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.