The expectations of the genre provide a framework for Work It that both delights (so many dancing montages! all of them fun!) and confounds (a chemistry-less romance). When it dares to break those boxes, however, things get miles more interesting.

Sandberg unquestionably has an eye for a great horror motif — and, given the frequent use of absolutely gut-churning ambient sounds and hair-raising scratching noises, an ear for it, too — and he’s assembled a strong cast to tell Heisserer’s expanded story, but even those smart decisions and clear talents can’t push Lights Out to brighter heights.

Even as "Gabi" steadily slides downhill and ends with a shrug, it remains intermittently fun and never entirely unbearable-much like Gabi herself.

There are plenty of guts, but The Woman doesn't have enough to make its feminist rhetoric stick.

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.

The latest of Eastwood’s many potential swan songs, this sketch of a movie is transparent enough to focus all of your attention on the shadow imagery behind it. On the brimmed silhouette that its director and star cuts in a door frame, on the six pounds of gravel that it sounds like he gargled before every take, and on the way that he plays Mike as a man who would give anything for a place to hang his hat if only he could bring himself to take it off his head. Better late than never.

While “Christy” has long been positioned as an awards play for Sweeney . . . her performance here is more nuanced and more painful than early indicators fully let on. She’s committed to the role, but she’s also committed to a story that doesn’t totally fit the usual mold. It doesn’t pull punches, even if that ultimately leaves a different kind of mark on its audience.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism isn’t funny enough to get away with so few genuine scares, and it isn’t scary enough to save most of its biggest laughs for the final act.

Objects become subjects in Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s sweeping yet focused analysis that exposes the truth about the power of images to shape the world’s views of women.

As the film’s themes announce themselves again and again, it weakens the mystery. The film seems to be yelling at us who the culprit is while hoping we remain engaged by mugging and hijinks alone.

The problem, as with most romantic comedies, is that there are no shocks in the story.

In its wonderfully irreverent way, Wrong makes it clear that this reality is never to be trusted as anything more than a succession of strange moments that coalesce into an abstract representation of the subjectivity that traps us all. This is the essence of new film noir, which challenges our perceptions through a series of compellingly ambiguous moments.

Unfortunately, Lawless lacks the same darkly energizing spirit that made "The Proposition" such a revelation: It has plenty of gunplay, scowling showdowns and dust-caked setpieces, but little in the way of dynamic filmmaking to imbue those elements with life.

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 Hologram For the King never congeals into a single, involving story.

When Landon moves away from the darker parts of the film, opting to play up the campier elements of a mostly silly story, Happy Death Day is the kind of dizzy fun as slasher horror can possibly be. Too bad then that all that goodwill has to reset every night, pushing everything back to square one just as it was getting good, murderously so.

The strength of the pair’s chemistry — with Johnson cast as the smart but starry-eyed Maggie and Ross doing a lighter spin on her own real-life mother’s mythos as the larger-than-life Grace — helps guide shaky character development, though The High Note is less successful at making its stars shine when they interact with others.

Like any Mamet endeavor, the real star is the language. Major plot events happen almost entirely offscreen, with its ensemble of characters using them as jumping off points to soliloquize about everything from the value of therapy to Snow White’s vagina. Everyone has preconceived opinions about his writing style, but Mamet puts it to use, with more substance than recent misfires.

No film about the utter demise of a supposed utopia — a real one, to boot! — and the utter infallibility of human beings should be this fun, but we’re lucky this one is.

"The Next Level” attempts to find a balance between winking jokes about video gameplay and the price of immortality (no, really), settling back into the charm of the film it’s tasked with following up. It’s not the most original kind of magic, but there’s potency there, more than enough to keep audiences hanging around for at least one more round.

It’s always a tough ask to improve upon an original, but “Moana 2” is a sprightly addition to this sea-faring legacy. It does something nearly impossible in our sequel-glutted world: made me want further adventures. “Moana 3,” ahoy?

As familiar as much of this will feel — and as easy as it will be for even causal fans of the original to toss off word-for-word line readings of iconic scenes — the new stars that line Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.’s film add fresh dimension to the “Mean Girls” mythos.

The moral is clear as day to any kid, though plenty of adults could use the reminder: Never judge any creature by the way they look. And, for animation devotees, the lesson is the same: Never judge a cute animated offering by its platform.

Byington excels at turning the edict that time waits for no one into a sensory experience. No matter how sly it gets, Somebody Up There Likes Me still retains that fundamental truth.

If this is the end of The Equalizer, it’s a good one, a high note that overcomes confusion, complications, and convolutions to give everyone — Robert, Emma, kind-hearted Italians, the audience — a lavish adventure to remember.

If you're willing to just go with it, An Unexpected Journey is a competent ride, but as a whole it lacks purpose, giving the impression of a television program in its later seasons still chugging along while full aware that it has peaked. Needless to say, "Hobbit" fans will find plenty to soak in; others may get the feeling of being bludgeoned by deja vu.

Adapted from a popular memoir by the late doctor’s son, Trueba’s film overcomes its ham-fisted clumsiness because it goes a step beyond hagiography. It’s a story filtered through the eyes of a grieving son in complete awe of his father, one told with enough warmth and detail that it could be easy to forget its memories don’t belong to the filmmaker himself.

Riddle of Fire is all too happy to wander around in circles as it simmers in its own absurdity, as if any kind of legitimate incident might threaten to break its spell.

There are a succession of physically arresting images, though the movie is frustratingly opaque, too emotionally diffuse to capture a necessary nuance and depth of expression. In never quite finding a vital rhythm or shape, Distance is a work more easily admired than genuinely appreciated.

Theater lovers will enjoy seeing these actors take on such iconic roles, but they’ll find themselves wishing they were seeing the same great talent on the stage.

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.

Justin Chon’s overcranked but achingly heartfelt “Blue Bayou” is a case-study in how issue-driven melodramas are a double-edged sword.

Intentionally or not, however, Fading Gigolo actually functions as something of a statement on Allen's persona—onscreen and off—as it has been understood in the public eye. And the resulting conclusion, like the movie, is a decidedly mixed bag.

A labyrinthine descent into the grotesque extremes of a Disneyfied society, Escape From Tomorrow is surreal for many reasons and wholly original because of them. It's also a daring attempt to literally assail Disney World from the inside out.

Charlie Harper is the kind of film whose impact will always be the strongest as you’re walking out of the theater. The lack of originality and occasional on-the-nose dialogue cancel out most of its rewatch value, but it’s hard not to be affected in the moment by the sincerity of its storytelling and the chemistry between Robinson and Jones.

Any expectation that Salomon’s profound story might be depicted in grown-up, searching animation that’s still all too rare, is quickly dashed. Instead of being brought to a place of soulful contemplation, Charlotte merely becomes cinematic Ambien. What a tragedy.

It builds to a conclusion that, like the best parts of this film, combines movie-magic whimsy with hard-won realism, slipping some very grown-up ideas (and ideals) into a classic talking-animal charmer.

While Papadimitropoulos and his cast capture the perma-vacation feel that permeates Mickey and Chloe’s happiest moments, he’s less adept at navigating the heftier emotional elements.

Not only is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny an almost complete waste of time, it’s also a belabored reminder that some relics are better left where and when they belong. If only any previous entries in this series had taken great pains to point that out.

Much like Wicked, Wicked: For Good works its way up to a massive duet between the pair, so emotionally resonant than even the most wicked of audience members will still likely shed a tear (the song is, of course, “For Good”). It’s an unmitigated high note, but it’s a lonely one indeed. Is it alone worth the wait? Maybe, why couldn’t the entire film feel that way?

Despite its confused and overstuffed worldbuilding, “Elemental” has enough charming moments to get by, even if its meaning lies less in its ill-conceived immigrant saga, and more in the personal drama that lives a few layers beneath it.

7500 takes a familiar scenario and doubles down on its claustrophobic potential to make it fresh.

Zombie's witches aren't as scary as the credible psychopaths he has portrayed before, but The Lords of Salem contains enough frenzied imagery in its climactic moments to make the spell linger.

If the faintly amusing final product is pretty thin gruel when compared to the rest of its filmmaker’s output, the project’s high-concept construction is clever enough to sustain the meandering story it tells.

The film is both sci-fi/fantasy and Bollywood romance, an ambitious introduction to a mythological cinematic universe with the expected hiccups of building a massive world from scratch. It’s an admirable attempt and unmissable theatrical experience for any Bollywood fan.

Torn between action and comedy, irony and sentiment, and rah-rah jingoism and genuine self-reflection, Heads of State is a surprisingly entertaining romp.

Writer-director Todd Berger, improving his technique with his second feature-length credit following "The Scenesters," combines enough energetic performances with charged wit to make this one doomsday comedy that earns the right to its familiar backdrop.

Giving the final days of Christ a contemporary, allegorical spin, The Book of Clarence is more concerned with entertainment value than delivering a sermon. The results are tonally erratic, but absolutely interesting, at the very least.

Plot is often the cruelest fate that could ever befall a cool premise, and so it goes with Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge, a high-concept genre exercise whose shallow depths are all too eager to come to the surface.

Frustrating as it can be to watch such an intriguing movie get so high on its own supply . . . Chainey’s aggressive refusal to engage with the specifics of Darcy’s inner “rot” or to unpack Daphne’s artistic insecurities allows this delirious three-hander to remain appealingly immune to the “everything is trauma” approach that has made so much of modern horror feel like a form of collective psychotherapy.

The new version of “Pet Sematary” is both darkly humorous and quite chilling, modernizing some of the cheesier emotional beats of that earlier adaptation. ... It’s in the third act that Kolsch and Widmyer’s ambitions get the best of them.

The evils within the film feel tragically prescient, and “The Most Precious of Cargoes” makes those parallels explicit

Director Chris Perkel, who also edited, hasn’t made a movie so much as a prolonged tribute reel with ample material to fuel a dozen lifetime achievement award ceremonies.

The Laundromat may be blunt, and the humor hit-or-miss — but it swings wildly at a worthy target, and eventually hits its mark.

Decency, in its raw, instinctive form, is ultimately what earns The Zookeeper’s Wife a place in the self-conflicted canon of Holocaust cinema.

We take frequent and foolish pleasure watching the four charismatic leads brush up against one another while bristling against their assigned roles, with the film giving performer time to shine.

A sweet and gracious and often painfully labored dramedy about a stand-up comic who struggles to connect with his autistic 11-year-old son, Tony Goldwyn’s “Ezra” rides an emotional honesty that’s almost completely undone by the sweaty contrivances of its plotting.

At best, it’s a suitable companion piece to the novel; at worst, it’s a lackluster feature bolstered only briefly by flashes of real human emotion.

This is a movie that would probably be really funny if you were high. The laughs are mostly dry and deadpan, depending on your closeness to and fondness for the material — in other words, very much in line with the mockumentary world of producer Christopher Guest.

You’ve seen this story a thousand times before, but Joris-Peyrafitte’s expressive direction and Margot Robbie’s sheer force of will are enough to endow the movie’s best moments with the same hope-and-a-prayer immediacy that its heroes take with them as they speed towards the southern border.

Whatever compromises were required of Smith, she holds fast to the soul of a movie that ultimately cares less about how high Kate and Marine can fly than it does the exotic truths they might only be able to learn as they fall.

As they bond and converse, their conversations take on a closed aspect, never inviting us in to their increasingly close relationship. We remain watchers, appreciative of but never truly understanding the magic of Jane Birkin.

It’s a story that has its share of unnerving sequences, but like its pivotal character, it feels stuck between two worlds.

When enthusiasm alone can no longer keep the ship afloat, sheer audacity rides to the rescue, as “Dicks” ends with an inevitable but satisfying eruption of bad behavior that feels so good — one that leaves you wondering just how much funnier and more transgressive this movie could have been had it allowed itself to go that hard from the start.

A surprisingly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek New York comedy from "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling, Vamps teeters on the brink of not quite working and yet still routinely lands its laughs.

The humble visual language is a vessel for a rich human drama. Bear with what sometimes resembles a television movie for the slowburn panorama of life it captures.

Perhaps no other movie has better illustrated the golden rule of CGI: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Roommates has a real chance at being a formative experience for someone, which is more than a lot of movies can say. But those of us who have already been sufficiently formed? We can find better things to stream this weekend.

As a spare and sexy thriller, Michael Winterbottom’s “The Wedding Guest” is far too undercooked; there’s little flavor, and even less to chew on. As an audition for its star to be the next James Bond, however, this aimless Dev Patel vehicle is virtually perfect.

At his best, Cooper is someone who can wring tension and understanding from what’s come before, not necessarily in anticipation of what’s about to happen. Antlers ends up getting caught between the two.

All in all, this Road House is a fitting update to its predecessor’s legacy. Not because it’s better, or even because it’s all that similar, but because it moves with the same unselfconscious stupidity that fueled so many of the ’80s blockbusters we remember so fondly.

Outrageously snappy and unapologetically fun, I Don’t Understand You is a must-see for anyone who likes queer romance, horror-comedy, and/or hot Italians.

The conventional road trip dramedy mines that father-son dynamic for all its worth, but Sudeikis and Harris are very much up to the task, and their chemistry helps the film rise above its tropes.

Once Encounter reveals its destination, there aren’t many places for the script to go, though there’s a savage little side trip to a rural militia during which it becomes clearer that this Ahmed acting showcase is also interested in touring the American psyche

Even when the storytelling falls short, Pedro Páramo never fails to offer up ideas worth pondering.

Assuaging teenage growing pains like a shot of novocaine administered by a shaky hand, this tender and subdued look around the limbo between adolescence and adulthood might start with a sullen kid trying to save his crush from her darkest secrets, but it never gets swept up in the idea that he actually can.

The Broken Hearts Gallery will fit snugly on the shelf for tweens and teens as a source of comfort and maybe even empowerment, an ode to rebuilding, when the dissolution of a relationship leaves you feeling like a husk of yourself.

It’s a blockbuster that funnels the appeal of big-budget action and horror with an almost sacred reverence for the material. That’s absurd, but Snyder’s a true believer in go-for-broke escapism and at its best, the mayhem in Army of the Dead is an infectious zombie bite of its own.

Macdonald's movie is a kind of fairy tale. While in the Marvel franchises, the good guys always win, The House I Live In explores the far more tangible process of simply remaining alive at all costs -- and finding, against impossible odds, justification for living through another day.

Any bona fide sushi fan stands to benefit from the general wake up call that "The Global Catch" provides in ample doses.

An elegant little film about the things in life that are worth taking risks for, Arcadian is a reminder of how much Cage has to offer us when he’s not contorting himself into something indescribable.

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.

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

Still, with a distinct POV, strong visual design, and the ability to see his strange slow-burn vision of semi-realistic domestic torture all the way through, Skotchdopole serves up a strong enough debut that he should someday get a shot at making another.

It's no less of an accomplished performance than Hilary Swank's similar turn in "Boys Don't Cry" or newcomer Zoé Herán's delicate achievement as the lead in "Tomboy." Unfortunately, Albert Nobbs traps Close's sizable talent in a simplistic drama--not unlike Nobbs herself who winds up trapped in a restrictive period.

Sheep in the Box is less concerned with feelings than it is with our impulse to elide them.

The music and locations are specific so that the characters don’t have to be — viewers can take the movie on its own terms, while also projecting themselves onto it.

Gyllenhaal's alarmingly effective presence is enough to act circles around the soapy narrative of a fallen athlete's comeback so tightly that it crumbles in the very first act.

Never as hackneyed as it is heartfelt, Instant Family takes the stuff of real life and turns it into a touching reminder of what love can do for the people who need it.

When this thing moves — and, wow, does it ever — it offers one of the best examples yet of what Netflix bucks can buy. It even makes off with upped emotion (including that engendered by shining a brighter spotlight on the wonderful Farahani and Bessa), a new dimension to the always-evolving Hemsworth, and proof that the action franchise can capture old thrills with new stories.

When it works, it’s never better than a loving retread of the pleasures of the first film; when it doesn’t, it’s a head-scratcher of the highest order, a film that exists to push forward a franchise that seems to have already lost its way.

We never get the chance to see what inspired Chisholm’s political fire or her personal problems — mostly, that’s left to exposition-heavy dialogue from other characters — and even the machinations and calculations behind her presidential run are left far to the side.

Taut and well-acted as this queasy little thriller can be, its unflinching tale of corporate authoritarianism is much too streamlined to reflect the emotional truth of watching totalitarianism in motion. The result is a hollow synecdoche of today’s America that seems timely and ridiculous in equal measure.

“Miss Peregrine’s” is a hollow ode to wonder and weirdness that suggests we’re running perilously low on both.

A familiar but arrestingly visceral crime story with a coming-of-age twist, Claudio Giovannesi’s Piranhas has an unusual relationship with its own predictability.

An ode to the strength of onscreen horror even in its less inspired state, the new Evil Dead primarily succeeds at illustrating how the originals have managed to stand the test of time.

If Love and Thunder is more of the same, it’s also never less than that. The MCU may still be looking for new purpose by the time this movie ends, but the mega-franchise can take solace in the sense that Thor has found some for himself.

Borrowing from a dozen better movies as it tries to blur the line between a forgery and a masterpiece, Capotondi’s film manages to undercut its thesis with each new stroke.