An excruciating chase film, a terrifying puzzle-box whodunit, and a testament to romanticizing even the darkest cinema in glowing 35mm, Strange Darling is an outright triumph.

Greedy People is consistently funny, endearingly acted, competently directed, sufficiently twisty, and more than entertaining enough to pass an afternoon when it’s too hot to go outside but too early to distract one’s self with copious amounts of football.

Had Daniels explored all the underpinnings of a horror outing as a dramatic allegory for addiction — as the film‘s opening quote (“I need forgiveness for my sins, but I also need deliverance from the power of sin…”) suggests he might — the director could have fared better than going all the way to ghosts… or is it demons?

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.

Even if the film‘s ridiculous premise is at least chuckle-inducing — and sold rather convincingly by a cast that all seems to be on the same page about how stupid it is — its convoluted MacGuffin and predictable twists ensure that no amount of expensive action sequences from director Julian Farino or genuine chemistry between Wahlberg and Berry can elevate “The Union” into something worth watching.

“Hard Times” offers no radical change from the (quite deliberately) repetitive construction of “Spring,” but does feature subtle shifts in focus and certainly a lot more in the way of incident and splintering effects.

How we look from the outside versus how we are on the inside doesn’t always lineup, and that disparity can shake the visions we have of ourselves. The metaphor extends to “Skincare” itself as a film that looks bright on its face but ends up dull despite its best efforts and self-care.

It’s certainly hard to imagine a cruder way of connecting the dots between the series’ fractured mythology.

You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll have, yes, a very good time. You’ll also marvel at the introduction of a newly-minted filmmaker with a crystal-clear vision of both what the world is and what it could be, at least if the women were in charge.

It’s easy to get caught up in the lives and loves of the Supremes, and the warm-hearted spirit of the entire endeavor is contagious. We just wish there was a bit more time to savor it all.

If granted permission to bring his signature sadism to these infamously batshit characters, Roth could have delivered his “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Instead, restricted by standards that seem equally unlikely to please preteens, he was left holding a bomb.

And while some viewers may brace while watching (or avoid altogether), the overwhelming feeling of watching this adaptation in a packed theater was solidarity and catharsis. As dark as the dirt is in this story, “It Ends with Us” is a film focused on what can grow out of it.

Hartnett is in on the joke, going against the type he was pigeonholed into by Hollywood as a teen matinee idol who won our hearts and other body parts in “The Virgin Suicides” as too-cool boy-next-door Trip Fontaine, or as a self-induced sexual ascetic in “40 Days and 40 Nights.”

Coup! isn’t objectionable for its politics, it’s objectionable for trying to deny them. Unless its politics are just that muddled, and then Stark and Schuman have no idea at all how to express whatever it is they’re trying to say.

Damon and Affleck are low-key one of the most perfectly measured duos of the last 25 years . . . so it’s no surprise that they bounce off of each other so well here, but their natural chemistry is more pronounced in the context of a movie where everything around them feels so forced, and their characters’ grounding idiocy is more refreshing in the context of a movie that betrays that realism at every turn.

Close to You is rife with real emotion, but the gap between vulnerability and meaning keeps everyone at arm’s length.

If there’s any takeaway from “Rob Peace” for the industry folks in the audience, it’s the leading-man power and charisma of Jay Will, who gives an overwhelmingly heart-open performance that makes you understand why everyone in his midst adored him, and how his life’s richness lent well to a best-selling biography.

It’s dull and low-energy stuff to begin with, but that a story premised on the infinite potential of a child’s imagination should end by cribbing from the most creatively bankrupt stuff of modern cinema is a perfect microcosm of how far Harold and the Purple Crayon misses the mark. Saldanha and his writers had the entire world at their disposal, and they ended up drawing a total blank.

If there’s a core flaw to Rhinegold, it’s that you walk out of it knowing a lot about its subject’s biography but almost nothing about who he truly is.

The Beast Within has nothing much to offer except the domestic violence allegory at its center, so Farrell repeatedly emphasizes, spotlights, and underlines it in red, just in case anyone was unclear about what the film was really about.

It helps that Hathaway is rivetingly dangerous as a woman who’s capable of nothing and anything all at once, and that “Mothers’ Instinct” inherited an ending that — at long last — allows it to square the raw emotionality of its characters with the daytime TV luridness of their situation, but that pitch-perfect finale only serves to reinforce how the rest of this movie struggles to articulate the profound sadness that undergirds even its frothiest moments.

Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande is halfway decent as a story about Cymande, but it’s sadly not even close to the story of Cymande.

The Fabulous Four might feel like a series of math problems that don’t quite add up, but it’s still an enjoyable time at the movies — especially if you choose to gobble down gummies at the same rate as the “geriatric” cast of Jocelyn Moorhouse’s raucous comedy.

Yes, the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has long been more compelling than any of the stories told in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and — in the process of reconciling those two stories as only Marvel Jesus could — Deadpool makes a very persuasive case that this should be the last superhero movie ever made. It won’t be. It already isn’t. The best we can probably hope for is that “Deadpool 4” is similarly willing to die for all of the sins that its genre will commit between now and then.

Fearlessly specific in its comedy and just as attentive with its character arcs, this algebraic study in adventure might have a metaphoric typo or two (insert obligatory comment about CGI), but it’s mostly a triumph.

Great Absence isn’t quite as allergic to sentiment as this slow and steady film might seem on the surface, and it’s prone to metaphor in a way that a less honest story would never be able to survive, but Kei is committed to keeping things at the same even keel as Yamazaki Yutaka’s locked-off cinematography.

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.

Monia Chokri‘s brilliant feature is one of the sharpest cinematic examinations of the paradoxical expectations we place on our relationships in the 21st century.

As Riegel builds to a conclusion that feels both predictable and satisfying, Dandelion must decide how far she’s willing to go to bet on herself. More people should bet on Riegel and Layne, and fast.

At the core of it all, Juri’s performance is a marvel of coiled emotion and wide-eyed wonder at the world around her. It’s just that the film around her does a disservice to that performance.

There’s just something retrograde about the entire thing, a copy of a copy, a “new” story with some very light edits to the “old” one, that bogs down even the lightest touches of merriment.

National Anthem is high on mood and feeling rather than story. This very horny queer Western is a rush of sensory pleasures, from the reddened, rust-colored rocks of New Mexico as captured by cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi to a killer soundtrack featuring the likes of Angel Olsen, Perfume Genius, Susanne Sundfør, and Spiritualized.

Spanning 50 years and multiple continents without ever shifting its focus from the universal human urge to ponder what could have been, Touch is an ode to accepting your life story without losing sleep over the things you couldn’t change.

Existing at the intersection of the specific and the universal, The Convert manages to combine an entertaining portrayal of an often ignored historical era with universal questions about whether it’s ever possible to build a human society on the foundation of something other than violence.

Too often watching Sing Sing, you can feel the film’s manufactured drama push up against its embedded realism. The film’s immersive elements, and its valiant efforts to eschew prison film stereotypes, are commonly at war with a narrative at best designed to be instructive rather than compel on its own merits.

A movie theater may not be the safest place to hide from a tornado, but this winning July blockbuster makes perfectly clear that huddling in the dark with strangers is a hell of a lot better than watching the storm from home.

Zippy at first with the charisma and verve of a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, before it way outstretches its welcome across multiple encores and a 132-minute running time, Fly Me to the Moon has the patina of a straight-to-streaming movie tossed into theaters due to a backend deal or to appease filmmakers.

Terrifying in the abstract even as it grows increasingly absurd to watch, “Longlegs” slinks its way into that liminal space between childhood nightmares and grown-up practicalities with the same precision that it splits the difference between serial killer procedurals and supernatural psychodramas (let’s say “The Silence of the Lambs” and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure”).

Kill makes very, very good on its goofy title by the time all is said and done, but perhaps the most surprising thing about Bhat’s action extravaganza is that it inverts expectations without ever getting off-track.

Much of what we see is what the Taliban wants us to see, but as that’s what’s really important to them, it’s also what we — anyone who’s a non-fundamentalist — need to see to understand them.

It doesn’t stop “Axel F” from getting the job done, but that’s little consolation in a movie so concerned with the long-term consequences of not caring about anything else. If only “Axel F” didn’t make it so damn easy to forgive it for that.

Despicable Me 4 already feels like six episodes of just such a show, crammed into a single unwieldy, disconnected, and oddly episodic outing.

An unhinged work that captures the escalating madness of untangling entire social webs through the lens of a single person or event, Babysitter charges through the ruins of mainstream cinema’s post-#MeToo moment.

It’s unable to channel the essence of what made Powell and Pressburger’s films unforgettable. Sadly, it’s not really trying.

Seamlessly blending the best inspirations from sci-fi, fantasy, and Hindu epics, the film is a staggering cinematic experience — even if that experience drags toward the end.

It’s a film that ends in a far more ambivalent place than it starts, and puts much less emphasis on Lane’s moral fiber than it does on the ever-shifting nature of morality itself.

June Zero is a film as a conversation piece. It may not be especially articulate at moments, it may not be as focused as it could be. But some of that is by design: This is a film with questions, not answers. Its tangents are like those of any meaty conversation. And it’s a conversation worth having.

With A Family Affair, Efron picks up where “17 Again” left off, and it’s a delight to see this former teen heartthrob back in a similar mode.

Occasionally, both Johnson and Penn — unquestionably talented performers — nearly get Daddio back on track.

The adorable eccentricities of the movie’s second half are balanced out by the sincerity of the beauty that surrounds them.

The filmmaker manages to bring much of his sensibility and overall texture to the series. Part of that is due to the nature of the prequel itself (go back to where it all began!), part of that is due to the relative freedom to build in new characters and stories, but much of it is thanks to Sarnoski’s ability to pull deep emotionality out of his stars and audience almost immediately.

If nothing else, the dazzling finale feels like a hyperviolent ‘80s period piece tailor-made For the Girls. It delivers some of the series’ most extreme kills as well as its best uses of glittery costumes, bloody testicles, and feminist subversion for a whirlwind joy ride that doubles as a societal lambasting.

Jordan Scott’s film, adapted from Nicholas Hogg’s novel “Tokyo Nobody” and produced by her father Ridley, isn’t quite as interesting as the towering questions that it asks. But the fact that it bothers to ask them at all puts the film in a rarified class above many of its Hollywood counterparts.

Don’t be fooled by the airiness of its wine-drunk aesthetic or the languor of its pacing: Last Summer is every inch a Catherine Breillat movie, and its effervescent sheen is nothing but a natural distraction from the uncertain gloom that comes with the fall.

Watching Cho, perhaps on the same search as the filmmakers — for profundity, for catharsis — is always an entertaining experience, and a reminder of her curiosity as an actor more than the sum of her stand-up parts.

The film’s wild ending will determine whether or not a viewer enjoys the film. But rather than trying to understand exactly what it means, you’re better off appreciating it like one of Alex’s photos.

Quad Gods is less effective as a social issues doc than it is as a work of individual portraiture, and while Jacklin’s emphasis on camaraderie prevents her from digging all that deep into any one of her subjects, each of her primary characters proves sufficiently riveting all the same.

At first glance, Bang Bang seems like a dreadfully cliche-ridden film. Nelson throws everything he has at the eponymous character, but the washed-up fighter archetype who spits poetry about the demons he now battles has been done to death. Yet it becomes clear those cliches are the point.

This is a rare nonfiction chronicle of an artist that also avoids hagiography — we see Dion at her lowest because that becomes the reminder of who she is at her very best.

On its own terms, the film is an exquisite star vehicle for one of Hollywood’s best rising actresses and an engaging thriller about the contradictions that form when you can’t assemble the puzzle of your own life without relying on pieces you’d rather throw away.

The lively narrative flits and darts between scenes like the film’s namesake, lingering for a moment before speeding off to the next in an edit that feels energized yet never rushed.

Trigger Warning only exists to serve the needs of a streaming algorithm, which is just as well, as that streaming algorithm is the only audience this undercooked and utterly lifeless piece of streaming content could ever hope to satisfy.

On the one hand, it’s a mediocre genre movie with a title as mundane as it is misleading. . . On the other hand, even as a muddy character study making only the weakest attempts to scare, “The Exorcis-m” is still a bigger treat for fans of “The Exorcis-t” than its recent flop sequel, “The Exorcist: Believer.”

There’s an element of finding yourself, of course, because that’s what you do when you’re coming of age in a summer set film on screen, but the script feels underdeveloped still — a work in progress like Annie, herself.

This haunted and harrowing psychodrama — based on surviving records from the 18th century, and rooted in the day-to-day tedium of Styrian farm life — has too much respect for its emotionally isolated heroine to frame her unraveling as part of a broader phenomenon.

This creatively unbound tale about imaginary friends is so determined to spirit you away that it soon loses any meaningful grip on reality.

Hacking Hate can charitably be construed as a subversion of social media incentivization, a filmic attempt to channel free-floating rage towards powerful entities who make money off of human fragility and social discord. But as an exercise in positive or progressive radicalization, it falls short of its aims by communicating well-known problems without offering solutions beyond the need to soldier on in the face of such vast hatred.

Menuez and Rendón share a terrific chemistry as long-holding-on friends questioning whether they should stay friends at all, and if they should, then why? Comedies like Summer Solstice rarely ask that question with such candor and insight, and with a trans lead actor and character the movie lets simply be themselves despite living in a world rigged against them.

Just the Two of Us is a rare thriller whose setup is more compelling than its climax.

Co-written by John Quester, von Heinz’s script tends to operate more like a wrecking ball than a controlled demolition, but Fry and Dunham endow their scenes with a brick-by-brick specificity that brings their characters to their life — the former in spite of Edek’s general buffoonery, and the latter in spite of the humorlessness that Ruth has developed as a reaction to it.

Here we have another spreadsheet of a movie that conceives of the human mind with the vision of a digital artist and the ethos of a corporate accountant; a film so mercilessly “relatable” that only a chatbot could ever hope to see themselves in it.

This is a filmmaker who knows how to tell story by showing it, and by trusting her audience to come along for the ride. How rare that has become these days.

There are things in life that you can’t avoid, and things that you can’t take back. Vulcanizadora doesn’t know how to cope with these truths, and will alienate much, if not most, of its audience as a result. But the honesty with which it expresses these dark thoughts is commendable — and more reflective than a dozen articles on the “male loneliness epidemic.”

Running eightysomething minutes with credits, “Sacramento” never aspires to be much more than an incisively rendered sketch, but its casual nature and outward lack of ambition belie how well it manages to convey the terror that change brings into our lives, the mania of trying to deny it, and the relief that comes from recognizing that someone else in your world is changing with you.

As a showcase for his stellar casting abilities and knack for heartwarming storytelling, Griffin in Summer is a very fine feature directorial debut.

Although it succeeds on its own terms in bringing to light the pathetic and exploitative behavior of plantation owners during the final era of Dutch colonialism, it succumbs to the same listlessness as Josefien, lying in bed, covered in mosquito bites, waiting for a climax denied.

Ultraman: Rising is a fun, sincere, and thoughtfully conceived piece of kids entertainment.

As much as Tuesday strives to be an adult fairy tale about accepting loss, it struggles to be truly effective because, by design, it traffics in an adolescent sandbox. The fantastic can bring a fresh lens to old truisms, like how the dead live on in the stories and memories of the living, but it’s difficult to enliven them while utilizing the language of a child.

This Diane Von Furstenberg is plenty engaging, but as a tribute to the woman who reinvented the modern dress, it doesn’t reinvent anything itself.

If there’s much about her debut that left me wishing the apple had fallen a little further from the tree, there’s also no denying that the “Unbreakable” filmmaker’s daughter has the skill to follow in her father’s footsteps, which she does here even when the material is begging her to blaze her own trail.

While a degree of naturalism does still make its way into many slow-burn scenes, Quy’s filmmaking largely favors expressionism.

The gradual transformation of an innocent child into an accessory to violence, forced to become increasingly pragmatic and cold along the way, is far from a fresh hook this far into the history of crime movies. But Colonna’s film, co-written with Jeanne Herry, is a riveting, moving take on this narrative.

The sometimes-rapid shifts in tone, even within the same scene, are aided to tremendous effect by the magnetic, fearless performance from Saura Lightfoot Leon.

Rooting his drama in the specifics of rural Taiwan and the Southeast Asian diaspora that make their way there, Chiang’s tough but affecting film taps into tragically universal notions of feeling invisible or ineffectual in one’s day-to-day survival. These concepts are most certainly not lost in translation.

To a Land Unknown is a tour-de-force of empathic storytelling, with its genre narrative bursting with an overabundance of humanity.

Gazer might be inspired by New Hollywood, but its existence is almost reason to believe that a similar filmmaking renaissance could be on the horizon.

The film is ultimately most interested in celebrating the irrational levels of devotion that live theater inspires in the people who make it. While it doesn’t pull punches about the challenges that lie ahead, “The Great Lillian Hall” ultimately makes it clear that its protagonist is lucky to have something that’s so hard to let go.

Beautifully written and performed (Patra Au Ga Man as Angie being the standout of an excellent ensemble), All Shall Be Well illustrates Yeung’s keen eye for the nuances of social dynamics, especially regarding matters of wealth and class that many may prefer to skirt around when it comes to family.

Entrancing from the start but slow to reveal the full scope of Wilson’s vision, Look Into My Eyes locks into that furtively cinematic essence by framing its psychic readings with a stiff naturalism that recalls the interview scenes in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “After Life.”

It works because the movie around these actors strikes the right balance between silliness and sincerity, even if only by virtue of being sillier and more sincere than any of the previous installments.

You may think you know your sports movie tropes, but you’ve never seen them used quite this way — that is, within a queer cheerleading drama firmly focused on complex female characters — and Waterson’s Backspot delights in skewing such expectations for often (but not always) new ends.

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.

Regrettably, “never again” proves to be a misguided ethos for a film about pain that’s so nakedly unresolved, both in its characters, and in a world that has learned nothing from the lessons they were born to teach it.

It’s good enough, rousing enough, compelling enough.

Aspects of the plot do feel predictable, there’s no getting around that. But “Solo” is too smart of a film to be held back by contrivance. With nods to “All About Eve” and classic Douglas Sirk-style melodrama, the gradual unraveling and backstage backstabbing paints a picture of how the damage queer trauma leaves behind can shape us differently from person to person.

Suri’s film is full of non-actors who excel at being themselves in front of the camera, the result so eminently watchable because it feels so remarkably like the real India.

Filmlovers! melds fiction and non-fiction, the personal and the political, popular and art cinema, into a lyrical tribute to spectatorship, embracing all the theories and emotions that come with it.

It’s the brilliance with which Erradi performs, especially in the musical sequences, and the touching portrait of a woman pursuing her art despite the world seemingly conspiring against her to do so, that sustain and invigorate the film.