The simple film is a straightforward entry in Hong’s filmography that is unlikely to ever be held up among his true masterpieces. But its delightful execution of small details speaks to how clearly the artist understands his own strengths at this point in his career.

Always interesting, seldom enjoyable, and somehow both smothered and excessive at the same time (and at all times), this nearly three-hour bonfire of Searchlight Pictures’ annual budget is a towering monument to human love that betrays almost zero interest in actually being liked.

If the rest of the film does err towards the slightly generic, Howard gives Thelma the Unicorn a great lead that you’ll have no trouble rooting for.

And “Megalopolis” — in its most dazzling and audacious moment — breaks through the screen to bridge the gap between life and thought, art and reality.

Yes, the masks are great. And yes, home invasions will aways be scary. But when it comes to messing with genre classics, your answer to “Why remake a near-perfect film?” can’t be “It was here.”

It isn’t interested in finding a bright side to war; such an outcome would feel too complacent. Instead, it points its microphone unflinchingly at the darkest parts of the human soul, while forcing the viewer to hold the camera and search for the brutality within its images and empty spaces. It makes the audience, and their recognition, a necessary ingredient to portraying the bigger picture.

Cicėnas and Grineviciute are both strong actors, each conveying their character insecurities and vulnerabilities with nuance, but their chemistry together isn’t quite enough to paper over the cracks in the movie’s love story

Such an internally combusting prequel might seem like a strange lead-in to a movie that spit fire in every direction, but don’t you worry: George Miller still has what it takes to make it epic.

Tonally, IF never finds a happy medium. Story-wise, it doesn’t bridge the gap between pure imagination and basic narrative flow. We don’t know what’s happening most of the time, and worst yet, we don’t know how to feel about it, no matter our age. That’s much more than a failure of just imagination.

Cohen and Halberg manage an admirable faith in their own movie — delivering consistently delightful kills in a soapy story that doesn’t seem insecure until the very end.

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.

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

Halverson is too far on the deep end to provide us with digestible storytelling, and Cowperthwaite, who spends the movie jumping in nonlinear fashion from one year to the next, is in no rush to make the larger picture easier to see.

Though this thriller is packed with memorable characters, the diner itself might be its greatest.

Wes Ball’s lush and nuanced Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes might lack the epic sweep or revolutionary fervor of the recent Matt Reeves movies that salvaged this series from the stink that had been on it since 2001, but this well-honed adventure still manages to build on the best of their legacy, if largely because of its keen focus on the hard-fought lessons that have been forgotten from it.

For all of its cliched youthful exuberance, the film finds its footing in the third act when it offers a bittersweet look into the tradeoffs of fame and how their conflicts with personal obligations can derail even the most promising artists.

Unfrosted sprinkles in a few choice examples of Seinfeld’s observational schtick (“the magic of cereal is that you’re eating and drinking at the same time with one hand”), but it mostly sees him using the film’s Boomer milieu as a backdrop for an uninspired mishmash of contrived sight gags and anachronistic cultural references.

More than anything, however, this compellingly sketched slice of life offers rare and abiding insight as to how interwoven the Israeli and Palestine communities are in Lod and the other “mixed” cities around the country, how unequally justice is shared between them, and why such imbalanced conditions for survival will always make the world less safe for people on both sides of such bifurcated societies.

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.

Mars Express may have benefited from the luxury of being able to slow down (this story could have easily sustained a 13 or 26-episode anime season), but Périn makes the most of its propulsiveness, as this eye-popping movie launches toward a future where tech might be liberated from the people who created it.

With a thinly sketched premise and a Hail Mary pass at emotional depth arriving late in the final act, the film feels like a series of vignettes draped around Stalter’s charms. Unfortunately, charisma alone doesn’t make an interesting narrative.

Cinematographer Johnny Derango helps to ensure that the film’s more prosaic moments — of which there are many — are endowed with the same ambient vitality, as the active camerawork and careful framing invite audiences to look for truth in the kind of story that tends to just shove it in your face.

Scene by scene, Marks’ film plays like a traditional high school-set rom-com, but things take a turn as Aza’s illness becomes more obvious.

A tale of romance and revenge that culminates in a shootout, The Dead Don’t Hurt is not a total misfire. There are moments of excitement, and the film’s semi-nonlinearity allows for a few midpoint surprises about characters we thought we knew.

It’s a breathless ending, but the juice hardly feels worth the squeeze by the dying minutes of a noble failure that trims all of the trappings off of the slasher genre until there’s nothing left but a monster, an old mask, and — in Nash — a seriously promising talent who could use a little bit more to work with next time.

Power achieves a profoundly unsettling sweep by prioritizing breadth over depth, and Ford’s doc is able to cover a ton of ground as it hopscotches between chapter titles like “PROPERTY” and “STATUS QUO” in order to argue that policing has always served as an instrument to maintain class order.

At the very least, Nowhere Special is one of the great father-son movies.

In spite of its demented enthusiasm (as well as this independently financed, Sam Raimi-produced film’s welcome rejection of anything that might resemble a studio note), Mohr’s frenetic and exhausting video game of a movie doesn’t know where to focus its energy.

Humane doesn’t want to be a hard-hitting drama about moral equity in an unequal world that nobody escapes alive, it wants to be a satirical — and increasingly basic — thriller about the evils of financially incentivized health policies in a world where nobody deserves to die, and it’s hard for it to succeed on those terms without caring about which of its characters ends up in Bob’s other body bag.

It’s a slice of life, surely, but a meager one at that.

With some memorably grisly moments and a star that’s committed to acting past his character’s spectacularly fucked fate, there’s plenty to enjoy while it lasts.

If this catastrophic bore of a film isn’t game over for “Rebel Moon,” then nothing will be able to stand in her way.

As it stands, the Forgers’ cinematic debut is more poop than truffle, albeit an enjoyable one that fills the hole fans are forced to strain with while we wait for season three.

As much as I’d love to see these characters in another film, I’d also love to have seen more of them in this one. Oh, and a quick general note to action directors everywhere: Silencers are great for stealth kills, but they really suck the fun out of a full-blown siege.

Watching “LaRoy” is a lot like the seedy motel affairs that all of its characters seem to be having — two hours of fun, followed by a tragic feeling of emptiness and a desire for a shower.

The director’s gift for unpacking the way notions of witchcraft can function as fig leaves for trauma, combined with his obvious eye for costumes, lighting, and framing, make for a visually striking, deeply compassionate, and memorable debut.

These competitors only feel alive when they’re bound together by the mutual intimacy of being edged to the break points of their desire, and Guadagnino’s deliriously enjoyable movie doesn’t let any of its characters get off until even the most sophisticated Hawk-Eye line-calling technology on Earth would be unable to pinpoint the exact spot where tennis ends and sex begins.

It’s a seedy ride through a bleak existence that would be entertaining enough to watch with popcorn if it didn’t depict a life that’s all too real for too many people.

"It’s Only Life After All” paints a holistic portrait of two artists who became one, crafting a stirring collage of queer history with the engaging archival footage.

The palpable sincerity behind “Back to Black” almost makes its myriad weaknesses more glaring. Everyone involved in the film approaches the late artist with love and respect, but its tawdry instincts and misguided sense of responsibility let her memory down.

On some level you can only give a remake so much blame for making the same mistakes as its predecessor, but this one certainly doesn’t get credit for fixing them either.

It’s only because Freire’s hyper-combustible debut feature remains so true to itself that we believe Malu and Lili might find what they’re looking for, even if it ultimately doesn’t look anything like what we expected them to find.

There’s decent fun to be had in this crafty and contained Aussie skin-crawler (a low-budget affair that doesn’t scrimp when it comes to its WETA-created monster), but Sting is a bit too small for its massive alien spider to maneuver itself in unexpected ways, and the tender human story that Roache-Turner weaves around her lacks the bite it needs to melt your heart or liquify any of your other organs.

The Long Game is determined to ape the tropes of a feel-good sports drama, but only as a means to an end, and its struggle to balance the demands of the genre with the deeper concerns underpinning this story ultimately stops either side of that equation from going the distance.

What Vaniček’s intricately crafted creature feature lacks in the specialness of its specimen it makes up for with a captivating killing den that’s inhabited by multidimensional characters as melancholy as they are hilarious.

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.

Yes, “Abigail” was conceived as a new take on “Dracula’s Daughter.” But as the finished product stands, that infamous origin story is as invisible as a vampiric reflection. Not only is Abigail routinely sidelined by a plot that fails to trust her skills, but the ostensible underpinnings to her character are as half-assed as one-sided fang.

Stevenson’s spin on The Omen can tie its borderline NC-17 terror to a multi-decade genre legacy suddenly feasting on noticeably improved visual artistry and a narratively satisfying revamp of stale IP.

The film is too close to — and too impressed by — the simple fact of what just happened to see under the surface, or even bother to look that hard.

No disrespect to the similarly Proustian rewards of “Ratatouille,” but here is a 73-minute movie — animated by about 10 people — that manages to deliver twice the flavor with a fraction of the ingredients.

While the moments focused on the kids’ lives are the best part of the film — James and Ramirez have natural chemistry and are compelling to watch — Baig occasionally falters on that front too.

Frustratingly, despite being jam-packed with facts, there is not much insight into what makes Bird tick, what makes her a great player, or what her legacy actually means to the sport.

The unrepentant movie-ness of “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” can also be part of its charm, especially when it comes to the cast members whose performances aren’t as stale as their parts.

The film would have benefitted from either committing to Carter’s growth or taking the comedy in a much darker direction, but the middle path it trods is ultimately unsatisfying. Lousy Carter might be a reminder that middle age is filled with monotony and unsolvable problems, but that doesn’t mean our movies have to be.

This goofy-ass, clumsily assembled Saturday morning cartoon of a movie might as well be called “Godzilla Minus Everything,” if only because the more accurate “Godzilla Minus Everything Plus Dan Stevens in a Hawaiian Shirt” wouldn’t fit on a marquee.

Música heralds the arrival of a filmmaker, an actor, and a musician worth paying attention to, while also delivering a winning and visually inventive musical comedy.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person isn’t a wholly new take on the subgenre. But it is a charming one — a rom-com for teenagers (and teenagers at heart) who swoon when cute boys talk about death.

The film makes plain the experience of being caught between a rock and a hard place, a boldly incisive metaphor for the trans experience.

Oddity delivers a brilliant, bespoke, and tightly entertaining string of ideas that work stronger as a collection

Philibert’s fly-on-the-wall documentary is all the more effective because the director refuses to pretend that he isn’t visible — not in this place where people come to be seen, and not merely looked at.

Observing a nation’s shortcomings is not typically this fun. Yet — unlike latter-day miserabilist works by the likes of Ken Loach — Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and its barbs stick entirely because Jude trusts his audience to appreciate tonal scope.

Late Night with the Devil fails to deliver an ending as fresh as the rest of the movie. The fact that you’ll see it coming makes it less fun but sure as hell doesn’t make it less honest.

The film’s outsides, all darkness and furtive lighting, seem to pour out of the characters’ insides, where pockets of trauma live in their own self-erected shadows.

At the very least, it seems safe to assume that Doda wouldn’t mind how this documentary casts her as a quasi-deliberate revolutionary, but McKenzie and Parker lack the intel to see any deeper into Doda’s bimbo savviness, just as they lack the ambition to explore whether intentionality even matters when it comes to changing the world.

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.

Rather than a spirited diatribe about the need to step away from our desks and live life, it’s a thoughtful little comedy about how those soul-crushing hours in the office have the unintended benefit of giving us a personal life that’s worth missing.

This film is as muted in its approach to character and drama as its color palette, but the result is devastating.

The details are so hypnotically sadistic that Titley’s documentary is seldom bothered to deviate from them, as none of the film’s retrospective interviews, candid and thoughtful as they are, prove as gripping as the raw video of Nasubi’s ordeal.

This franchise might not be entirely dead just yet, but its latest resurrection doesn’t make nearly enough good arguments to keep pumping life into it.

By the end of this adaptation, we get the full picture of this romance and the two people involved.

Benson, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, knows his way around heartbreak, and despite the elevated nature of the story — she time travels, for chrissakes — always finds room to add genuinely relatable elements to Harriet’s incredible plight.

Lowe finds ways to make it all feel if not wholly original, at least quite fresh. You’ve heard this story before, but you’ve never seen it quite like this.

While the film’s time-loop premise does engage with the usual themes of appreciating every moment and the preciousness of life, it also ties the concept to the scientific method in a way that feels fresh and interesting.

It’s a visceral look at the veteran experience and the kinds of loss we can’t easily describe or process, and the isolation that comes with that.

There’s nothing especially revelatory about the scenes where Anette sits in the country home that now feels more like a prison, wondering how her life got to the point . . . But her response to said feminine mystique is demented enough to make this a wild and satisfying ride.

I wish we got to see more of the big show at the end of the movie, but that’s almost beside the point — all that matters is that, somehow, someway, it goes on.

To the extent that the ending works at all, it’s because of Froseth.

Leguizamo may give one of his career-best performances in the feature, but it’s Ferreira’s surprising command onscreen that is the most memorable.

A light but meaty piece of magical-realism that threads the needle between Cronenbergian body horror and Miyazaki-like fantasy to create a modern parable that evokes any number of identifiable emergencies — deforestation, the AIDS epidemic, the global migration crisis and its attendant xenophobia, etc. — in the service of a story that refuses to be reduced into a clear metaphor for any one of them.

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.

Even if the execution isn’t always where it needs to be, Katz and screenwriter Simon Barrett still deserve their flowers for conceiving such a purely cinematic idea and swinging for it with so much confidence.

The rom-com genre lives and dies on its tropes, because we love them and they’re comforting, but the lack of originality smarts here.

It’s a return to form for its director after the misstep of “Men,” a film that’s grim and harrowing by design. The question is, is the emptiness that sets in once the shock has worn off intentional as well?

While Much Ado About Dying strives to be a tribute to caretakers and Chambers’ dearly departed uncle, its baggy structure, dictated by David’s declining health, renders the film frustratingly inert.

It’s great that “Stormy” might buy its namesake a small measure of the sympathy she deserved from the start, but 110 minutes of your time shouldn’t feel like this steep of a price.

[A] sturdily enjoyable if emotionally uninsightful heart-tugger that aims straight down the middle of the audience for a mildly reassuring experience mostly made with families in mind.

The film accurately reflects the tumult of mothers and daughters and intergenerational culture gaps, which are never nearly manifested or bridge. Reality is messy — anything else is the stuff of dreams.

It is in the third act that Immaculate delivers a gonzo, rock-smashing, fiery, crucifix-stabbing and all-out bloody good time. Unfortunately, by that point, it’s too late to save the soul of this movie, which is condemned not to go to hell, but remain in dull horror movie purgatory.

The film is so self-aware, in fact, that it raises questions about which of its flaws are intentional and which are, well, flaws. The filmmaking here is as polished as one might expect from a Hollywood crowd-pleaser, well lit and only occasionally showy in terms of its camerawork. And the combat and car-crash stunts are great — they better be, given the subject matter.

The cuts are quick and the sound effects are bone-crunching, and were it not for an extended lull in the middle of the movie, it would be an exhilarating ride.

It’s simultaneously candid and also staged in a way that plays with form by straddling realism and fiction. Yet that doesn’t detract from the personal nature of the story Mullinkosson tells, and it doesn’t detract from the film’s political power either.

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.

Combining the youthful raunchiness of “Superbad,” a detailed nostalgia for the era of video stores and AOL Instant Messenger, this playful sci-fi spectacle splits the difference between early “Stranger Things” and “The Terminator,” with immaculate soundtrack vibes courtesy of Fatboy Slim and Chumbawamba.

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.

While Babes begins its approach to domesticity with the same aversion to responsibility that powered “Broad City,” it ultimately settles on a more mature attitude that illustrates the way many of Glazer’s fans are growing up alongside her.

It’s as if “Cabrini” is trying to separate the Christian ideals of the saint’s teachings from the political realities of putting them into practice; as if it’s trying to flatter the moral principles of its conservative audience without pushing that crowd to embody them. Just scan the QR code in the credits, pay a few movie tickets forward, and let the hard work of solving anti-immigrant discrimination become somebody else’s problem.

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.

Even at its most entertaining, “Imaginary” has about as much staying power as the figments of imagination that give it its name. Just like your childhood imaginary friend, you’ll probably forget about it pretty quickly.