The casting is solid, with an even more pumped-up Jordan once again anchoring the movie as the conflicted young boxer in the title. But it’s the underdeveloped villains of the piece who ultimately prove more intriguing, despite their one-dimensionality.

The challenge – the one this film proves incapable of overcoming – is how you marry a broad family comedy with the endless complexity of the adoption process.

At every turn, corruption oozes from the pores of this thriller, and although the film’s tone keeps us on edge, Widows also hits a few perfunctory pits in the road.

What I learned from Monrovia, Indiana is that I – personally – am bored by mattress shopping, City Council arguments over fire hydrants, and high school band concerts I am not obligated by shared DNA to attend.

When it comes to buddy comedies, The Long Dumb Road isn’t exactly forging new territory. It’s a bit like "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" refitted for the 21st century, yet it’s grounded in a nostalgic sense of kismet that predates using an app to order rides from strangers.

While Cam feels authentic, it's not a documentary.

Ultimately, Buster Scruggs is lesser Coen, despite the movie bearing many of the filmmakers’ trademarks. Both silly and serious, it’s a hodgepodge in spurs, a horse opera with nothing but arias.

On the strength of this sequel – a dense yet deft return to the high standards Yates set with the Potter films – count this Muggle’s heart and mind all in.

What They Had has a lived-in ring of truth that will be instantly recognizable to any caregiver, spouse, child, or other loved one who has experienced something of this sort.

With Burning Lee has molded a psychological masterpiece that will leave you full of doubt, dread, and searing questions about morality.

Clever, dynamic, and full of little touches of world-building that will drive science-fiction fans wild, Prospect is destined to land on every list of underrated genre films for years to come, long after it has ceased being any semblance of underrated. Stay one step ahead of the curve and see it.

There are even times when both the subject and aesthetics of A Private War seem to align accordingly; unfortunately, the film is incapable of sustaining this poignancy for any extended period of time.

Remove the horror aspects, and Overlord is ham-fisted and oddly unimpressive.

Outlaw King gets far more right than it ever gets wrong. Fourteenth century Scotland wasn't kilts and Pictish face-paint: It was a Late Middle Ages nation, with elaborate regal clothing at court, elaborate cravings and furniture, a distinct culture – and mud and blood and violence.

While rarely feeling heavy-handed, Lez Bomb manages to be both over-the-top funny and yet incredibly realistic, sans the doom and gloom of yesteryear.

The plots of these films and stories, and so much of Scandinavian crime fiction in general, often rely too heavily on coincidence and chance, be they serial killers or multinational cutthroats. And while this chapter of Lisbeth’s life is similarly convoluted, they are dark and gritty and compelling.

In The Grinch power rankings, this one trails Theodor Geisel’s original 1957 storybook and Chuck Jones’ cheeky 1966 TV special by a long mile.

Yes, Boy Erased is a horror movie, but it bears pointing out that the emotion is by definition intertwined with both empathy and a certain sense of compassion. Terror elicits a shriek. Horror hits you in the heart, and the next thing you know you’re sobbing. Bring some tissues.

Iranian-American director Keshavarz utilizes the always reliable Sarandon to fine effect, but the final takeaway is less than riveting.

In the end, you feel like you’re the victim of a cruel bait-and-switch, lured into thinking Nobody’s Fool would be a crappy but nevertheless entertaining Tiffany Haddish movie, only to have it turn out to be a crappy but nevertheless crappy Tyler Perry movie. Talk about mixed feelings.

There are no violent clashes or extraneous drama about boys. Instead, it's a simple and tender portrait of how friendships aren't always forever.

Paul Dano’s directorial debut is a visually stunning living portrait of a midcentury marriage falling apart at a time when that was sort of unthinkable, or so we think.

Grant punctuates almost every piece of Hock’s dialogue with an absurd gesture or facial expression – the theatricality of his portrayal of this not-so-street-smart bullshit artist is fascinating.

Suspiria is not a movie that will gel with everyone. It will awaken the sickest, most twisted parts of your mind if you allow it.

The first 30 minutes of this film feel like a fever dream, as Hannaford and his entourage trade barbs while the film stock (and subjects) change like a child’s kaleidoscope. It is frenetic and a bit unsettling. But once the party settles in at the director’s estate, it becomes mildly coherent.

On Her Shoulders offers some limited insights into the politics of international refugees, but the film keeps its focus on a woman of humble origins who willingly takes on the pain of millions.

The film is as bland as Melba toast served on a bed of parsley while snatching sips of water from a nearby puddle following a rainstorm (that actually, in retrospect, could have some flavor). It is the very antithesis of creative destruction.

Cue ultraviolence, gang stereotypes, and a bucketload of plots that never really go anywhere.

Bogdanovich narrates the most extraordinary moments of close-up slapstick and derring-do with equal fascination. But mostly what he does is let them play out with the occasional factoid, so the audience can appreciate just how impeccable Keaton's work was.

So yes, Bodied is a comedy of ill manners, fraught as it is with a veritable encyclopedia of contemporaneous qualms confronted and contested with some seriously dope hustle and flow. Tag this one #badassseriousfun.

It's a fascinating story told by the rote conventions of the musical biopic.

Here Hill makes his debut as a filmmaker while trying to prove himself as the voice for an entire generation. And there are even times where Hill succeeds, navigating his own missteps as a first-time filmmaker to create a promising – albeit unsatisfactory  –  story of adolescent millennial angst.

The result is a cheerfully unfunny low-brow affair which simply can’t compare with the many genuinely entertaining James Bond spoofs that seem to crop up every decade or so, such as "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery or the more sublime pleasures of Jean Dujardin in the "French OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies."

A surprisingly fun throwback to Cold War thrillers.

There are scenes during which Everett’s Wilde commands our wide-eyed attention, still mesmerizing despite his physical and psychological decline. Yet in between those quickened moments, The Happy Prince trudges forward with monotonous uniformity.

Most important, there are the photographs themselves – lots of them – which director Freyer freely uses to illustrate Winogrand’s genius in capturing the ambiguous now, urging the viewer to fill in the details of the story glimpsed in the shot.

Border is a Venn diagram of a film: sometimes darkly comedic, sometimes wild honey sweet, sometimes a stomach-churning crime drama, with aspects of both Scandinavian mythology and contemporary queer cinema.

That may be Beautiful Boy's biggest problem: That it's too emotional.

It’s a tantalizing offer that’s stuffed with celebrity, scandal, hedonism, and riches and all the sex, drugs, and disco that money could buy.

For a first-time director like Barinholtz, The Oath is more than impressive. Tonally, it goes all over the place, but that only serves to keep the audience as off-balance as the characters onscreen. No matter what your political affiliation may be, this Orwellian farce is a candidate for President Trump’s least favorite film of the year.

Without ever feeling stagy or theatrical, The Guilty is an exquisite reminder that all you need is four walls and a great performance.

At its heart, Luff Linn is a very sweet love story between Colin and Lulu, punctuated by absurdity and a specific type of humor that (as I’ve referenced before) brings to the screen the spirit of the work of famed graphic novelist Daniel Clowes.

You know Westerns are in the middle of a comeback when even low-budget filmmakers are trying their hand at the genre. Big Kill, the latest such film, may not operate on the same level as a movie like "The Sisters Brothers," but there’s certainly a bit of charm in watching a filmmaker play it straight with a few of our favorite Nineties stars.

With original director John Carpenter's blessing, Green manages something that is both a tribute to and an evolution of the 1978 classic, with moments designed to create resonances that are not just re-enactment but part of his bigger theme of trauma-causing scars (there are also, in a nod to his days as an Austin resident, a couple of subtle visual nods to the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre).

The numerous characters presented in the film probably dilute its overall dramatic power.

Thunder Road has received oodles of festival awards, including the Grand Jury Award at SXSW. The film is a singular work. Even though it doesn’t always live up to the promise of its opening sequence, Thunder Road is an exhilarating ride.

Shula never confirms or denies being a witch, making the title of the film a strange choice, though that affirmative defense through history has largely fallen on deaf ears and too many women have died to prove it. In short, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween knows what its target demographic wants but also resonates with adult audiences, thanks to the zippy plot and across-the-board excellent performances from the totally game cast.

Even the documentary crew, composed of seasoned climbers and longtime friends, can barely watch their buddy painstakingly move up the peak.

It's up to cinematographer Linus Sandgren to give First Man its almost operatic sense of drama. He replaces the Technicolor glories of "La La Land" with something closer to the period graininess of his work on "American Hustle" or "Battle of the Sexes." But he adds rawness and intimacy.

Don’t think this is merely some edgy, caustic rom-com: This is a seriously funny examination of a life wracked with pain, and the healing steps it takes to move on with your life.

No one can accuse Hardy of giving Venom anything less than his absolute best. He has always been a performer who loves a good affectation; here he seems to be riffing on his performance as Max Rockatansky in "Mad Max: Fury Road."

The beauty of Redford’s rock-steady performances over the last six decades or so is that he never showed off, and yet always commanded your attention.

Most of all, this rendition of A Star Is Born oozes with romantic chemistry between Cooper and Gaga, as well as the stunning command of rock & roll visual tropes evidenced by Cooper and his director of photography Matthew Libatique (Black Swan).

It’s a visceral fear that’s filmed in a way that forces the viewer to undergo the emotion along with the character.

It's no "Metalocalypse" (pretty much the only metal comedy to completely break the rules), and there are no new classic anthems here, but if you want to bang your head to a very familiar beat, Heavy Trip is a solid cover version.

Screenwriter Audrey Wells adapts Thomas’ YA novel with a sure hand and the supporting cast – especially Hornsby’s deeply protective and loving father, and Sabrina Carter as one of Starr’s white besties who just doesn’t get it – are pitch perfect.

Colette is a good primer for a wonderful author, and a reflection on how your life will never turn out as you think.

What Greene both shows and helps enable may be the first steps toward a new understanding in a shattered community.

If you’re looking for a thrilling whodunit, there’s nothing in this film that hasn’t been done – and done better – a dozen times before.

But really, it seems like a movie hatched because someone had access to an amusement park and knew a lot of people in the makeup and lighting department.

An incredibly evocative film and one of the most evocative neo-Westerns of the past decade.

Smallfoot also features some excellent physical comedy, some of which calls to mind the sight gags prevalent in the old Looney Tunes cartoons once produced by this studio (Warner Bros.).

Reilly, Phoenix, Gyllenhaal, and Ahmed – a murderers’ row of outstanding character actors who all moonlight as leading men – take the script’s raw materials (daddy issues, the trauma of being bullied, the civilizing effect of a toothbrush) and forge new bonds with a few words, a light look. The film treats their growing intimacy, in all its permutations, like an objet d’art, to be turned over and examined, delicately, from every angle. When they’re together, the film is electric.

It’s fine; it works. The future is bright.

Crafted within the broadest, not-quite-funny brushstrokes possible, director Lee’s movie about a class of troublemakers, hustlers, adult J.D.s, and Rob Riggle’s patented goofy man-child schtick struggling to earn their GEDs at the eponymous classroom fails, epically.

Dialogue is reduced to consistent mumbled whispering, in an attempt to build mood and tension, but that's as ineffectual as the sepia-tinged photography is at evoking the period.

A serviceable cast of unfamiliar actors (the exception: Thompson as the family matriarch, Marmee); a serviceable script that takes few if any chances, with occasional wordless montages of shiny happy people; and serviceable direction that gets the job done and nothing more.

Kusama’s paint-splattered jeans, her continual need to create, and her singular vision are concepts that Lenz gets through with her very loving film.

So it comes as no small shock that The House With a Clock in Its Walls may very well be one of the best spooky movies to ever operate under a PG rating. The man known for taking things too far also appears to know exactly where to stop.

While not always dramatically successful, The Song of Sway Lake earns big points for originality. The film has a distinctive tone, look, and setting, which are supported by strong performances (one of them by the greatly missed Elizabeth Peña, who died in 2014, making this her final film appearance – somehow appropriate to this movie about how the past can impinge on the present).

To be crystal clear: Comedian and actress Gilda Radner was a genius. Her humor and her life were an impeccable combination of a love of life and precise comic timing. There are beings that light this planet, shining brightly. And Radner shined. It is impossible for me to think of a world without her, and Lisa Dapolito’s documentary goes above and beyond in marking this person’s life.

It all feels like a poorly constructed and overwrought Lifetime drama from a decade ago, albeit one featuring a shaggy dog dubbed “Fuckface.”

The film weaves comedy, horror, and romance without delving too deeply into any of them. The humor is rather dry (and completely dialogue-driven), and the horror only alluded to: There’s something chilling about certain things writer Mike Makowsky leaves to the imagination.

Technically, what’s on display may not be the Oscar winner’s finest go at filmmaking, but never has his message seemed more urgent and unaffected.

Hungarian cinematographer Marcell Rév puts himself in the top echelons with his kinetic, vibrant work here, smashing Jacques Jouffret's neon-and-blood visual thrills from "The Purge" series into suburbia with a slick and easy violence, and when the world breaks down – as in one of the most brilliant and sickening home invasions ever filmed – he makes the stylish chaos all too believable.

The emotional crux of the movie is the relationship between the inept father and his hapless children. It’s a one-note relationship but the tone it strikes is good, due in large measure to mullet-headed McConaughey’s typical absorption into his role.

We the Animals isn’t the sort of film that much concerns itself with the more usual conventions of filmmaking, such as the passage of time or even plot itself. It’s more of a mood, punctuated by clear whacks of emotional trauma. It’s a little bit like watching a poem.

Just strap in, because A Simple Favor's plot isn't just twisty: It's so labyrinthine that you expect a minotaur to pop up.

For a time, The Predator offers some popcorn thrills, grisly deaths, and funny one-liners. But the film tries entirely too hard to capture the magic of those Eighties action/comedy films that Black cut his teeth on that anything resembling a cohesive plot gets set aside for another endless round of bad jokes and running gags, which I’m quite sure is by design.

It's not the kind of story to win Oscars, but it will definitely make you want to pet a pupper.

Tully, along with cinematographer Wyatt Garfield and composer Michael Montes, has crafted an elegantly creepy pastiche.

Without endearing characters to sell this mixture of comedy and dread, Danger One quickly succumbs to its low-budget annoyances.

Can faith and evidence coexist? That's an age-old question, and one that The Apparition, the latest from French director Giannoli, broaches without ever truly resolving.

Mandy, though, is flat-out orders of magnitude a more emotionally adept and shockingly powerful film in virtually every department, from the dazzlingly insane cinematography and lysergically–inclined production design to what I can only believe is Nicolas Cage’s single best performance to date.

First off: The Nun is quite likely the best entry in the blockbuster The Conjuring cinematic franchise. However, this is still not much of an endorsement.

What is lost in translation from Wolitzer’s novel is her particular vision of Joe – short, Brooklyn-born, Jewish – and her sidelong portrait of midcentury men of letters like Bellow and Roth. The Welsh-born Pryce makes a halfhearted swipe at mimicking an Outer Boroughs accent; he’s better at capturing Joe’s gluttony and overgrown-child sulks.

The last thing Peppermint could afford to be was a mediocre action movie, and yet, here we are, and here it is.

Löwensohn's Luce is an amoral fury, as much death goddess as aging libertine, a figure who drives the imagery as much as she is captured by it. In a world where boredom is the only sin, every act of violence or lust is all at her pleasure.

It is at times a beguiling and compelling piece of cinema, but it’s not without its frustrations.

If you watched AMC's "The Terror" and thought to yourself, "What this really needs is ravening hordes of mermen," then Xavier Gens' period monster flick is a must-see.

Don’t expect any hokey scare tactics here. Under the steady hand of Oscar-nominated director Abrahamson (Room), the film is a calculated slow burn, one that plays a cunning head game with those viewers willing to be entranced.

If you’re looking for "Inglourious Basterds" redux, then this bloodless historical drama isn’t for you. Despite a pair of steely performances from Kingsley (as Eichmann) and Isaac (playing a roguish Shin Bet agent who eventually turns out to be the key to unlocking Eichmann’s stubborn ego), Operation Finale has the too-slow-burn of "Argo"-lite.

Writer/director Emmanuel Finkiel tries very hard to adapt Duras’ modernist storytelling tactics to Memoir of War and, at times, even succeeds in translating the author’s opaque blurring of the objective and the subjective.

Unfortunately, what should have naturalistic depth seems oddly superficial, and an attempt to dispose of traditional structure becomes episodic. As with many failed experiments, there are still, at least, some interesting takeaways.

This mash-up of family drama and science fiction is a pleasant but unconvincing adventure with strong adolescent appeal and music by Mogwai.

The film has a lot to say, but it thankfully does it in a manner that is natural, gentle, and if you will, authentic.

Green's relationship with reclusive bibliophile Edmund Brundish (Nighy) is the most effective component, even if it does owe such a glaring debt to the superior "84 Charing Cross Road" (sorry, "You've Got Mail," but still the ne plus ultra of bookstore movies).