The film serves as more of a primer for the uninitiated. But even for the initiated, it could contribute to ongoing discussions on how to dismantle the American racial divide that is deeply entrenched in our national psyche.

The film’s inherent messiness and unpredictability eventually settles into more expected charms, but Spinster is at its most appealing when leaning into the very ideas it seemed hellbent on rejecting early on.

It’s an efficient, effects-driven ride with snippets of real ideas, but never quite willing to take them out of this world.

Even at a slim 95 minutes, Endless grinds on endlessly.

La Llorona is a quiet movie that shudders with spiritual trauma.

The expectations of the genre provide a framework for Work It that both delights (so many dancing montages! all of them fun!) and confounds (a chemistry-less romance). When it dares to break those boxes, however, things get miles more interesting.

The result is a messy but mesmerizing summation of his unusual career ambition, a dreamlike chronicle of human suffering for which Jodorowsky offers a wild solution on par with his craziest filmmaking conceits.

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.

Pitched somewhere between outrageous satire and sincerity, the movie has a tough time finding its priorities, but it’s endearing to watch it try.

Even when The Tax Collector finds a steadier purpose as a taut revenge thriller, it’s mostly just a slog of vulgar threats and violent outbursts, trading substance for anger until the credits bring some measure of peace.

Despite the claustrophobic entrapment in a violent and hyper-masculine world, The Shadow of Violence is an ultimately moving morality tale announcing a confident new voice in international cinema. Not to mention a powerful vehicle for its two leads, Jarvis and Barry Keoghan.

Overflowing with stunning visuals, Black Is King blends imagery from the Pan-African movement, African art and Western portraiture of African bodies, as well as Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s shared vision of Black excellence within Western culture.

It doesn’t help that Plante frustratingly writes around the palpable tension between the swimmers’ individual success and their value to each other as teammates. But if his film sometimes mistakes murkiness for ambiguity, it still resolves as a deeply felt (almost anthropological) look at a rare butterfly in search of the second chrysalis she needs to spread her wings and become herself all over again.

Dressed heavy-set, Crowe is all grimaces and frowns in disgust at everything around him. His only emotional note is all ANGRY, resulting in a parody of his own performances. It’s Crowe on overdrive, and it’s horrible.

While much of what Swale has crafted here is familiar, the film’s loving tone and Arterton’s compelling performance recommend it, and the result is a warm drama never afraid of a little magic.

Rebuilding Paradise doesn’t make it any easier to imagine what it would be like to be in the eye of a cataclysmic firestorm, but it makes it easier to understand that some things are unimaginable, even if they’re very real.

Armed with her funniest material to date and a winning performance from Gillian Jacobs, the filmmaker finds new dimensions for both her work and the millennial ennui that has always inspired it.

Seimetz has conjured a beguiling narrative so tapped into the current worldwide panic that it might have been made in its aftermath.

While it offers some necessary growth for all of its characters, The Kissing Booth 2 can never resist looking and acting like dozens of other offerings of its genre ilk, unable to grow beyond basic complications and done-to-death dramas. And yet there are hints that its evolution has a few more tricks left to employ, its winking conclusion only one of them.

The origins of the room in question are never explained, which is half the intrigue, but mostly the frustration. The core conceit is enough to make The Room a not entirely wasted ride. Still, enter with care. It’s a mixed bag, but upon exit, it somehow runs through the mind.

While the film is hardly as transgressive as its subject, it manages to be unexpectedly moving, and a nostalgic time capsule of an art-world rebel whose unorthodox methods and decidedly politically incorrect vision couldn’t exist today.

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.

If Animal Crackers never quite matches the mania of “Meet the Robinsons,” nor the comic wit of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meetballs,” it still moves so fast that less generic animation might have seemed like a waste.

While Maine’s witty script is filled with more than enough sequences primed to get laughs out of any audience (with Dyer turning in a charming performance that never goes too broad), the real winners will likely be fellow Catholic school survivors, who will recognize many of the great truths in Yes, God, Yes.

A Girl Missing is a story about someone trying to make themselves whole again, but so much of its energy is spent on keeping her apart.

While Carrillo-Gailey’s book was flinty and fresh, A Nice Girl Like You is more predictable than wild, more staid than sexy, but at least Hale injects some refreshing fun into the outing.

Even in spite of its obvious nowness, this thing is such a lean, mean, and utterly merciless old school programmer that it might seem anachronistic if not for the fact that it’s being released onto many of the same drive-in screens that would have shown it 35 years ago.

Too chaste to be a “Fatal Attraction” ripoff and far too dull to approach the hammy charms of “Obsessed,” the greatest assets of Peter Sullivan’s Fatal Affair are stars Nia Long and Omar Epps. They keep this from looking and feeling like a limp Lifetime movie knockoff.