Where the film loses steam is in its configuration; the slow-paced journey from setting to setting builds the tension a bit unevenly in service of the film’s themes. These bumps in the road leave Emergency imperfect, but it’s still a chaotic and thoughtful ride worth hitching onto.

Just because you can shove a bunch of IPs together, should you? Especially when the motivation is a 90-minute joke about beloved TV series, with a lot of cheese-as-cocaine gags. Who is it for? People who still laugh at uncanny valley jokes. For those that don't, no reason to worry, because most of the references will be explained to you.

Die-hard Downton fans aren’t going to grumble at the chance to spend more time with well-loved characters, and there are plenty of bright spots along the way.

The film’s greatest strength is its unabashed sentimentality. The look on these artists’ faces – their obvious pleasure in being in the room with their heroes, making great music? It’s not just good on the ears; it’s good for the heart.

Lux Æterna is barely a film – even Noé has called it an essay – but then it's not meant to be complete. Created in five days on Yves Saint Laurent's franc (one has to wonder what they thought they were getting), it's a discussion, not a conclusion.

Nothing here really works. Even a surprisingly flat score from horror master John Carpenter (who was originally slated to direct the '84 version) can't save Firestarter from being a colossal misfire.

Scott subtly weaves those stories together by having every talking head be simply a voice, unified in their belief that this weekend was vital, an affirmation that it was OK to be young and broke.

Based on a memoir by Annie Ernaux, Happening is remarkable for its first-person depiction of the panic and desperation of a young woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy. Moreover, the film is remarkable for its depiction of a determined and unflinching female protagonist who refuses to accept her predicament as her deserved fate.

What really drags it down is the wafer-thin script by Carol Chrest, which neither Sivertson nor a determined if sometimes overblown Ricci can pull past its messy metaphor and undeserved twists.

Hit the Road is stuffed with thoughts, ideas, and metaphors, which can leave the film feeling weighty and thick, but for those willing to dig and see past its simplistic charms, it’s quite an ambitiously layered debut.

What Rana and Warin have also created is a quiet warning. As a new tide of fascism and monomaniacal cultural oppression looms on the horizon, they make Salomon’s story a tragic reminder that fleeing a nightmare may mean more than just keeping it in your rearview mirror.

The Automat is rather like a nickel slice of pie or bowl of mac & cheese you’d get from one of their restaurants. It’s not fancy, but it’s good.

With neither the grandiosity of pagan vision that illuminated The Green Knight, or the subversive forest horror of Ben Wheatley's In the Earth, Garland's Men is never quite a joke, but maybe that would have made it a more pointed parable.

Unrelenting and inconsolable, with a smattering of compassionate moments, the superb Vortex brings to mind an observation attributed to actress Bette Davis, no less: Getting old ain’t for sissies.

The film offers a familiar structure of family, friends, and experts speaking of O’Brien’s struggle, of the need for more awareness, and of the growing health care crisis that looms in the not too distant future.

Petite Maman is a fine balance of heartache and whimsy.

Makino finds a way to uplift the young women she writes without any cloying girlboss idealism, and that level of nuance is what these Texan teens deserve.

Escape the Field won’t change the world, but it is a solid showing for everyone involved, and it works overtime to keep the audience entertained throughout – at least until the sequel-bait ending for a movie that will probably never happen.

The Duke may superficially seem like old hat, but in its comfortable ways there’s still a strong message.

There’s an interesting tension at play within Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the strongest MCU outing since Black Panther, that’s nevertheless as much Marvel Machine as it is Raimi enjoying his return to the big screen after almost 10 years away, deploying every trick he keeps up his sleeve.

Never less than enchanting, constantly surprisingly exciting, and with a burning sense of optimism that maybe, sometimes, hard work and vision can really win the day, Pompo: The Cinéphile is a tribute to everyone who colors within the lines but make those colors all their own.

By turns beautiful and ugly, occasionally infuriating in its obfuscation and disconnect, always slow and intriguing, King Crab is powered by the wild-eyed and soft-spoken charisma of Silli as the instinctually rebellious and disdainful Luciano.

Memory is better than some Neeson action flicks, worse than others, but, predictable as it is to say, you'll have trouble remembering it much longer than its run time.

The Aviary, a modest mindf*ck of a thriller about two young women fleeing a cult in the New Mexican desert, goes round and round and round in a circle like a snake swallowing itself. A beguiling metaphor, but by the end, you’re left with a self-cannibalized movie.

Hatching does its best at cracking the surface, but never quite sinks its claws as deep as it wants to.

Unfortunately for a film that has so much to say about a topic of great import, Unplugging is hamstrung by its ricocheting tone and undercut by sequences that probably provoked chuckles during the initial read-through but too often fall flat in the finished product.

This is Cage trying to find himself in all those messy decisions he’s made, trying to make amends while accepting and celebrating who he is.

9 Bullets just constantly misfires, and never gets better than the inadvertent comedy of Worthington pulling a gun on a dog as a negotiating tactic.

I’m not sure The Bad Guys is something kids on the younger side will enjoy, as the action and humor seem aimed at a slightly older, 10-and-up crowd. Still, there are some good lessons to be learned here about staying true to your friends and not judging someone on the way they look – a lesson we all, not just the kiddos, need to learn.

A standard setup for a horror film, but filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (who, among other projects, was ringleader/executive producer for the equally slippery SXSW 2016 feature collective:unconscious) has not made a horror film, but a fractured portrait of teenage malaise, of deceptions (both of self and others), and of the awkward probing of a cocoon’s inner shell.

Paris, 13th District never quite provides a good enough reason to smoosh two of Tomine’s stories together.

There are no insights here, only lavishly budgeted cosplay.

With a big, domineering performance from Yash front and center, a love of bonkers action and unrelenting brutal violence, stunning camerawork from Bhuvan Gowda, and a director with flair to spare, crime and action lovers would do well to give it a chance.

Stearns’ film is less interested in examining the complexities of our duality than it is with displaying our societal follies with an irony and disaffection that is Stearns’ trademark. When Dual’s clone confrontation lands on its O. Henry finale, it’s both inevitable and satisfying, another darkly comic deposition to add to the archive.

Ross’ script is never able to pull this out of the depths of trite banality, every line and emotional beat clocked from a mile away and cribbed from every other faith-based drama you’ve ever seen.

Rookie Season feels like it started off as a standard fluff piece about a sports team with a little bit of money to burn, and it's undoubtedly race fans who'll get the most out of its personal depiction of life behind the wheel. But what it really delivers, hidden under the hood of a very stock story of a season, is much more driven by Lidell's story.

The lazy writing is what makes this film such a frustrating experience. With a little more craft, the film could be as fantastic as the title. Maybe the next two films (gah) will be more successful.

The Northman lives and breathes like the old epics; not Old Hollywood's cartoonish depictions of warriors with horned helmets, but the ancient tales to which he pays deep respect.

As the focus of the film, Navalny himself is a fascinating and complex figure, but Roher makes him explicable by focusing on his family, his recovery, his motivations and his growing realization that to change Russia for the better he has to risk his life.

If tradecraft is what you like best about the espionage genre – the dead drops and dead-of-night tailings – then All the Old Knives will feel comparatively pokey, especially put up against the kind of spry spy entertainments long-form television so capably produces.

Coast is undeniably empathetic towards the inner lives of kids living in the bland nothingness of California’s Central Coast, but it’s also not got a lot new to add.

It’s all proper nonsense that in some ways lends itself to a more inspired, manic experience than the initial outing but in others is still held back by generic kids’ movie fluff.

While the movie’s nonlinear construction is its selling point, at least for those moviegoers who prefer a bit of a challenge, an underlying vibe of melancholy gives Mothering Sunday thematic weight.

Even for the most adventurous viewers, it may prove taxing. But to embrace its strange singularity yields a thought-provoking experience, and perhaps even a transformative one.

Look, I can’t even pretend like Ambulance is great movie. I can’t even say it’s good, but, and it’s a really big but here, I can say for more than half of the run time, I was entertained.

The Contractor seems torn between two types of films: the direct-to-video staple of a reluctant soldier bearing arms to protect his family, and a bleaker condemnation of private contracting (and the systems of power that necessitate its survival). It is the second film that blinks first, leaving Pine and Foster to carry the remaining scenes to their generic conclusion.

Morbius does what it's supposed to, nothing more, and barely that. If only this living vampire had more of a pulse.

Goran Stolevski’s dreamy debut You Won’t Be Alone is a poetic glimpse at generational trauma.

Director and writer Charles Dorfman’s debut feature is a corker of a good time to watch and rife with some juicy subtext regarding class, British colonialism, and toxic (read: douchebag) masculinity.

If you thought Hobbs and Shaw were a cute couple, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet; RRR is bromantic action nirvana.

Just because 7 Days knows the beats of the classic rom-com, that doesn’t make it a cover version. Instead, it’s a delightfully new riff, one filled with cultural specificities and timeliness.

Much like a lot of fare coming out recently, The Lost City is a film you can escape your troubles with for a couple of hours.

The imagery by cinematographer Michal Englert is stupendous, but the dialogue and plot by actor-turned-screenwriter Joshua Rollins, who also has a small role in the film, are a bit too minimal. Infinite Storm always shows the perils we face but never explains them.

Truly, Everything Everywhere All at Once does one thing: exactly what the title promises.

It may feel somewhat slight when it’s all said and done, but Apollo is packed with Linklater’s unique voice and breezy attitude that makes you feel right at home.

Social anxiety abounds in velvet-black British college reunion comedy All My Friends Hate Me, a seething sneer of a satire that swirls around angst-plagued Pete (Stourton), the milquetoast member of a group of friends who come together to celebrate his birthday.

The expectations for West’s return to film were high, and luckily X brings this master of horror back with a bang.

There are so many interesting components of Umma that never click, wasting a completely original idea on banality.

While there’s no denying that the well-tailored Outfit starts slowly, once it finally gets going the mystery is fun to work out. But it feels like it takes a long time to get there and with a run time of 106 minutes, it really shouldn’t feel that way.

An arresting feature debut from director Mariama Diallo, Master gingerly walks the tightrope between outright supernatural horror and a criticism of the enduring power of monied white privilege.

For a while, you wonder whether the movie will become a thriller about the perils of solo travel, particularly for single females. But the intimacy of director Kuosmanen’s Dogme 95-inspired camerawork hints that something more is happening here.

Alice stitches together an intriguing premise, but ends up weaker than the sum of its parts.

If you’re ready for 90-odd minutes of relentless desert scenes with Efron struggling to survive, then this movie is for you.

Chilling and unsettling, intimate yet monstrously vast in its cosmic horrors, Offseason is as dangerously welcoming as the island itself.

After Yang will resonate with anyone who has absorbed such emptiness into themselves, and found some comfort there.

What Riddler is doing is nakedly political, and there’s a risk that the audience may fall for his persuasive, butcherous way. Yet in the rebuttal to the Riddler’s conundrum, Reeves give this Bruce Wayne something more meaningful than an origin story: He gives him redemption.

One would think that a film concerning ghosts, time travel, and righting past wrongs would clearly lay out the rules, but Do and screenwriter Christopher Larsen are more interested in pastoral atmosphere than logic and with examining the emotional toll of regret, of mistakes, and how those things can follow you forever.

The story – two guys, one girl, much deceit – is eternally contemporary. Sometimes gigglingly so in the hands of ever-erratic Joe Wright (Anna Karenina, Atonement, Pan), who injects horny, corny musical theatre-kid energy into this latest iteration of Rostand’s doomed love triangle.

It is nothing less than a tapestry detailing the human desire for, yes, money, but more importantly, for connection.

The Foo Fighters are a rare band that has maintained a roughly decent amount of relevancy decades after rock ruled the music industry. Their self-aware horror-comedy is a sweet ode to their ride, but where Medicine at Midnight brought them a nice wave of good praise, Studio 666 feels like a dud – a horror movie with no good hooks and a rock & roll film that lacks the bombastic energy that’s ever present at the band’s live shows.

With so many video game adaptations being little more than live-action fanfiction, Uncharted stands out by feeling like an actual movie, mostly eschewing fan service in favor of little organic beats between characters.

Julie’s restlessness is anchored by a self-confidence that Reinsve conveys guilelessly and brilliantly.

With a modest budget that belies the eye-popping visuals at play, filmmaking duo Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney have affectionately crafted a sweet romance surrounded by the tart crunch of satire.

King Knight is a weird delight, the kind of unlikely low-budget pleasure in which Ray Wise turns up as everybody’s favorite f*cking magician and delivers dancing lessons.

Though occasionally emotional, this ain’t no heart-tugging rehash of Lassie Come Home. And there’s something to be said for that.

The Cursed may be a shaggy tale in places, but its bite is ultimately deep.

Despite Paxton’s high ambitions to serve up be the next great elevated horror movie, there’s not enough meat on its bones to ultimately feel satisfying when the final holy image is served.

What I Want You Back really has going for it is Slate and Day. The set-up may be a Ryan deep cut, but their awkward energy, and shared ability to scattershot subtle one-liners without them getting buried by the sillier antics, harks back to another of her classics: When Harry Met Sally.

In its dour and often depressing depiction of environmental struggle, 1970s-set true-life pollution drama Minimata would pair well with Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters.

Marry Me is ... okay. It’s not great. I think I would’ve like it a whole of a hell lot less had it not starred Lopez and Wilson, who are both eminently likable (the supporting cast is okay, too).

Yet another clunky thriller predicated on having Liam Neeson afford it some form of legitimacy, this Mark Williams-directed film is part political intrigue, part actioner, part family drama – all destined for the bargain bin.

At first, you fear this uncharted emotionalism may undercut the delicious pleasures of Christie’s clever plotting, this one being a particularly nifty stumper, but in the end, it subtly enhances the film without being pretentious.

Any workplace drama (and that’s what it is, more than a sports film) must fit you for the shoes of the laborer, and that’s exactly what Jockey does. It makes you understand why riders would subject themselves to so much pain and poverty in search of what one calls “that one minute where you feel like the most important thing in the world.”

The Long Night may not be revolutionary, it's definitely got its own dark magic.

The simplest thing to say about Who We Are is that it should be part of the standard curriculum in every school in America.

Moonfall is bad – the wrong kind of bad – because everything in this formula fails to hold up its end of the bargain. The effects are muddled; the supporting cast is terrible. The only thing Moonfall delivers on is the big ideas, but by the time the movie begins to layer in the sci-fi absurdity, the film is already three-quarters of the way home.

Roth delicately captures the weight of weariness that burdens Neil, as he shuffles the streets in his Birkenstocks, briefly showing signs of life in the company of Berenice. We are locked on to Neil for those signs, and Roth’s performance is utterly absorbing.

The Wolf and the Lion is deeply sweet, utterly predictable, and may well send a few unintentionally mixed messages about human relationships with large predators.

I don’t say this lightly, but I think jackass forever is exactly what we need right now.

Introduction feels like a mediation on how time chips away at first impressions: What started as something beautiful and simple can become complicated, unattainable, and hard to hold on to.

The obnoxious enthusiasm of Rise of the Gamers (which literally calls the day traders “heroes”) misses the point that those day traders are playing the same game as the big hedge fund managers.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché is the daughter cinematically coming to terms with their complicated relationship and with a figure who changed our culture.

Last and Future Men is a haunting film of melancholic beauty, but hidden within are stubbornly persistent elements of hope.

There’s a rumbling, inconsolable guilt at the heart of Clean, the latest from fascinatingly flexible writer/director Paul Solet.

The documentary’s sugar rush display of healthy fandom is a rarity, giving the film legs outside its pandemic novelty.

In sharing his story with the world, Amin and Rasmussen have given us a truly generous gift.

With a few standout performances and production design that imbues it with a good amount of period shine, it may yet find a receptive audience.

Melodrama mixes with light-hearted touches, moral dilemmas, and historical reckoning in Almodóvar’s latest.