Sheila O'Malley

As Danica, the head witch, draped in a bright-red gown with matching lipstick, Rebecca Romjin gives a very perverse and funny performance, all icy intimidation and glamorous power.

Some of the symbolism has the feeling of being laid on top of the narrative. It feels imposed, especially when it goes from subtext to text. You can see it coming from a mile away. But Ms. Purple works because of Chu's performance.

It's a disappointment when so much goes unexplored, when the film bows to the demands of a cliched plot driving the story forward.

Jawline works gently, slowly, presenting its subject and sub-culture with not just affection but sympathy, a sympathy very close to tenderness.

Blinded by the Light, at its very best, captures the experience of being a fan, the pure exhilaration of it, and the sense of your vision opening out to vistas beyond your horizon.

Affleck's acting style has always been understated to the point of barely existing. It's why he was riveting in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” in particular. Affleck drifts, he floats through dialogue, he doesn't have words at his easy disposal. This works well for him here.

Cliches aside, there's something at work in The Peanut Butter Falcon, something eccentric and exuberant. Nilson and Schwartz's devotion to the details of Zac's world highlights Gottsagen's funny and intelligent performance, giving the film an authenticity it wouldn't otherwise have.

The film is filled with brutality from start to finish, over its grueling run-time ("The Nightingale" feels much longer than it is). The Nightingale has already caused controversies at festivals, where people walked out, outraged at the multiple violent rape scenes.

The Mountain, with its long stretches of quiet, bleak subject matter, and Alverson's staunch refusal to let us in, or fill in the blanks, creates a genuinely unnerving mood.

A mostly satisfying entry in the art heist genre.

Marianne and Leonard turns out to be a rather run-of-the-mill documentary about Cohen's journey, taking us down well-documented paths.

If nothing else, Danny Boyle's Yesterday, which imagines a world where the Beatles never happened, made me think about what would it be like to hear "Yesterday" for the first time, what life would be like if the Beatles didn't exist. The film, scripted by Richard Curtis, explores some of the implications of its premise, but, frustratingly, skips over others.

The Quiet One is Wyman's journey, and because of that the documentary is intimate and personal, but by the same token it is also highly selective in what it shows and acknowledges.

The setup (script by Glen Lakin) is full of wacko screwball potential, some of which is mined, some of which misses the boat.

Late Night comes directly from Kaling's own experiences. This is an earnest and funny comedy, with very sharp teeth.

Best of all, they haven't sacrificed emotional impact. Mouthpiece is a deeply moving piece of work.

With a script by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder and Shepard, The Perfection has a gory grindhouse sleaze overlaid with the tony gleam of the upper-crust, a very sick combo.

The film plods at points, trudging along, and there are a few misguided narrative "devices" tacked on, but still, Trial by Fire bristles with anger.

As an origin story, Tolkien, has its moments of clarity and emotion. Some of it is oversimplified, even misguided. But the film cares about its subject, and cares about finding ways to portray "things that are good and days that are good to spend."

The film does a great job of contextualizing the phenom of Dr. Ruth.

Refusing to explain Ted Bundy is the strongest possible choice Berlinger could have made because it destabilizes reality. The film itself gaslights us, and this is where Berlinger and Zac Efron — an inspired choice—are powerful co-creators.

The rhythm is slow. You really get the sense that when you walk through the doors of Carmine Street Guitars, you step outside of time.

Threaded through with interesting thoughts about matriarchy, climate change and generational trauma, Fast Color tries to do a little too much, and there are maybe one too many things shoehorned in, but Hart wisely keeps the focus intimate, staying close to the characters.

This is a great example of Olnek's style. It's respectful, but it's also alive. It's serious, but it's also tongue-in-cheek. Olnek's approach gives Emily room to breathe. At last.

The film is appalling from start to finish.

The heist movie has a long pedigree, and while Finding Steve McQueen is no "Le Cercle Rouge" or "Rififi" (or even "Reservoir Dogs"), Johnson keeps the tone light, vivacious, almost slapstick at times. This is a smart choice.

Does Girl work as a film? No. It does not.

In some moments, Gloria Bell is almost an exact recreation of the original, in shot construction and edit choices, even in dialogue (the script was co-written by Alice Johnson Boher and Lelio), but there's enough freshness in the approach that makes "Gloria" a unique experience, funny and a little bit messy. The mess feels real.

Watching all of those clips drove home how dance cinematography like this is mostly — and sadly — a lost art.

One of the intense pleasures of Ruben Brandt, Collector (astonishingly, it is Krstić’s first feature) is how it suggests that theft (i.e. "collecting") is the only way to manage obsession.

Darren Lynn Bousman's St. Agatha goes so full-bore into the scary nun trope it's practically nunsploitation, and the mood he establishes — the look and feel of the claustrophobic "convent in the film — launches St. Agatha into a weirdo plane of phantasmagorical psychological and physical torment.

The script is very sparse. It feels like an outline, a general idea rather than an actual filled-out story. Because of this, there's a slightly belabored quality to the film. We see where it's going. We see how it's going to go.

A film like The Invisibles is part of bearing "precise witness." We clearly need reminders, and constant ones, of the end result of "otherizing" an entire group of people.

Emotions never before experienced come surging to the surface. How Martinessi pulls this off — in what is his first feature — is nothing less than extraordinary.

Touch Me Not is definitely abstract and intellectualized, although I didn't find it exploitative. But so much of the film left me cold, even bored.

An astonishing directorial debut.

This is a pretty rote story, and many of the plot points beggar belief, but Kusama's flourishes help somewhat to elevate the material into something more meditative, a character study of a woman in ruins.

A gentle low-key comedy.

The film is an onslaught, sometimes silly, sometimes profound, but always riveting and emotional, and dazzlingly sure of itself.

At a daunting 188 minutes long, Never Look Away takes its time, doesn't force its themes. Like one of those novels that follows a family through multiple generations, Never Look Away follows Kurt from Dresden, to Düsseldorf, to Berlin.

There are some interesting things going on, and some insight into New York's economic hierarchy, but the film veers off into a hard-to-believe crime heist, and, ultimately, none of it really hangs together.

The film is best when it doesn't take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, for the most part it takes itself very seriously.

Fidell trusts the dynamic between her two main actors, and allows them a lot of leeway. The conversations have a fresh and improvisational quality. Best of all, she leaves space for the unexpected and the random.

An engaging and accessible look at one of the most important figures in cinema.

Bohemian Rhapsody is bad in the way a lot of biopics are bad: it's superficial, it avoids complexity, and the narrative has a connect-the-dots quality. This kind of badness, while annoying, is relatively benign. However, the attitude towards Mercury's sexual expression is the opposite of benign.

It's a great film, engrossing, suspenseful, and strange.

The strength of Mid90s lies in its small observations about a very tight sub-culture, and what that sub-culture provided its most devoted adherents.

It's an emotionally exhausting film — but a little bit of perspective might have resulted in an even more politically urgent document. As it is, though, The Sentence is the beginning of a conversation that needs to continue.

This is Everett's first film as a director, and there are times when it shows. But what he brings to the table - as a director, writer, and actor - is his intuitive "take" on Oscar Wilde and the performance alone makes this riveting and revelatory viewing.

All About Nina has moments of stark tragedy alongside the vivid comedy, plus a third-act revelation of what has made Nina so angry.

Nappily Ever After is as much a polemic as it is anything else. In a confrontation with Clint, Violet says she is sick of how much brainspace is taken up with her hair. "It's like having a second full-time job," she exclaims, exhausted.

The frustration with Lizzie is that a lot of it works, but the style - elegant, hushed, and period-appropriate - acts as a damper on all the fraught possibilities. Lizzie is at war with its own impulses. You can sense there's a sexy overheated melodrama in there, yearning to burst free of its corset stays.

It's suspenseful, but also hilarious.

City of Joy is devastating and enraging, but the strength of the women profiled, their will to survive, to lay claim to their own bodies, is inspiring, although that's not quite the right word. It would have been better if they had not been brutalized at all.

Without an establishing tone or style — the first scene sits there on the screen like a void — it can come off as trying to jump on some already-long-gone bandwagon.

It works best when it's most impressionistic. Although the big events in life have the most impact (you wonder what on earth is going to happen to these three boys), it's the small things — the early morning light, the tall grass, the black flowing river, Ma's smudged mascara, Paps' dazzling grin — that we really remember.

Writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez is the latest to tackle the rich implications of Bluebeard in his film Elizabeth Harvest, bringing a modern horror-sci-fi sensibility to the story. The horror is already implicit. Gutierrez makes it explicit.

Cocote, filmed entirely in the Dominican Republic, is filled with such images, seemingly unconnected to one another at times and yet when placed in collage they create a powerful and visceral experience.

The film is a disappointingly empty experience.

The extraordinarily assured feature film debut by writer-director and standup comedian Bo Burnham, starts out with one of these videos and it is so touchingly real, so embarrassingly true to life, you might swear it was improvised, or found footage. But it's not. This is Elsie Fisher, a 13-year-old actress herself, amazingly in touch with what it's like to be in the stage of life she's actually in.

The film is beautiful in spots, and features a believably tormented performance by Vincent Cassel as Gauguin, but unfortunately it has only a hazy idea of what it wants to be about.

Leave No Trace is, at times, heartbreaking, but it's also filled with glimpses of almost casual human kindness, throwaway moments of good will and inclusion piercing through what could be the bleakest of tales.

The King has a restless, kaleidoscopic, take-a-snapshot-and-move-on energy. In many ways, it's a documentary about everything, it's a documentary about "then" and it's a documentary about "right now."

En el Séptimo Dia makes its points powerfully, even more so since the set-up is so simple. Even better, its third act is as thrilling as anything in a traditional sports movie. McKay's control of tone and rhythm is in high gear, creating a work both thought-provoking and hugely entertaining.

Hearts Beat Loud could use more urgency in the telling, more sense of what is at stake for the characters.

It's not just a story of an incredible feat of survival. It's also a love story, presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

The film is one long interrogation, not only from Jennifer the character's standpoint, but from a directorial standpoint.

The movie is fairly faithful to the book, and yet so much is lost in the transfer.

One of the strengths of the film, also written by Pearce, is how much it is willing to withhold, without descending into "Gotcha!" manipulation.

Cohen and West's approach is so adulatory that the documentary becomes a surface-level work of hagiography.

A good old-fashioned melodrama, albeit with a quieter touch.

At a brisk and efficient 78-minutes, Mercury 13 is engaging, yet sadness and anger seeps in as it progresses.

Aardvark doesn't know how to do what it wants to do. It's not that the tone is uneven or uncertain, it's that the film doesn't have a tone at all. Because a specific tone isn't established, earnest moments come off as insincere, deep moments seem like they're supposed to be a joke. It's not clear if all of this is by design or an accident from a first-time director.

Based on Jonathan Ames' novella of the same name, the film is rooted so firmly in Joe's point of view he sometimes is absent from the screen entirely. We're inside his head.

As a commentary on Reynolds' career trajectory, The Last Movie Star is hit-or-miss. What is undeniable, though, is the space Rifkin has created where Reynolds can do what Reynolds does best, and if you're a fan (as I am) there's much here to treasure.

A lot of grappling happens. The community grapples. The characters grapple. People grapple alone, people grapple together. Grappling is more interesting to watch than certainty, any day of the week.

When the film focuses on the wine-making process, in the progression from vine to bottle, it's a fascinating and detailed look at a very specific subculture.

Director Greg Berlanti, who has helmed a string of hit television shows as producer and writer, uses the familiar teenage romance genre to tell an LGBTQ story, and in so doing makes these tropes feel fresh, fun, entertaining.

The story is simple — too simple, in fact — and some of its more intriguing elements could use further developing, but the presence of Huppert makes Souvenir well worth a look.

The dialogue creates an arch and artificial mood, never sounding like real talk despite the clearly talented actors (Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Michiel Huisman) playing the roles. The film itself seems to be in denial about its own story.

What is most unexpected about Permission is its sense of poignancy and tenderness. In its own way, it's quite heartbreaking.

The problem is there's not enough sex and too much ... everything else.

Suffused with fantastical elements, dreamlike sequences and hallucinatory images, A Fantastic Woman stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress, and her performance roots the film in a kind of intimate verisimilitude.

So poorly done, its tone so lackadaisical and uncommitted, it's not clear half the time what you're even watching. If it's supposed to be a comedy, it's not funny. If it's supposed to be a satire, it doesn't know what it's satirizing. The biggest problem is that the stakes are never high enough to invest in any of it.

Conflict doesn’t have to be some huge melodramatic thing, but the total lack of inner conflict in Mary might be why Mary and the Witch’s Flower — as transportive and entertaining as it is — feels a little slight.

A sweet film with a purity of purpose and intent, elevating it above other films portraying similar struggles.

The film gets increasingly hallucinatory as it progresses, and there's a vivid sense of growing danger.

Alexander Payne's Downsizing starts with an intriguing "What if?...", the launch-pad of all good sci-fi stories, and very quickly devolves into a bland story about a nondescript khaki-wearing guy who learns to care about the less-fortunate.

The Greatest Showman, directed with verve and panache by Michael Gracey, is an unabashed piece of pure entertainment, punctuated by 11 memorable songs composed by Oscar- and Tony-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

The film has a good comedic rhythm, and there's a rambunctious bickering energy in every scene. It's often quite funny. But Permanent feels like a short film stretched to feature length. It never quite rises above the level of its premise.

Only 90 minutes long, the film feels intimate and yet at the same time vast. It has a relaxed pace, but an intensity of focus.

The Shape of Water doesn't cohere into the fairy tale promised by the dreamy opening. It makes its points with a jackhammer, wielding symbols in blaring neon.

Anyone who has ever circulated, even peripherally, in any comedy club scene, will recognize all of it. It's a quick-flash study of both frenzied activity and crushing ennui.

Also similar to "Carrie," it works best when it stays specific, grounded in this one woman's singular experience.

There are conflicts in Princess Cyd, but they're on a low boil. One of the pluses of Cone's approach — if you're open to it — is you are sometimes confronted with your own preconceived notions about people.

A nuanced and sensitive exploration of the many ways rape affects a person's life.

Where Maya Dardel really works is when it sticks to being a character study.

Some interesting things start to happen in Thy Father's Chair as the cleaners make headway, room by room.