At the end of the day, it’s the action equivalent of a secondhand musical – you’ll most likely come for the dance scenes, and they’re good enough to wade through the filler.

Through some of the screenplay’s slight formulaic stumbles, it’s Gallo’s charmingly fierce performance that anchors all the loose pieces.

The genius of Legge’s design, and why his debut works as more than just a cute little curio despite its thinness, is that it mines a sneaky emotionality from the bedrock of the film-within-a-film structure.

One could argue that Patti Cake$ doesn’t break any new ground, but that would ignore the infectious attitude of its determine young heroine, and how much it stands out from conventional variations.

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

Where Wild Life could have been a nuanced look into how wealth and ecology collide, instead it’s merely just a celebration of these rich people doing the “right thing” with their money. But who really pays?

Much of the material gets rehashed with slight variations...and many of the space battles have a redundant quality.

As a filmmaker, Flanagan deals in raw, go-for-broke emotion; it’s just that this time around, he’s using that passion to affirm the audience, not disturb them.

Tran’s debut feature delivers a ton of charm for a kung fu throwback, and kicks a lot of ass for a broad comedy about some old guys relearning how to honor each other and fight for themselves.

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.

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.

Rosewater is lacking in sophistication, but its attitude is infectious.

“We make our own destiny,” someone intones during the film’s closing voiceover, and by the end of Ethan Hunt’s story, it’s hard not to take those words to heart. I only wish that Cruise and McQuarrie had managed to make a better one.

Despite the claustrophobic entrapment in a violent and hyper-masculine world, The Shadow of Violence is an ultimately moving morality tale announcing a confident new voice in international cinema. Not to mention a powerful vehicle for its two leads, Jarvis and Barry Keoghan.

For all of the film’s janky pacing, thoroughly mediocre action setpieces, and the clumsiness with which it’s forced to double as backdoor pilot for Disney Plus’ “Ironheart” series, Coogler’s subthread of the MCU continues to operate at a significantly higher strata of thought, artistry, and feeling than the rest of Marvel’s assembly line.

Chevalier, despite its steadily devolving storytelling, is enjoyable and worthy of appreciation. When Williams and Robinson loosen up the strings and allow the film to feel as original and free as Bologne was at the height of his creative powers — a battle! with Mozart! with dueling violins! — and refuse to be beholden to the usual narrative beats and expectations, Chevalier soars. So does Harrison, whose cocky take on the young star is funny, flinty, and entirely justified.

Age of Rage is much more potent when questioning its own purpose than it is when giving fancy racists yet another platform to espouse their bullshit.

Da Silviera’s vision of bubblegum fascism is compelling, and Medusa sucks viewers in right away. Unfortunately, however, the film expends far more effort on aesthetics and world-building than it does on narrative.

The highbrow intentions of Barney's Version suffer from a constant pile up of dead ends.

By making the inanimate animate, they make nature come to life, and so does Convento.

As with most films that are eventually suffocated by their own eccentricities, Sometimes Always Never is strange enough to hold our attention for a while.

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

The Girl With All the Gifts really does offer up a fleshed-out world rich with eerie implications, saving the biggest one for the memorable finale.

While Souza and his life and work are more than interesting enough topics for a documentary, what The Way I See It is really about — what it really wants to be about — is not the man who took the photographs, but the man who was the subject of those photographs.

Meanwhile on Earth is a film that feels more compelled by its premise than it is by its story, but Clapin is able to suffuse it with the same ethereal hauntedness that brought “I Lost My Body” to life.

There’s enough go-for-broke and whiplash-inducing shifts in tone on display to suggest this filmmaking duo has a future, even when their characters don’t seem to have a past.

It’s Riseborough who holds the film fast, rooting its seemingly wild twists and character developments into something haunting and, quite often, eerily understandable.

On the one hand, Outrage suffers from a cold removal from the events portrayed onscreen, mainly a series of arguments and gory acts of retribution. It's often a terrible bore. But the stylish execution renders many moments into imminently watchable pastiche.