The lighter moments are the best reason to catch The Marvels. Getting a reprieve on the running time is a close second.

A good-natured and well-acted small-town drama about midlife renewal, Gary Lundgren’s Phoenix, Oregon is the opposite of topical or urgent. That’s why it can be recommended as a distraction and a slice of comfort food.

None of it makes any sense, alas, and you’ll stop caring about what happens or who it happens to, fairly early on. There seems to be a lot of pseudo-Freudian yammer in the middle of this crime drama, or perhaps there’s a lot of drug-trade-related violence in the middle of a psychological family study; either way, it’s mystifying as hell.

Compulsus is a revenge thriller with a twist. No, make that two twists.

This is the sort of film that will divide audiences between those who will have their hearts torn out… and those who will want to tear out their hair.

As stark a manifesto against rush-to-judgment as his story is, one can’t help but think how much worse Richard Jewell’s ordeal would have been in a social media-driven world.

Rabid is a suitable entry into the science-fiction/horror genre that occasionally slants towards the promise of offering something more. And while the film’s science-fiction/horror elements don’t disappoint, the promise of something more doesn’t quite pull through.

As a turn-your-brain-off, tech-heavy action movie, Captain America: Brave New World succeeds well enough. As a Marvel movie that connects with other Marvel movies in any meaningful way, or charts a new direction (other than that vague suggestion of a “New Avengers”), it’s little more than a space-filler.

You could think of it as a 98-minute ad for the Super Bowl, opening as it is a week before this year’s edition. These words do not sound like the description of the GOAT of movies. And 80 for Brady is not that.

Knock at the Cabin doesn’t send you home with a clever epiphany that has you rethinking everything you just saw. What he gives you is an ending that you never have to think about again. And a film to match.

If our planet should collapse into some colossal cyber-punk afterworld, we can take comfort knowing that Milla Jovovich has our back.

It’s conceptually unsettling and bold, but there are some hiccups with the execution.

At times, it feels more like an elevated made-for-television movie. In spite of this, the film is affecting and moving. The formidable British actress Cynthia Erivo does great work here. The script doesn’t give her much range, but Erivo gives us a woman whose determination and humanity shines, presenting a hero for her age… and ours.

Whatever authenticity the film hopes to build through its natural-horror premise is occasionally undercut by a visual distortion that pulls us out when it should be dragging us further in. And yet, despite my quibbles, annoyances, and perhaps unreasonable expectations of chimp-centric emotional realism, Primate does deliver where it counts.

There’s life in Highest 2 Lowest, but I didn’t feel much of it. David King is meant to be a man driven by his passions, for music and for himself, his legacy and perhaps his family. I could see that and understood that, but I didn’t feel much of it.

A genuine crowd pleaser. But its commitment to serving the hero’s legacy frequently brings the fun to a grinding halt. Not to worry though, the fun manages to resurface even after the film flounders in a blaze of super-human gobbledygook involving evil scientists, mythical demons, and a snarky wizard.

The film, alas, feels far more emotionally conniving than its title character.

Not funny enough to be a biting satire on the absurdity of Hollywood or absorbing enough to be a portrait of regrettable spiritual emptiness, Jay Kelly feels oddly flabby.

The White Crow is really “Nureyev before Nureyev,” and it’s a struggle to sort out its purpose.

If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, at a tidy 90 minutes, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is on point for what it largely is - a violently slapstick domestic sitcom.

A film that wants to be a metaphor for something, the French film The Animal Kingdom is like an edgeless, absurdist high school version of The Island of Doctor Moreau.

There’s still plenty to admire: Derrickson’s eye for atmosphere, the bleakly beautiful snowscapes, and a handful of effective scares. But where The Black Phone haunted you with what might happen, Black Phone 2 simply tells you what will.

Wakanda Forever is far from a failure, except that where there should be excellence, there is a middling feeling of watching something spectacularly competent.

I'm all for the drama. Unfortunately, the drama in Glasshouse comes as an intrusion on the promise of a different story—a better story camouflaged behind the one being told.

It's an understandable impulse for a film of this sort to hold off on divulging secrets, content to fill the story with ambiguity rather than rush to reveal anyone's agenda. But directors Martín Blousson and Macarena García Lenzi's tight clench on the film's secrets feels more like an exercise in prying out a reveal than a steady unraveling of clues and discovery.

As empty of purpose and overlong as it is, Hobbs & Shaw is at least a more entertaining machine than the last F&F film.

There are enough speeches in the movie to make the film seem more curated than directed. But hang in until the third act, and you are likely to find that the lecture has a significant payoff.

This is as close to a grilled cheese on white made with Kraft Singles as a movie can get. Comforting in its way but so blandly familiar.