There aren’t that many minutes to mess up, but the film manages to make it feel much longer. At just 86 minutes, Brahms: The Boy II should fly by, but the film lurches forward with its momentum punctuated by bad jump scares and odd flashback sequences.

Onward doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but spins it so well that it conjures a spell of its own as a new decade dawns with the Pixar touch intact.

The film’s most telling scene unfortunately marks a steep divide between the fine-tuned first half and a back end that threatens to crumble into cliche.

Audiences may find the filmmakers’ approach more compelling than the film itself.

The 2020 Call of the Wild isn’t all-out atrocity so much as a question mark, a formulaic adventure story spruced up with cutting-edge technology in search of a purpose.

While Ordinary Love is so hermetically sealed inside the bubble of its cracking relationship that the film always feels like it’s about to suffocate to death, it’s so attuned to the meniscus of a “healthy” marriage that it remains touching even at its most inert.

By the time this Fantasy Island arrives at its gallingly stupid final twist, you’ll be dying to go home.

If only the story that surrounded it was as strong and well-crafted as the locales and people who populate it, The Photograph would be more than worthy of affection. As it stands, it just never quite develops into anything more.

And you thought fixing Sonic’s teeth would make this movie any less of a nightmare.

Buffaloed wants to package searing insights into the crooked world of debt collecting into a cutesy comedy, leaning hard on Deutch’s skills and far less on a script that’s unwilling to get nasty with its subject matter.

There is precious little here that hasn’t already been more cogently unpacked somewhere else.

Splitting the difference between silent cinema slapstick and the cartoon roguishness of Benny Hill, this is still the kind of old-fashioned, all-ages entertainment that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore.

With one film left in the franchise, “P.S. I Still Love You” effectively operates as both its own feature and a bridge to the more adult questions Lara Jean and company will face in the final offering. It’s a love letter to teen movies of the past, but also a smart look at what they might be in the future.

It’s one of the year’s best gay films.

De Wilde doesn’t strain for relevance or reinvent the wheel, she just unapologetically serves dessert for dinner until you’re left with the satisfaction of eating a three-course meal.

It’s a girl-powered, earnestly feminist superhero movie with big, implausible action sequences and outsized personalities, and while it never quite reaches that potential, it does begin to map out a fresh path to the world-worn arena of superhero narratives. It may not be the promised total emancipation (at least not yet), but it is fantabulous in its own way.

Welcome to Chechnya is a vital and urgent portrait of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and the world needs to hear about it.

If Almereyda fails to pierce the inventor’s skin and expose his circuity, his gauzy film nevertheless has fun exploring the idea that we’re all wired differently.

A straight line could be plotted through the feature which, despite its imaginative storytelling structure, still manages to hit all of the big moments in Steinem’s life.

Garbus, who has long been motivated by stories about remarkable women and horrible crimes, makes a strong showing with Lost Girls, her first narrative feature in her decades-long career.

There’s certainly enough here to provoke meaningful questions that transcend the boundaries of the frame, and Nine Days hits a commendable note about the value of embracing life’s unpredictable turns. But no matter its celestial implications, the movie can’t shake the impression of a brilliant concept that never takes flight.

At times a bit too enamored of these loose conceits, The Nowhere Inn sometimes registers as a cheap fuck-with-the-audience provocation that might have been better suited for a viral short (or several), but at its finest moments the movie conjures a singular vision steeped in zaniness, but not devoid of purpose.

Brie’s delicate performance nearly rescues both Sarah and “Horse Girl” from falling into the awkward traps it sets for itself, hedging on the tough stuff in favor of weirdness for its own sake, faux-arty style over anything that could offer the slightest interest in healing, for either its star or her story.

The Father exists for no discernible reason other than to render an inexplicably cruel element of the human condition in a recognizable way, and to do so in a way that only good art can.

Guided by Angel Manuel Soto’s slick direction and a breakthrough performance from Jahi Di’Allo Winston, the movie works overtime to energize real-world struggles with the thrill of street life.

The story is so outlandish — and the film so dry — that it’s hard not to be impressed by the discipline White showed in refusing to have more fun with it.

Lively makes off with one of her best performances ever, and one that makes an unexpected case for giving the actress a real action franchise next time around. One of contemporary cinema’s most underrated chameleons, Lively throws herself into the role with real gusto.

Deadpan in her delivery and facial expressions, Zadie is indeed a mess, but she’s working her way toward something better, and Meghie’s frisky comedy gives her the space to make some strides. As the weekend amusingly crumbles around her and the rest of her cohorts, Zamata tentatively approaches something like maturity (and definitely like getting the hell over Bradford), giving shape to a mostly freeform narrative.