Ultimately, throwing the same people in the same place with little to do and even less time to do it is emblematic of the sins of far worse, much less worthy sequels. Without Streep there to tie it altogether, well, it just doesn’t sing.

While this crisp and subdued Hitchcockian melodrama represents yet another unexpected pivot from a filmmaker who’s never liked putting one foot in front of the other (it’s Kurosawa’s first period piece), it’s also just a well-done slab of red meat from someone who hasn’t served up a satisfying meal in so long that it seemed as if he might’ve forgotten how.

Edited by writer-director Levin, Runoff is the kind of film that finds power and pleasure in silence; many of its best scenes come in careful, long, quiet scenes of revelation or desperation.

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.

Sewell’s book has always been a better fit for piecemeal storytelling — the book itself is divided up by Beauty’s owners — and while Avis’ script does keep the relationship between Beauty and Jo at its center, that lends an uneven treatment to many of Beauty’s later adventures.

Despite the stars’ strong performances and the high level of craft, the film struggles in its final act.

It has a couple of nice reversals, two or three good laugh lines, and a caustic but not too acid skewering of cultural institutions. It goes down easy, it’s relatively unmemorable and it’s fine. Close, on the other hand, is exquisite.

There’s far more of Snakehead that works than doesn’t, and Leong shows a serious flair for crime dramas. Together with Chang and Wu, the talents of the film are for an electric trio, including stars worth watching and a director very much on the rise.

Adam may not be above reproach, but its good intentions are infectious.

The overarching problem with Mojave is that the two tones don't mesh well together, to the point where it seems Monaghan can't decide if he wants to make an ominous neo-western or a dark satire. Fortunately, the filmmaker's committed lead actors make some of the storytelling issues bearable.

The movie walks a jagged line between conflicting sources, and overplays some of the more outrageous claims to the detriment of the trenchant investigation at its core. However, Kennebeck still musters a fascinating and provocative study of today’s misinformation age simply by adopting its elusive terms.

Gehraiyaan seldom earns its melodramatic turns. However, the buildup to them proves to be dynamic enough, emotionally charged enough, and above all, honest enough in its approach to infidelity and flawed human relationships that the film remains worthwhile.

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.

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.

Charlatan becomes entangled in its conflicting mesh of traits and time periods, but the film is only able to become more than the sum of its frustrating parts because it embraces those complications in the first place.

If the film never aspires to be any heavier than one of FLS’ unscripted comedy shows, it would be wrong to write it off as a fans-only proposition — not when Fried so palpably captures the universal thrill of going out into the world and finding the people who give rhyme to your reason, and reason to your rhyme.

Entertaining and exasperating in equal measure, it’s a nine-dimensional chess game in which the pawns think they’re working towards a better future, but the powers controlling them are only determined to maintain the status quo.

In its best moments, The Flash touches on something new and exciting, but too often, its the past that tugs on, keeping it from speeding ahead.

Women Is Losers is an infectious and auspicious debut.

In Blair’s The Toxic Avenger, the side gags are the film. The rest of it is the filler.

Our planet is a finite place, and our lives on it are finite, too. The twilight of Attenborough’s time here speaks to that truth so beautifully that you wish this documentary had more to say about it.

Till spins a sloppy but uproariously clever urban fable, one that doesn’t sanctify or belittle the handicapped, but rather shines new light on that invisible population by inviting them to play the most visible of movie archetypes: assassins.

The movie falls short of deep insights, but its most prominent qualities — scrappy, ephemeral, a little bit lewd — mirror the chief attributes of Callahan’s endearing work.

Plane may not take you anywhere you’ve never gone before, but if you’re buying a ticket to a movie called Plane, odds are it will get you exactly where you want to go.

The gentle, lushly visualized and exasperatingly diffuse Miss Hokusai is a missed opportunity in many respects, but it certainly does a magnificent job of validating its own existence.

If only Heretic were as serious about religion as any of its characters (either for or against), perhaps the movie’s second half wouldn’t be so quick to descend into contrived parlor tricks and too-basic displays of suspense, but Beck and Woods aren’t really in the business of pushing any buttons.

Although it often stumbles in service to delivering yet another foul-mouthed joke, its heart remains firmly in the right place.

Angus Wall’s super watchable Being Eddie is among the more convincing films of its kind, because instead — or by way — of trying to show us who the real Eddie Murphy is, it commits itself to arguing that Murphy has always known.