The problem with Joe Bell isn’t that it’s telling Joe’s story; that’s an important (and tragic) tale that should be told. The problem is that it fails to also tell Jadin’s story — even after it makes the point that Jadin’s journey is inextricable from Joe’s.

Shyamalan . . . feels caught between the more emotionally considered movies he used to make, and the leaner, meaner ones he’s done more recently. His filmmaking can’t make up for the fact that Old is hovering indecisively between the two halves of his career, unable to commit to either direction.

If we absolutely must have G.I. Joe movies, surely they shouldn’t be this joyless.

Cinematically speaking, this is all low-hanging fruit. Maybe such unimaginative choices wouldn’t stand out so much if Huppert were herself not such an inventive and riveting performer. She is, and Mama Weed doesn’t really deserve her.

Roadrunner may have been made too soon, and made with a misguided approach in mind, but in its closing moments, it manages a sudden magnificence in affirming that there’s no right way to mourn. Grief, in all of its ugly reality, is a part of life too, and there’s no tidying it up for the camera.

As it proceeds, it expands its vision and compassion, even as it de-escalates the tension. It’s not about the thing it’s about, except that it ultimately is totally about the thing it’s about.

The film’s humorlessness is off-putting; it is slick to the point of lacking texture. But the underlying problem is more fundamental. Gunpowder Milkshake is led by someone without the star power to carry it, surrounded as she might be by actresses far more interesting.

Like most corporate cinematic endeavors, Space Jam: A New Legacy tries to have it both ways, proclaiming to be on the side of the angels while doing the work of the Devil. It criticizes shameless, money-grubbing attempts to synergize and update beloved classics (as LeBron himself puts it, “This idea is just straight-up bad”) … all the while shamelessly synergizing and updating beloved classics.

That it feels like it’s half at war with its title character, bringing her firmly to Earth (until she, like Bond in Moonraker, has to make her way to a high-altitude villain’s lair) and insisting on emotional coherence from her personal history, is its most interesting quality, though it’s maybe not as revolutionary as it first seems.

Saudi director Shahad Ameen’s mesmerizingly bleak fable Scales accomplishes something many films attempt but generally bungle: It tells a highly symbolic tale while conveying recognizable human emotions.

I suspect that, if nothing else, this astoundingly beautiful picture will stand the test of time.

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 is a nasty, effective slasher.

So, it’s Edge of Tomorrow meets Interstellar meets Aliens meets Tenet meets Independence Day, with their brains removed. But it’s still tremendous fun, because this thing moves. Let’s face it: If it slowed down, the audience might start asking too many questions. The Tomorrow War is just as stupid as it needs to be.

The Forever Purge jumps through a variety of styles and subgenres as it proceeds; some extended sequences will remind you of a Mad Max flick. The hodgepodge is weirdly appropriate.

The film is about the power of storytelling, and not in the cornball, self-congratulatory sense in which that phrase is normally deployed.

False Positive fails to cohere. Glazer and Lee’s script scatters its thematic attention in the last third, which ruptures the movie’s attempt to build dread, and director Lee creates a thin, under-realized world.

Ultimately, The Ice Road veers uneasily between immersive tension and a variety of you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me howlers on the level of both plot and dialogue.

To watch director Justin Lin, who returned for F9 and the two subsequent films that will close the series out, wind things back to the start is to feel blessed relief that this improbably good gearhead daddy-issues opera may very well stick its landing.

Luca is so intent on meaning something that it only ever halfway inhabits the delightfully colorful world it lays out. We never get a deeper understanding of the history between the sea monsters and the humans beyond some hints that there has been far more interaction than Luca was raised to believe.

Getting sucked into these people’s lives means experiencing the story in all its immediacy, sans judgment. Holler is too entertaining and well-made to be overly dour, too full of suspense and throwaway bits of cinematic elegance. It marks the arrival of a major new directorial talent.

Infinite feels like a depressing fable about the movie industry.

It feels like a fist that won’t close, its elements never intentionally coming together.

It’s not Chaves’s takeover that makes this new film feel like it runs off the rails — it’s the choice to shift focus from a haunting to a murder.

Despite — or because of — its candor, the film is careful not to traffic in titillation. Everyone is beautiful, everyone is young, but this movie is made for the people in it, rather than appealing to some creepy, objectifying gaze.

Cruella takes one of the richest narrative archetypes — the madwoman — and whittles her down into a glossy, hollow, capitalism-approved monster fueled by girl-boss politics. It has nothing to say about how women move through the world.

Beyond the many jump scares involving aliens and the terrifically terrified-out-of-their-wits performances, what makes A Quiet Place Part II special is the sheer joy we get from feeling like we’re in the hands of a confident filmmaker.

The Dry is a beautiful thriller that leaves us not with explanations, but with overwhelming sadness.

If Profile has value, it’s not as a tale of terrorist recruitment or of amorous delusion, but of how power works in the extremely online world.