Todd Gilchrist

On a level of sheer cinematic flourish, Miranda’s adaptation is a triumph; he really harnesses Larson’s songs for the screen and gives them tremendous life, whether or not you’d seen them before on stage.

Queen & Slim is convincingly and unapologetically multidimensional in its portrayal of its characters; as our perception of them shifts from one scene to the next, we realize they’re not ciphers for communities, cultures, arguments or belief systems, but individuals wrestling with who they are and how they present themselves to the world.

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

Ghost Protocol is a fun but mostly empty adventure story that operates with the rote predictability of a middling ‘90s James Bond movie rather than a benchmark-setting actioner or even seasonal “event movie.”

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.

As a romantic comedy, 7 Days hardly circumvents a cinematic lexicon of time-honored tropes, but its skill in dismantling stereotypes, sexist beliefs, and even the process of falling in love offers a fresh and charming rejoinder to the cynicism of both its own genre and the emerging repetition of pandemic-set films.

Jolie can’t decide whether she wants to be a poet or a field reporter, and the combination results in an important story that’s frequently, breathtakingly beautiful but ultimately more admirable than affecting.

Although the film's ultimate payoff feels a little too big, and too insufficiently explained, to justify all of the obfuscation that led up to it, the script keeps the audience engaged and guessing right up to the end.

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.

With Pattinson glowering beneath his cowl, Reeves creates a Batman whose psychology is at least as interesting as his crime-fighting activities, for the first time in a long time.

Even if it was long overdue, or maybe precisely because it was, “Black Widow” still felt like the remnant of a timeline before heroes had reached total market saturation. “Shang-Chi,” by comparison, feels like the new beginning that its predecessor was meant to be, as much as anything, because it truly ventures in a new direction — building distantly on the world that has now become common moviegoer knowledge, but adding stylistic flourishes and an unhurried pace from Cretton that suggests it’s content to be its own story instead of a cog in a larger machine.

It will probably get the job done for casual jazz fans — after all, it features clips of some of the most incredible, enchanting and inspiring recordings ever made. Those already familiar with the genre may be disappointed to discover that it mostly sticks with the notes they know and very seldom ventures beyond.

Director and co-writer J.D. Dillard (“Sleight”) delivers a smart, streamlined thriller that skillfully integrates a careful whisper of social commentary into a story that also unfolds masterfully as a straightforward genre workout.

Klayman, an increasingly skilled observer as a documentarian, occasionally succumbs to her own curiosity, or maybe incredulity, to ask him a question about these comments, or positions, but mostly, her quiet, unobtrusive gaze exposes his flaws without requiring interjection.

Paddleton is quietly funny and full of compassion — the kind of movie that, much like its characters, feels likely to get overlooked or ignored but proves surprisingly rewarding once you make the effort to look past its surface.

Zak Hilditch’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novella of the same name feels overlong or maybe underfed, fleshing out the character’s mental deterioration in handsome but unsurprising detail.

Funny and honest in equal measures, like a good stand-up routine, Standing Up, Falling Down uses a light touch to teach us there’s always more to learn.

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.

Even if Echo in the Canyon feels slightly anemic at 85 minutes or so, there are worse ways to revisit this epochal artistic moment than via Andrew Slater’s affectionate, intimate documentary.

Compliance is as much a meta-textual gauntlet as it is a movie; its subject matter not only deserves, but demands to be discussed and argued about, rather than being simply accepted at face value.

Ultimately, Ross hasn’t just successfully mounted an adaptation of a hot literary property, or even launched a film series that earns the right to be a franchise. He’s produced an engaging, thoughtful, populist piece of entertainment that transcends gender, genre or source material.

Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, both terrific in their roles, play the couple around whom the film’s meditation on modern sexual relationships revolves, while Lyne proves not only that he can film hot scenes unlike almost anyone in the business, but inject them with a psychological sophistication that complicates their (and our) postcoital bliss.

If there’s anything that Active Measures does most effectively, it’s to demonstrate the depths and the breadth of the corruption, the criminality, the immorality operating in contemporary politics.

Volpe’s specificity with each characterization, including many of the men, humanizes what would otherwise be an issue-driven movie, and lends it an immediacy and resonance that fuels audience sympathies, not to mention understanding.

Ultimately this intimate, affectionate biography underscores an essential truth about the fashion industry, Talley’s work, and the life that he built out of what might seem like the unlikeliest circumstances: “Fashion is fleeting. Style remains.”

Is this massively ambitious, unfairly burdened sequel as good as Black Panther? Definitely not—and it probably could never have been. But in a mythology where death is more often used as a narrative device than a true measure of loss, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever magnifies the truth that the title character’s world will endure, even if he doesn’t—and there are at least as many lessons to extract from his absence.

Lost Girls is a story that works much better if you do a Google search before watching it, not after, since it offers a lot of convenient human truths, but not enough hard facts.

An improbable escalation of events and more than a few niggling questions about who’s doing what and how renders this screenlife thriller in dimensions that unfortunately resonate better on an intimate, handheld scale than the big screen.