While Bateman’s more florid touches sometimes wear, Munn is so devastatingly good at selling Violet’s internal strife that it’s easy to forgive Bateman’s other creative impulses. With a star this well-suited for the role, Bateman has already proven her salt as a keen-eyed filmmaker.

Polanski struggles to make the material more cinematic, toying with clever mise-en-scene to showcase the mounting tensions. However, Carnage repeatedly suffers from an internal tension between the possibilities of two media at odds with each other.

Sorely lacking the energy that made “Mediterranea” such a vital shot in the arm, A Ciambra is a half-step backward for Carpignano, whose clear sense of place is too often hampered by shapeless plot.

It’s always a shame to watch something so jaw-dropping start to feel stale, but Headshot is much easier to enjoy if you think of it as a good excuse for Uwais to stay in shape so that he’s ready for the movie that turns him into a household name.

If Love and Thunder is more of the same, it’s also never less than that. The MCU may still be looking for new purpose by the time this movie ends, but the mega-franchise can take solace in the sense that Thor has found some for himself.

The filmmaker's first-rate access feels like a kind of desecration.

We take frequent and foolish pleasure watching the four charismatic leads brush up against one another while bristling against their assigned roles, with the film giving performer time to shine.

Plaza steals the show with her killer instincts and comedic timing. If she can keep an operation this overstuffed afloat, there’s nothing she cannot do.

If Stanleyville initially assumes the posture of an Off-Off-Broadway adaptation of “Dogtooth” — one happy to revel in half-baked ideas and hand-me-down humor — its commitment to entropy randomness gradually coheres into an identity of its own.

Equal parts reverent and narcissistic, humble and grandiose, this Nick Knight-directed curio is both a tribute to the Lord and a testament to West’s unparalleled ability to get in his own damn way.

A Gregg Araki movie will never be boring, and this one is a good time even when it’s tripping over itself to complicate its story and disguise the fact that it’s trying to serve as a teachable moment.

Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex folds a nuanced look at the pressures and permissiveness of teenage friendships inside a frustratingly didactic story about the vagaries of consent.

While Kovgan, a Russian filmmaker who has made her own contributions to the world of dance through film and performances, has a clear affection and respect for Cunningham, her solo feature debut is unable to do much more than hold him at arm’s length.

Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future.

The polished new documentary, McQueen, charts the late designer’s rise from English country boy to fashion’s enfant terrible, but the filmmaking lacks the artistic vision of its subject.

Its genuine, gentle charm holds far more appeal than the icky “Kissing Booth” series.

Despite considerable thrills throughout, Maclean’s writing makes it seem as though his characters never actually existed in their world before the film started.

If The Conjuring Universe is a horror force you want to believe in again, then The Nun II will bring you back to the faith.

This film is not the best representation of Burnett’s works, which toed the line between the magical and the painful — but in the moments when it succeeds, The Secret Garden blossoms into something beautiful.

Hooligan Sparrow is held tight on the strength of the solidarity it finds between these women, and while many other movies have more powerfully exposed the corruption of contemporary China, few have so articulately confronted the gendered weight of these prejudices, and how women always seem to be the first citizens to have their wings clipped.

By no means a failed film, this two-hander about toxic-codependency from Romanian director Călin Peter Netzer is best in small-moments and insightful asides, but does a disservice to the relationship at its heart by honing in on one single thought and hammering it home again and again and again.

Whether it's purely through the use of music or through the individual, attentive care given by some of the featured nursing home workers, the proof of positive changes presented in "Alive Inside" provide a sense of idealism amid bleak situations.

Baumbach lacks Sofia Coppola’s singular ability to leverage a character’s wealth for the wanting it reveals of them, but he, Mortimer, and Clooney share a vivid understanding of the resentments that can form in the space between who we are and how we’re seen — and of how stardom can widen that space to the point that friendships and families are liable to fall into it unnoticed.

Scene by scene, Marks’ film plays like a traditional high school-set rom-com, but things take a turn as Aza’s illness becomes more obvious.

Only in the film’s final half-hour, which (unsurprisingly) sets the pair on a path to duke it out in the ring, do they — and this film — really spring to life.

So long as “Billy Lynn” remains focused on his ambiguous mindset, it remains an engaging, somewhat theatrical character study. But Lee’s ongoing need to complicate his approach yields a movie trapped between conventional narrative tropes and questionable attempts to deliver something that registers on a more visceral level.

It’s an impressive first feature, and while fans of zippy midnight movies might balk at its slow-burn opening act, the film eventually builds to some nutso body horror and a strong sense of mythology that announces Garai’s arrival as a filmmaker to watch, no matter the genre.

Scream makes so many references to its predecessors, along with plenty of other horror flicks both lowbrow and high, it’s impossible to forget you’re watching a fictional film. It may be exciting to let the audience in on the joke, but it’s hard to get lost in this world.