Tomris Laffly

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.