All the components for bite are here, from unflattering character portraits to hideous amorality, but The Commune never clamps down quite as hard as you’d like it to. Your time won’t be wasted with the movie, but it won’t send you out of the theater scarred, either.

Posley balances Bitch Ass’ moral dilemma with clever, exuberant filmmaking.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is everything you could reasonably expect from a Sam Raimi-Kevin Feige collaboration, but not much more.

Curtis and Lohan haven’t missed a beat in their comic chemistry, and they’re now joined by the winning Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons. Rather than an attempt at some lofty reinvention (it’s Freaky Friday, for God’s sake), Ganatra’s take is more of a reunion tour where we bop our heads along to the familiar tunes.

Despite effectively crafting character conflicts and jokes around the messy business of moving life to the stage and then moving it from the stage to the screen, See How They Run feels like it’s missing some punch. It’s certainly clever, but almost too much so.

One of the more frustrating experiences in appraising art is arriving at the confusing intersection of admiring an artist’s work, while simultaneously not particularly enjoying it.... Bill Watterson’s fiercely creative yet endlessly frustrating Dave Made a Maze leaves the viewer in precisely this uncomfortable position.

It’s a star vehicle intent on dulling its leads’ shine, a slick blockbuster relying on narrative and visual restrictions, a cynical movie about the power of friendship. And yet, even as Wolfs undermines itself, it’s a charmingly prickly (or charming, despite its prickliness) mess.

Given its limited cast, location and budget, Glorious is an impressive feat. It never drags or feels more claustrophobic than intended. Thanks to strong performances and mostly tight writing, it’s a tense little chamber film, with deities and grand ideas, but without pants.

At its best, The Perfection is an homage to 1970s horror movies and 1980s thrillers, a glorious, multi-hewed mind screw.

While Chase, Taylor and Konner figure out a way to give us a half-assed rundown of the gangster rise-and-fall we saw again and again in the series, they couldn’t figure out how to make that into any kind of satisfying film—let alone one worth its references to the gangster canon and let alone one that has anything at all to say about the race relations in Newark during its setting.

The film never quite achieves the level of fevered hurry for which it aims—sometimes due to its often trite, on-the-nose dialogue and sometimes to the stilted delivery of said dialogue.

This is a film that aims squarely at respecting its source’s established fan base, and cares little for casualties who can’t hang on through its grindhouse paces.

As a feature film debut this is a miraculous venture, one that feels glamorous and big while still relishing in the sparks that emit from talented actors finding new and interesting ways to fill an empty space.

This is the best installment since the original, mainly because the film takes risks and bends conventions already set forth by the films that came before it. Scream was built on rules, but rules are always best when broken.

Eremita (Anthologies) offers bursts of such inspired and inhibited strangeness in an uneven assessment of life, documenting this specific period around the world through a diverse spread that’s very imperfection is relatable to anyone that’s tried to get anything done under quarantine.

Lightyear is a beautiful starship with precious genre cargo, functional and direct in its simple mission to carry on.

Good Boys manages to find that happy medium between outrageous and heartstring-pulling.

As movies about a Liam Neeson character marinating in regrets before punching and shooting his way out of immediate danger go, this is a pretty good one, by which I mean at one point Neeson smokes a pipe while driving a car. It’s also Lorenz’s best as a director by a fair margin, a movie that feels inspired by Eastwood and old Westerns, but not beholden to them.

There’s some surprisingly compelling footage, played over the end credits, of real life Juggalos providing testimonials about what their community means to them, and in that a message about understanding the misunderstood.

Motherless Brooklyn is far from an airtight masterwork like Confidential—it’s too bloated at almost two and a half hours and contains some acting choices that borderline on irritating—but for those looking for a neo-noir that goes down as harshly yet as satisfyingly as Sam Spade’s favorite Bacardi, it’ll deliver.

Despite Fraser donning anywhere between 50 and 300 pounds of prosthetic fat for his role, Charlie lacks a fleshed-out interiority that, unfortunately, reflects Hunter’s original material.

Warm Bodies shambles along as inoffensively as its “regular” zombies—with little fright, little gore and an occasional chuckle. But, as a mild diversion that won’t bother either person on a date, one could do far worse.

Crawl is a brilliant ode to the magical realism of Florida and how, when made with craft and care, few movie-going experiences are as good as creature-features in the hottest month of the year.

As the film trickles toward its howler of a conclusion, any hopes McCarthy might somehow salvage this story evaporate. Stillwater sinks like a stone.

Despite the amateurish lack of comic or dramatic timing, Christmas Pageant does have some old-fashioned charm.

Early on, the self-deprecating stuff takes on a studied air, and in the final stretch, the filmmakers seem to think they can shock-cut and rug-pull their way into something resembling psychological horror. The weirdness isn’t really weird enough to pull this off; it’s all the self-indulgence without much oddball pleasure.

If Aporia’s airiness gives the story a bit of distance from the world we’re living in right now, the film nonetheless does what good science fiction is supposed to, forcing viewers to bring the future conundrums it raises to their present.

Very rarely do you get the sense that anyone involved in Christopher Robin had a really strong take on the material or an innate understanding of why these characters have resonated for nearly a century.

Wonder Woman 1984 has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as its predecessor. Fortunately, the exact mix and proportion of those strengths and weaknesses has shifted for the better.

Like any obviously competent action director, Johnson establishes geography and spatial stakes with rigor, but then, like any incompetent action director—cough, Peter Berg, cough—he loses focus, the idea of the action overtaking its execution. It’s frustrating, because Johnson clearly understands what he’s doing.

In its loopy, beguiling, occasionally befuddling way, Three Thousand Years of Longing feels like it’s trying—and sometimes failing—to sum something up about Miller’s own history of loving strange movie magic.

Merlant’s writhing, fainting spells and intense gaze do well to communicate the intensity of desire and, although the film can sometimes be a dizzying attraction to climb on, Jumbo is certainly worth the ride.

While Hardiman couldn’t have foreseen the elevated commentary her film would take on six months after its TIFF debut, it’s refreshing to have a film that takes itself so seriously by refusing to sacrifice its moral stance in order to satiate the anxieties of viewers—anxieties that have become more prescient than anyone could have imagined.

It’s torture-forward, funny, preposterous, imaginative and puts into practice what the franchise should have learned a long, long time ago: There is no reason to reinvent the saw blade.

A remarkable real-life, low-artifice spy thriller becomes unremarkable fiction.

If Gudegast is indeed aiming for Michael Mann, as some contemplative shots and a synth-y score suggest, he’s arguably missed the mark wider than ever. If he’s hoping to chart his own territory, well, Pantera spends a lot of time in the wilderness – before teasing another sequel, of course, where surprise will be even harder to come by.

With a tight 87-minute runtime, Caveat would have made for a perfectly lean chiller had it opted to maximize the claustrophobia inherent in literally chaining the viewer to one terrifying location for the entirety of the film.

There are problems with Mrs. Hyde that have nothing whatsoever to do with Bozon’s puzzling creative choices, though for perspective’s sake, the problems are dwarfed by the choices.

When The Power is on, it’ll have you white-knuckling a flashlight all night. When it starts flickering, well, even its least nuanced moments or most telegraphed turns still have a level of craft that make certain Faith will be able to keep the lights on as a filmmaker for a long time to come.

As they often do, Tomlin and Fonda make their material look sharper than it really is.

The Columnist argues that silence can be more violent and political than speech.

What Tokyo Pop never allows is overcooked drama where the couple has to decide if they’re really in love, or if they’re just trying to hit it big. The film is genuine. It devoutly avoids putting on airs.

There’s a terrific 50-minute fan edit somewhere in The Aeronauts, but as far as the theatrical experience goes, half of it is more than worth your time, if you’re willing to tolerate the other half.

Little Joe could use a trim for better deployment of plot and unnerving atmosphere. No matter. Little Joe is a quirkily rattling movie, an off-kilter tonic during the year-end onslaught of movies proclaimed “important” by their studios, and what the film lacks in structure it makes up for in its eerie, cold singularity.

If only Jennifer Jason Leigh had been available for a few more days of shooting, perhaps Night Always Comes could have put some flesh on the bones of its family drama, enlivening what is otherwise an overly familiar crime caper, but like an absent parent, the supporting elements of the film just can’t be counted on when you need them.

A queer ghost story with devastating emotional power and transgressive themes of domination, selfishness and abandonment, it is all too often hamstrung by plodding stylistic choices and a thin script that stretches many of its interactions until they’re so thin, threadbare and ethereal that they end up just as spectral.

Compared to the eight films preceding it, the mindlessness of Hobbs & Shaw isn’t a sign of humble poptimist genius, just of something less than what it could have been.

Still, House of Gucci would not be what it is without the sheer weight of Lady Gaga’s portrayal of Patrizia, a woman who wants to “have it all” and then some.

There’s a good movie baked into Being the Ricardos’ 131 minutes. It’s about 90 minutes long, maybe a little less. The remaining 41 minutes comprise an Aaron Sorkin movie, and like too much cream in a beautifully fried donut, they weigh down the total package with needless fat: Talking heads, flashbacks and archival footage.

A fantastically frenetic performance from Dianna Agron, a truly chilling central entity and interrogations of Jewish heritage elevate Clock (and the potential of further monstrous motherhood stories) above otherwise lackluster competition stateside.

The premise is also genuinely neat, a fun, breezy little 90-minute high-concept that unfortunately sounds more propulsive and invigorating than it really is.

While the film’s premise is appealing enough in its coming-of-age charm, the central characters themselves are intensely grating.

It’s a really well-made genre movie, the product of a smart, obviously skilled filmmaker with a good sense of economy.

For a touch-and-go exercise in hoping the audience will fill in not just the narrative blanks but the emotional ones, there’s We Live in Time.

See for Me positions itself as an unfair tale of “easy target versus evil men,” but highlights its strongest material when valuing people beyond their disabilities.

While China’s propaganda department made sure the film was imbued with a definitive moral, there’s a subtle pleasure in a spy story otherwise intoxicated with its own smokescreen.

None of it ever escalates past a baseline of digestible insanity, which isn’t really all that insane when the pasts of Cage and Taylor are littered with the skeletons of seedier films and more preposterous premises.

It’s an odd sort of travelogue Leon and Kirby curate here, but Italian Studies’ drifting, artsy peculiarities make 70 minutes fly by with a palliative affection—for Alina, for New York and for all the intersecting stories contained within its bounds.

With a script co-written by Eslyn and Duplass, Biosphere retains the distinct brand of organic conversational comedy that’s been present in the duo’s collaborative crossover for the past nearly 15 years.

It’s an endurance test where viewers pit their tolerance for naked displays of ugly masculinity against Bravo’s assured directorial chops. It’s also the best, or maybe most vital, presentation of whiteness in theaters in 2017, or for that matter the last half decade or so of pop culture.

So, then, what makes it the “best” entry? The more severe Rings-tone that Jackson has been attempting to graft on top of the (mostly) whimsical original source makes the most sense here. Also—and at the risk of coming off as pedantic—it’s because, technically, it’s the shortest of the three.

There’s solace to take in the realization that in another director’s hands, The Silent Twins would have been completely standardized, absent the redeeming artistic value invested in the film by Smoczynska’s presence. But the film doesn’t capitalize on her vision.

Overall, Dragon Ball Super: Broly punches triumphantly within its own weight class, aspiring not to any lofty heights of thematic heft or cinematic gravitats, but delivering a visually packed and unabashedly enjoyable experience that’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser among enduring fans, the modestly engaged and newcomers alike.

It’s solid, and at its best it’s an impishly entertaining little thriller. But all the talent in the world can’t overcome the feeling that there is more here to be mined, if only Humane had dug just a little deeper.

Judged purely on the promises made by the title, it’s hard to see Godzilla vs. Kong as anything but a success. As a film, on the other hand, Wingard’s G v. K often still feels like it’s held together with copious amounts of cinematic duct tape.

Terrifier 2 feels like it was destined to be the ultimate overkill horror movie, and whatever else it might turn out to be, it’s certainly not forgettable.

No Hard Feelings may be marketed as just a raunchy, 2000s-era throwback comedy, but Lawrence and her co-star, Andrew Barth Feldman, elevate it into something more.

Grant packs plenty into Torn Hearts’ double-barrel approach, and assures herself as a director who knows her way around a joyfully dark midnighter romp. It’s a sinister and fork-tongued tune that holds a nutty tempo, sure to delight audiences who are into hootin’ and hollerin’ at some honky-tonk horrors.

Springsteen’s earnestness makes him seem like a nicer, more open-hearted sort than Dylan in A Complete Unknown. It also makes for a less prickly character in a less entertaining movie.

The fight scenes will make you laugh more than the dialogue, and it doesn’t survive a bumpy landing, but led by Captain Hartnett, Fight or Flight takes advantage of its budget airline resources for a knowingly ludicrous romp.

We’re typically never trusted to accept the reality of an icon’s life for what it is rather than what media consultants want it to exemplify. What the film’s real failing amounts to is any lack of interest in Ginsburg’s true superpower: Her inhuman, sleepless drive to do the work.

Despite achieving formidable scares and clever callbacks to the filmmakers’ debut Inside, a sinister specter of clumsy cultural engagement lingers in Kandisha.

The insights are lightweight, but there’s a genial warmth to the film’s outlook that’s hard to dismiss. Quiz Lady is pure formula, but sometimes you’re reminded why that formula worked in the first place.

For the first time in its storied history, a Pixar movie feels like a straight-to-DVD entry: undemanding, mildly amusing, utterly disposable.

Good Grief is not a dramedy (even though it is marketed as one), but rather a somber film about the messiness of grief and its often unforgiving, even destructive, grip.

Together, from director Stephen Daldry and writer Dennis Kelly, succeeds by candidly approaching the subject head-on—literally, as its two-handed drama starring a couple played by James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan is a moving, sharp and charmingly black-humored film of direct address.

There’s nothing exceptionally freaky outside one or two practical effects of bodily implications, and yet Good Madam still finds nationally significant ways to summon societal fears.

With Jakob’s Wife, come for the campy gore, stay for the surprisingly feminist message about vampirism as a way to set you free.

A simple, cute, unoriginal animated film that seldom impresses, but still warms your heart a little.

Feliciano’s effort is particularly marred by hackneyed tropes. Whether it be that Latino fathers operate out of the same withered copy of a machismo manual or the simple assertion that kids simply “need a father,” Women Is Losers certainly won’t win over those yearning for something new.

It’s telling that The Forgiven has the shape of a long, dark night of the soul, while actually taking place over several days.

Beyond the brutal violence and clever quips there’s a specific call-back to a type of film that flourished in the decades past, one that recognized fully that the specific joy of watching people get punched in the face doesn’t need to be wrapped in a dour or overly complex narrative.

If ever there was a case made that being on the right side of history, in the right place and with the right story isn’t enough to make satisfying non-fiction, Kim’s Video is it.

There are glimpses of comparably daydreamy thrillers like Come True or The Feast that give themselves to the fantasy of mania, but A Banquet fails to grab attention like these more ambitious companions. It all builds up to a cinematic Irish exit.

The worst choice Mary Harron makes in Dalíland is relying on convention to make an end-stage portrait of an unconventional figure.

The film pushes itself to extremes like a broad and black comedy would, but isn’t quite enough of one to come across as anything but cruel.

The film’s rock-solid survival story is enhanced by its charming ensemble and striking, elegant environment.

Bad Boys for Life is better than it should be—the audience at my screening clapped when it ended—but not quite up to being what it must: a reminder that, you know what, a thousand years from now, Bad Boys will still fucking be here.

Ana may be attempting to climb the class ladder, but the movie moves between classes with a freedom that feels weakly imagined.

The pulse-pounding, gag-heavy climax of Ballerina, meanwhile, attempts to cover up the fact that the film is only truly redeemable in the action-laden third act, after a clumsy and disjointed 70 minutes of paper thin revenge plot theatrics, growled out by actors of an embarrassingly high pedigree.

Do not let anyone tell you that Joker captures our specific time, represents our specific society, both births and defines our specific zeitgeist, grabs ahold of our specific faces and breathes smoke down our throats. It doesn’t. Joker is, more than anything, fine. And we, more than anything, are not.

In the end, does a live-action The Little Mermaid feel vital? No. It gives fans of the animated original pretty much the same movie, beat for beat, with some slight adjustments that score on the positive side.

If Elfman’s destination is grim, the journey she takes to get there is palliative.

Though aimed at a slightly younger audience, The Monkey King still has the mix of high-stakes peril and high-reward comedy that has become part of Chow’s signature style.

Caught between these conflicting expectations, it’s hard to appreciate Cruella as a whole. It’s overlong, with endless endings, and invites more conversations about it as a curious corporate product than as a cohesive movie. But it can also be perversely enjoyable with its flashy playlist-while-playing-dress-up aesthetic and brash, heightened central actresses.

While the visual and thematic richness of Night in Paradise could adequately carry the film on their own, the wry comedic tone that often infiltrates even the darkest exchanges between characters enhances the overall emotional payoff.

What Happens Later is probably the most rewarding time spent stranded at an airport—literally or figuratively—that we’ll ever experience.

The feeling is one of depletion, as V/H/S/99 begins robbing past hits in a grim effort to keep itself mobile and vital.