Stephanie Zacharek

Lowery (A Ghost Story, The Old Man & the Gun), in addition to fleshing out the story, puts his stamp all over it so confidently that the results could be annoying, if they weren’t so enchanting.

Val is a portrait of an actor who poured his all into his work. Only now can he see what it amounts to, and find some vindication in the truth that it was worth defending all along.

Even when the story falters, or becomes astonishingly silly, there’s still plenty to keep you gazing at the surface.

The possibilities are rich. But Old is just dumb.

Roadrunner is lively, comprehensive, moving and troubling, as well as suitably joyous, capturing everything about why viewers loved Bourdain, while also reminding us that even those very close to him couldn’t always fully understand him.

This is primo Nicolas Cage dialogue, inquisitive and soul-deep, the kind of stuff he was born to say. To hear and watch him in this movie is like greeting an old friend. Pig seems to have come out of nowhere, but we’re lucky to have it.

Even if you don’t care much about whales, or don’t think you do, Joshua Zeman’s enthusiastic documentary The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52 might make you care about people who care about whales.

If Black Widow follows the standard Marvel template in some basic ways, it deviates enough to make its own mark. It’s blissfully free of that “Avengers working together” baloney, and all the smirky-cute bickering that comes with it.

No Sudden Move riffs on stereotypes of the 1950s, even as it suggests we haven’t come as far as we might think.

It’s a moderately effective horror movie with a much better, creepier and more nuanced one nestled invisibly alongside, the unborn twin ghost of a movie that might have been.

Even after The Ice Road overcomplicates itself, there’s enough gas here to keep the thing going, including some nicely sustained bridge-crossing suspense and several fine demonstrations of stunt dangling.

Just as the dessert topping you scoop out of a tub may contain only trace amounts of actual cream, the ninth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise, F9: The Fast Saga, isn’t so much a movie as an entertainment product. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long you know what you’re getting, and there are even some pluses.

Zola’s comic absurdities are entwined with its horrors in a way that almost shouldn’t work. But Bravo—who co-wrote the script with actor and playwright Jeremy O. Harris—shows a lightness of touch in navigating the story’s quicksilver tone shifts, and the movie’s two leads bring their best.

Summer of 85 delights in romantic excess, ending up as an almost literal evocation of one of the songs on its era-specific soundtrack.

Sometimes a dumb action comedy can work perfectly well as a one-off, particularly if its writers and director can pull off the illusion that they didn’t have to work hard to earn our laughs. But The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is all work and no payday. Even in the service of airheaded entertainment, no one should feel compelled to take a bullet for it. It’s OK to let a franchise die.

Though Skater Girl may give the illusion of telling one seemingly simple story, Makijany—who cowrote the script with her sister, Vinati Makijany—is really weaving many stories into one.

This is an imperfect film that still captures an elusive and incandescent vibe, as alluring as a strand of lights strung up for an impromptu concrete picnic.

Anthony—whose previous documentary, Rat Film, traced the history of Baltimore via the city’s relationship to its rodent residents—has fashioned a thoughtful, if sometimes frustrating, meditation on the acts of “seeing” and “interpreting,” particularly as they apply to law enforcement and the criminal-justice system.

Petzold loves his romantic bargains, his meditations on longing, obsession and deceit, and he unfurls all of that seductive cloth of gold in Undine.

For all the ways in which Plan B is sometimes thunderously obvious, there’s still a lot going on beneath the surface.

A Quiet Place Part II is effective, all right—Krasinski holds all the keys to turning us into nervous wrecks by the end. But just because you hold the keys doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to use them all. And a horror movie that gives us space to breathe is also more likely to hit us where we live.

Snyder’s new zombie entree The Army of the Dead is too scattershot, perhaps too derivative and definitely too long. But it’s definitely a movie, as well as a perfectly acceptable turn-your-brain-off entertainment.

The picture is enjoyable not so much for its twisty plot—which, even if you haven’t already read the book, is essentially pretty guessable—as for its artful dedication to its own highly theatrical, drapes-drawn somberness.

Watching Street Gang is a largely joyous experience, but there’s also something heartbreaking about it.

Adapted from a novel by Walter Dean Myers, Monster is the story of not just one kid but many kids. It’s harrowing in its believability alone. If only it were a better movie.

Limbo, tender and searching, shows what can happen to people when they’re between points A and B, a nowheresville that can change the shape of a life forever. It’s also about the meaning of musicianship, of how songs and sound can define who we are and where we come from.

And yet, in these stressful times, a little mindless action isn’t wholly unwelcome, and Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse—directed by Stefano Sollima, who not long ago gave us Sicario: Day of the Soldado—is moderately un-terrible, a diversion that hits every beat predictably, with a mighty grunt.

It’s meditative, mournful and gently funny, and celebratory, too, but in a muted way. If you don’t know what kind of movie you’re in the mood for, this may be the one. It’s a tonic for listless times.