Todd Gilchrist

Thanks to Liu as both performer and producer, Rosemead not only earns its place among those films’ superlative ranks, but achieves a surprisingly powerful balance between intimate cultural authenticity and urgent, universal relevance.

Thrilling and sumptuous, James Cameron’s latest chapter in this ongoing saga is probably the best one to date, with painstaking world-building, sweeping action and stunning imagery. It also feels too often like a remake of its predecessor, with characters, conflicts and plot developments that even the most devoted fans may find repetitive.

Ultimately, there are few filmmakers whose work I admire more for its sophistication and undeniable humanity than that of Brooks, but this film isn’t just bad — it’s unbearable.

What lingers after watching the film in its most complete form, however, is the fact that it’s so thoughtfully written, brilliantly constructed and (especially) beautifully acted. One imagines that breaking the film in two may have scuttled its chances of earning Uma Thurman a Best Actress nomination, but 20-plus years on, she deserves that recognition more than ever, conveying the character’s strength, resilience and determination, but also her incredible vulnerability.

Though its far-reaching ambitions and many stylistic juxtapositions might make it seem like the work of two (or more!) filmmakers, Marty Supreme isn’t just a masterpiece, but feels vividly like a cohesive — and singular — vision.

The movie possesses reams of intriguing ideas, but instead reheats much of Legacy's plot and then busies itself with semi-incomprehensible set pieces.

Ultimately, The Long Walk is a terrific, entertaining film with some interesting things to say about the state of the world. They're not all fully articulated, but I’ll always prefer a film that advances cautiously in the right direction rather than one that hits the ground running without knowing where it’s going.

Even a joyfully queer reimagining of the genre’s classically hard-boiled protagonists fails to inject enough new energy to maintain consistent intrigue, prompting viewers to seek a resolution to the central mystery well before its comparatively short 89-minute running time elapses.

Despite Guy Ritchie’s herculean efforts to combine a whole lot of immediately familiar elements into a brisk, occasionally imaginative “adventure movie” potpourri, screenwriter James Vanderbilt’s reinvention of footnotes from his real-life family history never quite achieves the consistent balance between real-world seriousness and buoyant escapism demanded of a globe-trotting treasure hunt like this.

Hurry Up Tomorrow bears all the signs of pop star hubris masquerading as artistic candor, despite game performances by Jenna Ortega and Barry Keogan to prop up the budding thespian.

Clever, unpredictable and fun, Final Destination Bloodlines offers the series a transfusion of creativity that virtually guarantees that it will live to kill again.

Bullet Train Explosion feels like a blockbuster made for adults — or let’s say, not for a lowest-common-denominator audience — where the priority is throwing challenges and complications at smart characters instead of sparking conflict with cheap narrative shortcuts and bad, even dumb choices.

Locked is not without limited charms, but it ultimately fails to bridge the gap between putting audiences in the car with Eddie, and actually wanting to make them go for the ride.

A crude, unimaginative, suspenseless adventure whose tension mostly derives from deciding which of its three main characters will prove the most unlikable by the time it ends.

"Never Too Much” shows just how hard Luther Vandross worked to make his natural and irresistible talent seem effortless. That it took longer than he’d wanted to achieve certain results, not because of his shortcomings but the prevailing cultural forces of the time, is just one of many takeaways.

Transformers One approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity (as well as violent finality, in a few cases) that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date.

Ultimately muscular and effective if predictable, Saulnier’s latest reaffirms his bona fides as a deliverer of sturdy, tightly-controlled thrills.

Atlas is predictable, overlong and bland, the kind of experience it’s hard to get excited about when the star player seems to be perfunctorily running the bases.

Paul Crowder’s Imax documentary feels both more honest than most in its intentions and more effective in highlighting that organization’s excellence.

Set in a world where every door creaks and there isn’t a single well-lit location, Tarot is little more than a clearinghouse of horror clichés.

The Greatest Love Story Never Told, the third part of her album-cycle media offensive, delivers precisely the revelatory perspective that its counterparts lack.

Far more than a showcase of his talent and productivity, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus lets Sakamoto deliver an elegy, and in the process, an autobiography of his creative journey, as captured through the precision and poetry of director Neo Sora’s camera.

To be fair, it feels like a person who’s generated her level of fame and success and attention will never truly be “knowable” to an ordinary person. But This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is the closest that they’ll likely come, and it’s a testament to Lopez’s talent that she’s able to take pop-star wisdom and make it seem like a window into her soul.

Examining the looming shadow of the singer’s 1970s heyday as she embarks upon a new career as a gospel artist, Schechter chronicles the adversity — professional, romantic, even physical — that transformed Gaynor’s chart-topping dance tune into an anthem for female empowerment, the gay community and most of all Gaynor herself.

Written, produced and directed by Jade Halley Bartlett, the film is both impressively erudite and unrelentingly self-aware, a combination it bravely attempts but doesn’t quite fully balance.

Playful turns from a shrewdly selected supporting cast elevate the case from just another murder mystery to suitably arch gothic horror.

Strays balances human expectations and lost-in-translation animal experiences for a smart, suitably raunchy adventure that should resonate even if you don’t have a furry friend waiting at home for you afterward.

Savage’s confidence behind the camera sustains the film’s intensity even when the connective tissue between plot and theme, logic and tone is tenuous at best. But even working alongside sturdy collaborators like Messina and young Blair, it’s Thatcher who sells the improbable reality of an old-as-time spirit preying upon the frightened and grieving.