Tomris Laffly

What ultimately waters down Lightyear, an otherwise polished, gorgeous-looking entry into the Pixar oeuvre, is an absence of the excitement and disciplined storytelling spirit that made Toy Story such a pioneering hit.

Appealing on a scene-by-scene basis but generic like its title — it might as well have been called “About a Girl” as a thematic nod to Chris and Paul Weitz’s superb 2002 film — Steiner’s dull comedy lacks the crucial feelings that could have made the suburban aunt-niece tale at its center more memorable.

Crawl has a reptilian bite in its nods to the tradition of underwater monster flicks. It’s certainly not “Jaws” (what is?), or even “The Shallows,” but sloshing around the hazardous deluge of a Southwest Florida town on the brink of devastation by a Category 5 hurricane comes with its own kicks.

There is enough substance here to propel The Short History of the Long Road forward through its minor bends and speed-bumps. Most of all, it is Carpenter’s restrained performance and air of wisdom, permeating the screen with an astutely soulful quality that’s tough to turn away from.

You wonder how high “Sea Fever” could have risen, if only Hardiman had truly embraced the bare bones of the genre, indulging in some well-wrought group dynamics and even a pair of sneaky jump-scares to boot.

In segments brutal and unforgiving, Stephens gives the viewer glimpses of the kind of emotional and physical abuse Maggie is subjected to—beaten by her dad, unsupported by her kindly but helpless mother, told by religious figures in the past that her homosexuality can be “fixed.”

The duo [of Redmayne and Jones] hand-in-hand elevates [The Aeronauts] ... from a flimsy action-adventure to something worth watching on the biggest possible screen, even if it operates on a handful of clichés with little character-based substance to speak of.

Scott’s soapy epic—his second cinematic outing this year after the superior (and also partly campy) “The Last Duel”—isn’t exactly a bore, thanks to a number of its actors (like Leto) unafraid to lean into the film’s kitschy tone as well as some fearless moments—like one sensationally go-for-broke sex scene—that meet them at that amplified level.

It is with a zippy touch and a number of questionable directorial choices—Sorkin is still a much better writer than director—as well as an immersive, pressure-cooker structure that is never less than enthralling, that Sorkin implants his aforesaid signature style into Being the Ricardos.

Despite its structural hiccups, Demange’s film still manages to highlight the humanity of a family and community that fights to survive their no-win circumstances and aspire to pass on something hopeful to their descendants.

This recent The Secret Garden both respects and admires children’s imagination as its young characters discover their own way to grapple with loss, isolation, and loneliness.

It’s mostly a vanilla documentary with no real destination, but one with plenty of cuteness to go around.

This light pick-me-up of a flick is as eager to please as Lawrence is to show off her luminous physical comedy skills, elevated by the star’s fiery comic timing and effortless drollness.

Well-paced and directed with gusto, On the Basis of Sex finds an accessible, near-perfect tone, balancing serious courtroom drama and frequent legal jargon with tastefully Hollywood-ized emotional embellishments.

While listening to the kids, Rainwater makes sure we see the humanity and future potential in each and every one, treating his subjects with the respect they deserve.

It’s a rewarding experience to watch Izzo thread a tricky line with ease here, emitting both a child-like innocence and gradual steeliness that slowly yet convincingly sharpens and matures. If only the film could deserve her level of commitment.

Even when Carmen occasionally hits some narrative roadblocks with the trio of writers not knowing how to fluently weave together dance and plot, Barrera and Mescal consistently burn the screen, and our foolish hearts.

It’s curiously difficult to stay engaged with Mock’s film that merely puts forth a paint-by-numbers assembly of the wealth of material it has at its disposal.

If Wes Anderson were to mesh “Bad News Bears” with a live-action “Monsters University,” the result would look and feel something like Troop Zero, a whimsical, if not generic kiddie adventure more suited for young ones than grown-ups.

Because Apex is only interested in surface-level backstory about the characters, the pursuit between the duo can feel repetitive on occasion. Then again, prioritizing white-knuckle thrills over excessive emotion and explaining is one of the most refreshing qualities of this gorgeously shot picture about survival and fortitude.

As Birds of Paradise reveals its (admittedly predictable) secrets one by one, it does so with style and a merited sense of confidence so assertively that even the biggest skeptics of the genre might pause before dismissing it as just another slight YA entry.

It’s deceptively simple yet deeply philosophical stuff, channeled by first-rate genre filmmaking.

The filmmakers know that one drops into fare like Extraction 2 not for feelings and tears but for the fast-on-its-feet action, one they deliver in heaps.

If you can fend off the recurring bores of Happy Death Day 2U, Landon and Lobdell have some chuckles reserved up their sleeves.

The Good Half reclaims attention every now and then with its occasional humor and grace notes around its side characters. . . But what we eventually get with The Good Half doesn’t even feel half good.

Neither as sweet or profound as the fanciful American indies like Ghost World that clearly inspired it, nor all that insightful in its interpretation of a single mother’s universal struggles, Bagnold Summer is sadly a forgettable film, often too ironically close to being the kind of bore its central character Daniel’s accidental summer in the English suburbs threatens to be.

More troubling is Neeson’s baffling disappearance for long stretches of time, when screenwriter Frank Baldwin gets too enamored with the supporting clan while failing to expand upon them.

Despite the bleak backdrop, Finch manages to stay true to the fuzzy ring of its basic idea, delivering a family-friendly movie that is big-hearted, comfortingly traditional and bolstered by a genuine love of dogs.

Sweet and personal, How It Ends is hardly an entertaining movie, or one that will go down as one of the defining films of these unpredictably strange times. But you can’t really blame the artists for trying to make some therapeutic sense of it all, with a little help from one another.

The Bride! is more a film to feel than to explain.

What’s jarring in Crush is the absence of some requisite dose of youthful mischief, a sense of stakes and perhaps even a lightly scandalous touch, integral to the spirit of many of the genre staples Cohen and co-writers Kirsten King and Casey Rackham attempt to revive on their own terms.

The aftertaste of this madcap escapade is unexpectedly sweet and romantic thanks to its unapologetic commitment to womanly smarts and pleasures.

An optimistic film that feels truthful about aging, even if it doesn’t say anything we haven’t heard before.

Though thinly conceived overall with not much philosophy to back its daunting visuals, Offseason still offers some genuinely spine-tingling images and sounds that will keep midnight audiences on their toes until the end.

It’s hard to feel freely when you are constantly and loudly reminded by every aspect of the movie that you are supposed to feel things.

Following Zhu’s peculiar white rabbit is never less than an intriguing experience, but in the end, it feels like a hollow one.

A film that feels like a sumptuous beach read on a lazy sunny afternoon.

A thoughtfully feminist spin on “Pretty Woman,” this film is not.

So hectically overdone in style that it already feels dated despite its timely leanings, Levinson’s film vaguely shelters a compelling story about today’s unforgiving online mob mentality beneath its convoluted layers.

A deftly made suspense film, but one that falls somewhat short of its aspirations, both as a satire and as a psychological thriller with a critical societal eye.

It’s a welcome entry into a familiar genre that will resonate with young audiences burdened by the unwritten rules of their respective educational institutions. And that’s thanks in large part to an immensely likable ensemble cast guided by Poehler’s sure-handed energy behind the camera, as well as the film’s ambitious aims to be intersectional in its social and political themes.

It’s here to show you a respectably fun, inspiring time and it does just that.

Placing among the upper ranks of films for dog lovers, Stray successfully takes this mission to heart, revealing in the process not only the wholesomeness of humans’ four-legged best friends, but also the soulful voice of an exciting new filmmaker with immense moral queries on her mind.

“The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” unlike the stellar predecessors of the series, feels curiously starved for real insights into the opposing shades of the human soul.

Loosely based on the graphic novel Une Nuit de Pleine lune, The Owners doesn’t feel new or groundbreaking by any measure. Still, this increasingly bizarre film is grisly and absurd in all the right, self-aware ways; qualities that the comparable (and far superior) “Don’t Breathe” also possessed as another recent horror film that turned the tables against its lowlife aggressors.

Shrewdly, Watts goes for something subtle and soft here — instead of clichéd garishness, her performance hinges on her doleful gaze and melancholic tinge, ultimately helping Penguin Bloom honor its real-life character’s journey with some respect.

Black and Blue feels imbalanced and overlong, favoring fast and repetitive chase scenes over well-calibrated tension.

Empire of Light feels more like a sweet experiment on nostalgia and memory than an articulate film with something to say.

You come to Blood for its aura of spiritual sustenance, only to leave it feeling curiously alienated and undernourished.

Still, the greatest asset of the picture is Dafoe’s finesse in a part that’s both physically demanding and fiendishly fun to witness. It’s like someone dropped him in the middle of an antique shop with a baseball bat and said, “Go to town!” And that he does.

Balloon is decent entertainment to a degree, and that is mostly thanks to its handsome production values.

If only the half-baked story could also meet our expectations, or at least match the logic of the previous two “Annabelle” films.

Finley loses his exacting handle on the material, allowing the story’s more commonplace ideas to dictate its direction in ways both unsurprising and a little rough around the edges.

The film offers some simple-minded insights into the myth of the happily-ever-after, and a dash of nonchalant French charisma. But the whole thing is only as original as a dull midlife crisis, retrofitted into a whimsical screwball mold that feels miscalculated.

Dunham unearths a refreshing amount of humor, honesty, and sincerity through Sarah Jo’s misadventures with Josh between bedsheets, at once challenging her complex (though not entirely unwarranted) reputation of being a tone-deaf and privileged one-trick pony, with her second-only feature.

One almost wishes Chaves and Johnson-McGoldrick had not tried to reinvent the wheel, and instead just stuck with the franchise’s sophisticated simplicity and tried-and-true paranormal formula. Without a focal haunted house, this one just doesn’t feel like a film that belongs in “The Conjuring” universe.

Sadly, the film is a tedious and erratically cut caper, whose shape-shifting story feels like an uneven and over-plotted rehash of various recognizable films that we’ve seen before.

A grueling coming-of-age thriller on the cliché-heavy side, with little hook to offer other than Wolff’s aching screen presence.

In the end, only a fraction of McLeod’s ambitions sticks a landing. But Astronaut stays afloat with sweetness, thanks to a measured performance from Dreyfuss.

The movie’s most shocking feature isn’t any of its twisty plot reveals—mainly involving Dominika getting romantically mixed up with a CIA operative (Joel Edgerton)—but the exploitative brutality it rains down on Lawrence.

More concerned with paying homage to ’90s-era Quentin Tarantino than telling a contemporary coming-of-age tale with believable stakes, co-helmers Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s debut feature First Date saddles a young couple not with a romantic night out, but with a haphazard all-nighter crime-comedy that’s mostly unfunny and free of convincing suspense.

The strongest point Gutnik makes with his film is that we all have a concealed story when we share common spaces in silence. But that sadly isn’t enough of a hook to carry out this scattershot effort.

Sometimes, we should be made uncomfortable. And that is, in the end, what “After the Hunt” attempts and mostly succeeds in.

A committed group of dazzling actors keeps viewers consistently engaged until On The Come Up arrives at its predictable life lessons.

The resolute Greyeyes and the always-brilliant Chastain chart their respective characters with real chemistry, and White captures the pair’s brewing romantic tension. For underscoring the brief but beautiful optimism of two ill-fated outliers, her woman comes out ahead.

Unlike Kahn’s acclaimed and much tidier 2003 documentary “My Architect,” The Price of Everything has a meandering nature and explores one too many avenues in building a thesis, while losing the viewer in the midst at times.

Cabrini is in no way a perfect movie, but a damn dignified one that honors the little-known efforts of these fearless women.

A Man Called Otto isn’t exactly as philosophical as “About Schmidt” or as socially conscious as “I, Daniel Blake,” two films that occasionally hit similar notes. But it’s nevertheless a wholesome crowd-pleaser for your next family gathering.

It doesn’t help that neither Yeoh nor Thompson play a character that remotely resembles real people in a film that only brushes over the anxieties of immigrants in the still-early days of Brexit.

Alive with plenty of droll British humor and with a music-filled, picturesque finale that is sincerely earned, The Ballad of Wallis Island is the best kind of crowd-pleaser: disarming, joyful and full of compassion for its oddball characters. This Sundance charmer doesn’t hit a false note.

In trying to say a little bit of everything about both men, James’ documentary unfortunately falls short of balancing its narrative priorities.

Bless the old school stars Roberts and Clooney for elevating this lackluster mélange and in certain instances, even making you forget about the non-sensical film that surrounds them. But that’s hardly enough, especially if you are hoping for a homecoming for the rom-coms of yore.

My Salinger Year sometimes drags and falters with questionable tonal shifts. But it’s never a complete waste of time to witness a young woman grow into her voice on her own terms, especially when her canvas is this cinematic.

Likable yet tonally untidy.

[An] unevenly written but good-looking directorial debut that gradually runs out of steam.

This may all sound too shameless and syrupy, but to its credit, A Dog’s Way Home scratches the surface of something I, as a pit bull obsessive, have never seen a “dog movie” do.

Rushing through an emotional journey with an uneven pace and clumsy dialogue, The Lost Husband aims for familiar sentiments around loyalty, family and sacrifice, but bypasses sincerity, the most crucial ingredient.

Raymond & Ray is curiously alienating despite the two A-listers in the driver seat, some decent chuckles to spare and a handsome, cinematic finish courtesy of DP Igor Jadue-Lillo.

Little wears the theme of black sisterhood on its sleeve, growing into something winsome by prioritizing contemporary concerns over nostalgia.

With the exception of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” Oscar nominee Kathryn Hunter’s fiercely committed performance, much of this well-designed but boring film yields a shrug.

This is a movie that neither works as a quirky dark comedy about the hapless people of a small town (on that note, the film is painfully unfunny), nor as a period piece on the anxieties of the Reagan era, no matter how many “1984” references the characters throw at you.

It’s still worthwhile to consider the post-#MeToo ideas that Cat Person throws at the wall around notions like empathy, consent, and the vitality of crystal-clear communication and see what sticks. What you will end up with might look like a messy artifact, but one that will at least rattle in ways both witty and provocative.

Despite an obviously resourceful filmmaker at the helm and a more-than-game Beckinsale with proven genre chops, the film’s ultimately empty action bores more than it intrigues.

Perhaps the chief deficit of Don’t Worry Darling isn’t even predictability, but a discernible lack of new ideas of its own.

There doesn’t seem to be a single original bone in this film’s body that gives you a parade of half-baked comedic scenes braided with a trite thriller and family mystery.

The most bewildering thing about The Secrets Of Dumbledore is how superfluous each of its ideas feel in relationship to one another. There are countless globe-trotting international characters, worlds-within-worlds, and constantly competing historical, political, and mythological references, but they all fizzle because their ill-considered stakes never seem fully realized.

Between all the cool gadgets—a vintage VW van serving as The Guard’s G-Mobile being the best of them—a devoted cast and a well-meaning spirit, you desperately want Secret Headquarters to be a fun and swift adventure like the one Joost and Schulman clearly conceived on paper. But that imaginary film is unfortunately trapped somewhere inside this clumsy wreck, waiting for its superpowers to be restored.

There is a curious datedness, monotony and lack of excitement throughout “Lisa Frankenstein,” that feels dull despite its preferred power-ballad “Can’t Fight This Feeling” by REO Speedwagon, and colorless in spite of its magenta-heavy production design. In its best moments, Williams’ debut feels very much like its central monster—undead, but with no place to go. It’s a cosmic disappointment.

Even the most eagle-eyed and engaged viewers might run out of patience with R#J. Thankfully, Williams’ magnificent cast counters the disorder with their confident screen presence and theatrical muscles that stand out within the film’s unique atmosphere.

This broadness of info only means the Tickells remain surface-level on most topics. Their Common Ground only teases but doesn’t dig deep enough into the intersection of racism and capitalism that brought us to today.

Perhaps it was enough for “Book Club” to merely exist as an act of rebellion against the stubbornly young-skewing studio fare. But this follow-up needed to give us more, something along the lines of a sharper film deserving of the earned legacies of Fonda, Keaton, Bergen and Steenburgen.

Reminiscence aims for something existential within a well-recognized film-noir template. Sadly, the result is an unpersuasive, vaguely pessimistic dystopia at best, one that liberally pulls 101-level references from recognizable Hitchcock flicks and neo-noirs alike, only to drown their time-honored spirit in murky waters.

Krasinski’s concept borrows generously from Pixar films like “Monsters Inc.,” but is so chaotic and half-considered that you don’t feel as inspired as you should be, making it hard to submit to the film’s alternate reality.

The result is yet another wearisome tale that inelegantly depicts themes like acceptance, understanding and diversity within a saga that has always been rather clumsy with its messaging around such weighty topics.

Perhaps Wilson would have benefitted from the subtle method of Jaws, or even The Reef, by prioritizing teasing over showing. But here, the shark’s frequent appearances and unrealistic looks lessen the impact of the fear it’s supposed to spread, despite some truly unnerving camerawork by Tony O’Loughlan.

Despite a strong ensemble of actors and some impressive photography, Mayday drowns inside its own overambitions.

A slight comedy that sadly embraces neither the worthwhile questions that surround its central premise nor the story’s dark humor potential.

Uneven it may be, Red Joan still emanates a memorable essence, one that’s refreshingly and believably feminine.