At its best, Eric LaRue interrogates the rush to healing and forgiveness that can sometimes follow tragedy in Christian communities.

Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote and directed Margaret, deserves credit for the framework and dialogue he provides, but it’s Paquin who channels the roiling surges of that age with a startling combination of unpredictability and precision.

The movie’s best moments – especially those involving the futile acorn hunt of a squirrel/rat – are those in which [Wedge’s] wicked wit shines through.

The fabulous 1970s fashions don’t hold up too well, but what still resonates is the movie’s empathetic attention to what it’s like if your sexual identity doesn’t neatly fit into traditional norms.

Writer-director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) does more veering that navigating, but stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson (the latter nominated for Best Actress) connect on such a genuinely exhilarating level in the music scenes (especially the early ones, where they’re refining their act) that you end up rooting for them and, by default, their movie.

Pandora—the stunningly imagined planet of James Cameron’s Avatar enterprise—has been populated by something unexpected and extraordinary: compelling characters.

It would be too dismissive to call Babylon—Damien Chazelle’s incessantly bravura period piece set during Hollywood’s transition to the sound era—a “giant swing at mediocrity” (to borrow a phrase the silent star played by Brad Pitt uses to describe one of his films). Babylon is better than that. But the swing still registers more strongly than the results.

There may have been better made movies starring Crawford (she’s working with director Vincent Sherman here, not Otto Preminger, Michael Curtiz, or George Cukor), but I don’t know if she ever had a richer opportunity to click on all of her intimate, melodramatic, and camp cylinders.

There is cuteness, to be sure, but also an honesty about dirty diapers, runny noses, and the sheer exasperation of the situation.

At least in Kinski you can see why Schrader thought Cat People might work. Her feline eyes are part of it, but it’s the mystery behind them, especially in the second half, that almost redeems the project.

As a portrait of a real-world villain the movie is muddled and lacking any sort of compelling theory.

It all goes down easy enough. And while never pushing the feminist angle too hard, Ocean’s 8 does ultimately become about the ways these women exploit the sexist expectations of men.

We get some great music in Respect, but only a surface sense of the rest.

Onward may not rank among Pixar’s best, but the studio’s ability to gently tweak heartstrings, without overdoing it, remains intact.

The horror comedy Slice has so many amusing, eyebrow-raising elements that at the very least it entertains as a curiosity.

The movie wields its mockery with the subtlety of a power tool.

Swiss Family Robinson’s sole saving grace is the tree house the family builds, an inventive piece of production design that manages to capture the sort of imaginative delight the rest of the movie is striving for.

There’s an intriguing idea and an incredible sequence in Scream VI—which is just enough to justify this follow-up to 2022’s Scream (which itself was just clever enough to justify reheating the series 11 years after Scream 4).

Emerald Fennell’s follow-up, as writer and director, to Promising Young Woman, Saltburn is another stylishly glib exercise, entertaining and engagingly acted until the bottom falls out.

Standing out among the cast are Pierce Brosnan, clearly enjoying his scruffy beard and potbelly, and Helen Mirren, who threatens to turn this into something sexier and scarier at every moment. Chris Columbus keeps things on the straight and narrow, however, directing as if this were an adaptation of Harry Potter Book 78.

As long as Harley Quinn is on the screen, Birds of Prey has a propulsive, rollergirl energy. Unfortunately the screenplay, by Christina Hodson, unnecessarily complicates things in various ways.

Bad Hair really needs a loud, live audience, preferably around midnight, to reach its full potential. But it’s a fun, guffaw-producing horror comedy even without that.

Campion’s camera captures the sort of things most costume dramas are too fussy to notice: mirrors and windows that bifurcate Isabel’s distressed face; the bleary darkness of her home with Osmond, where the doors close behind her like those of a tomb; a slide into slow motion when one character smells a flower that has been given to her and another character crucially notices.

Sure, it may look like it was filmed in a parking garage and the story seems cobbled together by someone who fell asleep during Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone, but it’s still hard to resist The Lost City as it coasts along on the charisma and chemistry of its stars.

This is largely an obligatory Marvel Cinematic Universe installment until it becomes possessed, quite literally, by a horrific spirit.

Once Wolfs leaves the hotel the charm begins to thin (though Austin Abrams has a giddily dizzy monologue as a third wheel they pick up along the way), while a last-act attempt to inject a moral dilemma into the proceedings feels false. Yet for a dad—and, let’s face it, mom—movie, Wolfs could have been way worse.

The meta irony is that even as Scream 2022 is telling certain fans to back off and calm down, it’s also wooing a new generation. Luckily the film is clever enough to earn such … well, let’s call it appreciation, rather than allegiance. It’s just a movie, after all.

One side effect of a tagalong project like Lightyear is that even while the movie is rightly being shrugged off as another reheat, moments of real artistry will get overlooked. The animation in this Toy Story-adjacent adventure is astounding; with each new movie, the studio advances the art form in incremental ways.