A modest, nicely executed diversion, with a slim, not especially memorable story.

Although Doucouré steeps Cuties in emotion and experience, she abandons its grace to make crazier gestures.

Overall, Smile delivers a captivating and claustrophobic mental hellscape that will cause one to both grimace and grin.

The film just lacks in, you know, tension, danger, build, and stakes, the hallmarks of dramatic narrative. It’s almost as though the word “mellifluous,” pertaining to Hania Rani’s score, was coined for this film.

Even as the movie devolves into an ineffectual shaggy-dog story shoehorned into a baffling and abrupt real-life backdrop, it remains a slick and enjoyable pastiche about messy outlaws adrift in a world designed to screw them over.

[A] suitably workmanlike documentary.

"The Book of Solutions" is — first and foremost — a high-energy ode to the joys of being possessed by a creative spirit, and the pleasure that Gondry takes in telling a plot-light story that’s driven by pure invention is both palpable and contagious.

Sponge on the Run sprints by too fast to dwell on the moments when it runs out of breath, and the mad science that Hillenburg first experimented with on “Rocko’s Modern Life” still draws from such a textured palette of sweet insanity that you can’t help but keep watching.

There’s no denying that Los Frikis were punk as hell, and errant traces of that anti-establishment attitude can be found in Nilson and Schwartz’s refusal to judge their characters for injecting themselves with HIV as a “fuck you” to a government that hadn’t left them any other choice, but the declawed safety of their storytelling undercuts that energy at every turn.

Watching Brosnan shoot a henchman’s earring off from 20 feet away is fun and all, but the real pleasure of Fast Charlie has less to do with such “he’s still got it!” theatrics than it does with the slow-boiling idea that, for Charlie and Marcie, the best might still be yet to come.

The results are a bit more wishy-washy than usual. If Mills’ films are typically aimed at the intersection where the personal and the universal collide, this one can be unspecific in a way that drifts toward vagueness.

It’s lovely, lively, and guaranteed to get kids interested in the wild world around them, all the better if that also includes some outside research into what really happened with Joao and Dindim.

Inconsistent tonality, uneven pacing, and far too many self-referential winks dilute this tale of unrequited love before it even has a chance to fully develop.

"Blood Brothers” is worthwhile for the introspective investigation of lives so often, in the public eye, devoid of the tangled humanity that all interpersonal relationships carry.

The film depends too greatly on its sense of academia to unearth its story, and it struggles to fully engage with the explosive topic at hand for its first hour. However, in the final stretch of its 85-minute runtime, this approach proves foundational for chilling revelations and quiet, cinematically self-evident questions about the way we remember history.

While this isn’t quite the stuff of vintage Black, it’s close enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing him crank another one out every two years for the next decade.

Bienvenu comes up with a stirring ending, one so emotional it almost paves over the bumps in the narrative road that got us there.

It's less of a showcase for Bateman's ability to direct comedic storytelling than simply to make people laugh, which makes Bad Words a sufficiently vulgar playground.

It’s a genre blend that’s delightful, baffling, and surprisingly ruthless in its decisive direction with a holiday twist that isn’t necessary for the plot but certainly ties the zany concept together.

Liberated from the bumper lanes that are built into the sitcom format — from the oppressiveness of canned laughter, throwaway B-plots, and the steady drumbeat of commercial breaks — Romano’s latest semi-autobiographical charmer is free to tell a more nuanced story within his favorite milieu, and it often does so with enough grace and sensitivity to suggest that Romano might be even better-suited to the big screen than he was to network broadcasts.

Well cast and undeniably attuned to the nuances of human behavior, Amigo nevertheless suffers from simple dramatic shorthand.

We know where this is going. That doesn’t dilute the emotional power of it, of a man seeing where his heart really is and what that means in practice.

What I wish for this film is that it had trusted the lilting rhythms of its own initial story more confidently rather than a crash into various melodramatic episodes in the finale that only serve to get us to a hurtled-toward cathartic ending.

If only the story that surrounded it was as strong and well-crafted as the locales and people who populate it, The Photograph would be more than worthy of affection. As it stands, it just never quite develops into anything more.

His new sequel contains as much blatant fan service as you might expect, and some of it is probably even worse than what you’re imagining, but the film eventually finds its footing by making (and committing to) some legitimately bold choices.

What we’re left with is a rather opaque portrait of the artist as a man, but certainly a vivid one of the man’s art.

A fun but largely unnecessary fourth outing.

As an experiment in filmmaking trickery, All the Money in the World is an extraordinary viewing experience; without that, it’s a compulsively watchable rumination on the worst of the one percent.

Micheli’s film is less than artful, scattered with limited talking heads (mostly Lopez’s business partners and her mother, briefly), random flashbacks, occasional archival footage, and a series of short sequences that could frame their own films (particularly quick-cut segments about Lopez’s early years, her treatment by the press, the obsession with her body, the constant tabloid attention), but none of that is the draw: it’s Lopez.

The result isn’t as riveting as “I Am Not Your Negro” — it feels less personal and more generic, like a term paper someone could have written in undergrad. Still, Peck makes his points well, and accomplishes what he sets out to do by getting your blood pressure rising.

Hubie Halloween gets by on the strength of its cameos and sight gags.

Though it’s all satisfyingly silly, Mafia Mamma never quite find its tone. Hardwicke doesn’t seem to know if she’s doing Quentin Tarantino or Mel Brooks, and the two styles are so far apart that splitting the difference lands the movie out at sea.

Things grow slacker and a touch sillier by its middle act, which both does away with big problems and introduces entire new ones in their place. Still, Condor remains such a genuinely adorable leading lady and Lara Jean such a special character that fans will undoubtedly embrace the messy ride.

It’s only once Butterfly Jam seems doomed to repeat the same dark fatalism of Balagov’s earlier work that it suddenly affirms itself as the bittersweet fable that it’s been all along.

While Yen makes sure to acknowledge that he isn’t as young as he used to be, such admissions prove needlessly self-effacing.

The beats of Fighting With My Family are comfortingly familiar, and the soap opera pomp of the wrestling world is eye-popping to both fans and neophytes alike, but it’s Pugh that is always fresh, surprising, and wily. The film might not hit hard, but Pugh never stops doing just that.

Much like “Les Misérables” before it, “Les Indésirables” is a series of riveting setpieces that are strung together with a mess of exposed wires, and much like “Les Misérables” before it, “Les Indésirables” can be easy to forgive for its contrivances because Ly’s anger is so palpable, his vision so viscerally lived-in, and his widescreen cinema so capable of galvanizing suffering through spectacle (a mixed blessing).

The End We Start From leaves most of its spectacle to the imagination (radio news reports handle the lion’s share of the heavy lifting), freeing Belo to train her camera on the whirlwind of emotions that storm across Comer’s face as her character gradually comes to realize that none of this is just for now.

Mothering Sunday pushes toward cut-and-dried conclusions, sewing up certain storylines with a finality that doesn’t befit the early sense that nothing is really ever over for Jane or the wounded world she inhabits.

There’s enough potential with the balloon’s feats to justify an entire feature-length experience set within its basket, but The Aeronauts constantly interrupts the journey to shoehorn random tangents on the ground, and busies up the drama with underdeveloped side characters.

It’s fine that Bonello would rather raise unsettling questions than provide unhelpful answers, but his inquiry often feels every bit as confused as his characters. Nocturama is enthralling until the bitter end, but it’s so hard to distill its purpose that you can’t tell if the film is opaque or if it simply offers nothing to see.

Fortunately, the black-and-white debut of writer-director Logan Sandler is just sharp enough to complicate its clichés with strong performances and a mesmerizing tone that pushes the mopey proceedings into psychological thriller territory.

I know that Cameron has committed himself to another two sequels, and now I know why he’s starting to hedge about whether or not he wants to direct them himself; even the most orgiastic moments in “Fire and Ash” left me feeling like he’s ready to come back down to Earth.

As a whole, Begin Again is a fairly mannered treatment of an expressive medium.

Execution is more of the issue, as the film’s 112-minute running time feels both packed to the gills and unable to fully tackle everything James’ script throws at the wall. Yet a strong visual sense and excellent performances, especially from Midori Francis, are tough to beat.

In a movie that likens passing legislation to pulling off a massive heist, eventually departing from reality altogether in a series of late-game twists so intricate they would make Danny Ocean blush, the sheer velocity of Chastain’s performance holds it all together.

Even though it doesn’t aim for outright comedy, Dumont doesn’t deny the material some levity.

Unfortunately, the character development never hits hard enough for “I.S.S.” to transcend being a cool idea, rather than a cool movie.

Powell and Arjona have fizzy chemistry with each other, which isn’t much of a shock for two people who could probably get a spark going with a paper bag during a rainstorm, but it’s fun to watch both of their characters throw themselves into their new lives.

But the most fundamental reason why “The Creator,” for all of its shortcomings and clichés, ultimately sold me on its optimism is that it succeeds as a blueprint where it fails as a movie.

Larraín’s freeform portrait of the diva’s final days seldom feels like more than a libretto: passionately sung, but lacking the detail and fullness needed to bring it to life.

The film still ends in rousing fashion, but it recognizes something far more profound: There are no actual conclusions in real life, even if we can feel moments of triumph throughout. It’s what next that matters.

As with all of the director’s previous work, Funny Face is electric and moribund in equal measure, the simplicity of its story obscured by the opacity of its telling. The film is so unformed that it feels like its shots might disassociate from each other at any moment, but also so unsubtle that its script could’ve been sky-written over Brooklyn.

Godard’s revolutionary crime drama about a guy, a girl, and a gun comes off more like a pet project or even a student film here, part of both the charms and frustrations of Nouvelle Vague.

Downsizing is rife with witty visual touches and inspired comic premises but never quite comes together as fully successful whole.

Harriet doesn’t reinvent the biopic formula, but Erivo’s performance injects a palpable urgency to the material that makes up for missed time.

If Low Tide recedes all too fast, it still leaves behind a clear sense that life doesn’t always happen on schedule, and that the hardest part of growing up is figuring out what to share with people along the way.

The ending may be strained, but it works its way to just the right sentiment.

McQueen’s pointillistic approach invites our minds to wander freely between then and now, his film less interested in shuddering at the specifics of its awful facts than it is in probing our ever-evolving relationship to them, but the documentary’s monotonousness resists deeper engagement.

Of course, nobody does a better job of inhabiting their character’s future shell than Michael Gandolfini, whose performance as juvenile delinquent Tony Soprano is such a lived-in riff on his father’s most famous role that it completely transcends the gimmicky task at hand.

A straightforward tale of overcoming personal and professional challenges with no fancy dressing, Grigris goes down easy but offers nothing remotely fresh.

Despite some obvious budgetary constraints and irksome plot holes, the movie strives to provide an alternative vision of the superhero narrative tied to the genuine experiences of people learning to come out of their shells and confront a new future for blackness, motherhood, and women taking charge.

Glitter & Doom isn’t quite as polished as other jukebox musicals like “Mamma Mia!,” or even “Across the Universe” for that matter, but this scrappy, DIY approach is very much in keeping with the duo who inspired this film in the first place.

Simran might put Ranaut front and center, the film proves once again that in Bollywood, screenplays that truly serve an actress’s talent are still woefully hard to find.

Despite its shortcomings, “John and the Hole” shows enough restraint and thematic sophistication to indicate strong potential for Sisto behind the camera.

Neither the deficiencies of Thorne’s script nor the made-for-TV feeling of Taylor’s direction ever fully obscure the enduringly relevant principle they exist to serve: Science will always keep inching forward, but it’s society’s job to ensure that bringing life into this world is a happiness worth the heartache of living in it.

While director Sam Fell continues the stop-motion brilliance of Peter Lord and Nick Park’s original, set pieces and winking homages are given primacy over character stakes leading to a somewhat grating emotional ride.

It spreads itself too wide and too shallow, and leaves us wishing that we might have seen more of the journey that has come to define Jones’ adult life: The path to starting a family of her own.

As is clear from the very first scene, and made all the more so by the very last, She Rides Shotgun is Polly’s movie at its core, and Heger’s face — a detailed portrait of love and loss, its colors all the more radiant by how they run together when she cries — is expressive enough to make it a movie worth watching even when it feels like one we’ve already seen a number of times before.

As a coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old forced to reconsider her place in her family after finally recognizing their place in the world, “A Chiara” can be vague and heavy-handed (even at the same time). As the final layer of a mosaic that renders Gioia Tauro a microcosm of the modern world . . . it’s hard to imagine a more harrowing or distressingly unsettled finish.

Blitz creates a rousing show of strength in the face of horrific civil strife, and there’s an undeniable power to how McQueen revisits the most visible chapter of his country’s history through the eyes of someone who’s so frequently been erased from its pages. If some of the movie is hurt by its failure to bear his imprint, that only serves to remind us just how valuable his imprint has become.

It doesn’t always fit seamlessly together, but it’s far more entertaining than that might lead on. This is a spirited and sweet spin on classic material that deserves kudos for its balance of necessary updates and affection for the old ways. Mostly, it’s a reminder of what’s actually worth considering and critiquing: the final product. This one is good.

The story works wonderfully as an idea, but Kore-eda never quite manages to infuse it with the same depth of feeling his main character goes through.

Whether Girl Most Likely intentionally satirizes its upending of conventions or suffers from a half-assed screenplay, the resulting hodgepodge at least livens up a clichéd premise.

Basic yet enraging ... it shines a harsh light at one of the greatest evils of our time with all the panache of a "Dateline" special.

Sometimes Souleymane feels like he’s sprinting through a race with no finish line, and sometimes he’s running into an unmovable brick wall. The film exists in the space between those opposing outcomes, and its contradictions become its greatest strength as it depicts the endless exhaustion of navigating a system that doesn’t care about you nearly as much as it claims to.

Despite its refined palate and dashes of local flavor, The Feast remains empty calories — haunting only for how it seems to admit as much in the very last shot.

A potent but emotionally diffuse coming-of-age drama in which everything — even faith, even love — has the potential to be as exploitative as the deforestation that continues to eat away at the soul of the Amazon.

Musicals are meant to be big, expansive, overstuffed, emotionally rich, so consuming that the concept of singing and dancing about it make all the sense in the world. Just as “Wicked” starts hitting its highest notes, it’s over. For now. For another year. And not for good.

Cruella is lousy with incredible costumes (from Oscar-winner Jenny Beavan, who should absolutely be back in the awards mix with this one) and needle drops that run the gamut between hilarious and too-on-the-nose, a riot of sound and color and delight that partially obscures the darkness at the film’s heart.

It’s only in the film’s final moments that Diana realizes the power of the team, but “Nyad” would have felt just that much deeper if the film itself recognized it earlier. There’s more to “Nyad” than Diana, and there’s more to this story than swimming.

Princess is an arresting and taxing film experience, and although Ezer’s execution and vision are clear-eyed and she’s portraying experiences that still (tragically) occur in the real world, it’s difficult to wonder what the film itself is hoping to accomplish.

The vague but vividly rendered All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt runs a little drier every time writer-director Raven Jackson loops back to squeeze another drop of meaning from the textures and traditions that connect a Black Mississippi woman to the place where she was born (and vice-versa).

“Force of Nature” generates just enough mystery never to be boring, but not enough interest to elevate it above its modest trappings.

There’s something ineffably beautiful about such a purehearted folly, even if a Herzogian drama about the making of Loving Vincent might have more to offer than the film does itself.

Green has made a slavish, sharply executed bit of fan service elevated by Jamie Lee Curtis’ transformation into a badass grandmother back to finish the job.

As exercises in pulp go, this one yields a solid workout.

They mix like Fireball and water, but the odd couple nonetheless shares a sensational chemistry, building on the base amusement of seeing Oh let her extension-laden hair down and Awkwafina crimp the straight-man character into weird new shapes.

A pulpy slice of pie from deep in the heart of American nowhere, Evan Katz’s Small Crimes is far too convoluted for such an admittedly modest thriller, but the film ties together in such a perfect bow that it’s tempting to forgive all of the knots it took to get there.

The always-understated director never mines the domestic situation for excessive melodrama, instead opting to step back and wryly examine the three leads’ contradictory impulses.

Before its messy climax, Skyman works well as a tragicomic look at the nature of extraterrestrial obsessives. After a random expert opens the movie by explaining that such true believers are “looking for something science can’t prove,” Myrick digs into the psychological factors driving that desire with enthralling results.

This is horror filmmaking that's designed to work on you like a virus, slowly incapacitating your defenses so it can build up and do some real damage.

The result is an anodyne if increasingly tender little film that would have been lost in its own lineage if not for the strength of its cast.

Ejiofor’s compassionate script, adapted from William’s 2009 memoir, is finely attuned to the cold realities that confront its warm characters. It only struggles to chart a clear arc for its protagonist, who remains a bright and quietly determined kid from start to finish, while his (often sidelined) father is the one who best embodies the film’s conflict.

The film's primary delights are found in either fleeting moments of comedy or Jeremy Piven continuing to crush the role he was born to play -- pure raging id coupled with enough human decency to make him... perhaps not likable, but watchable, for sure.

The film’s determination to shed light on systemic causes of dementia is admirable, but the real takeaway of Little Empty Boxes is that caring for a parent in a state of serious decline is an impossible task at which everyone is technically destined to “fail.” All we can do is our best, and the last true challenge is making peace with the fact that it will never be good enough.

While Francine distinguishes itself with atmospheric strangeness, Cassidy and Shatzky never create a satisfying whole.

Prior and Zagorodnii are both so watchable, and their chemistry so electric, that it’s easy to get swept away in their romance. Historical accuracy be damned.