Four Good Days is a portrait of addiction that wants to dive into the ugliest parts: the detox, the physical deterioration, the flop houses, the things Molly did for drugs. But, despite Kunis’ haggard appearance, Four Good Days only flirts with ugly, pulling away from the most vile details at the last moments.

I’m not saying the film needed to be formally experimental. But as it is, the documentary feels deeply pointless.

Every character is merely a stereotype or symbol, not a fully-fleshed out person. Indeed, one has to wonder what every actor, including Monaghan, is doing in this flimsily written psychological thriller, but perhaps, that question isn’t even worth the speculation.

Even if Godzilla vs. Kong feels more a tad more mecha than human, it satisfies nonetheless. The MonsterVerse remains a better-than-average franchise, pulling enough variations on its theme of Titans, clashing, to keep on keepin’ on.

The film doesn’t seem particularly interested in who Turner is as an artist, or her creative inclinations and musical instincts.

The cast generates the goodwill. Madison and Quinn bring heart and some shrewd dramatic instincts, while Cook and Sterling settle comfortably into a sincere comic key.

I hate hidden-camera gags on principle and have since “Candid Camera.” It takes something at least as funny as the first “Borat” (and, at its sharpest and sweetest, the second one), or this movie, for my jaw to unclench long enough to enjoy the brutal slapstick and the faux human misery.

Lean, mean and brutish, Nobody is best enjoyed as the juicy piece of pulp that it is. But Odenkirk, stepping into an action hero role for the first time, brings a sense of dolefulness and rue to this performance.

I’d love to say it isn’t half-bad, but I can’t, because it is. It’s roughly 50 percent bad. The other 50 percent is better than that, even with a running time that threatens to never stop not stopping.

It zigs when it might zag (unless you’re already familiar with Wynne’s life story), and “The Courier” becomes something much more dark, complex and moving.

While the sentiments feel authentic, the ludicrous plot, filled with holes, doesn’t do the emotional aspects of the story any service.

A cinematic delicacy as rare as the truffle itself.

The end result is a movie that comes across as disappointingly vacant, a jumbled collection of good intentions gone wrong.

The movie — certainly Daniels’s best since “Precious” — is as turbulent and zigzaggy as Holiday’s life no doubt felt like to the woman who lived it. If this risky movie hits some bum notes, Andra Day cannot be found anywhere in the vicinity.

What happens in Night of the Kings is a piece of traditional oration and impermanent art, significantly marked by both its temporal and improvisational qualities. It’s both a power struggle and a ritual practiced by the collective within a microcosm of society housed under the oppression of the state, and a powerful demonstration of the transporting, and liberating, power of narrative.

Horror films often offer catharsis, but rarely are they also as deeply sorrowful as Keith Thomas’s The Vigil, a horror film based in Jewish faith and culture.

The acting’s uniformly strong, and the script is distressingly weak.

There are colors that pop throughout film — as if, in a nod to the title, drawn from a TV test pattern — and visually this is what stayed with me, from the yellow of Renesha’s dress, to the aqua benches against the white antiseptic floors of the hospital waiting room

Wiig and Mumolo work so easily and smoothly together, you feel like an ingrate for not enjoying their efforts more in these script circumstances (especially since they wrote it). Now and then, though, the payoffs arrive.

Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung is telling his own story here. The rough outlines and even some of the specific details are autobiographical and filtered through his memories of childhood. But he’s also considering these themes from his perspective now as an adult with a child of his own . . . and he straddles the two sides of this line so well, with wit and nuance, but also with such cutting precision.

I wish the results were better, and a lot stranger. Cahill’s world-building has its moments, though. And the filmmaker did determine — correctly — that it’d be fun to have Bill Nye, the science guy, in a bow tie, portraying a sniffy scientific researcher.

Early on, the camera is outside looking in through the couple’s windows and it’s as if we’re eavesdropping. That kind of cinematic intimacy is a huge draw, even if things are about to get ugly.

Sophisticated management of tone makes Two of Us rich and nuanced, complex and utterly heartbreaking. Within the folds of the film, simultaneously a love story, thriller and tragedy, nearly anyone can find an anchor, or a wound. It illustrates with devastating clarity what a mess secrets can make, and how one errant, unpredictable thread can unravel any carefully calibrated lie.

Hartigan has a knack for sensitive, human dramas, and while Little Fish takes place in a near-future heightened reality, the story is relatable not only because we’re all living through a pandemic ourselves, dealing with grief and loss on a scale that ranges from the deeply personal to the impossibly large, but because this kind of loss is also very real.

Judas and the Black Messiah is my kind of dramatized Chicago history. It’s a real movie, for one thing — brash, narratively risky, full of life and sneaky wit (even if the dominant tone is one of foreboding) and brimming with terrific actors.

No Man’s Land is an interesting twist on the border drama, daring to depict Mexico as complex and nuanced country: welcoming, fascinating and menacing in equal parts. But the story still centers a white male experience and hero’s journey.

The moral conundrums aren’t particularly thorny, since Balram’s revenge is well-earned. Yet Bahrani works so well with the individual actors, they seem like people, not archetypes or stereotypes.

The film wants to speak to some kind of old school, lone-ranger American hero type (as portrayed by a man from Northern Ireland), but it’s too vague, shying away from any controversy, to say much at all.

The actors take your mind off things when they can: I like the way Hathaway jabs her elbow at the elevator buttons for punctuation, and the ardent commitment to language Ejiofor brings to his character’s public poetry readings. But a movie shouldn’t rely on Hathaway and Ejiofor to shell-game your attention away from the movie itself.

The stakes are important, but the film is carried by a stream of small, acutely observed moments, and the way these actors move, converse, relate and enliven Powers’s best dialogue. It’s a case of getting the best of both worlds: a strong, mellow film of urgent, historically prescient ideas expanded from a juicy theatrical premise.

There’s not a thrill to be found in this ostensible thriller, a rote kidnapping exercise taped together with digital blood spatter and an overly dramatic score, vaguely gesturing at global crises from five years ago.

In Pieces of a Woman Kirby never seems to be building up artificial climaxes or big reveals; she works on a quieter, truer level. Too much going on around her ends up working against her.

The film positions Black women at the center of their own stories, and this authentic portrayal of the platonic relationships that hold them together feels rich and true, a celebration of a feminine community that becomes family.

The movie at hand is small, I suppose, and it may not be enough for some audiences. It’s enough for me.

It’s a moderately diverting sequel. That means it’s also a distinct drop down from the 2017 origin story.

If we strip away the comets raining fire on the earth, this film is about how the ways in which how we treat each other can be a matter of life or death. Even in that darkness, it dares to have a little hope.

The music is drippy and constant, the wobble from comedy to drama feels off, and the dialects have been reamed in the Irish press. Charm resists calculation; even if actors get some going, even if a writer creates an approximation in or between the lines, deliberately manufactured charm curdles so easily. The one success story of Wild Mountain Thyme belongs to Blunt, who has yet to give a poor or lazily considered performance.

It places a modern lens on complicated questions of art, love and perspective in storytelling, in an entertaining and intelligent thriller of intimate proportions.

The movie’s a little sketchy and underwritten, and it feels sometimes as if scenes have been pared away or cut altogether to concentrate on Ahmed. But Ahmed really is terrific. Director Marder has a knack for both observing and igniting human behavior, through character. And supervising sound editor Nicolas Baker’s work astounds, period.

While Another Round inspects the varying effects of alcohol on daily life, it’s far from clinical. Waves of ebullience, love, humor and sorrow crash on top of each other, as anyone who’s ever been overserved can attest to. It isn’t prescriptive about drinking, and doesn’t seek to impart any message other than that life is hard, and sometimes dark, and sometimes ecstatically beautiful.

The tweaks are interesting, even if they can’t do anything about larger narrative frustrations.

Hart and Horowitz map this hero’s journey onto her growth as a mother, her empowerment proving to be a source not just of strength, but love — a rare commodity in a crime flick.

The result is a narrow slice of a much, much larger story, somewhat akin to the hands-off, eyes-wide-open documentary approach of Frederick Wiseman — if Wiseman were a war correspondent. Rarely has recent global history seemed so far away, yet so present. It’s one of the year’s essential documents.

Happiest Season” isn’t full-on farce; it’s lower-key, and runs into trouble only when the script contends with confessional monologues right up against hiding-in-a-literal-closet routines or routine slapstick, as it does in the climax. But you know? It works.

Because the movie starts at an 11 and doesn’t let up, the runtime feels overly long. However, the voice performances are excellent, especially Cage, who brings his signature sense of yearning pathos to Grug the Neanderthal.

Cutler’s documentary skip-walks a fine line between a great, unstable talent’s rise and fall, and between the un-tender trap of addiction and the joyous energy of a Chicago-bred giant.

In Zappa, this legendary artist’s uncompromising nature is bracing, bold and utterly refreshing.

Seeing these actors, the late Boseman chief among them, relish the opportunity to try to get a daunting stage-to-screen adaptation right: That’s a privilege to behold.

Gripping, incisive and shockingly powerful, Collective is easily the documentary of the year.

It’s a familiar but enjoyably vindictive PG-13 thriller about mother/daughter trust issues. Plus a little psychopathology.

The film capably, if expectedly, proceeds down this standard procedural path, progressing from investigation to trial, with flourishes of genius every now and again from Pearce, having some campy fun as van Meegeren. But even with a few courtroom theatrics and some profound ethical issues to chew on, The Last Vermeer is ultimately a dreadfully milquetoast outing.

What’s missing is the vital emotional turbulence of Sciamma’s modern classic, or of any three-dimensional story of passion and feeling. The compensations here are smaller, but they’re welcome, too; they’re more about two fine actresses digging for what’s underneath the obvious contours.

The revelation here is Vaughn, who in his 6-foot-5-inch frame, physically channels the body language and gestures of an otherwise petite, cowering teen.

It’s best taken, I think, as a romantic gesture to a writer who loved movies. Well, two, really: Herman J. Mankiewicz, and Jack Fincher.

A 1960s-set Western laden with big skies, steady gazes and slow-roasted narrative corn, Let Him Go gets by on the strength of its female leads, Diane Lane and Lesley Manville. Kevin Costner’s effective, too, and he’s right in his taciturn sweet spot, muttering about this and that.

A pre-teen on the autism spectrum, lonely and isolated, becomes the online prey of an unwanted stranger, a monster from another realm. That’s Come Play in one sentence. The results unfold more like a collection of reference points to previous film than a film unto itself.

I laughed at a good deal of the movie, but a good deal more of it left me with (Cohen’s intention, probably) the taste of ashes in the mouth.

What makes Synchronic sing is the two together, zinging each other with sardonic one-liners, their conversations meandering to the cosmic and the macabre after a few whiskeys.

While Bad Hair is more humorously incisive than truly terrifying, Lorraine, in the leading role, sells it, while Simien creates space to discuss the ways in which women enforce unfair standards of beauty on each other in a white patriarchal society, using the horror genre as a blunt but effective tool to clear the path.

The Devil Has a Name has an important message if you can get past the unwieldy melodrama of the film, but the second coming of “Erin Brockovich” this is not.

The pretty, empty, emotionally frictionless and touch-free new Rebecca adaptation may suit the pandemic dictates for social distancing, but the drama fails to spark.

Pietro Marcello’s sweeping historical Italian epic Martin Eden is a whole lot of movie. It possesses a weight and heft, both cinematically and philosophically, that make it a rare treat. And at the center of the film is a whole lot of movie star: Luca Marinelli’s performance in the title role is an outstanding star turn for the Italian actor.

It’s a movie about a movie star taking out the trash, leaving behind a lower body count than usual, but executing his duties faithfully, and with a predictable dash — the right kind of predictable — of world-weary charisma.

Spontaneous allows Langford’s Mara, blasé swagger incarnate, and Plummer’s stealth charmer enough unaffected sincerity to make it stick. Onto that sticky stuff, the script applies comforting reminders: Stuff happens. We don’t know how long we have. Seize the day.

Bradley’s film is a lyrical documentary, a piece that feels like a poem or a prayer, an almost meditative experience, set to a plaintive piano score.

Yellow Rose is an emotional blunt instrument. It’s not exactly subtle, but then again, the best country songs, and the best coming-of-age tales, rarely are.

The final third of this grim, accomplished film felt sluggish to me; just when he might’ve profitably gone crazier with the scenario, and the storytelling rhythm, Cronenberg putters and lets the audience get out ahead of the developments.

The Forty-Year-Old-Version is that rarest of films: funny, wry, incisive, sexy and sincere.

Seeing what may be Coppola’s least compelling film has a way of reminding you of all her better ones, especially in the seriocomic vein. Those include the aforementioned “Lost in Translation,” along with “The Bling Ring,” “Somewhere,” even the playfully anachronistic “Marie Antoinette.” If they’re new to you, have at them.

Parsons has some sharp, truthful moments, but his demeanor lacks the world-weary authority as written. (His zingers have lost a lot of their zing, it must be said.) Everyone else is wonderful, and the limitations of Parsons and Quinto, in the end, are just that — limitations of often effective work.

How does it all end? Don’t go looking to Save Yourselves! for answers. It lands in an ambiguous middle that’s not too bleak or too hopeful and just falls flat; an exaggerated shrug.

Sorkin’s writing may be better served by a director who can bring a new set of perspectives and dynamics to the work, rather than simply presenting them head-on. Yet it works anyway. The actors win on appeal. And it’s always worth revisiting this particular chapter of Chicago unrest and injustice, because that chapter, tragically, is always up for another rewrite.

For such a sweet film, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles evolves into a complex exploration of the symbiotic relationship between money and art, and questions what the visibility of that conspicuous consumption could portend.

Blackbird is a simple tale, well-told, but it’s also the tale of all tales, of life, death and everything in between.

All four key actors are lovely, none of them playing to the camera — Durkin likes nice, long, slow-zoom set-ups, roomy and generous — and all of them affecting. Coon has the built-in advantage of playing the character undergoing the most evident and playable changes. But she’s extraordinary in her contained emotion.

Souza comes off as a genuine and genuinely humble talent. There is, however, an element of intentional or inadvertent image-packaging that goes with any White House photographer’s beat. One wishes Souza were heard on the subject of the fine, tricky line between reportorial authenticity and visual flattery.

While there’s little or no outright expression of religious faith in Nomadland, Zhao and company have given us a glancing but evocative state-of-the-nation character study. In its own spiritual fashion, Fern’s story becomes one about the character of a nation, and an America desperately searching for the ribbon of highway (to quote Woody Guthrie) to take us all the way home.

Extremely well wrought. Not overwrought. Not underwrought. Just wrought.

For all the film’s minor flaws, it is deeply moving and incredibly important to witness the impact of "I Am Woman” as an enduring, uplifting cry for freedom and empowerment.

The lush production design by Zazu Myers, especially in the Chloe Hotel, and rich cinematography by Alar Kivilo make for a colorfully saturated fantasy of New York City that elevates the film. This is a big, juicy rom-com that has proven to be a rare entity these days on the big screen.

Shooting largely on New Zealand’s South Island, Caro has a beautiful knack for fluid transitions: the witch entering the body of an unsuspecting traveler in silhouetted shadow, for example, or a simple, fixed composition of Mulan riding from one side of the screen to the other, in extreme long shot. The dizzying wuxia martial arts action, with warriors sprinting up, down and sideways, defying gravity, propel the action scenes without overwhelming them.

The documentary infers a good deal about Mulvihill’s underworld connections and political maneuvers without quite nailing them down.

Cheesy, yes, hit-and-miss, maybe, but the bits that work really do work.

It’s frustrating, although I’m grateful Kaufman didn’t simply film the book as written. The actors couldn’t be better attuned to the nervous system of this universe.

I wish Tenet exploited its own ideas more dynamically. Nolan’s a prodigious talent. But no major director, I suppose, can avoid going sideways from time to time.

Tilda Swinton’s a tightly wound riot as Copperfield’s snappish aunt, living seaside and fending off stray donkeys while her serenely mad lodger Mr. Dick resides in his own universe. He is played by Hugh Laurie, beautifully, as if Bertie Wooster had taken a few wrong turns.

Though the film initially feels like a patriotic tale of a daring mission, this isn't a story of U.S. military triumph, it's one of sorrow.

In the sadistic yet middling road-rage thriller Unhinged, Crowe literally steers the vehicle delivering the big box of acting, over- and under-. While there’s barely a movie there, a year from now, when the multiplexes of the world will either largely be back, be gone or be something in between, we’ll have forgotten Unhinged.

While Represent could’ve used another 20 minutes to flesh out its unguarded moments, this is a strong feature-length directorial debut. Regional politics is local politics is national politics. It’s revealing to see how the sausage gets made, and who gets to make it.

The clever and nicely gory Sputnik comes from Russia with love, slime, and an impressive lesson in efficient, low-cost pulp filmmaking.

It is potentially the most culturally relevant film of the fall, masterfully made and one heck of an emotional roller coaster. From moment to moment Boys State veers from exciting to troubling to amusing, and it's never anything less than utterly riveting.

Howard does a fine, loving job tracing who he was as a gay Jewish boy growing up in Baltimore; as an aspiring playwright and theatrical impresario, schooled at Boston University, Goddard College in Vermont, the summer theater program at Tufts University, and a graduate student at Indiana University; and as a hungry young New York City transplant, eager to make his mark.

This one’s more than one kind of comedy, too. It’s a sweet yet nicely vinegary immigration fable; a deadpan fantasy; and a tale of two Brooklyns, one (1920) a repository of rat-infested factories and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, the other (2020) the gentrified land of their progressive, pea milk-drinking great-grandchildren.

It’s frequently gripping and finally very moving. The director’s innate decency and forthright sense of craft does justice to a painful subject — one with unexpected connections to the 2020 pandemic moment.

It's a refreshing spin on this type of film that's usually quite white and heteronormative.

The lightly carbonated fizz of I Used to Go Here has everything to do with Rey’s deftly chosen ensemble.

It starts out good and turns out dumb, ditching a promising, nicely suggestive first half for second-half payoffs (revealed in the trailer) taking director Dave Franco’s feature directorial debut into lame and lamer slasher-film territory.

In several scenes, the camera stays close to Dyer’s dazzling array of expressions at the computer keyboard, while Alice processes the latest rabbit hole or interior dilemma. Maine knows a pitch-perfect performance when she sees one.