Ross Bonaime

Jimpa is a heartfelt tribute that unfortunately doesn't resonate as much as it should.

Snow White deserved an update of sorts, and this is an admirable new take that certainly is one of the better live-action remakes from Disney. It might not be the fairest Snow White of all, but it's an admirable effort nonetheless.

As a platform for Sweeney to show her broad talents as an actress, Christy is undoubtedly successful, as she finds the heart and sadness within Christy Martin. But Michôd's film doesn't make that life story quite as riveting as it should be, which is what Martin deserves.

Einbinder, Reynolds, Gluck, and Theroux are appealing as a team, but Strouse doesn’t give them any weight on their own, which leaves this story feeling fairly one-dimensional. Seekers of Infinite Love will, unfortunately, leave you searching for more.

They Will Kill You is an undeniably fun and berserk action film that relies on the style to make up for the lack of discernible substance. For the most part, They Will Kill You pulls this off, and it’s easy to get caught up in just how much this cranks itself to 11.

Even if The Musical isn’t always a hit, it’s worth it when the film does find its high notes.

As Ibsen’s play has shown, even a century after its writing, this is still a story with life in it, and DaCosta’s take modernizes it in deft ways. However, the questionable way DaCosta's film goes about it doesn’t do the story justice, making this a party that fizzles out long before the last guest has left.

As those familiar with Chomet's work would expect, A Magnificent Life is an exquisitely animated film to watch, even if the narrative is a bit rote. But it also makes one think that maybe the original concept for this as a documentary of Pagnol’s life could’ve been more effective and illuminating of what made him such a great artist.

It's a deliberately-paced drama with some decent performances and a gorgeously dark aesthetic, but lacks the time or effort to give these stories what they need.

Smith has always been best when he wears his heart on his sleeve as he does with The 4:30 Movie, a film whose earnestness tries to iron out some of the usual problems with Smith’s films, but with mixed results.

Quite frankly, it never hurts for a film to preach the dangers of Nazis and how they can be anywhere and everywhere, but it is a bit of a shame Nuremberg isn’t finding a more compelling, enticing way to tell this inherently fascinating true story.

An intriguing formal experiment from Steven Soderbergh, focused on two solid performances by Sir Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band is a straightforward yet enjoyable trip with one of the best live bands ever to exist. Yet considering the story that this tour has told so far, it's a bit of a shame that Zimny's documentary doesn't explore the entirety of what this road diary had to offer.

How to Make a Killing is a fun, albeit flawed thriller drama with a mildly dark sense of humor.

The Greatest Night in Pop is a worthy story in its own right, but a bit more of the director's touch could've done justice to this gigantic achievement of pop music history.

Silver's vision doesn't always work, sometimes feeling like a mishmash of ideas and tones that don't always go well together. But when the film focuses on this central relationship, Between the Temples finds a lovely sweet spot that makes it all sing.

A Private Life is worth exploring simply for the performance by Foster, which keeps this story moving the best she can, despite the screenplay’s constant starts and stops. If anything, the real mystery of A Private Life is why we don’t get to see Foster on our screens more these days.

Dicks: The Musical is a decidedly big swing and a genuinely weird take on the musical that has its moments, but also feels a bit stretched too thin given its concept.

Metal Lords ends just when it feels like it’s finding its footing, with its characters taking too much time to address their flaws, leaving the music and the bonds that have been formed via the music, on the back burner for too long.

It’s truly impressive that Fowler has found a way to integrate the wild world and characters of the Sonic the Hedgehog games into the real world in a way that actually works, but it’s a shame that it comes at the expense of the story of friendship that made the first Sonic the Hedgehog film so charming.

By the end of Hate to Love: Nickelback, it’ll be hard to hate these four guys, and in some ways, that’s sort of the point—putting a human face on a band that is often seen as little more than a meme.

Plemons, Collins, and Segel elevate this basic story beyond more than just a generic noir homage, but it’ll likely leave the audience like Nobody: willing to accept less when they should be asking for more.

In its own way, Persuasion is trying to persuade its audience that Austen was brilliant in her modernity, when Austen already handled that quite well without Cracknell, Bass, and Winslow’s help.

Susie Searches has its heart in the right place, and this could’ve been the beginning of an interesting mystery series of sorts, full of intriguing characters, twists and turns that are hard to see coming—even for Susie. But the mishandling of tone and unusual shifts in logic and character motivations makes this film more of a mystery in itself.

Empire of Light ultimately becomes a confusing mixture of ideas that never congeal into one solid narrative. Yet Mendes’ film does have the tiniest slivers of magic poking through the seams, proving his thesis about the beauty of film, even when he’s too distracted to focus on that idea himself.

The Survivor is too frequently going through the motions of tried-and-true biopic stories that we’ve seen countless times before, or making choices that seem daring, but ultimately hold back the power of Harry’s story.

Especially compared to the 2015 adaptation, A Man Called Otto is a clunky update that often feels like it's full of cartoonish characters, with poor music choices, and cloying sentimentality. But when Forster and Magee pull away from these eccentricities, the story of Otto and Marisol is often a thing of beauty, and wonderful friendship that is lovely to watch grow.

Yet even though it never quite reaches its full potential, Day Shift is enjoyable for the aspects it does want to focus on, even though it’s hard not to wish it would investigate the larger world further.