Empathy and compassion aren’t vulnerabilities in this narrative. They’re resources, with which you can defy the cold cosmos — though not without cost.

Mulligan’s raw portrayal of a woman trapped by invisible walls is certainly powerful — she keeps the film afloat even when it falters — and the way Fennell gives human form to those walls imbues the film with a simmering rage. However, these handful of strengths are hardly enough to render its other failings moot.

Mugen Train may be light in character development, but what little we get is effective enough to make the tears flow like waterfalls by the end of the film.

The plot is built to deliver on the promise of the title, which it does with aplomb.

The filmmakers’ attempts to play around with the concept of the unlikely action hero are only moderately successful.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League may feature altered scenes from its chopped-up counterpart, but it’s unlikely to play any differently to general audiences — apart from feeling like more of a slog. Its mere existence guarantees that someone, somewhere will be satisfied, but the film’s improvements are hardly enough to fix what was, now quite apparently, a flawed endeavor from the start.

Yes, it’s a bit helter-skelter, but it is also an adequately enjoyable and untaxing way to kill off a couple of hours.

The film is nothing short of a joyous experience that champions a hopeful optimism in humanity’s ability to trust one another despite ample evidence to the contrary.

You feel the late genius through the way Day carries her body, so lissome yet creaking with the weight of both her talent and addiction. The Rise Up singer not only matches our imagination’s version of Holiday, but somehow beats it: she seems so present yet ethereally sozzled in a manner that suggests she may be operating on another plane.

Another powerful, mesmerizing and downright heartbreaking performance by the great Anthony Hopkins enhances The Father.

Another of those fact-based semi-documentary style films about the need for government transparency that is responsible, sobering, worthwhile and, in my opinion, as boring as the recent halftime show in the 2021 Super Bowl.

The strength of Judas and the Black Messiah is that it moves well beyond rhetoric, or even historic reconstruction for that matter. Letting his talented cast lead the way, King has made a film centered on roiled emotions and relationships that are at once fractured and loving.

Powerful, persuasive and insightful, Falling is a sensitive and beautifully composed film that marks the formidable directing debut of the wonderful actor Viggo Mortensen.

Eight for Silver howls the arrival of a new and exciting take on the old werewolf story, with an inventive mythology and a memorable xenomorph-inspired scene that will nest in your nightmares. Sadly, the good parts of the film are trapped within the monstrous body of an overly long and average feature film.

In a story that is as heartfelt as it is heartbreaking, Supernova is a moving look at the emotional toll that dementia can have on the powerless sufferer and their selfless caretaker, revealing that one can never have too much time with their loved ones.

Is Wonder Woman 1984 entertaining? Sure, it’s fun, hits all the right superhero marks, and visually, the 1980-something world is a technicolor throwback to behold. But if our heroine is supposed to represent the good and hope for all humanity, one has to wonder who specifically this humanity is reserved for.

While Wild Mountain Thyme might be far from a perfect depiction of the intricacies of central Ireland, it is, at its core, the fabled and beautifully shot love story of two witty and eccentric childhood sweethearts that will have the ability to warm the coldest of hearts this holiday season.

Too queer for some, not nearly queer enough for others, Uncle Frank is fated to become the green bean casserole of this holiday’s film streaming options: designed to appeal to everyone, but destined to remain uneaten.

Happiest Season has managed to skip the hurdle of being classed as an LGBTQ+ film to win people’s hearts over with its charm and hilarity.

Even when the larger world that surrounds them is fuzzily rendered, when Wilson, Wolfe, Davis, Boseman and all those fabulous actors past and present are serving as our guides, gaining entrance into such uneasy places feels like a true gift.

The only reason to waste money and risk COVID exposure in any theater showing Jungleland is the privilege of seeing Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’Connell, two of the best and most charismatic actors in films today, struggle to turn a turgid, cliché-riddled bore about the underground game of bare-knuckle fighting into something better than it could ever be.

To me, the sex in Ammonite is nothing short of a yawn. The movie is also ponderously slow — the cinematic equivalent of liquid valium. But the two accomplished actresses at the helm balance two sides of a difficult equation exquisitely, exact and admirably immersed in total dedication to their roles, and supported by a fine peripheral cast.

Dreamland doesn’t quite work, but she (Robbie) deserves an A for effort.

Let Him Go wastes no time pulling you into an emotional grasp so compelling you can’t believe what happens as the narrative moves from one shocking scene to the next in a pandemic of violence.

Every thing about Fincher’s film—from his resurrection of his late father Jack’s script to his exacting recreation of a Hollywood in the midst of a creative explosion that it wouldn’t experience again for another 30 years or so—is a call to arms.

While the film proudly remains a chamber piece very much in keeping with its roots in the theater, King opens it up in ways that show an innate knack for visual storytelling.

Suffice to say that a number of Sacha Baron Cohen’s trolling antics amid this year’s coronavirus pandemic make a lot more sense once you watch the film.

Instead, by reshaping this charged moment culled from somewhat recent American history in his own image, Sorkin has made The Trial of the Chicago 7 about something else entirely: himself.

The real issue undermining Durkin’s sophomore effort is central to the weaving of the film’s conceit. It looks like a horror movie, swims like a horror movie, and quacks like a horror movie, but it isn’t a horror movie. So then what the hell is it? Good question. After a long, slow build-up, The Nest winds up being as vacant as the Surrey country house of the title, and leaves the viewers feeling every bit as empty.

Enola Holmes isn’t a revolution or revelation that is going to forever alter the course of cinema, but it is enough of a charming and cheerful change to give Netflix a new franchise.

It is a visually enthralling, high-gloss commercial for state power and repressive constructs. This is a product precisely tooled to be what the global marketplace demands of entertainment that is this expensive to make—a win for capitalism that will leave many filmgoers who found a powerful reflection of themselves in the original film feeling like they’ve lost something important and essential.

They came in fleeting glances, befuddled smiles and odd-timed pauses that the iconic pair share with each other before the movie shuffles them from one frenzied and inconsequential story beat to the next. In such stolen moments, you sense the depth of a friendship so profoundly felt and so deeply comforting that you think to yourself, I would follow these guys anywhere.

It’s also the kind of storyline that gives quite a bit of cover to the film’s lesser attributes—namely its general small-mindedness and squishy moral logic.

Aesthetically—accompanied by Ludwig Göransson’s aggressively throbbing score—Tenet is the cinematic spectacle you’ve imagined...The plot, however, is where things start to falter. Tenet is as convoluted—if not more so—than Inception or Interstellar, and its tangled narrative occasionally fails to completely unknot itself (although that may be the point).

You see, instead of staging a character-driven dramatic thriller with zombies like the first film, Peninsula presents a world hit by a zombie outbreak that responds by turning into a ridiculous, cartoonish dystopia — and it is much better for it.

An American Pickle uses arguably the dumbest concept imaginable to tell a surprisingly tender story about intergenerational pain, legacy, family, forgiveness, American division, Jewish heritage and the importance of family roots.

A film that is part infidelity drama and part slasher film while never fully committing to either idea.

All of this unvarnished evil is depicted with haunting beauty and uncompromising artistry. Shot in 35mm black-and-white by master Czech cinematographer Vladimír Smutný, every shot is breathtaking to behold.

They have made a film absent of time that could not possibly be more of the moment.

The result is a film—Kore-eda’s first outside of his native country and language—that feels almost aggressively low-key, low stakes and notably less urgent than the filmmaker’s earlier works.

Shockingly un-cinematic and utterly devoid of dynamism, the film lacks anything resembling the well-researched insights or sharp-edged comedy that you have come to associate with the former host of The Daily Show.

That the film is a mediocre product doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that Disney+ now has a shiny new big-budget spectacle to dangle in front of its core audience.

What results is a messy, ambitious, deeply emotional film that sometimes falls victim to the tropes of the genres it attempts to remix but never loses its power to move us.

Instead, we just sort of soak in the despondency, like lukewarm water in a half-filled hot tub. While sometimes touching, the results of this noble experiment lack dynamism. Eventually whatever is fresh about the approach is undercut by a familiar will-the-man-child-finally-grow-up trope that has made some of Apatow’s lesser films feel insular and self-indulgent.

There is an immediacy to the film so rare in period biopics and such a tactile physicality to its intellectual gymnastics. By the time Shirley draws to a close, you end up feeling pleasingly spent, like you just stayed up all night drinking a bottle of Canadian Club while discussing literary theory with a dear old confidant you hadn’t seen in years. Some friends just tire you out like that, and they are almost always the best kind.

The result is a brutal and haunting meditation on violence and power in the music industry — and whose careers have been derailed in the aftermath.

The High Note is a wholly unexpected and utterly enchanting summer movie throwback.

It would be easy to put the blame here on the two stars; expect a lot of misguided chatter about Nanjiani and Rae’s lack of chemistry. But if they deserve blame, it is in their capacity as co-executive producers who approved production on the anemic and half-baked script.

Inheritance has not one iota of the thematic intensity of Bong’s film, nor any of the dynamic relationships that make Succession’s twists and turns impactful. Instead, there is nothing much on Inheritance’s mind, and the relationships end up as underdeveloped as the film’s cliché-ridden dialogue.

The series’ trademark blend of character comedy and absurdist sight gags is in full display, served up with just the proper amount of postmodern self-awareness that adds to the fun rather than detracts from it.

Overall, it is the performers that give the story life and allow Arkansas to rise above some of its shallower instincts, which include a garish costume design that seems to posit the idea that people from the South dress like rodeo clowns. Hemsworth in particular brings a truth and measured heartbreak to his portrayal of someone who has been forced to glimpse how the world works and deeply wished he hadn’t.

Cole’s overarching theme of time drifting, folding inward and ultimately dooming the fathers, sons, mothers and daughters of All Day and a Night is hugely aided by the manner in which he frames these ideas visually.

The movie shows that, true or not, in the right hands and with the right actors, this oft-told tale—like the Western genre itself—can course with the kind of venturesomeness that makes cinema so exciting no matter the circumstances under which we watch it.

The often-stilted dialogue of the teenage protagonists doesn’t fare much better. As a result, many of the performances from the seemingly talented cast come off as stiff and stagey.

A film about mental health issues needs a good script and a first-rate cast to sustain a viewer’s interest, and this one has neither.

After an hour of this tedium, you stop worrying about where this disaster is going — or if it’s going anywhere at all. In the end credits, 28 producers are listed for an 85-minute film that doesn’t appear to have even had one.

A lurid, tasteless crime procedural about a plague of serial slaughters by a pair of particularly demented maniacs roaming across Europe torturing and mutilating young newlyweds and leaving their victims nude and positioned to resemble famous works of art. It’s more gruesome than I dare to describe.

The plot may be formulaic, but there’s nothing predictable about Ben Affleck’s commitment to the role of Jack, or the subtlety and sincerity with which he plays it.

Hope Gap is pithy, engaging, and insightful — the kind of movie we desperately need more of.

This moronic parable inspired by Donald Trump’s treatment and attitude towards illegal immigrants is a disgrace, but so is almost everything else on the screen these days.

The Banker is a sadly facile and largely surface level rendering of a profoundly complex problem that deserves more attention.

When Whannell’s movie is at its best, the audience is not just a witness to the terror; we are part of the machinery that inflicts it. Which is not to say that — when it works — this remake of James Whale’s 1933 classic is a success born of camera placement, special effects, or even conceptual daring.

Despite its title, Onward is a regressive film, sometimes painfully so.

The entire enterprise is so muffled and dull you can’t believe what you’re watching.

For an alleged psychological thriller, The Night Clerk has no thrills, suspense or tension.

Buck is lovable forever. If you think he’s perfection on four legs, he is. If you think he’s the most human dog since Lassie, Benji and Rin Tin Tin, he isn’t. Because Buck, you see, is computer-generated. Never mind. I guarantee you will love him anyway.

Well-crafted, potently written and beautifully acted.

All of it combines into not only a profoundly romantic experience, but also an exploration of a number of different kinds of love and connection.

In Downhill, it disintegrates because both parties turn out to be such unsalvageable bores — a misfire, in a feature-length movie, that is worse than stale popcorn.

Vulgar, contrived and incomprehensible.

In what is something of a movie miracle or at the very least an unexpected surprise, this adaptation of the much-loved Sega video game franchise launched nearly 30 years ago as a direct assault on Nintendo’s leaping plumber Mario, largely presses the all the right buttons—and even does so in the right order.

Despite the lofty and even admirable aspirations of this particular entrant to the ever-growing genre, what it has to offer bears little difference from all the rest: namely, a couple of really bad nights in a very bad house.

Artistic creativity and long-term plotting can co-exist side-by-side, but striking the right balance between them is a Herculean task....Regardless, even if Harley Quinn is no longer with the Clown Prince of Crime, she’s still poised to laugh all the way to the bank with Birds of Prey.

Unlike many of the other films of its ilk, The Rhythm Section never feels the need to move beyond Stephanie’s sadness and sense of loss. This is really a tragedy thriller more than it is a revenge thriller.

It’s rare to see a war film you can truthfully label poignant, but The Last Full Measure combines the heart-pounding excitement of "1917" with the urgent, deeply moving emotional honesty of "Saving Private Ryan" to tell a heroic but somehow overlooked story of courage under fire that now emerges as one of the most valuable chapters to emerge from the debacle of Vietnam.

It was written with empty-headed desperation and directed with minimal imagination by Guy Ritchie, one of the most incompetent filmmakers of the century.

It’s not much of a story, so understandably, it’s not much of a movie, either. But for shock effects, the aliens that descend upon the Gardners are admirably grotesque and some of the special effects are admittedly hair-raising.

The best thing about reviewing the new PG-13 horror movie The Turning is that you don’t have to worry about spoiling the ending because it doesn’t have one. It just, sort of, stops.

This is a movie where the charming guys fire holes into the un-charming guys while blowing stuff up and telling mildly funny jokes. Its story is absurd, most of the dialogue not spoken by one of the two leads is laughable, and save for a draggy middle section when the plot mechanics keep the bad boys separated, it’s a lot of fun.

Words are generally a problem for Dolittle—a fatal flaw when your picture is about talking animals. While the words are abundant, most are either perfunctory exposition or anachronistic jokes that fall flatter than the state of Nebraska.

In a bargain-basement bomb called Inherit the Viper, three siblings survive one gruesome moment after another without any of them adding up to anything significant or life-affirming. Despite a running time of only 85 minutes, it feels like days of mean-spirited self-indulgence.

The only reason I wanted to see it at all is Kristen Stewart, but she is so wasted that she should have stayed in bed.

It’s a dull story that is still worth telling — but in a better film than Three Christs.

A number of questions await anyone who lasts the full 88 minutes. What just happened? Was the suicidal composer a lunatic devil worshiper who planned for his daughter to follow in his footsteps? Will anyone else ever hear the sonata of the damned? Does anyone care?

The beating heart of the film, this performance is further evidence of what a gift Foxx’s late career shift to supporting parts has been for filmgoers.

It is rare that a movie finds its way into the hearts of a massive audience with both flair and sentimentality that made the 1949 "Little Women" so unique and unforgettable. The new one pretty much settles for sentimentality.

The intensity is overwhelming. Every war is hell, no matter when it was fought, but 1917, which is about a war far removed from contemporary reality, turns out to the best war picture since "Saving Private Ryan."

Yes, this is a great one, and a magnificent centerpiece performance by an unknown actor named Paul Walter Hauser in the title role is a major reason it is so unforgettable.

Despite its desperate efforts to justify the homicides, there’s nothing remotely innovative or even goofily satirical about it. The lousy actors, incompetent writer and clueless director remain nameless. That’s my good-deed Christmas gift to all involved, and better luck next year.

The result seems to tiptoe around the even juicier chance to tell the dirty behind the scenes stories that could have made this story a real bombshell indeed.

Under the careful guidance of Australian director Benedict Andrews, Kristen Stewart’s Jean is a doomed star emerging in the center ring of her own drama, distinctive and refined, with an elegant mask that fails to cover the twitching nerve beneath the surface that feels like it’s always on the verge of exploding.

The Safdies’ film is a cinematically expressive tightrope walk that seems designed to leave your blood pressure permanently spiked. It can be relentless and hard to take, but it is brimming with surprise and a vivacity that radiates off the screen.

The dialogue is dull as dried glue, but the acting is fine, although the boundless range and skill of Redmayne is wasted, which might account for the reason he doesn’t appear to enjoy the ride as much as he could. Unfortunately, we’ve seen it all before with motorcycles, submarines, airplanes and ships at sea in peril instead of hot-air balloons.

Helen Hunt is a good actress with an Oscar on her mantle and practically no ability to choose a decent movie script based on quality or entertainment value. She’s been absent from the screen far too long, so it’s a pleasure to welcome her back, but not in a labored, amateurish charade as bad as I See You.

She (Watts) produced it to show off the range of her obvious talent, and deserves an A for effort in a vehicle that rates a D for dreary, desolate and depressing. The rest of The Wolf Hour deserves an F for forget it.