What the movie does have going for it is Ricci, who in the past few years has become a master at playing offbeat heroines in violent stories. Ricci is convincingly terrified in a film that’s never scary enough to justify her performance.

While the always affable Rudd is up to the more serious task at hand, the overly studied direction by Australian Ben Lewin frustratingly keeps the audience at arm’s length from both its lead and that surprising chain of events, which feel as palpably pieced together as the stitching on Berg’s baseballs.

There’s real ugliness here, with the creative torture visited on the victims being enough to unsettle all but the most hardened of horror fans. Unfortunately, the ugliness isn’t solely in the on-screen violence. Transphobia and misogyny flow through the film as much as blood, staining what might have been a solid genre effort.

The humor is often broad to the point of being shrill — especially once an eccentric genius nicknamed “Hopper” (Lee Kwang-soo) joins the team. For the most part though, The Accidental Detective 2 whooshes by, easily and forgettably.

Peppered with dream sequences and flashes of its protagonist’s thoughts, Beach House is a murky mess. It feels more like a draft for a college creative writing class rather than a finished work.

The modestly watchable, at times intriguing romantic mystery Intersection is never quite skillful or convincing enough to forget for even a moment how many far better haunted hunk-meets-femme fatale thrillers have come before it.

The woodenness of China Salesman, coupled with the general oddness of a two-fisted adventure yarn about hyper-aggressive telecom companies, gives this movie some “weird cinema” appeal. But if you can’t tolerate stinky cheese, leave this one on the shelf.

It is the charm of Lorna Tucker's film that, her subject's reluctance notwithstanding, it provides a fascinating, involving glimpse of both who Westwood was back in the day and who she is at this particular moment in time, so much so that we genuinely miss her once the credits begin to roll.

Côté’s film patiently paints a picture of men who are more than their bodies, revealing the emotions beneath the skin and muscles and challenging perceptions about them.

Throughout, Reynolds approaches the range of people and issues he encounters with warmth, candor and earnest support.

As we hang on the film’s plot twists, we also quietly absorb its points about the power of community and the purposeful determination of immigrants to create better lives for their families, not as special pleading but as something powerful and convincing.

Nothing here is revelatory — at least not to anyone who reads the op-ed pages or has watched “The Good Wife.” But the movie is refreshingly smart about how real feelings can get in the way of callous calculation.

Counterfeiters is an amateurish first film, with inexperienced actors, clunky writing and a homemade ambiance. But the ambition and moments of inspired style are be lauded.

Although this unsettlingly sympathetic biopic covering around the last 30 years in the life of famed New York mobster John Gotti is mostly well-acted and frequently entertaining, it bites off more than it can — or even needs to — chew, packing it all into a less-than-epic running time.

Making a late appearance in the Iraq War movie cycle, the impressively acted “The Yellow Birds” manages to leave an affecting mark even as it constantly struggles to find a distinctive voice of its own.

Thompson’s directing is serviceable, if slightly scattered and derivative, using every rom-com trope and flourish available. “The Year of Spectacular Men” feels a bit long and self-involved — and a lot like the men whom Izzy dates, it’s fun but far from spectacular.

Salazar’s deliberateness of image and tone can sometimes feel like its own archly overemphasized meaning, but it’s never less than an artfully sincere companion to the drama of missing years and reconsidered choices that fortifies Sunday’s Illness.

A beautifully filmed, subtly political travelogue with some central conundrums.

Written by and starring a bleached-blond Blake Jenner, Billy Boy is ambitious in its structure, style and editing, but the final product is disjointed and irritating.

You don’t need to be well-versed in rom-coms to know that, in the process, Harper and Charlie will ultimately fall into each other’s arms, but getting there proves to be a slog courtesy of screenwriter Katie Silberman’s talky, sitcom-ready dialogue and director Claire Scanlon’s ponderously uneven pacing.

While Tag doesn’t get every character beat right, it nails the energy and enduring companionship that the game has engendered among the friends. It’s the kind of frothy escapist fare that goes down easy on a hot summer day, with a big old beating heart to boot.

Superfly may be suffused with political fury, but it is also unapologetically awash in cheap, disreputable B-movie thrills.

Though it would be unrealistic to expect "Incredibles 2" to have quite the genre-busting surprise of the original, it is as good as it can be without that shock of the new — delivering comedy, adventure and all too human moments with a generous hand.

Saving Brinton is an endearing, affectionate documentary, an examination not so much of film exhibition pioneer Frank Brinton and how his life's work was saved but of the genial and humane eccentric who did the saving.

None of this is as deep as it intends to be, nor will it strike science-fiction devotees as especially novel. But Sackhoff’s Mack is such a vivid, well-rounded character that “2036” still works. It’s like a stage play, crossed with one of the more philosophical old pulp magazine short stories.

Not an exposé, and hardly a case of sports-as-uplift, The Workers Cup feels like a toe dip when the topic calls for at least a deep wade.

Alex Strangelove is a deeply annoying failed experiment at melding a sensitive LGBTQ love story with the ethos of raunchy teen sex comedies.

Rather than defaulting to either condemnation or absolution, Nancy instead holds out the fleeting possibility of love to someone who has never known it before — and asks why we should begrudge her the impulse to seize it.

Energized by Offerman and Clemons, the effectiveness of the music and the emotional freshness of "Hearts Beat Loud" are finally triumphant. Sometimes wearing your heart on your sleeve is the only way to go.

The sensationally gifted writer-director Ari Aster may tip his hat to the horror canon (“Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Shining”), but he has no interest in making a coy, winking exercise in horror pastiche. With breathtaking deliberation and quiet, unshowy mastery, he spins a devastating portrait of an American family in sudden, inexplicable decline.

The film looks amazing, but the writing is painfully pretentious and the acting beyond stiff and amateurish, so it’s impossible to gain a foothold into this story.

Neville's goal here is not so much to tell the story of Rogers' personal life, though that does get some play, but rather to detail the how and why of his success, to show the way someone whose formidable task was, in his own words, "to make goodness attractive" was able to make it happen.

Though its vibe is often too meandering, A Kid Like Jake shows that even the most accepting of environments aren’t immune to the vulnerabilities and worries coursing through any well-intended parent’s soul.

Breath boasts no unique truths about maturing, but its serene roar under gray skies makes it a softly roiling, ultimately affecting gem.

While it scratches an admittedly reflective surface, you keep hoping the nicely photographed Maineland would have dug a bit deeper.

Cage gets exactly one meme-able meltdown scene, about two-thirds of the way through the picture. The rest is a waste of time, even for trash cinema connoisseurs.

Believer has a well-told, entertaining story sustaining a running time 20 minutes longer than “Drug War.” With the extra space, Lee explores the motivations of his two protagonists, working toward similar ends for different reasons.

Like its developmentally-arrested, misbehaving man-children, the long-shelved source material hasn’t aged particularly well.

The well-intentioned script from first-time writer-director Saila Kariat tries for emotional honesty but feels like a soap opera, and the cast doesn’t help it advance past dour melodrama.

What the movie refuses to do is dazzle, or resonate, or overstay its welcome, which is another way of saying it doesn’t really linger. As “8’s” go, it could stand to be a little crazier.

It’s possible to watch this movie, in other words, and feel that the series is carving out a new direction, returning to its ancient stomping grounds and sticking to a familiar holding pattern, all at the same time. Such is the repetitive, rudderless nature of so much big-budget franchise filmmaking, even with a proven talent like Bayona behind the camera.

Its plot can be opaque and its characters often too remote and inscrutable to embrace, but Guilty Men, Colombia’s official Oscar entry for 2018, remains an absorbing, visually gripping crime-thriller from writer-director Iván D. Gaona.

It all plays out more convincingly than it may sound, with McIvor layering in depth, dimension and grace. Period re-creation is also first rate and, for animal fans, there’s eye candy aplenty in the form of giraffes, lions, chimps, flamingos and, of course, one soulful elephant.

For all of the manic anti-authoritarian energy that Knoxville and pals generate in Action Point, it’s not directed at anything, which renders it meaningless and leaves the film to fizzle out like a deflated balloon.

A largely inspiring and transporting portrait.

This dreadful indie comedy rarely replicates life, instead offering dialogue that someone thought was funny said by awful characters in the midst of inorganic situations.

American Animals is not like other criminal stories and the differences make it one of the summer's freshest, most entertaining films.

If Upgrade ultimately plays like a genre exercise, it’s certainly a taut, engrossing one.

What seems at first like an ingenious and surprising dramatic strategy feels, by the end, like an evasion on the movie’s part, a refusal to grant its subject the unflinching honesty it deserves. A true story it may be, but no one should mistake it for a truthful one.

It’s a movie that already seems like a dust-gathered statue, rather than something vividly, imaginatively crafted to reflect the burning intensity of so passionate and forward-minded an artist.

Johnson tries too hard to make all his mayhem meaningful, to minimal effect. Still, this picture should entertain Adkins’ growing base of fans, who ought to appreciate that the star gets more freedom than usual to be delightful as well as dangerous.

Social Animals is far darker than its colorful, exhibitionist exterior lets on. As the film builds to a climax, it swings wildly in tone, each scene feeling disconnected from the one before.

At times, it seems like a parody of itself but manages to beguile while it sermonizes.

Writer-director Kyle Wilamowski smothers his bid for nuanced emotion in the cardboard mechanics of bad-decision drama.

It's a very fine film, powerful yet nuanced and not in any sense sensational or exploitative.

Audiences who care more about how a film makes them feel than if it fully works will be rewarded. But those who need more will find that Discreet lives up to its name a bit too well, never fully offering answers to all the questions it asks.

Spotty acting and casting, many thinly drawn or over-the-top characters, weak stabs at humor, and some awkward editing and dialogue further undermine this well-intentioned effort.

The film probes that tricky-to-reconcile bridge between honoring the fallen and moving forward.

Every minute of this film is absolutely mesmerizing. It’s as if the stars are commanding the audience’s attention, knowing they may never get this kind of showcase again.

Sollers Point boasts a cool, classically observational tone marked by Sabier Kirchner’s invitingly elegant cinematography that eschews the vogue for artificial shaky-cam edginess, and the naturalistic detail of a lived-in neighborhood populated by at least a dozen instantly memorable characters — by turns stressed, satisfied, curious, weird and sad — just doing their thing.

Unfortunately, while its intentions are as pure as the heart of its heroine, the biography offers little depth or insight into Yadvi. She is presented more as a flawless saint than a human princess in this drama mired in poor narrative structure and few details.

At its best, That Summer proves an effective time capsule aimed squarely at Beale devotees, adding light and context to the saga of this endlessly baffling and singularly captivating mother-daughter duo.

With its gorgeous photography, charismatic participants and unabashed love for discovery, The Most Unknown feels like a science documentary cross-fertilized with that sentimental old Coke commercial — the smartest among us holding hands across the globe, charting our universe in happy harmony.

This high-concept tale works because of the two leads' charisma and chemistry. Tong is a star, and the role asks her to display her full range. Lei makes a great unlikely romantic hero.

Ultimately, this is a memorable look at our desire to love and feel safe, to connect and belong — and the unexpected ways in which families can reshape and grow.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is an aimless, sweet-souled jumble. Its ebullience is palpable, if rarely infectious.

The film celebrates Mary Shelley for the trailblazing woman that she is, but hews far too close to convention to truly represent her life.

Awe-inspiring visuals and equally stirring orchestrations combine to fittingly majestic effect in Mountain, a unique portrait of mankind's enduring fascination with the world's most formidable summits.

While the film features strong performances and good direction, it's still way too rote. A bunch of kids head into the forest and meet a monster. What happens next is just a matter of connecting the dots.

It's a rare delight to spend so much time with the inimitable André. This revealing documentary shows the playful, loving and vulnerable side to this towering figure of taste.

The film is impressive as a star vehicle, if a bit rickety as an action picture.

Though the script relies on gross-out body humor more often than it needs to, it manages to be deeper and more resonant than most girls gone wild comedies. A truly enjoyable trip.

Exquisite and ferocious.

A tender ensemble piece whose skillful performances dovetail into a perfectly symphonic whole, Shoplifters is a work of such emotional delicacy and formal modesty that you're barely prepared when the full force of what it's doing suddenly knocks you sideways.

To call the movie a mess would be to state the obvious and perhaps miss the point. The movie’s sense of moment-to-moment chaos — madcap scenes of bellowing, falling, tumbling and general agitating — is scarcely accidental. It is, on the contrary, very deliberately achieved.

What's bracing about Sorry Angel is that it refuses to allow the specificity of its characters — specifically drawn and superbly played — to be obscured or flattened by the drama of terminal illness. Neither man is made nicer or more palatable than he has to be.

Burning is a character study that morphs, with masterly patience, subtlety and nary a single wasted minute, into a teasing mystery and eventually a full-blown thriller.

A sense of disorientation is a wholly appropriate response to a movie in which the past is both irretrievable and unshakable. But even at its most openly baffling, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” never loses its seductive pull.

For a movie about a fleeting moment, it leaves a surprisingly resilient ache.

It all plays out a bit randomly, but the leapfrogged plot points, thin characters and blunt messaging in Max Botkin and Marc Hyman's peppy script prove forgivable, given how this nicely modulated film largely avoids the hyper-aggressive jokiness and desperate stabs at relevance that often plague kidpics.

On Chesil Beach is a beautifully made film that is as difficult to write about as it is to watch, and it is inescapably hard to watch. Yet the reasons it is difficult — a completely heartbreaking story brought to exquisite life via immaculate writing, directing and acting — are why it's worth putting up with the pain.

It is an exquisite piece of filmmaking and also a blunt, pulpy instrument, a despairing, fully sustained howl of a movie that is easily this director's finest work in years.

As a portrait of a man who surrendered his career and much of his life to the service of a master, Filmworker proves compelling, particularly for those with a passing interest in Kubrick.

In its perceptions and mood, Angels Wear White plays like acutely serious female noir.

The machination is comic, and the repercussions carry the awkward tinge of threadbare farce, but the vibe is pure melancholy, echoed in the clinically beautiful monochromatic cinematography and the tinny, weeping musical phrase Hong often leans on to close his extended takes of dialogue.

Drawn from the director's personal memories of post-1968 excitement and disillusionment, the drama moves from surging emotional highs to melancholy lows, but it also pulses with a vibrant, moody energy that a 24-year delay from American screens has done nothing to diminish.

The result doesn't feel evasive so much as vaguely incurious, and its focus on the message over the man himself can be as impressive in its single-mindedness as it is frustrating.

This crime spree may have style to spare, but that's about all that's holding it together.

This movie is either in your wheelhouse or it's not, but for those looking forward to Book Club, it delivers. For what it is — a breezy bit of Nancy Meyers-like fantasy, featuring four beloved actresses talking about sex, baby — it's exceedingly enjoyable.

There's little in the underdog sports dramedy Champion that feels vital, aside from its star.

Carrey's quietly exacting, uncharacteristic performance, though not qualifying as a saving grace, hints at some promising new career directions in the same manner Robin Williams successfully tapped a darker side with "One Hour Photo." All Carrey needs now is a better film.

Each moment in Always at the Carlyle feels like a pitch. Though it's effective in presenting the hotel's appeal, the salesman's greasy fingerprints linger, a stain which would never be welcome at the pristine spot.

Co-directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke (the latter of whom wrote the screenplay) sacrifice some tension with their more character-based approach, but the cumulative effect is emotionally powerful.

Ehrenreich isn't given much to work with here, but his sly comic reserve and devil-may-care attitude give you reasons to keep watching, well after the story has stopped doing anything of the sort.

In Deadpool 2, the manic antics fly fast, but the franchise loses its edge as wise-cracking antihero Deadpool goes dadcore, attempting to infuse standard-issue four-quadrant studio blockbuster beats into what was once a revolutionary R-rated premise.

This is a soothing and transporting journey sure to inspire gardeners of all stripes to create their own slice of heaven.

The endless sharing and chaotic conflicts that ensue among these largely uninviting men prove more tedious than convincing, with flashback bits that are more redundant than enlightening.

Yuasa's bold imagery and sometimes convoluted storytelling defy the conventions of traditional animated filmmaking, but he is clearly an artist with an individual vision whose work offers something genuinely new and eye-catching.