Gran Turismo is perhaps a more basic film for Blomkamp, but a welcome reminder that his breakthrough first feature District 9 wasn’t a fluke. He manages to give a film that is more or less an ad for a video game a little bit of heart.

Truly, it is elucidating for folks who’ve never seen dementia up close, and guttingly familiar to those who have. But even more profound is the film’s record of a remarkable love.

Golda isn’t a failure of skill, but one of vision. Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin deliver a biopic that feels like a complete misfire. Stale and without any sense of self, Golda unfortunately does nothing for Israel’s only female prime minister.

The movie struggles to find the right kind of humor for its adult demographic, given that a talking dog flick is a genre usually targeted at kids somewhere in PG territory.

It's an incisive, intriguing, and ultimately moving look at America's ongoing socioeconomic collapse: The whole "kids streaming their first slow dance" thing is just one aspect of this rich and nuanced drama.

While Belle promises a dark twist on the old tale of Beauty and the Beast, its muddled genre and aimless characters may disappoint fans of the source material.

What Martelli and her co-conspirators have created with the radicalization of Carmen in Chile ‘76 – and what, incidentally, eludes so many contemporary horror films – is the palpable sense of dread.

The movie has a big heart, ambitious references, and moments that make it an entertaining watch, but it can curdle thanks to the constraints of the superhero genre.

In Passages, Sachs’ enthralling eighth feature, he and his regular co-screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias return to the more experimental bent of Keep the Lights On, echoing that film’s elliptical nature and naturalistic presentation of sex, its dizzyingly destructive relationships and Euro-arthouse affect.

As much as Øvredal tries to evade all the modern blockbuster conventions that are bound to keep the Demeter from its best destination, it’s too bumpy a journey to ever feel quite on course.

Unfortunately, most of the budget seems to have been spent on the first half, a murky slog through the depths of the meg-infested abyssal depths of the titular Trench where the characters are puddle-deep and the villains so cardboard that their biggest danger isn't being chum but dissolving in water.

With its offbeat-dramedy-meets-sci-fi concept, Jules feels pulled right out of the world of indie cinema from 10 years ago. It’s in communion with the likes of Safety Not Guaranteed or Seeking A Friend for the End of the World: movies that revel in a superficial attempt at charm that’s undermined by a shallow understanding of their own characters, instead choosing to live and die by a determined sense of quirk wrapped up within their supposedly refreshing sense of genre-bending.

Writer/director Moshé (South by Southwest 2017 selection The Ballad of Lefty Brown) grounds the tension of the various ethical dilemmas in Aporia by focusing more on his characters than on the gimmick of his delightfully lo-tech time murder machine.

The Unknown Country is a naturalistic exploration of America that’s hopeful of human connection in the midst of a country that sometimes feels hostile. It’s simplistic, but honest and true to Maltz and Gladstone’s optimism in the face of a place that sometimes bleeds hopelessness.

All of these characters’ supposed “shortcomings” are more often relationship-ending defects. Ironically, this steadfast depiction of noxious people is what makes the movie appealing.

Smith presents the danger as the cumulative effect of being trans and Black and a sex worker in America. However, that's not all that Smith is talking about.

The film’s weak spot is that it and its subjects seem unsure of Case’s cult status.

With new animated feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Nickelodeon proves that this franchise has not lost any flexibility with age.

This isn't a definitive history of the Athens indie scene (as indicated by the way that REM and Pylon are only mentioned, not heard), but an overview of the people who created and became associated with the distinctive Elephant 6 logo.

Co-produced and edited by Austin filmmaker Karen Skloss, Have You Got It Yet? is as exhaustive a study of Barrett as possible. It does suffer from the flaw that affects so many biographical documentaries, that the subject is somehow unique.

Talk to Me is hardly a bad horror film, but the disconnect between what was and what could be looms large over the final act.

It's mean, gritty, and brutally nihilist, its mystery unwrapping before it strangles you with its perfect meanness. If noir is about, as the old saying goes, bad people doing bad things for good reasons, then Sympathy for the Devil bleeds in all the right ways.

Buoyed by pitch-perfect performances from the cast (Schubert especially nails the insufferably delicate masculinity of Leon), the film balances its humor and pathos with a natural ease, ending with a satisfying conclusion. All qualities of any good story.

Indeed, much like the Academy that created an animated features Oscar just to keep cartoons away from "real movies," Paint Vs Pixels often falls into the trap of believing that animation should be kid-friendly. Yet it still provides an incredible viewpoint from the artist's side of the wonder of American animation and its rich legacy.

The experience is a little like being stuck in a Doom Buggy on a day when the ride is very stop-start. The flow of the attraction collapses, becoming individual cool designs but not a story.

It’s a stunning debut worth seeking out, a reminder of what has passed and what is rearing its ugly head once again, and a statement about the necessity of queer joy and solidarity.

Cobweb's greatest achievement is in ambiguity, in leading the story to its inevitable ending without ever sacrificing that unnerving quality.

In a way, Oppenheimer is like atomic physics: Each tiny spark interlocks to create a massive, breathtaking, terrifying, conflagration.