At the core of it all, Juri’s performance is a marvel of coiled emotion and wide-eyed wonder at the world around her. It’s just that the film around her does a disservice to that performance.

There’s just something retrograde about the entire thing, a copy of a copy, a “new” story with some very light edits to the “old” one, that bogs down even the lightest touches of merriment.

National Anthem is high on mood and feeling rather than story. This very horny queer Western is a rush of sensory pleasures, from the reddened, rust-colored rocks of New Mexico as captured by cinematographer Katelin Arizmendi to a killer soundtrack featuring the likes of Angel Olsen, Perfume Genius, Susanne Sundfør, and Spiritualized.

Spanning 50 years and multiple continents without ever shifting its focus from the universal human urge to ponder what could have been, Touch is an ode to accepting your life story without losing sleep over the things you couldn’t change.

Existing at the intersection of the specific and the universal, The Convert manages to combine an entertaining portrayal of an often ignored historical era with universal questions about whether it’s ever possible to build a human society on the foundation of something other than violence.

Too often watching Sing Sing, you can feel the film’s manufactured drama push up against its embedded realism. The film’s immersive elements, and its valiant efforts to eschew prison film stereotypes, are commonly at war with a narrative at best designed to be instructive rather than compel on its own merits.

A movie theater may not be the safest place to hide from a tornado, but this winning July blockbuster makes perfectly clear that huddling in the dark with strangers is a hell of a lot better than watching the storm from home.

Zippy at first with the charisma and verve of a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, before it way outstretches its welcome across multiple encores and a 132-minute running time, Fly Me to the Moon has the patina of a straight-to-streaming movie tossed into theaters due to a backend deal or to appease filmmakers.

Terrifying in the abstract even as it grows increasingly absurd to watch, “Longlegs” slinks its way into that liminal space between childhood nightmares and grown-up practicalities with the same precision that it splits the difference between serial killer procedurals and supernatural psychodramas (let’s say “The Silence of the Lambs” and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure”).

Kill makes very, very good on its goofy title by the time all is said and done, but perhaps the most surprising thing about Bhat’s action extravaganza is that it inverts expectations without ever getting off-track.

Much of what we see is what the Taliban wants us to see, but as that’s what’s really important to them, it’s also what we — anyone who’s a non-fundamentalist — need to see to understand them.

It doesn’t stop “Axel F” from getting the job done, but that’s little consolation in a movie so concerned with the long-term consequences of not caring about anything else. If only “Axel F” didn’t make it so damn easy to forgive it for that.

Despicable Me 4 already feels like six episodes of just such a show, crammed into a single unwieldy, disconnected, and oddly episodic outing.

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.

It’s unable to channel the essence of what made Powell and Pressburger’s films unforgettable. Sadly, it’s not really trying.

Seamlessly blending the best inspirations from sci-fi, fantasy, and Hindu epics, the film is a staggering cinematic experience — even if that experience drags toward the end.

It’s a film that ends in a far more ambivalent place than it starts, and puts much less emphasis on Lane’s moral fiber than it does on the ever-shifting nature of morality itself.

June Zero is a film as a conversation piece. It may not be especially articulate at moments, it may not be as focused as it could be. But some of that is by design: This is a film with questions, not answers. Its tangents are like those of any meaty conversation. And it’s a conversation worth having.

With A Family Affair, Efron picks up where “17 Again” left off, and it’s a delight to see this former teen heartthrob back in a similar mode.

Occasionally, both Johnson and Penn — unquestionably talented performers — nearly get Daddio back on track.

The adorable eccentricities of the movie’s second half are balanced out by the sincerity of the beauty that surrounds them.

The filmmaker manages to bring much of his sensibility and overall texture to the series. Part of that is due to the nature of the prequel itself (go back to where it all began!), part of that is due to the relative freedom to build in new characters and stories, but much of it is thanks to Sarnoski’s ability to pull deep emotionality out of his stars and audience almost immediately.

If nothing else, the dazzling finale feels like a hyperviolent ‘80s period piece tailor-made For the Girls. It delivers some of the series’ most extreme kills as well as its best uses of glittery costumes, bloody testicles, and feminist subversion for a whirlwind joy ride that doubles as a societal lambasting.

Jordan Scott’s film, adapted from Nicholas Hogg’s novel “Tokyo Nobody” and produced by her father Ridley, isn’t quite as interesting as the towering questions that it asks. But the fact that it bothers to ask them at all puts the film in a rarified class above many of its Hollywood counterparts.

Don’t be fooled by the airiness of its wine-drunk aesthetic or the languor of its pacing: Last Summer is every inch a Catherine Breillat movie, and its effervescent sheen is nothing but a natural distraction from the uncertain gloom that comes with the fall.

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.

The film’s wild ending will determine whether or not a viewer enjoys the film. But rather than trying to understand exactly what it means, you’re better off appreciating it like one of Alex’s photos.

Quad Gods is less effective as a social issues doc than it is as a work of individual portraiture, and while Jacklin’s emphasis on camaraderie prevents her from digging all that deep into any one of her subjects, each of her primary characters proves sufficiently riveting all the same.