Alice Waddington makes her feature directing debut with this futuristic sci-fi psychological thriller, and she is a clearly talented visual stylist.

Motherless Brooklyn isn’t in the same league as obvious influences such as “The Maltese Falcon” and “Chinatown,” but it’s an effective mood piece and a worthy entry in the genre.

There are more than enough ingredients here to cook up one rousing and thought-provoking sci-fi thriller. Except this time around, they’re just serving up overcooked leftovers.

Harriet certainly doesn’t shy away from reminding us of the horrors of slavery, but it’s mostly about the quest for freedom, and a remarkable woman who found her own freedom wasn’t nearly enough.

This truly IS must-see cinema — one of the most visually striking films you’ll ever see, featuring magnificent performances from the two leads.

It’s hard to make a case for being a timely, provocative thriller when so many characters are regressive caricatures.

While there are some sparks of creativity in the script by Michael Mitnick and some strong performances (most notably from Shannon and Waterston), it fizzles out under the weight of a pompous and meandering storyline that includes cryptic flashbacks to a wartime encounter, and a strange subplot about the advent of the electric chair.

In the uncomfortably funny, unapologetically insensitive, cheerfully outrageous Jojo Rabbit, writer-director Waititi (“Thor: Ragnorak”) delivers a timely, anti-hate fractured fairy tale AND turns in hilarious work as Adolf Hitler, imaginary friend to a 10-year-old German boy near the end of World War II.

They’re all terrific, but Emma Stone in particular kills with a sharply honed, funny and endearing performance as the battle-tested and cynical Wichita, who is fearless when it comes to taking on zombies, but terrified when it comes to fully committing to a human connection.

Mistress of Evil is an entertaining thrill ride with a sly sense of humor and some admirable albeit obvious political and social commentary, with messages along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it matters who you love.”

While it strikes a different visual tone and moves at a faster pace than many of the TV show episodes (as one might expect from a feature-length story), thanks to Gilligan’s masterful writing and directing, and the bold and powerful and layered performance from Aaron Paul, it’s an extended epilogue quite worthy of the “Breaking Bad” brand.

Almodovar’s stylized and meta slice of self-representation is as visually stunning as it is emotionally effective.

As quickly as Thing can snap its fingers, we’ll soon forget our visit with this version of The Addams Family.

Lucy in the Sky is an irritatingly self-conscious, maddeningly rudderless and scatterbrained story that bounces all over the place and never finds an identity.

The main story keeps stalling out in favor of these drive-by interludes that take center stage for a few minutes and then fade into the background, usually never to be heard from again.

Paul and young Danny Murphy are terrific together, with Paul playing a wounded bear growling his lines and Murphy delivering a fully realized performance. And for such a bleak and harsh tale, The Parts You Lose finds some rays of light at the end of the night.

In the flat-out hilarious 1970s period piece “Dolemite Is My Name,” Murphy is the funniest he’s been since we last saw Sherman Klump and family in the early 2000s — but he’s equally effective in the handful of relatively low-key, dramatic moments. It’s a fully realized performance.

For all its next-generation technology, and even with the great Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain”) directing, Gemini Man is a mind-numbingly unoriginal international spy thriller.

The characters aren’t consistent, and Cliff eventually becomes so unbelievable that we just stop caring. The movie’s ending is an exercise in plot; its beginning and its music deserve better than that.

At times the film overdoes it with the clown metaphors (including the use of songs such as “Everybody Plays the Fool” and “Send in the Clowns”), and I had major misgivings about one particular subplot, but with Phoenix appearing in virtually every minute of this movie and dominating the screen with his memorably creepy turn, Joker will cling to you like the aftermath of an unfortunately realistic nightmare.

This is not a movie. This is mutilation porn. This is a gratuitously violent, shamelessly exploitative, gruesomely sadistic and utterly repellent piece of trash with no redeeming qualities other than its mercifully short running time of less than 90 minutes.

With all we know about this chillingly amoral, blackhearted man, Where’s My Roy Cohn? still serves as a thorough and insightful history lesson that makes a convincing case that among other sins, Cohn was one of the early architects of bitterly divisive, take-no-prisoners, make-no-excuses, dirty-tricks politics.

From start to finish, Judy feels more like a stylized tribute act than an insightful interpretation of the real thing.

7 Days to Vegas works as a broad and funny comedy about some truly bent but hilarious characters.

Directed with claustrophobic, docudrama-style intensity by Derrick Borte (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Forte) and featuring a career-best dramatic performance by Gaffigan, American Dreamer is a dark and intense and sometimes brutally violent slice of rotted life.

“Between Two Ferns” is filled with hilarious alternate-universe moments.

It’s an extravagant dessert after a six-course meal. Absolutely unnecessary, but still a real treat.

Given the nature of director/co-writer James Gray’s admirably daring, bold and ambitious, sure-to-be-polarizing, flat-out weird, crazy fever-dream space opera, it’s only fitting for the title to be so obscure and challenging.

While Gun’s story is certainly worth telling and this is a well-intentioned, solid film with fine work from Knightley, Official Secrets is too heavy-handed and drab, and falls far short of procedural thrillers such as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” and “The Post” or broadly entertaining whistleblower stories such as “Erin Brockovich.”

It’s nothing we haven’t heard before, but it’s still heartbreaking to see small farmers telling their individual stories about the financial and emotional stress they’ve experienced.

It is an ambitious, dreamlike, beautifully shot movie (with cinematography by the legendary Roger Deakins) that aims for the fences again and again in the course of 149 minutes — but nearly every one of those mighty cuts is a swing and a miss.

Hustlers is slick and sharp and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, with writer-director Lorene Scafaria delivering a film that often feels like Scorsese Lite — a breezier, infinitely less violent, pole-dancing, glitter-covered riff on “Goodfellas.”

Directed in capable, straightforward fashion by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and featuring voice-over narration from the artist herself, The Sound of My Voice is like a well-sourced and thorough video Wikipedia entry about the life and times of the now 73-year-old Ronstadt.

This intense and claustrophobic gore-fest is far removed from the elegiac tone of “A Quiet Place.” It’s more like a “Saw” movie, mixed in a bloody blender with elements from films such as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Cabin in the Woods” and “The Hills Have Eyes” and even “Carrie.” And yet there are a few genuinely thought-provoking sequences sprinkled in.

For all of Muschietti’s visual flourishes and with the greatly talented Bill Skarsgard again delivering a madcap, disturbingly effective, all-in performance as the dreaded Pennywise, It: Chapter Two had a relatively muted impact on me.

Thanks to an ambitiously layered script from Paul Downs Colaizzo (who also directs with a steady grasp of comedic pacing and a nice visual eye), and a resonant and rich performance by the terrific Jillian Bell in the title role, Brittany Runs a Marathon has some refreshingly sharp edges and occasionally charts a relatively unorthodox course for such a comfort food-type movie.

Even accepting the increasingly dizzying level of logic-defying, mind-effing, increasingly convoluted time-bending developments in the entertainingly bad (but still bad) Don’t Let Go, I found myself wondering why and how.

It’s a morose and slow-paced and off-putting drama, in which even the joyous moments seem brittle and draped in melancholy.

Shia LaBeouf turns in one of the most sincere and effective performances of his career.

Though set in a real place and occurring within a historically accurate framework, The Nightingale often feels like a journey through Hell itself. It’s that punishing. That bleak. That horrific. That haunting. It’s also a powerful, gripping, masterfully filmed tale.

Ready or Not is a warped and audacious and absolutely ridiculous slapstick gorefest. The gross-out visual punchlines might have you doubling over with laughter. Or gagging to the point where you’ll regret ordering those nachos. Or both.

Though Light of My Life is a well-filmed and occasionally brutally effective piece of work, Affleck dilutes the power of the story with too many self-indulgent, patience-testing scenes.

Yes, it’s a raunchy, edgy, hard-R comedy about a trio of 12-year-old boys who drop the f-bomb every other sentence and get involved in all sorts of predicaments featuring sex toys and beer and molly — but even the most hardcore jokes have a good-natured and even sweet larger context.

Them That Follow is a harrowing and chilling deep dive into an isolated community in the Appalachian mountains.

Blinded by the Light is almost unspeakably corny at times as it shifts tones from realistic drama-comedy to flat-out musical — but it’s easy to forgive the bumpy moments in favor of sitting back and enjoying the simple pleasures of an old-fashioned, inspirational, coming-of-age tale … Especially if you’re a big Boss fan like yours truly.

In a rare weak performance for Cate Blanchett, she plays an aggravating, off-putting wife and mother in Richard Linklater’s disappointing book adaptation.

This is a time capsule — an expertly crafted time capsule — of an astonishing career.

So much of Luce is about what’s happening beneath the surface and between the lines. Everyone says they’re searching for the truth — even as they lie and obfuscate and bend the facts to suit their particular agendas and world views.

Sure, there are times when we’re aware our emotions are being manipulated — but we’re fine with that, because we want to see, and we expect to see, the heroic underdog triumph against nearly insurmountable odds.

Thanks in large part to Costner’s robust, earnest, growling, deadpan voice work as a dog who can be brilliant one moment and fantastically clueless the next, “The Art of Racing In the Rain” still comes close to winning us over … Until the final scene, which was so shameless and manipulative, I wanted a refund on every lump in the throat and teary-eyed moment I had experienced to that point.

It gets to the point where it hardly matters to us who lives and who dies, because they’re all stone-cold killers.

Painfully long, exceedingly tedious, consistently unimaginative and quite dopey.

In certain elements of tone and structure, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood has echoes of "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown," but it is alive and electric with a beat all its own.

While not all the pieces of the puzzle perfectly fit into place, it’s still a good yarn filled with arresting visuals and solid performances.

Some of the developments seem a bit rushed and forced, but then Shelton wraps up the story with the perfect grace note, and we find ourselves thinking about the lives of these characters beyond the closing credits and hoping they’re all going to be just fine.

This is a viewing experience to be treasured. It is one of the very best films of 2019.

Toni Morrison is an absolutely beautiful wordsmith and a beautiful force on multiple fronts, and if this documentary is an unabashed love letter to her life and work, I say: Why. Not.

With an intriguing premise, the magnetic Daisy Ridley (Rey in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy) in the lead and a stellar supporting cast including Naomi Watts in a dual role, Ophelia has its moments of inspiration and beauty.

Nanjiani and Bautista are terrific together, but Stuber also benefits from a quartet of wonderful actresses who are all effective despite limited screen time.

While the musical numbers don’t match the impact of the originals and there’s a bit of a lull in the second act where not all that much seems to be happening, The Lion King is on balance a solid and at times stunningly beautiful film.

Clocking in at a bloated 2 hours and 20 minutes and featuring a VERY slow build before we get to the good stuff, the gorgeous and weird and ludicrous horror film “Midsommar” tests our patience more than once before delivering some seriously grisly and wonderfully twisted material in the final act.

It’s a zesty and sweet and satisfying but not an overly dark slice of entertainment, bursting with pyrotechnics and sprinkled with sharp humor and infused with just enough life-and-death ingredients to keep you interested throughout.

A quirky and entertaining deadpan comedy/drama.

It’s the kind of music doc that makes you want to download about 50 songs — although you already should have most of them on your playlist.

Nightmare Cinema as a whole is the bloodiest, most violent, most gruesome and most twisted movie I’ve seen this year. And I mean that mostly in a good way.

It’s arguably the weakest, lamest and least memorable entry in the history of the franchise. It’s also crass and tone-deaf. And played mostly for laughs that are few and far between.

The Dead Don’t Die is delivered in one long, deadpan note. Some of the sight gags and quips are gold; others are just filler, but still kind of interesting in a wacky sort of way.

The fourth entry is a worthy addition to the Toy Story library, bringing back some of the most beloved characters in the history of animated film and introducing us to a fantastically entertaining new bunch of toys — some of them adorable and huggable, some of them more reminiscent of a certain type of creepy, old-school doll usually seen in R-rated horror films.

Tessa Thompson’s performance is the best thing in the movie, in part because she’s playing a character who genuinely respects the legacy of the Men (and Women) in Black and is thrilled to be part of the team.

Unusual framing device aside, Halston is on balance a solid and affectionate tribute to an American original.

As 16 Shots so well documents, this was a seminal moment in Chicago history, as “just another justified police shooting” turned out to be anything but that.

With Rolling Thunder Revue, Scorsese remains at the top of his game, and is the perfect filmmaker to tell the story of a unique chapter in the life and career of a fellow creative legend.

Despite the frequent verbal confrontation scenes in which characters lash out at one another, soap opera style, for lying or serving their selfish interests, Dark Phoenix doesn’t come close to carrying the emotional impact of so many Marvel Universe films where the characters come across as complicated, relatable and three-dimensional.

Even with all its pyrotechnics, and even with arguably the finest and deepest team of actors ever to appear in any of the three dozen movies about the big guy, King of the Monsters careens about all over the place in search of an identity, never really finding its footing as a campy treat, an exciting popcorn adventure or a monster movie with humans we actually care about.

It’s never a good thing when a film about a dying man sometimes has us wondering if some of the people in his life will be better off without him.

Elton John deserves a movie operating on a much grander scale than a standard, paint-by-numbers showbiz biopic, and Rocketman is a suitably snazzy vehicle.

Virtually every frame of this film is strikingly effective.

Clever trappings aside, Brightburn is filmed mostly as a horror movie, with the monster lurking just around the corner or pounding on the door as the dopey victims behave just like all the other dopey victims in forgettable slasher films.

In virtually every scenario, director Wilde and the team of screenwriters serve up the material in a fresh and original manner.

Despite a couple of large, genie-blue stumbles along the way, Guy Ritchie’s live-action version of Disney’s Aladdin is on balance a colorful and lively adventure suitable for all ages and a touching romance featuring two attractive leads — and has enough creative musical energy to introduce this story to A. Whole. New. World.

The dynamic between Dern and O’Connell is powerful and palpable, even though their bond develops solely through written correspondence and prison conversations in which they’re talking on the telephone and separated by thick glass.

It’s a hard-R live action cartoon, and it is superb, wall-to-wall action entertainment, and I’m already looking forward to “John Wick: Chapter Four: This Time He Adopts a Cat.”

If you want to see a solid movie about Bundy as mostly experienced through the viewpoint of the single mother who fell in love with him without knowing he was a murderer, check out the Netflix feature film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Vile and Evil.

The result is a well-acted, competently made, utterly tedious bore of a film lacking in creative spark, unwilling to take chances and determined to grind Tolkien through the muck and the blood of war and death at the expense of providing much insight into his creative process.

This is a noble effort, but ultimately Mary Magdalene isn’t much less of a mystery than she was at the start of the journey.

The Intruder is next-level dopey. Every single character in this film, including the villain, is irritatingly, maddeningly dumb. Nearly every scene is practically an invitation for the audience to talk back to the screen and ask these people if they’ve lost their minds.

There’s a certain vulnerability and intelligence, and a respectful and self-deprecating aspect to Rogen’s on-screen persona that makes these male-fantasy romances seem at least semi-plausible.

Director Lears and co-writer/editor Robin Blotnick had the benefit of knowing the outcomes when they put together the film, so it’s easy to understand why Ocasio-Cortez is the primary focus. But they do an excellent job of weaving in the stories of the three equally impressive candidates.

I’m not prepared to instantly label Avengers: Endgame as the best of the 23 Marvel Universe movies to date, but it’s a serious contender for the crown and it’s the undisputed champion when it comes to emotional punch.

Stretched over 135 minutes and overloaded with shout-to-the-rafters confrontations, Her Smell has too much talking and squawking, and not enough rocking and rolling.

Minghella does a fine job of capturing the essence of the 21st century talent competition show and all its corny, addictive allure.

Working with an economical running time of 100 minutes and a relatively modest budget, Hart infuses Fast Color with genuinely moving drama, an engrossing, supernatural-sci-fi mystery and some pretty darn impressive special effects.

Cruz is a deadpan treasure, never cracking the hint of a smile even as he delivers some well-timed one-liners. Wish we could have had an entire movie about this guy. Instead, we were cursed with the annoying and shrieking but not even close to terrifying La Llorona.

This is one of those wonderfully convoluted guilty-pleasure actioners with so many WTF moments.

The new Hellboy lands with a thud that’s loud and dark — but almost instantly forgettable.

Despite the best efforts of McGovern et al., The Chaperone is lightweight trifle.

Of course, Gilliam’s quest to make his Don Quixote film mirrors the original novel, and the movie he finally made is like a funhouse mirror version — filled with wonderfully, sometimes disturbingly strange imagery as tragedy meets comedy meets romance meets the noble glory of the artist sacrificing nearly everything in the quest to make lasting art.

Despite the strong performances and more than a few audience-pleasing moments where peace and love triumph over stupidity and bigotry, the film travels such an obvious path and falls into such a predictable rhythm, it doesn’t quite carry the emotional resonance such a powerful true-life story should convey.