West, who demonstrated a penchant for extensive build-ups in "The House of the Devil" and "Trigger Man," continually makes it unclear if the inn actually harbors a ghost or if his heroine (Sara Paxton) has simply imagines it. Both she and her hilariously frazzled co-worker (Pat Healy of "Great World of Sound") want to believe in supernatural affairs for the thrill factor alone.

Though the original novels were written in the ’70s and ’80s, at times Confess, Fletch feels like a ’50s farce, with good old-fashioned misdirection and mistaken identities doing the leg work. Unlike James Bond, Fletch doesn’t need gadgets or fast cars to untangle this mystery, just a few Negronis and heaps of charisma. The formula works.

Every winking iris shot and cheesy cross-dissolve adds to the timeless spirit of a film that knows beauty may be short-lived, but good schlock never dies.

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

Prometheus is an unquestionable good time, one of the best big-screen science fiction accomplishments since 'Avatar.'

Chew-Bose’s directorial debut is a sharp offering that adds to the mystique of the original material and makes a strong case for its own existence.

Despite some obvious budgetary constraints and irksome plot holes, the movie strives to provide an alternative vision of the superhero narrative tied to the genuine experiences of people learning to come out of their shells and confront a new future for blackness, motherhood, and women taking charge.

Slash is much sweeter than it is satisfying, but it smartly observes that the road to adulthood has never been paved, and it makes a convincing enough case that teens shouldn’t be afraid of driving down their detours.

Southern and Lovelace’s documentary appears to be held together by the same proverbial glue and paper clips that cohered the early sonic boom of this particular indie subset. And that’s largely part of its charm. But the results are often navel-gazey.

Khan’s film pulls liberally from the genre playbook — stars and co-writers Ali Wong and Randall Park haven’t been shy about the film’s early inspirations, especially classics like “When Harry Met Sally” — but it also offers its own charms, thanks to Wong and Park, who delight both on-screen and on the page.

The larger-scale drama is unquestionably effective — what Greengrass and his team of craftsmen and visual artists have been able to do with wind is a miracle, and that’s to say nothing of the fire itself — and so evocative and terrifying that words fail to do it justice.

It’s the kind of culturally specific filmmaking that somehow immediately gains universality in that ambition to connect, to understand the empathy and sensitivity to listen in to these conflicts and this bright spark of a boy who speaks to struggles of faith however you were raised.

The film accurately reflects the tumult of mothers and daughters and intergenerational culture gaps, which are never nearly manifested or bridge. Reality is messy — anything else is the stuff of dreams.

This documentary is not a dry, academic history of youth culture, but rather a vibrant political statement that shows the powerful force of teenagers and their ability to foment social, cultural, and political change.

Though hardly subtle in its metaphoric intent, this story of a rural cult of all women, segregated into “sisters” and “wives,” led by a single powerful man makes for an unnervingly effective thriller dripping with atmosphere and foreshadowing.

Bombshell is a lurid, cartoonish romp, marred by rough and sometimes overbearing flourishes, but not without a tragicomic soul. That alone makes it a genuine movie of the moment.

Guadagnino dredges up the dead with such crazed purpose that his magnum opus is able to dance through its rough spots and make good on its foreboding promise.

This is pop art by way of lowbrow slapstick, with a premise that suggests "Cast Away" meets "Weekend at Bernie's," but really feels like a lunatic's idea of a big, broad studio comedy — or maybe a mad scientist's.

The film’s main triumph is in crafting a convincing narrative with a clear point of view.

Imagine "Harold and Maude" directed by Eric Rohmer with shades of film noir and doused in philosophical chatter enhanced by ample white wine. But Domain isn't pure formula, because the subversion of expectations is its centerpiece.

If Ready or Not never quite feels like a cult classic in the making — the scares are soft, the imagery is familiar, and the ending is so batshit that it confirms your nagging sense that the previous 90 minutes were holding back — it’s still wickedly entertaining from start to finish, and painted with enough fresh personality to resolve into something more than the sum of its parts.

With each new twist, Sorrentino is always one step ahead of his audience, building a narrative that skips along at an enthralling pace.

An unhinged work that captures the escalating madness of untangling entire social webs through the lens of a single person or event, Babysitter charges through the ruins of mainstream cinema’s post-#MeToo moment.

By shattering genre conventions, Silva subverts traditional perspectives on modern adulthood and finds no easy answers in the process.

The movie is every bit as bloated as his last few, but its charms remind us of his great potential (and potential greatness).

It’s hard to find even ironic enjoyment in something this high on its own supply; something much less interested in how its namesake broke the rules than it is in how its director does, and something tirelessly incapable of finding any meaningful overlap between the two.

Simply put, Buddy is everything you could want from a midnight movie. It gets harder and harder to find something that feels fresh enough to be truly shocking and executed competently enough to transcend its gimmicks, and we should all celebrate when we find one.

There's an undeniable anthropological value to Allen's footage — imagine if one of David Koresh's most-trusted disciples had recorded every second of his time in the Heaven's Gate — but his film is far more compelling as an artifact than it is as a narrative.