A parade of pulled punches, there’s not enough of anything in The Tomorrow Man to make it stick as drama or even a believable romance.

The subject may be glum but there is something consistently pleasurable about Mouthpiece, a film that is both audacious in execution and relatable, even for those of us who don't live in women's bodies.

This is a filmmaker in full control of her craft. But as accomplished as The Souvenir is, the story it chooses to tell can leave audiences both mesmerized and alienated.

Echo In the Canyon is an affectionate look at the pop music that came out of the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles in the mid-‘60s, a period that the film argues quite effectively, was hugely influential.

Late Night is a light-hearted comedy with something to say and an excellent cast, that is unfortunately hobbled by a storyline that doesn’t quite add up.

The results are what might be best called “solid” journalism, with the occasional eye-brow raising surprise (Nixon wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute?) There’s a wealth of archival, often familiar, television clips along with fresh interviews with some of the first-hand witnesses and participants.

Call it Meh in Black. The pun is, I will admit, unoriginal. But then so is Men in Black: International.

The confrontations involve a lot of prolonged, quasi-slapstick bullet-spraying firefights, which are hard on windows… and on viewers’ patience.

The obvious thing to call this film is a social satire. The humour is dry, pointed and often very, very funny. But Jarmusch is too clever and too careful a filmmaker to simply toss off a genre film for a few laughs.

Despite its grand-sounding title, The Fall of the American Empire is another trifle, a familiar harangue against human perfidy wrapped in a creaky farce.

I accept the onscreen explanation that this Godzilla is simply on atomic steroids. It’s the movie that’s fat.

While most romantic melodramas and rom-coms play with the idea of destiny, the bittersweet Japanese oddity Asako I & II makes it something of a central character.

Clumsily told yet intriguing because of its singular subject, Halston — director Frédéric Tcheng’s knock-kneed documentary on the pioneering American fashion designer ubiquitous in the 1970s, who made haute couture both aspirational and accessible — offers a trove of pop culture trivia.

Rocketman is as fabulously mercurial and debauched as its subject; anything less would have been futile and disappointing.

The loss of two-dimensional artistry of the original has some compensation of human warmth.

To some extent, the performances elevate the script.

The movie rattles through ninety minutes of episodic jolts, the visual style is jumbled. Distinctive only in having a better effects budget than your average demons-in-the-attic quickie. While the super-parody elements offer a few snorts of amusement, the movie avoids taking on more complex ideas about Superman as an American ideal, though the filmmakers are obviously aware of the Bizarro context.

The high school rite-of-passage film canon may have been raided here but its thieves — screenwriters Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman, doubtless abetted by producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay — have wrung every drop of weird, contradictory, and squeamish fun out of the teenage experience.

A first-person documentary about a Los Angeles couple’s decision to move to the country and start a farm overcomes its excessively preciously start to become a genuinely insightful meditation on agriculture, nature, and our precarious relationship to the planet that feeds us.

For a film that’s about decades of interstellar aimlessness, Aniara seems hopelessly rushed and superficial.

Because the potential is extraordinary, it’s a surprise that the film, co-directed by Herzog and Andre Singer, is so conventional and enthusiastic, bordering on adoring.

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.

Watching the teen romance The Sun Is Also a Star, starring the splendid-looking young couple Yara Shahidi (Blackish) and Charles Melton (Riverdale’s Reggie)), is something like wading through fields of pink candy floss and suddenly finding a speck of grit.

A Dog's Journey is a film that romanticizes the needs of the master over the beast. And while it's not untrue that domesticated dogs live to please, the willingness of the film to take full advantage of such unconditional devotion can feel exploitative.

While the thematic scheme may be ancient and remote, Zhang’s poetic compression and technical pizazz feel as fresh as a splash in a mountain stream.

While Stahelski is unlikely ever to be called upon to make a rom-com or coming-of-age movie, he and Reeves have taken the fluid action of the John Wick series to a point of “how are they going to top that last insane thing they did?” And there’s an imagination at work that’s straight out of Looney Tunes.

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

If you can accept its modest aims, Tolkien is quietly enjoyable on its own merits.