In Reitman’s hands — which are confident and clumsy in equal measure — these hefty matters play out as a mordant political comedy that tries to split the difference between “Veep” and “All the President’s Men.” That’s a tough needle to thread, and it doesn’t take long before “The Front Runner” throws in the towel on that idea.

The movie takes its time to provide a satisfying rationale, occasionally suffering from a sluggish pace and sleepy atmosphere that lessens the underlying mystery surrounding Erin’s mission, but Kidman imbues the material with continuous bite.

Mike Leigh’s expansive, exhaustive, and extraordinarily thorough portrait of early 19th-century political activism is, to put it one way, deliberate in pace and tone. To put it bluntly — and in an argot more readily familiar to its cast of working-class characters — the film is bloody well dull.

Guadagnino dredges up the dead with such crazed purpose that his magnum opus is able to dance through its rough spots and make good on its foreboding promise.

So much of Welles’ history has been relegated to scholarly texts that it’s a thrill to see this final chapter laid out with such clarity and charm.

There are plenty of plot devices to keep the audience on its toes, and Reynor is the epitome of a 21st century lovable antihero, so fashionable these days. He’s hard and grizzled when needed, but soft and playful as well.

The Old Man & the Gun eschews pastiche for a sweet, affable character study that resurrects Redford’s original star power with a wet kiss. The entire picture amounts to a low-key cinematic resurrection.

"Buster Scruggs” is a singular illustration of what makes the Coen formula so appealing, and a reminder of so many better examples.

Credit to Cooper for delivering his best, most soulful performance while pulling double duty behind the camera, but it’s his co-star whose magnetism most draws you into their world — and keeps you there even when the film hits the occasional wrong note.

Non-Fiction isn’t a surrender, nor is it a call to arms. It’s an anxious — but strangely calming! — reminder that change is the only true constant, and that steering the current is a lot easier than fighting it. Nobody does that better than Assayas, even when it looks like he’s not even trying.

Fans of the director’s late-period work (particularly his last completed effort, the rapid-fire diary film “F for Fake”) will find it thrilling to return to those unpredictable, garrulous recesses, no matter the bumpy ride. Welles continues to contemplate storytelling, Hollywood, and his own troubled career by transforming these obsessions into a marathon of creativity.

Lanthimos wants us to examine the different reasons we grasp at power — avarice, self-preservation, even fear — and better understand its corrosive effects.

Roma is by far the most experimental storytelling in a career filled with audacious (and frequently excessive) gimmicks. Here, he tables the showiness of “Children of Men” and “Gravity” in favor of ongoing restraint, creating a fresh kind of intimacy. Like a grand showman working overtime to tone things down, he lures viewers into an apparently straightforward scene, only to catch them off guard with new information.

Destination Wedding makes the case that the two-hander isn’t dead, even if it struggles a bit when forced to come to a neat, movie-ready conclusion.

Abrahamson seems so coy about the haunting of the Ayres’ house that he refuses to allow the movie’s strongest aspect to take center stage, and the perils of The Little Stranger hover aimlessly throughout the movie like a specter in search of some elusive white light.

First Man is an anti-thriller of rare intensity, with lived-in performances from Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy heightening the sky-high drama at every turn. It’s not a comprehensive look at the Apollo 11 mission, but revisits that famous story from a more intimate angle, even as it delivers a satisfying ride.

The result is a singularly American riff on “The Act of Killing,” a fascinating and dream-like mosaic that’s less driven by residual anger than by cockeyed concern, less interested in exhuming the past than in revealing its value to the present.

It’s both way too much and also somehow not enough, but even the most exhausting stretches of this bloated import blockbuster are fearless enough to make you wish that American films would follow suit.

Despite a few predictable beats, What Keeps You Alive offers plenty of effective jolts, helped along by the chemistry between leads Anderson and Allen.

Faraut is able to conflate the cinema’s quixotic obsession with reality with the athlete’s similarly impossible dream of perfection. In its own playful way, his film celebrates the beautiful folly of both pursuits.

If The Happytime Murders isn’t the worst movie of the summer, I tremble at the thought of whatever’s coming out next week.

Weitz and Orton mean to question the individual’s role in a mass atrocity, but the abstract nature of their ideas never squares with the rigidity of their storytelling. As a result, Operation Finale doesn’t feel ambiguous so much as it feels like it lacks a point of view.

Despite a starring turn from Sam Rockwell (whose character arc boils down to mastering a Cockney accent) and a supporting performance that should help Phoebe Fox convert a small legion of new fans, this Blue Iguana is far less evocative of yesterday’s classics than it is of today’s direct-to-VOD dreck.

Without a bloody foundation of truth to ground their swagger in reality or give it some kind of moral purpose, these two certified alpha males are completely lost; it’s like they were given all the various bits you need to assemble a watchable action movie, but went into production without any idea of how those pieces might fit together.

Anchored by a brilliant Mélanie Thierry, whose stone-eyed lead performance is at the center of almost every frame, Finkiel’s film never betrays the distance that Duras inserted between herself and her own experiences, or that she wrote from the perspective of a vessel as much as she did a subject.

Every beat of the film might be obvious, but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyability of watching an indelible young heroine like Lara Jean figure out her own life and just maybe fall in love in the process.

A tasteless and incredibly undercooked serving of the internet’s stalest Creepypasta, Slender Man aspires to be for the YouTube era what “The Ring” was to the last gasps of the VHS generation...there’s one fundamental difference that sets the two movies apart: “The Ring” is good, and Slender Man is terrible.

Entertaining and exasperating in equal measure, it’s a nine-dimensional chess game in which the pawns think they’re working towards a better future, but the powers controlling them are only determined to maintain the status quo.

Fans of Kwan’s books will not be disappointed by Chu’s adaptation, as “Crazy Rich Asians” lovingly brings to life some of the novel’s standout scenes, even as Chiarelli and Lim’s screenplay snips away subplots that detract from Rachel’s journey.

Statham remains an appealing summer movie fixture, but sharks deserve better than this.

Even when Christopher Robin stumbles or steers itself into a corner, it never stops trying to understand what people lose when they let go of the things they love. The movie sells itself by keeping one foot on the ground at all times.

It’s a tough story, but told through a decidedly female gaze, Night Comes On blossoms into something beautiful.

However afraid she is to let things get too serious, Miller Rogen is powerless to erase the emotional undertow that carries this story forward. All of the pent-up animosity her movie doesn’t know what to do with becomes its greatest asset.

Less moment-to-moment funny than committed to a sustained pitch of devilish glee, Never Goin’ Back couches its silliness in a credible milieu of American malaise. The women may never understand how they might find a better place, but the movie makes the case that their unending commitment to getting there might be good enough.

The film zips through its final act at breakneck speed, doling out answers and riling up new conflicts with little care for how they impact a standalone story, just setting up for a franchise that might never come to fruition.

The meandering and insufferable Death of a Nation is little more than a greatest-hits collection of its creator’s favorite neocon conspiracy theories, which frame the Democratic Party for the fascistic tendencies embodied by Donald Trump.

It’s intermittently engaging as a B-movie, but so often strives for something more that it never finds a satisfying tone.

One of those late-summer releases that’s just good enough to make you wish it were better, The Spy Who Dumped Me aims to please every step of the way, but it never earns the nearly two-hour running time.

Age of Rage is much more potent when questioning its own purpose than it is when giving fancy racists yet another platform to espouse their bullshit.

The polished new documentary, McQueen, charts the late designer’s rise from English country boy to fashion’s enfant terrible, but the filmmaking lacks the artistic vision of its subject.

It’s hard to understand how anyone so capable of diagnosing this problem can also believe themselves capable of solving it — so hard, in fact, that the last 20 minutes of Generation Wealth might compel you to reconsider the value of the 80 minutes before them.

The good news is that the fans of Antoine Fuqua’s “The Equalizer” — a bland and pulpy 2014 riff on the ’80s TV series of the same name — are in for more of the same. The bad news is that the rest of us are, too.

Ultimately, throwing the same people in the same place with little to do and even less time to do it is emblematic of the sins of far worse, much less worthy sequels. Without Streep there to tie it altogether, well, it just doesn’t sing.

Combining first-rate skate video footage with a range of confessional moments, Minding the Gap is a warmhearted look at the difficulties of reckoning with the past while attempting to escape its clutches.

He’s only Tom Cruise because nobody else is willing to be — or maybe he’s only Tom Cruise so that nobody else has to be. Either way, Fallout is the film he’s always promised us, and it was totally worth the wait.

The result is a dull and deeply compromised movie that would rather be a mediocre crime saga than a nuanced character study, but can’t quite bring itself to commit to that choice.

Even as the story drifts off, Night Eats the World derives its power from a beguiling, provocative implication: It’s hard to confront a hostile world, but gathering the courage to do so doesn’t make the job any easier.

Skyscraper plays out like a metaphor for diminishing returns — Johnson keeps climbing, higher and higher, until there’s nowhere left to go but down.

With plenty of laughs, truly dazzling animation, and some more of the franchise’s signature dance sequences, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is a summer treat worth savoring, and a reminder that if we can see past our differences, we’ll find we’re not that different after all.

While Zagar doesn’t force the material into many surprising places, it’s a fully realized tapestry, owing much to the complex, layered score by Nick Zammuto that hums through nearly every scene, and frequent cutaways to hand-drawn animation based on the scrapbook that Jonah stores under his bed at night.

The First Purge is another absurd B-movie, uneven and ludicrous across the board, but altogether transfixing for the way it funnels Trump-era terror into an empowering crowdpleaser.

Sanju is a reminder that putting a subject on a pedestal isn’t a biopic’s only potential pitfall. Here, it becomes problematic by portraying Sanjay as a victim of his circumstances rather than the master of his own decisions.

Custody begins with an air of documentary reality before evolving into a thriller so claustrophobic its climax fits inside the bathroom of a modest apartment.

There’s no denying the purity of Fleming’s intentions (the movie’s end credits even play over a montage of same-sex parents), but Ideal Home is too cartoonish to meaningfully celebrate the beauty of the families we choose, and too casual to accomplish much else.

When White Fang focuses on its real stars — animals, Alaska, the spread of untamed country — it’s as visionary as any animated film. Placed alongside ham-fisted humans, it loses its power.

By focusing on what binds those on the pitch and those in the bleachers, Nossa Chape doesn’t just wonder if some things are “bigger than the game” — it proves it.

The essence of Ant-Man is inherently silly, and that’s where the strength of the new movie lies.

Elijah Bynum’s debut embracing every last cliche it can find in a perverse attempt to forge its own identity. It’s a noble effort that comes up empty. Instead of something original, we’re left with a sweaty pastiche that shares its protagonist’s desire to be all things to all people, only to wind up losing any sense of itself along the way.

An electric lead performance and a growing sense of self make it worth your while to see that Izzy gets where she’s going.

From the flat battle sequence that’s shot with all the excitement of folding laundry, to the literal chess match that anchors the underwritten dynamic between Berg and his target, The Catcher Was a Spy shrugs through each bad scene as though it’s biding time for better ones to come.

Alas, all the darkness in the world doesn’t make “Day of Soldado” feel real, and errant mentions of a weak-stomached POTUS violently return us to the atrocities happening beyond the frame.

Uncle Drew is such a well-acted, warm-hearted basketball comedy that you’re liable to forget about its corporate origins.

It’s a powerful look at the durability of parent-child bonds as well as a fascinating psychological thriller about what it takes to heal such a rift when it seems irreparable.

Set It Up is a classic rom-com brought to life by a pair of wonderfully well-matched stars who seem to revel in the genre. This is cinematic comfort food, the kind we’ve been starving for.

Stuck between a hangout movie and an out-and-out caper romp, Tag settles for something in the middle — there are worse ways to spend your time, but the result is taking an outrageous premise and making it seem ordinary.

Quinn has clearly done the work to establish meaningful relationships with many of his subjects, and you can see the pain and concern in their eyes. Still, Eating Animals feels every bit as scattershot as it sounds, the film’s moral argument cornering you from all sides rather than attacking head-on.

It works because the characters keep things anchored to some kind of dramatic reality.

Connolly’s biopic isn’t a hagiography. The problem is that it’s not really anything. This is a strange thing to say about a notorious mob boss who was locked up for murder, but John Gotti deserved better.

Once the menacing and mysterious Screenslaver is introduced, inciting a Spielberg-level monorail chase that reaffirms Bird’s lucid gift for kinetic and character-driven action filmmaking, the movie blasts off and never looks back.

By all rights, it should be a heartwarming comedy with a few more tender moments. Instead, Hearts Beat Loud operates like a sad drama with a few moments that might make you smile. We knew punk was dead, but the comedy doesn’t have to be.

It’s damning, if not quite fatal, that Lee’s version works best when it’s riffing on the standout elements of the source material rather than trying to reinvent them.

A handful of amusing details in desperate need of a purpose, the film spends its first half looking for a compelling reason to exist, and its second half trying to disguise the fact that it can’t find one.

Despite a cool backdrop and a daring idea, the heist itself feels like a third-tier Soderbergh joint, one that’s temporarily bolstered by the same jazzy music and quick cuts that marked the filmmaker’s trilogy, though carried out with considerably less energy.

The Fallen Kingdom is at its worst when attempting topicality (the testosterone-fueled Wheatley refers to one of our heroes as a “nasty woman”) or when beefing up its crass plot.

Unwatchable even by the subterranean standards of a direct-to-video Nicolas Cage thriller, director York Shackleton’s 211 is the kind of low-grade schlock that leaves you with a newfound respect for the basic competence that most bad movies bring to the table.

For most of its interminable runtime, Action Point feels like a porno that deliberately ruins the sex scenes in order to stop you from fast-forwarding through the plot.

Silas Howard’s new film is nothing if not well-attuned to the difference between the purity of sharing the right values and the messiness of actually living with them.

The high school-set rom-com is a sexist and regressive look at relationships that highlights the worst impulses of the genre.

Adrift is told with an inimitable sense of place and a rare attention to detail, both of which help to ensure that we never lose sight of the terror at hand. When all else fails, which it sometimes does, Woodley is there to right the ship.

As the tension builds to its harrowing conclusion, and Alex begins to bare his teeth, Mathews pulls enough tricks from his sleeve to make Discreet a worthy digression.

The movie is able to ride a line right through so many of its genre’s worst clichés because it never stops negotiating between fear and desire, risk and reward. It’s an assured directorial debut from “The Mentalist” actor Simon Baker.

It’s as wild and unhinged as the other films in its brethren (the MPAA does not typically rate original Netflix films, but “Ibiza” would absolutely be on the receiving end of an R). However, Ibiza subverts plenty of expectations in service to a story that’s both funny and sweet.

Newton’s film knows that people are always going to be letting themselves (and each other) down, no matter how hard they try, and Nicholson’s unforgettable turn makes it impossible for us to forget it.

For a giallo riff so light on gore, Knife + Heart is still a bloody mess.

Sorry Angel doesn’t strain from too much ambition; it’s a sharp snapshot of two men at pivotal moments in their lives, and ends on a note not too different from the one it starts on. But that cycle is central to its gentle intellectual flow.

A master of threading the needle between conflict and contrivance, Kore-eda manages to turn this drama inside out without every betraying its most resonant truth.

Wanuri Kahiu’s sophomore feature is just good enough to give its modest intentions a historic purpose, bringing fresh context to an old formula while hitting the expected emotional beats.

Rise to the challenge, and payoff awaits on the other side: a formulaic story transformed into something more perceptive and profound. If only more family dramas took such care to get the details right.

Capernaum is a movie that wants its audience to empathize with its protagonist so intensely that you agree he should never have been born. It’s a fascinating (if obviously counterintuitive) approach, but one that’s frustrated by the literalness with which Labaki unpacks it.

The best thing about writer-director A.B. Shawky’s feature-length debu...is the way it burrows inside Beshay’s life without devolving into a pity party.

A hyper-stylish and unexpectedly sweet rebuke to the idea that screwing people is a good way to get ahead, Gavras’ second feature manages the almost impossible task of mining something nice from the me-first mentality that’s been sweeping across modern Europe.

This film manages to celebrate the spirit that stood in opposition to limit her to what she looked like on a poster. It’s a reminder that, even for world-famous icons, it’s pointless to reduce people to a single piece of notoriety.

If the deliciously grainy archival footage were the only thing That Summer had to offer, it would be enough. But by including Beard and Radziwill’s introspective voiceovers, Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson (“The Black Power Mixtape”) creates a nostalgic meditation that touches on both cultural and historical memory.

The unexpected love child of Wong Kar-wai and Andrei Tarkovsky, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” transforms from a lush, slow-burn pastiche to an audacious filmmaking gamble while maintaining the pictorial sophistication of its earlier section. It’s both languorous and eye-popping at once.

It’s a shambling, transportive, and semi-tragic story about a fleeting past where anything seemed possible.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote sits alongside much of Gilliam’s late period work as a messy but singular achievement that strains to make its disparate parts fit together, but there’s a noble spirit of invention to its wackiness anyway.

More media installation than movie, The Image Book bemoans a vapid world well into the process of disintegration, and his film is engineered to simulate that process in visceral terms.

The movie lulls you into its unpredictable rhythms, and a striking poetry creeps into the material, finally overtaking it.