While the story starts fast and furious, it sputters in its second half, not so much running out of gas as just turning into a completely different film which becomes increasingly more convoluted as it becomes less engaging.

Ferociously subversive and trippily beautiful debut feature from director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat.

Cooper acquits himself as the main character, but between the pratfall/character-building montages and the endless platitudes imparted by the wise, old mentor, Measure of a Man does him few favors, and the film becomes a tedious haul through to the redemptive third act.

This is no Disney mermaid, not least because the conventions of creepy in Japanese culture are very different to what would pass standards and practices in the U.S.

All three principal actors – Weisz, McAdams, and Nivola – give effectively constrained performances. They work as a team here, consistent with the delicate balance in their characters’ complicated relationships with one another.

It’s mildly entertaining while also masking criminal deceptions as romantic foreplay. Yet this remake has little of the real-life sizzle that Hawn and Russell added to the story.

Dissent – or a remotely critical eye – doesn’t have any place in RBG; this is an entirely admiring doc.

A charming, touching, and deeply compassionate depiction of modern middle-class motherhood.

Little Pink House is not one of the great civil rights movies (it's no Loving or To Kill a Mockingbird), but its slow, steady charm never lets go of the fact that these are people's homes on the line.

Unfortunately offers up the same old recipe, with a soupçon of variation to make those jump-scares not feel like day-old bread.

Working from a script that lacks the visceral ingenuity of a "Don't Breathe," Devlin's Nineties crowd-pleasing instincts end up holding him back.

Kings is a confusing and far-fetched story in which good intentions outweigh good storytelling.

The Rider is a stunning piece of fiction played close to the bone.

Feels feverishly dreamlike while keeping its subject firmly rooted in the present. If you desire a female empowering musical manifesto with both claws and kisses, here it is.

The Marvel films have been accused of being repetitive in their structure; Infinity War bursts any conventions wide apart. This is a vast, truly epic endeavor, one that both brings the current MCU to a near-climax (wait for the so-far-untitled follow-up, due May 2019, for the ultimate resolution), and sets the future in motion.

Noble intentions, ignoble results.

Super Troopers 2 is a movie out of time and out of sync with comedy in 2018. It might have managed the success of its precursor, if only it had been released in 2002.

Sometimes the screen goes completely black as the film focuses solely on the audio component (Wilkerson’s voice). It has the sense of a confession, and made me wonder if this project is somehow an act of penance.

Not every aspect is as exquisitely structured as Terajima's bittersweet performance. An underlying subtext about reinvention never truly develops, and the idea of Lucy as Setsuko's alter ego stutters. But her performance, especially when matched by Minami's hard-sighing world-weariness, is nothing less than transfixing.

Lowlife is also far more bloodstained than Tarantino’s normal fare. Grisly isn’t the word: The entire effects and makeup team work overtime for some of the most splattertastic effects in any non-horror film since the bone-shattering, skull-squishing glories of "Brawl on Cell Block 99."

Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched.

What ultimately disappoints here, however, is the conventionality of the movie’s narrative arc, its mushy characterizations (as the cosmetic company heiress who befriends Renee, a squeaky-voiced Williams is utterly dispensable), and a rushed conclusion that ties up the loose ends with a sloppy bow that diminishes the movie’s message.

The familiar narrative gambits of Finding Your Feet aren’t the problem here as much as their heavy-handed execution.

The magic of the film lies in Tucci’s eye for a sense of place – Paris in the Sixties.

If there's such a thing as observational comedy horror, this is it.

The influence of executive producer Alex Gibney is clear in the photography and editing (making Gibney-esque now officially a term of art), but he has his own adept, incisive skill in linking a truly global economic crisis in the making, threading the narrative all the way from rural China to Flint, Michigan.

Baja is just plain bad.

If Ramsay's 2011 melancholy masterpiece "We Need to Talk About Kevin" was about the consequences of caring too little, You Were Never Really Here is its polar opposite – a story of a man who cares so much that his soul is bleeding out of every pore.

Despite its reliance on some overworked symbolism, the screenplay by David Tranter and Steven McGregor is smart. However, the intercut flash-forwards and flashbacks do little to aid our understanding or appreciation of the story, and seem like artistic frippery.

Submergence – despite much lovesick gravitas from its two leads – never quite coalesces into the epic romance that it should. It fizzles when it should ignite, leaving the viewer with a palpable yearning for something other than a shrug.

Refreshingly unsentimental and straightforward.

This crazy-gleeful adventure jumps between grisly and cartoonish.

Inelegant but not uninteresting, Ramen Heads is a bronze contender at best.

Ismael’s Ghosts drops a number of seemingly disparate ingredients into a stew that ends up coalescing into a satisfying treat, full of surprises and flavors you wouldn’t expect.

The elegant emotional narrative is informed by their toxic relationships with their fathers.

Well-paced and featuring a game cast, this is still a yawny yarn that steals outright from Hideo Nakata’s seminal "Ringu" and the more recent "It Follows," as well as several of Blum’s own prior productions.

Chappaquiddick portrays the “incident” with the delicate meticulousness of an autopsy – which is ironic because the body of Mary Jo Kopechne never got one.

With caustic wit and fantastic performances for all involved, the film is destined to be an anti-war classic.

Not that he lacks artistry. When he delivers on tension, it's not a jump scare, but a jarring sense of inevitability (another kinship to Shults' work). Every time there is a sound above a whisper, there is a payoff, and how Krasinski navigates between those two events is never less than enthralling – and, yes, tragic.

A neon-drenched murder mystery – or is it? – for the selfie generation, set in the hipster hamlet of Silverlake. So it goes with this highly stylized slice of bad, black millennial noir, a post-mumblecore take on the shady underbelly of L.A. in which Los Angeles plays itself, very nearly upstaging the main characters’ plight.

What papers over any remaining cracks is the perfect casting of Hamm as the fixer turned business consultant dragged back into the morass. His raw charisma, and near-peerless ability to sweat martinis through a disheveled linen suit and still look stylish, sends the film's moral compass spinning – exactly as it should.

The seductive scenery in this French film will sink its hooks into any hungering soul, and the window into the winemaking process it offers will stimulate the juices of any armchair oenophile. But the dramatic core of Cédric Klapisch’s Back to Burgundy is pure boilerplate.

If there's one error, it's that there are almost too many laughs. Cannon keeps the pace up, and some of the smart one-liners from the script by Brian and Jim Kehoe get stamped on in the race for the next gag.

With this latest thriller (comedy? My fellow audience members were laughing at scenes I highly doubt were intended to be funny) Perry implies that not only does she belong there, but she forged every link in her chains.

To its credit, this third GND installment earnestly attempts to give some degree of lip service to diverging perspectives on the socio-religious-political scale without too much proselytizing, although there’s never any question about who’s side it’s on.

And yet, for all those weaknesses, this is a Steven Spielberg film, of the kind only Steven Spielberg can make. Big, raucous, heartfelt, referential, and unabashed in celebrating the culture he has always loved.

All three leads give subtly wrenching performances that wouldn’t have been out of place in Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre.

They (Mirren and Southerland) give potent and particular performances, bright buoys at sea in an otherwise nondescript picture.

Iconoclastic British environmentalist and sculptor Andy Goldsworthy doesn’t experience the world in the same way the rest of us do. Using more than just the conventional five senses, he profoundly intuits his surroundings as if in a meditative trance, mentally and physically absorbing the details of his environment like a forensic scientist in the pursuit of a unique artistry that’s brought him worldwide acclaim.

Remember the eyeball-scrapingly unfunny "Gnomeo and Juliet"? Remember watching it and thinking, “Really? It’s 2011, and we’re still doing Borat mankini jokes?” Well, welcome to Sherlock Gnomes, a sequel seven years past its sell-by date, and 12 years after Sacha Baron Cohen made audiences cringe at his swimsuit choices.

Perhaps it’s just not-the-best-translation of "Taiyō no Uta," the title of the 2006 Japanese original, but I’m (unfortunately) not a language scholar, so I can’t be certain either way. What I can tell you is that this remake kind of sucks.

Utter rubbish compared to its 2013 precursor. Enter with low expectations and you might just have some rock ‘em, sock ‘em, let’s-ravage-Tokyo fun.

There’s a naivete about the film that only a teen at heart could love.

When the movie shifts from psychological to physical terror, the film (like Sawyer) unravels and finally loses its bearings.

It is beautiful, lyrical, tragic, redemptive, and focused down to the last tick on a dog’s nose. His animated characters have all the grace, quirk, and charm of any live-action performance.

This new iteration of Ms. Croft, played in a far more realistic fashion by Vikander (of Ex Machina fame), is somewhat more serious in tone, but altogether more fun to watch.

All the action in Souvenir happens in such a dreamlike haze, that it’s my personal pet theory that none of it is actually real and Liliane has been sitting in front of the TV the whole time.

It’s a cliched happy ending, one you’ve seen countless times before, but never in this way.

The movie has a floppy vibe to it, teetering on lazy farce in its mixed marriage of dry humor and flashes of violence.

For all the pratfalls, this is a grim, dispiriting work. It dares not to be liked, and there’s a lot to like in that daringness.

There is no character development or psychology manifested in any aspect of The Strangers.

The debut feature by writer/director Cory Finley began as a script for stage, not screen, and that shines through in the intricate dance of dialogue. There's a hint of David Mamet in his use of strictly defined silences, and flat statements as heavy implications.

It may owe much to viral shockers like "28 Days Later," but its political and personal insight elevates The Cured alongside the best of contemporary European realism.

The opening act, I’m sorry to report, is a mess.

The new Death Wish is unlikely to spark similar controversy, simply because the filmmaking is not as compelling as in the original film.

Without preaching from the pulpit, A Fantastic Woman powerfully communicates the hostility and hatred that persons such as Marina encounter simply due to their otherness. In its way, it resembles those Hollywood-era message movies like "Gentleman’s Agreement" and "Pinky," but without the self-congratulatory importance that weighs those films down with all the subtlety of an iron anchor.

Coming so close on the heels of another clumsy female-led spy adaptation, "Atomic Blonde" (which at least had the good grace to be stylish in its stupidity), Red Sparrow plummets to Earth.

The peerless crew of actors playing the party guests present stinging dialogue and reactions with the precision of expert marksmen.

The stellar cast is uniformly great, but perhaps that speaks more toward the subject matter of grief and moving on, giving everyone a showcase to sink their teeth into acting.

Why do I feel like a bummed-out tourist gone home with dashed hopes? “I was promised a new-millennium mindfuck, and all I got was this crummy pick-the-bodies-off horror.”

The film owes what charm it has to a whip-smart script (heavy on double entendres – a delight for word nerds and game geeks alike), and the chemistry between its actors.

The fact that Russians appear to have dash-cams as standard equipment in their four- and two-wheel rides is as foreign and fascinating as anything President Donald Trump could come up with.

It wants so hard to be "Pulp Fiction," but it ends up "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag."

You could say it’s toothless most of the time.

24 Frames is a classically Kiarostami work, indicative of his life’s curiosities and trademark inquiries, but far short of a culminating utterance.

Yes, Black Panther is a moment. But in 20 years' time (or 100 more Marvel films), when this moment has passed, it will still be the kind of resonant, rip-roaring crowd-pleaser to which all smart action films should aspire.

Visually, this is a charming addition to Japanese interpretation of pastoral England, with the overall vision of manor houses and rural idylls feeling perfectly bucolic. There are moments when some elements of culture or set dressing ring a little false. It's in little details.

Early Man is wanting: of a cleverer narrative, of memorable characters. It’s not bad, necessarily. It just feels like an early draft of a better movie to come.

If you’re expecting "Paddington"-level profundity and whimsical adventure you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The biggest takeaway from the film is that the American foster-care system has failed us all. And that’s super sexy.

Given its can’t-miss potential, you’d think this would be one kick-ass movie. So why is The 15:17 to Paris such a trainwreck?

The film’s message, which it wields like a war chain, is a timeless one: Don’t be such a dick to people because they look different from you. We all live in Bomb City: One stray match and the whole thing will explode.

The director avoids turning this into some form of misery tourism, which would be a real risk in less adept hands: yet the story is told with such a uniform tone that it’s hard to remain emotionally engaged.

You’d think the sordid history of the Winchester house would have inspired a more evocative or even entertaining haunted house story but the Spierigs rely far too much on the sort of shock-cut du jour that has become the lazy and boring norm for so many PG-13 “horror” films of the past 15 years.

The lion’s share of the work then is on Bening and Bell’s shoulders to flesh out dramatically thin characters. That they do.

Subpar special effects and a by-the-numbers final act “Yakety Sax” chase send this sad mess back to a mercifully early grave.

The Insult shows how personal resolutions may be the only recourse and pathway to personal peace.

Although it has the smell of self-importance, like a Michael Cimino movie on steroids, Den of Thieves ultimately fools no one. It’s all about the guns.

Taylor’s film works best as both a commentary on the viral limits of parental affection, and the terror of bringing up said juvies.

There is a numbness of loss that resonates throughout the film’s subsequent revenge narrative that deepens and heightens the material to depict a portrait of a person who literally has nothing to live for.

The deepest frustration is that Barker had seemingly unrestricted access to one of the most revolutionary and skilled White House offices of the postwar era, yet the end result is like condensing an entire season of "The West Wing" and cutting out all the best monologues.

The film is historical yet its characters are fictional. Well-captured is the controlled chaos of some of the political actions.

The Death Cure is at its absolute best when something’s getting blown up, or a plan is being hatched to blow something up: Series director Wes Ball is aces with action, and almost as effective with the procedural steps to get to said action.

Small Town Crime is so engrossing in its optimistic darkness that it screams for the further pulpy adventures of Mike Kendall. Hawkes imbues him with the beat-down appeal of a Sam Spade or a Jim Rockford.

This bland romance doesn’t take its own advice. It’s all water, no whiskey.

There's a reason why Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires – a phrase repeated throughout 12 Strong, a depiction of one of the first and most unequivocal victories of the U.S. war against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

A studied but silly misfire from the director of the abysmal London Has Fallen that attempts to walk the walk without ever actually being a movie genre fans, or much of anyone else for that matter, would want to see.

Some have remarked that The Post is the story of Kay transforming into Katharine Graham, which is pretty on the mark.