probably the worst film of the director’s career. But even his worst effort is worth biting the bullet for.

Saad’s sharp psychological character study doesn’t provide the cathartic ending audiences might crave. The perspective is too cold, too ambiguous to give such easy answers. The film, instead, serves as a showcase for Badhon and a platform to examine the limits of unbendable ethics in a sexist culture.

It’s not the promised spectacle that cements Venom: Let There Be Carnage as touching, wild entertainment. It’s the themes of home, love, and companionship that make Serkis’ sequel another reason to want more “Venom” movies, and quickly.

One Gets Out Alive is a desperate attempt to explore the immigration crisis through a horror lens, à la Remi Weekes’ stunning film His House. But Menghini’s film is an underwritten hodgepodge of hollow scares.