Oscillating between the relentless energy of “John Wick” and the dense plotting of a John Le Carré novel, Atomic Blonde never quite finds a happy medium between the two. But when Theron goes back to kicking ass, nothing else matters.

From laugh to laugh — and there are many — you might question the target of the jokes, but that’s often because The Disaster Artist rarely works on one level: There’s meta humor, self-referential gags, and human reverence paid to the earnest pursuit of a Hollywood dream. Such are the layered joys of this exuberant — if surprisingly conventional — buddy comedy about the making of the worst movie of all time.

The pervasive elegance makes up for a largely derivate plot. We’ve seen variations on this story before, and Mean Dreams doesn’t do much to shake up expectations — until, that is, a violent finale that punctuates the characters’ psychological development.

The film is never funny, and its attempts to wink at the adults in the room are so lame that you wish they’d been left on the cutting room floor, but the deeper the film delves into Tim’s imagination the less imaginative it becomes.

The director’s most ambitious work to date is a wildly successful romantic heist comedy, propelled from scene to scene with a lively soundtrack that elevates its slick chase scenes into a realm of musicality that develops its own satisfying beat.

Ducournau tears down the walls of a genre so often identified with male filmmakers. (Like the father of body horror, David Cronenberg.) Shrewdly using the art-horror format to upend the traditional teen Bildungsroman, “Raw” makes it impossible to look away — as much as you might want to.

There’s plenty of intrigue to the dissonance of a hard-rock lifestyle and Malick’s gentle touch, but much of the movie’s potential is overshadowed by the impulses of a director unwilling to get there.

Modest in its ambition but profound in its specificity, Batra gets to the core of the slipperiness of memory and the allure of the past. It’s not through grand pronouncements and cosmic love stories; instead, a handful of unshakable moments do the trick.

It may not be entirely inspiring, but Betting on Zero captures the everyone-for-themselves desperation that would make any wronged individual furious, be they jilted employee or frustrated stockholder.

When it keeps its aims small and its attention narrow, The Other Half lands on a simple love story that speaks outside its familiar boundaries.

A limp and lifeless historical melodrama that aspires to be the “Pearl Harbor” of the preamble to World War I and still falls well short of that ignoble goal, Joseph Ruben’s The Ottoman Lieutenant tries to snatch a love triangle from out beneath the Armenian Genocide but fails to get any of the angles right.

If, for all of its godawful men, “Brimstone” has a hard time sewing its feminist fervor into anything more than a thin shawl over its bleak spectacle, this disturbingly watchable religious Western makes a solid case that hell is a place on Earth.

By highlighting sweet, indicative, or hilarious moments rather than tracing the teachers’ relationships with any particular students, the film is more attuned to the rhythms of Headfort than it is the people in it.

Specificity is the film’s strong suit, and The Last Laugh is at its best when eschewing its gaggle of celebrity interview subjects in favor of sticking with Firestone as she reckons with their comedy.

Aside from the thrill of its lavish sets and costumes, there isn’t much new to offer in this Beauty and the Beast.

Kong: Skull Island may include some clever period details and idiosyncratic asides, but it’s largely a blockbuster B-movie less interested in depth than scale.

Spencer and Alush turn in the film’s best performances, and Spencer’s natural warmth and Alush’s deep charm keep The Shack hammering right along.

It’s always a shame to watch something so jaw-dropping start to feel stale, but Headshot is much easier to enjoy if you think of it as a good excuse for Uwais to stay in shape so that he’s ready for the movie that turns him into a household name.

Ultimately, Contemporary Color captures the essence of the event in question with expert craftsmanship, and the filmmaking prowess doesn’t overwhelm the show.

Blitz manages to land the occasional punchline, but the smattering of decent jokes only call further attention to the film’s complete lack of rhythm.

Russo-Young insists upon Before I Fall maintaining the courage of its convictions, and she gets her way — the movie takes a while to get off the ground, but when it lands, it lands hard.

Never quite sure where to put his cameras, Creevy attempts to compensate by placing them everywhere, and cutting between them as if at random.

McMurray fixates too much on the brutality of his subject, foregoing any meaningful character development. The result is a film about punishment that is quite punishing to watch.

A testament to the power of community to heal the deepest wounds, My Life As A Zucchini takes on heavy subject matter with a light hand, and comes up with a delightful tale that is equal parts wrenching and uplifting.

Actor Martinez is a fascinating collaboration between these two filmmakers, who seem willing to pillory their own image and dissect the nature of moviemaking in order to uncover real cinematic truth.

The vivid palette of Liu’s animation conveys a comic book-like exuberance to the proceedings, but the underlying socioeconomic frustration is very real.

In not knowing whether it wants to be a heartfelt, chilling or activist story, Irada ends up being none, suggesting that perhaps good intentions aren’t always enough.

By placing vastly different people into a situation in which they find common ground, it highlights the tantalizing idea that the minutiae of day-to-day problems matters less than the prospects of escaping them through companionship.

By no means a failed film, this two-hander about toxic-codependency from Romanian director Călin Peter Netzer is best in small-moments and insightful asides, but does a disservice to the relationship at its heart by honing in on one single thought and hammering it home again and again and again.

This immaculately furnished film sacrifices too much drama in order to expound upon its characters’ ideals, and sacrifices too much exploration of those ideals in order to accommodate for a healthy degree of drama.

Spoor remains witty throughout, breaking even the tensest moments with the lead’s acid-tongued appraisals of the local hunters.

Django deserves credit for refusing to fit its subject into the straightjacket of a survival tale, and Ketab’s expressive turn — much of which is captured in close-ups — provides the story with a richness that the writing struggles to achieve on its own.

Moverman’s discordant structure constantly veers from clumsy moments to fascinating exchanges. As an experiment, it never finds a complete shape, and ends on a frustratingly abrupt note.

Franco clearly enjoys playing the idealistic rabble rouser, and who wouldn’t want to direct a movie so they could cast themselves as a charismatic radical? Unfortunately, watching someone else play make believe is only fun if you believe it yourself.

The director has a novelist’s attention to nuance, and Barrage is at its best during the scenes in which Catherine and Alba are casually trying to redraw their boundaries.

Logan isn’t always a satisfying movie, but there’s a very satisfying answer to those questions waiting for viewers at the end of it. Satisfying not only because Mangold resolves things with some brilliantly expressive imagery, or because he endows this story with a no-shits-left-to-give honesty that defies its origins and justifies its spectacular violence and salty vocabulary, but because it proves how iconic Jackman has made this character over the last 17 years.

Winsome, sweet, and often very funny, The Other Side of Hope is more of the same from Kaurismäki, and thank God for that.

On the Beach at Night Alone is a fascinating sublimation of autobiography into Hong’s precise creative terms, a bittersweet character study as poignant, witty and deceptively slight as much of his work that also refurbishes it with a unique personal dimension.

Though the film is all surface, that surface is precisely the point.

While the storytelling grows frustratingly elliptical, Lelio so desperate to constrain the drama that he resorts to removing helpful pieces of it, the scenes that remain are succinct and evocative.

A bad movie by any culture’s standards, The Great Wall mostly goes to show that if the future of the business lies with Hollywood -China alliances, it doesn’t bode well for either side.

Kedi is a playful and poignant look at the complex nature of the creatures and their inherent appeal to humankind.

Gigi is an invaluable role model to young trans people in her ferocious courage and undeniable fabulousness, but the film is little more than a celebration of that.

Whipping up a proper tone for the big screen versions of E.L. James’ wildly popular novels was always going to be the films’ biggest problem, and while director James Foley might not quite nail it, wily injections of humor prove to be an unexpectedly helpful addition to the kinky franchise.

There will be many people who see themselves in the furtive glances and mud-covered kisses from which God’s Own Country weaves its harsh but hopeful narrative, and they will do so while witnessing a finely crafted piece of cinema.

Verbinski packs so much stuff into his giddy Grand Guignol, and the more he crams in the better it works.

As relentless, eager-to-please genre filmmaking goes, it marks the rare occasion where too much of a good thing is just good enough.

The dancing alone is worth the price of admission, and Naharin is a dynamic if somewhat aloof subject.

Keep Quiet is far more compelling as a portrait of a man in transition than it is as a man reborn, but Blair and Martin never solve the problem that they only have access to the latter.

More fun than funny, more clever than smart, “LEGO Batman” moves too fast to acclimate audiences to the world it so eagerly dismantles and rebuilds (and too fast to make them want to stay there for a minute longer), but it serves as a frenzied reminder that laughing at the things we love is sometimes the best way to remember why we love them.

Rings never solidifies into one of kind movie, cramming a handful of possibilities into its bloated running time.

The film is undone by the wobbly dynamic between its romantic leads.

By the end of I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin’s words have transcended the boundaries of their era and become timeless, functioning as both a celebration of cultural survival and a warning that the battle for its survival won’t stop anytime soon.

While Goodman’s feature doesn’t focus our recently inaugurated president, it serves as a blunt reminder of what has happened, and could happen again, when misinformation is spread to dangerous, angry, homegrown radicals.

While Lovesong fails to coalesce, Malone and Keough emerge with two of their best performances yet, bolstered by an on-screen bond that deserves far richer material that what is offered up here.

Thoroughbred is a dark and pointed piece of work that depends on the delicacy with which someone can thread the needle between Hitchcockian suspense and capitalistic venom, and Finley — adapting his own play to the screen — demonstrates a cinematic authority that eludes many filmmakers who have worked in the medium for decades.

Amidst the appreciation for the natural world and the tiny battles for public attention, the process of developing a camera that can capture and transmit these time-lapse images gives Chasing Coral the added layer of a time-crunch caper.

Whereas most docs about “different” people are content to flatter our empathy, Dina aims to deepen it.

One could argue that Patti Cake$ doesn’t break any new ground, but that would ignore the infectious attitude of its determine young heroine, and how much it stands out from conventional variations.

What value there is to be found is in its cast. Hoult and Costa are charismatic, committed, and totally capable of making it feel as though their characters really can’t see what’s coming.

It’s at once a celebration of individuality and its potential to unnerve those who resist it.

With its intimate focus, Menashe avoids indicting the strict logic that stifles its anti-hero’s individuality (though secular viewers can reach their own conclusions). Instead, it succeeds at showing how his challenges are more universal than judgmental viewers might think.

Almereyda’s feature is rich in acting talent, but this stagey, flat drama can’t match the wattage of its leads.

With Elliott front and center of every scene, The Hero pulls off the kind of acting showcase that its fictional star can never achieve.

Bolstered by a strong performance from Teresa Palmer (who only gets better with each role, and seems happy to mix things up when it comes time to pick them), Berlin Syndrome doesn’t break much new ground in the genre, but it’s certainly a worthy entry into it.

Ingrid Goes West is colorful and flippant enough that it can survive a lot of its more senseless developments, but the movie never digs beneath the most obvious layers of its L.A. stereotypes.

With his intimacy drama Golden Exits, Perry strays from his typical fare of people behaving badly to, well, people behaving not quite as badly and certainly with more believable motivation.

Shot with raw specificity and a remarkable sense of place, Dayveon doesn’t cut through its clichés so much as it is reclaims them as the stuff of real life.

When the concept really clicks, Casting JonBenet operates as a darkly entertaining look at how gossip can fuel legend to the point where truth loses its relevance.

While too silly and open hearted to hate, Brigsby Bear begins with a premise that’s weird enough to be good, but settles for a weak trajectory that isn’t good enough to be weird.

Despite the efforts of its cast, Crown Heights is too crammed and hectic to convey the immensity of the systemic evils that run through its ruptured heart.

From “Star Maps” to “Cedar Rapids,” Arteta has consistently poked at the plights of marginalized characters, and Beatriz is a rich, grounded figure, but the inanity around her is hard to believe.

With an energetic set of young actors liberated by Hittman’s jittery naturalism, the movie remains a gripping drama throughout — a combination that speaks to the director’s emerging aesthetic.

Raw and unadorned, Whose Streets? is a documentary in the truest sense of the word; an actual moving document of events fresh in the country’s memory, but never before laid as bare as they are here.

Trophy tells a story as captivating as its images are beautiful.

Even as the screenplay (which Clowes adapted) contains much of the source material’s pitch-black humor, it also falls short of realizing its subtle vision of an angry recluse learning to make peace with his surroundings.

If Get Out isn’t half as scary as the ideas that inspired it, Jordan Peele’s directorial debut is almost certain to be the boldest — and most important — studio genre release of the year. What it lacks in fear, it nearly makes up for in fearlessness.

What is the meaning of life? Are we here for a reason? Is there a point to any of this? We may never know, but knowing this movie exists may bring some viewers one step closer to giving up on the whole damn thing.

Wind River may not blow you away, but this bitter, visceral, and almost parodically intense thriller knows what it takes to survive.

While Mudbound is rooted in a precise historical moment, it’s also a sobering commentary on timeless struggles.

Matching a crackling wit with the absurd dissonance of time and place found in the best of Monty Python and Mel Brooks, Little Hours is so eager to please that its one-note humor lands with ease.

The final beats of Guadagnino’s adaptation galvanize two hours of simmering uncertainty into a gut-wrenchingly wistful portrait of two people trying to find themselves before it’s too late.

As a director, Harrelson seems to be grasping at elements of far better movies. The live component, while impressively executed, rarely alters the movie in any meaningful way.

Landline is a textured, silly, sweet, and deeply felt comedy that traces the distance between the most satisfied parts of ourselves and the most desperate, between the people we are and the people we think we should be, and it finds that — for better or worse — we’re all stuck somewhere in between.

This whirling vortex of dysfunctional friends and acquaintances feel like an unfocused and self-absorbed melange of frustration. It’s a parade of broken people, connected only by their fruitless pursuits of happiness.

Lowery manages to find entertainment value and genuine intrigue from his outlandish scenario, synthesizing the magical realism of his earlier films with a tighter grasp of tone.

By turns resoundingly human and regretfully half-baked, the film wears its influences on its sleeve.

The Big Sick plays less like a great movie than a platform for its appealing tone, but it’s so well acted and dense with insights into the culture clash at its center that nothing about the central dynamic is strained.

Fogel’s only other filmmaking credit, the romcom “Jewtopia,” doesn’t suggest the makings of a sophisticated nonfiction storyteller, and Icarus suffers from an imitative quality that’s hard to shake. Fortunately, Rodchenkov’s dilemma single-handedly keeps Icarus engaging throughout.

The filmmakers manage to improve on the limitations of the original by showing more of Gore’s resilience in the field.

The film never loses its strong sense of character, but those characters deserve a bit more love than they’re afforded. Still, Lynskey and Wood see it through.

Even in the weak signal that is the January movie season, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage hardly registers.

While hardly reinventing the wheel, Donald Cried spins it faster than usual, taking cues from its memorably irritating protagonist. Beneath its entertainment value, the movie also hints at the tragedy of aimless adulthood.

If Sleepless feels like the microwaved leftovers of a dish that was designed to be swallowed whole, Foxx is the frozen part in the middle, the bite that makes you regret that someone tried to heat this up in the first place.

Led by a few strong performances, and delivering plenty of heart-clutching moments, The Bye Bye Man is sure to appeal to horror lovers of all stripes.

Too heavy-handed and clumsy to land with a real knockout punch, Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson’s second feature benefits immensely from the quietly moving work of its lead, Besty Brandt.

The scenes where Creech and co are outracing the Terravex death squads are playful and inventive enough to provide a glimpse of what this movie could have been if it weren’t so remarkably bad in most other respects.

For every moment of sick visceral genius (e.g. whenever Hernandez or Evoli are left to their own devices), there’s another of clumsy metaphor (e.g. the limp punchline of the movie’s final minutes).