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.

What Mad Heidi has is some genuinely impressive production design, beautiful landscapes, solid performances and a setting that is fresh and novel for this kind of neo-exploitation angle.

Slattery and Bernbaum’s adherence to genre standards may hold Maggie Moore(s) back from doing anything new in its space, but not from doing anything worthwhile. There’s nothing wrong with a messy low-level crime movie done right.

If Extraction 2 isn’t necessarily smarter than its predecessor, maybe it’s somewhat less stupid. Its self-conscious action craft puts a little bit of brain behind all that performative brawn.

True to its small, sometimes nearly microscopic, scale, The Adults draws a perfect miniature portrait of a highly specific demographic: People obsessed with doing bits, making up songs, and perpetuating their own inside jokes who nonetheless never turned to a life in the performing arts.

It’s better as a comedy than as a wickedly sharpened thriller, making The Blackening one of those surefire “see it with a crowd” pleasers.

The dead air in the movie’s opening section is intentional, yet there are moments where Final Cut, the movie you’re actually watching, feels off – not through outright incompetence, but the eerie, imitative quality of a too-soon-too-little remake. Call it undead air.

Despite its rueful musings on the time that passes whether or not you’re properly occupying yourself, and despite the clear passion Rabe and Linklater exhibit for this material, Downtown Owl persists in a kind of circular ramble. It’s so transfixed by the process of muddling through that the movie itself becomes an indistinct muddle of its own.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts keeps it simple enough, which is smart, because franchise creep is going to hit like a ton of bricks within a sequel or two, especially given its ending. Rise of the Beasts isn’t quite as intimate or grounded as Bumblebee, but neither is it as cumbersome or dull as the other Transformers movies.

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

For a directorial debut, Aloners showcases Hong Sung-eun as an exciting new voice—hopefully next go around she’ll give us a little more to chew on.

Would all this be better if Flamin’ Hot weren’t based on one guy’s well-documented self-mythologizing? Sure. But like the exaggerated yarns Montañez weaves throughout the movie, the truth is much less interesting. The legend, on the other hand, is colorful, heartwarming and surprisingly fun, and Flamin’ Hot is far from the only movie of its kind to tell a tall tale disguised as an account of actual events.

Padre Pio’s two halves stubbornly, constantly butt heads with each other, stories in catastrophic disharmony.

You can feel The Flash wishing it could steal a glimpse into the audience and revise itself on the fly accordingly; no wonder early screenings apparently hedged on an ending until the last possible minute.

Besides announcing Song as a brilliant observer of dialogue, interaction, and tone, Past Lives is a strikingly romantic movie about what composes our lives.

Director Chris Robinson’s go at Shooting Stars doesn’t reach the heights of its genre’s potential, but it’s not a completely blank slate either. It sits somewhere right in the middle of both worlds: You can feel the inspired approach to the material at a basic craft level, but it’s also never particularly surprising that it went straight to streaming on Peacock.

Never sugar-coated or saccharine, Youth (Spring) shows the full spectrum of our experiences.

Pulling off such a seemingly incongruous blend of sensationalism and sincere thoughtfulness is no easy task, but writer and director miraculously find a way to ease the tension between style and substance—and, what’s more, manage to deliver wry commentary on the way we consume scandals at the same time.

Repeat viewings of Across the Spider-Verse to bridge the gap until the final installment next year sounds like a great way to savor this film as it so richly deserves.

Even when you might want more from its plot, and even when it’s sticking to quiet character drama over all-out monster assaults, The Boogeyman thrives on the implied thing that’s lurking in every corner, which makes it a very effective, intimate creepshow.

Elemental may not rise to the heights that Up soared to, but the ingredients of Elemental combine in ways that are both satisfying and even moving.

There’s a reason that Satter knew Winner’s transcript would succeed as a play, but she brings very little that’s new and exciting as a film director of that same narrative.

A delightful, refreshing dose of hope. ... Gondry maintains his well-documented individual, idiosyncratic style (plenty of cute little animations abound), but The Book of Solutions marks a significant shift. This is the work of a man who has stared straight into his own dark abyss of personal demons, and came out the other side better for it.

Writers Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes adapt Kreischer’s unbelievable viral story about robbing a train with Russian mobsters into a retrospective on the comedian’s tumultuous history with excess—a tonal misfire of fantastical absurdity clashing against emotional confessions.

What Influencer brings to the party lands with a softer impact in the messages it preaches, but that doesn’t prevent a twistier predatory narrative from snagging our attention like a buzzworthy viral sensation.

Kandahar gets the straight face right, but seems woefully convinced that it’s a serious drama, right down to the wailing-woman soundtrack that so many Hollywood and Hollywood-adjacent movies about the Middle East bust out to show they’re down with the anguish.

Beyond the tepid cultural commentary, the film has few other redeeming qualities.

Asteroid City may be a minor work by this artist, but it’s still a magical one.