When all the dust settles, we’re left right where we started, and with nothing to show for it but a fleeting reminder that peace is impossible without negotiation. It’s a lesson that history has failed to teach us, filtered through a movie that doesn’t understand why.

Mute is ludicrous, but within the confines of its referential logic, also pretty cool.

Set aside the contrivances and creepy plot twists, and Michael Suscy’s Every Day offers up a timely message about acceptance and the nature of love that’s especially welcome at the moment. Unfortunately, the movie falls short of doing justice to that idea.

Eschewing poeticism for an empty sense of prefab empathy, Kings is so determined to be hopeful that it forgets to be honest.

The movie casts an unmistakable spell out of Pfeiffer’s ability to imbue Kyra with a profound sense of sorrow.

Unsane brims with curiosity about digital technology, discomfort with corporate bureaucracies, and is spiked through and through with icy wit – in short, it could never be anything but a Soderbergh film, and a particularly delicious one at that.

At once a gripping jungle survival thriller and an alluring sci-fi puzzle, Garland’s heady gambit confirms he’s one of the genre’s best working filmmakers.

At first, you may be inclined to reject it outright, but Game Night works so hard to win viewers over that it eventually finds its way to a winning formula.

Somewhere in this material is the potential for tense exploration of private desires afflicting people enmeshed in extreme psychological disarray, but this sleepy drama never approaches the sophistication (or pulpy fun) that would allow it to succeed on that mission.

The elegance of Francis Lawrence’s direction, cinematographer Jo Willems’ measured camerawork, and James Newton Howard’s ominous score adheres to a familiar set of beats, but it’s the rare big Hollywood mood piece and mostly satisfying on those terms.

It’s beguiling that a film with an almost religious aversion to subtext could be so unsure of its own subject, but Pellington knows from experience that it’s hard to put a finger on impermanence.

The staggeringly well-crafted Isle of Dogs is nothing if not Anderson’s most imaginative film to date.

The formulaic approach to presenting each story — which ostensibly track different people Julia herself has studied, though she never interacts with them — is predictable, static, and wholly clinical.

From the start, Whittington’s script lays everything out so schematically that there’s little reason to keep watching for the story.

Shelton’s work is understated, but elevates seemingly forgettable scenarios with a wise, humane approach that makes even a lesser work like Outside In a cut above the market standard.

Eastwood remains a deeply purposeful filmmaker, and The 15:17 to Paris clearly has a plan — it builds to a riveting showdown, with a unique kind of payoff enhanced by the authenticity of its design. It’s a fascinating gamble even when it doesn’t hold together.

The film is often compelling, clever and entertaining, but oddly enough, these strongest moments are revealed in an awkward third act tonal and structural shift to be nothing more than filler.

Finally, the Fifty Shades phenomenon has yielded a disarming comedy that makes this ridiculous material fun to watch.

Black Panther is different. It’s the first one of these films that flows with a genuine sense of culture and identity, memory and musicality. It’s the first one of these films that doesn’t merely reckon with power and subjugation in the abstract, but also gives those ideas actual weight by grafting them onto specific bodies and confronting the historical ways in which they’ve shaped our universe.

It’s worth remembering that the “Cloverfield” movies were only able to successfully disrupt conventional distribution methods because they’re good. The best thing you can say about this one is that it’s free with your Netflix subscription.

Theron and Davis are dynamite together, the actresses playing off each other like two sides of the same coin.

Maybe this is exactly the biopic that Kenney would want, silly and bittersweet and laced with regret. Unfortunately, the film is just good enough to convince us that he deserved better.

Anderson does add some style to the film, doing wonders with an indie-sized budget for a film that requires a specific period setting.

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.

Fuglsig’s feature debut is ultimately less an action movie and more a procedural, one in which incremental gains and minimal casualties are as much as can be hoped for.

Save for a few clever twists and winning performances from O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent (née Curtis Jackson), Den of Thieves is the kind of bloated crime thriller that could have been made in any decade — which is not to call it timeless so much as way past its time.

Tightly written and sensitively rendered, the devastating film is propelled by masterful performances, led by a bewitching Wood in the role she was born to play.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower may not be a great film — it occasionally struggles just to be a good one — but it’s a convincing proof-of-concept, and that might be more important in the long run.