Powell is an exceptionally promising filmmaker, but by the time he arranges all of his ducks in a row for the finale, he’s lost track as to whether Lucas is continuing the cycle of vengeance that has poisoned so much of his family, or if he’s breaking it.

It almost doesn’t matter that the movie is too emotionally prescriptive to have any real power, or too high on imagination to leave any room for wonder; DuVernay evinces such faith in who she is and what she’s doing that “A Wrinkle in Time” remains true to itself even when everything on screen reads false.

What this movie has — courtesy of Kurt Wimmer’s upwardly mobile script — is a rickety ladder that it climbs from comically low stakes up to the highest levels of power.

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.

It’s light entertainment meant to be shared, a big glass of summer fun that goes down easy.

"Blackbird" may be a tearjerker, but it’s also a reminder that there’s more to tears than tragedy, even in the midst of personal loss.

This is a dense, unforgiving movie in the classic sense, an adults-only drama that doesn’t placate despite its stylistic overreaches. It’s disappointing that in its final moments, the movie has come so far off its own hinges, so deconstructed its own rivets, that it can’t put them back together again. But everything that’s come before is so rich that you’re ready to forgive it.

Even when nothing else in the film makes sense, the unhinged ethos of its own creation leaves a clue behind with the clarity of a body-chalk outline.

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.

No matter how pleasant and even insightful certain segments of the interview are, it would play immeasurably better as a stand-alone audio program than inorganically expanded into a feature film that’s part-archival and part-tech experiment.

Lessons about loving oneself, accepting one’s faults, and being the best version of yourself are cheesy, but not without purpose. Call it cinematic comfort food, but Dumplin' knows how to satisfy.

Alita: Battle Angel is [Rodriguez’s] best film since he brought Frank Miller’s graphic novel to the screen, a sci-fi epic that does something rare in an age of endless adaptations and reboots: lives up to its potential while leaving you wanting more.

Shot in beautifully textured 16mm and told at an unhurried pace, Person to Person requires some getting used to, but once you settle into its groove the movie becomes much more than the sum of its parts.

Surprisingly funny, well-acted, and a little offbeat, Aline is as delightfully kooky as its monumental subject.

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.

Olin, at turns daringly open and frustratingly restrained, makes Maya entirely her own, the focal point and reason for the film itself.

Pretty and discardable in equal measures, the movie illustrates ingredients of the filmmaker's appeal while falling short of assembling them into a coherent whole.

If the genre elements sustain the work as a whole, the plot suffers from the meandering quality that frequently plagues late period Allen work. Still, the filmmaking finds its groove in individual moments.

It's all a shell of itself, with Fred Savage on hand to occasionally note how weird this all is.

The latest Blumhouse movie about creepy kids is a fitting addition to one of horror’s most reliable subgenres, and it manages to elevate itself above the competition through some genuinely compelling adult drama and a delightful Duffer Brothers-esque supernatural twist. And it’s infinitely more enjoyable than any direct-to-streaming January horror movie has any right to be.

It’s a natty-enough twist on the survivor story — what if you were stuck inside, not outside? — and one bolstered by the inherent watchability of star Willem Dafoe, one of the few performers absolutely up to the task of this particular feature.

6 Years offers little in the way of new material. Yet Fidell, working with executive producers Mark and Jay Duplass, effectively broadens her range by borrowing the sibling directors' improvisatory style and ceding control to her two leads, whose heartbreaking performances imbue this familiar Austin-set narrative with a fiery edge.

With emerging rebel leader Rey (Daisy Ridley) providing a sturdy emotional foundation, and billions of Disney dollars fueling an obviously stunning array of special effects, Rise of Skywalker doesn’t squander every opportunity to dial up the thrilling nature of the epic at hand, but all that razzle-dazzle can’t obscure a hollow core.

Caught somewhere between “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The Wire,” this dark genre hybrid has a lot of flaws, but none of them are fatal.

It’s hard to understand how anyone so capable of diagnosing this problem can also believe themselves capable of solving it — so hard, in fact, that the last 20 minutes of Generation Wealth might compel you to reconsider the value of the 80 minutes before them.

The script lacks bite, save some wry meta-commentary on the movie’s existence (including a passing reference to “horror transmedia”). Nevertheless, Susco follows the well-worn path of using the horror/thriller genre to explore the eerie ambiguities of modern times.

Here is a rare new entry in that smallest of sub-genres: Movies that don’t punish teens for f--king their brains out (surprise surprise: it’s French).

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.