It is very silly and often strange, but it’s also sweet and funny, and damn it all if you don’t start to really care about this odd little family.

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.

Anne Hathaway's faux British accent might be the first obvious conceit in One Day, but not its most cumbersome. That distinction belongs to the eponymous structure, a claustrophobic device that follows a pair of best friends over the course of a 22-year period, but only on many versions of July 15th.

Can actors save a mediocre movie? In London River, they come close. Blethyn's frantic, sad naivete creates a fascinating contrast to Kouyaté's understated performance.

What The Competition considers a deliciously exciting rite of passage, viewers might interpret as a kind of cultural rot. The truth likely falls somewhere in between, as Simone’s documentary is too gripping to be dismissed, and too queasy to be accepted.

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.

Too late, At Any Price displays the presence of a skilled filmmaker capable of using ambiguous pauses and representational imagery to convey the issues of greed and other covert desires. Until then, it's a slovenly affair only distinguished by its name cast.

Rather than mock their small-time dealings or direct them to chase brighter lights, “Song Sung Blue” treats Mike and Claire’s pursuit of tribute band glory as a sufficient driving force for a meaningful life. This isn’t a story about how you’re never too old to chase your wildest dreams and play in the big leagues; it’s about how there shouldn’t be any shame in realizing that you are.

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.

Just as this series focuses on survival instincts, it seems that Scott has found a way to exercise his own, keeping the “Alien” series relevant by resurrecting the same old scares.

The movie amounts to a tame, forgettable doodle, as if designed to imitate the scruffy Duplass movies that Naima worships; for Shawcat, however, it’s a promising step in a new direction that suggests a far more confident artist than the one she plays onscreen.

Not exactly the first movie that’s ever dared to suggest that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, I Feel Pretty at least has the decency to be honest about how far that wisdom can take you.

Thin and politically disengaged as this diverting Euro-thriller can be, it never forgets how even the most desperate of people can be left to suffer in plain sight — nothing but figures in a landscape.

The Unknown Girl combines its naturalistic direction with a strong lead performance and topicality, although these ingredients are hobbled by their familiarity.

While Margiela’s visions likely deserve a more radical treatment onscreen, Holzemer’s film offers perhaps the most complete insight yet into one of fashion’s most elusive geniuses.

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.

At least superficially, Hello, Love, Again offers something for everyone: stirring romance, politically-tinged drama, and shots of Calgary that resemble a regional tourist board’s wet dream. In execution, however, the film exhibits something of a split personality by awkwardly moving between cutesy soap operatic romance and an unsparing, oft-devastating portrait of the myriad hurdles facing foreign workers.

Hamm’s adaptation of the material is competent enough, offering all the striking shots of the Swiss Alps and extra-laden battle scenes that any historical epic connoisseur could ask for. Bang checks all the boxes as a leading man, emitting the rugged sexiness and unflinching bravery required of a historical figure who transcended his own lifespan and achieved true immortality.

Even when the the music swells and people talk through their problems to reach unremarkable conclusions, there’s an undercurrent of emotional authenticity.

The film is an agreeable document of cultural processing that should especially appeal to the niche crowd at its center — it's more or less mandatory viewing for L.A. foodies.

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

Dramas pile up, some obvious, some not, and Penguin Bloom meanders a bit before coming in to land. The path there might be predictable, but there is still something beautiful when it really takes flight.

It’s charming — and it’s different, and it’s worth saving.

It’s the questions that Fenton can’t answer — maybe even the questions he doesn’t mean to ask — that make It’s Not Yet Dark such an illuminating experience.

This is a nice movie: the kind that’s lit brighter than a dentist’s office, scored by the lead singer of Sigur Rós (along with Alex Somers), and aimed towards a heart-stirring conclusion about empathy, isolation, and the power that we all have to affect each other’s lives. It’s about the hard areas of being human, but it only displays a passing interest in exploring them.

There is still much to enjoy and admire here if you can stay on the film’s wavelength without getting frustrated.

Splitting the difference between “Terms of Endearment” and David Cronenberg’s “Crash” in a way that’s often sweet and surreal (but never sinister), Wittock essentially takes an ultra-familiar premise and coats it with the candied shell of something you’ve never seen before. It’s enchanting stuff, at least until that colorful layer of hard sugar melts away and you’re left to chew on the beige core inside.

The new movie basically jams the archetypes of a John Hughes teen comedy into a minimalist haunted scenario. While that’s not enough to suppress the underlying gimmickry of the storytelling, Annabelle Comes Home at least manages to charm and frighten its way through the purest distillation of the “Conjuring” formula to date.