Is it a must-see? No—the middle hour is fun, in that patented easygoing "Ant-Man" way.

Most of all, Magic Mike's Last Dance is about fit, graceful bodies moving through space.

The problem is that the Mamet brand of tough-talking puzzle movie is harder to pull off than it looks, and writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka just don’t have the gift of dialogue needed to elevate this thriller beyond its foundation.

We know what the Hallmark Movie Channel version of this story would be. But Brie and her co-screenwriter, husband, and director Dave Franco like to subvert those conventions, as Brie did as co-writer for last year's "Spin Me Round."

Your Place or Mine begins in 2003, and it feels like the kind of superficially agreeable and instantly forgettable romantic comedy that came out around that time.

Huesera doesn’t necessarily re-invent either of those subgenres. But it does present them in a vessel that’s so artfully crafted, and filled with details that bring the characters and their relationships to such vivid life, that it accomplishes a lofty goal for genre cinema: Taking a familiar formula and turning it into a personal statement.

As it is, Seriously Red sneaks up on you.

The situations in this scrupulous, compassionate, and quietly captivating picture, written and directed by Maryam Touzani, are tense, to be sure. But the movie itself doesn’t surrender to the tension. It depicts unruly passions as they stir the lives of circumspect characters.

The film proves to be just another retread of “spooky” Catholic-themed horror tropes without adding any insight or originality to the subgenre.

Only the most committed genre fans and academic-minded masochists will want to hang around until the bitter, arthouse-meets-choose-your-own-adventure style ending.

This film takes no prisoners, offers no explanations, and forces you to go on its twisted journey that blends found footage structure with something that H.P. Lovecraft might have dreamed up. It’s a ride.

Attachment very much wants to set its horror within Jewish mythology and Ultra-Orthodox life, and yet this specific choice always creates an exposition overload, which has a more distancing than inclusive effect.

Waking Karma is the kind of small movie you root for even when it fails to live up to its potential. There's a lot that doesn't quite work, but you can tell by the strong performances and the production's overall sincerity that everyone involved was hoping to create something memorable; the missteps are mainly about what the film decides to emphasize.

One can sit back, relax, and enjoy 80 for Brady, understanding that nothing here makes sense in terms like “might happen” or even “should happen.” Just as all fairy tales should, this movie lives in the land of “wouldn’t it be wonderful.”

By trying to make a grand statement to a post-lockdown theatergoing audience about what they are willing to believe—but also about how far they are willing to go for others—Shyamalan trips over himself and neglects to give them much of a movie.

Centering the character’s experience is pivotal to making the movie so effective, but when it deviates from those visual guidelines, it feels like it loses a touch of its power. As a trained actor with a camera on him throughout the entirety of the film, Poikolainen shoulders the task with a stoic grace and a sardonic wit.

The climax of Godland feels conclusive in ways that the rest of Pálmason’s mystery play does not, making one wish that there was an extra hour or two between its beginning and the very end.

Watson's memoir and the 2010 documentary about her achievement, "210 Days," are altogether more thorough and nuanced looks at this story, though of course that's nearly always true of documentaries that tell the same story as works of fiction.

Baby Ruby operates at a high-pitched melodrama-horror level, and the constant frenzy becomes exhausting. The film's nerves become so frayed there's almost no feeling left in them; the terror is monotonous and repetitive.

If The Locksmith offers anything new, it’s in neutering the genre.

It could be because of deviations from the source, the bland visual style of the film that’s just unambitious enough to be annoying, or the unengaging story, but The Amazing Maurice is, well, less-than-amazing. Only a game voice cast keeps it from total disaster.

A Lot of Nothing takes a fraction of a stance on how Black people are socially caricatured and systemically discriminated against. So when the film reaches its big reveal and the discussion of it, it spins any assumption of intention into obscurity.

Full Time looks and sounds like a nail-biting thriller and tells a story that many viewers will be able to relate to on an intensely personal level.

Let It Be Morning is a quiet film that builds to a powerful ending.

The scenarios of Hansen-Løve’s films can feel rarified and unique at first glance, yet they are painfully relatable on some level. They may be devoid of melodramatic showdowns, but there’s a quiet ferocity to them in the way they so deftly address our daily pain, insecurity, and loneliness, still resonating with us long after the movie’s over.

As focused and controlled as every scene in "Close" is, it feels, in a way, calculated and almost cruel.

A modern attempt at something like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” from the creator of “Black-ish” and co-written by star Jonah Hill, Netflix’s “You People” is a stunning misfire, an assemblage of talent in search of an actual movie.

We're watching two strong-willed people overcome their differences and learn to be a team: it's "Die Hard" reimagined as couples' counseling.

Blood delivers plenty of the titular substance but not much else of note other than a couple of decent scenes here and there; a central performance from Michelle Monaghan is ultimately more interesting than the film surrounding it.

What drew this cast to this film? One that boils its characters down to cardboard copies of real people whose only aim in life is traditional heterosexual, Christian, nuclear family units without any defying characteristics beyond their roles within those units.

The Man in the Basement doesn’t endorse a single answer; it ends on a deliberately tentative note, leaving the viewer thoroughly unsettled.

Entries in this genre like “The Same Storm” and “Together” made us care about the characters who were isolated or stuck with each other because of COVID. “Life Upside Down” never does.

It’s a great compliment to say that Infinity Pool works completely divorced from the legacy of the man who made it. Brandon has become his own captivating filmmaker. He’s no clone.

Somehow, The Wandering Earth II never feels tonally unbalanced or narratively convoluted, partly because Gwo and his collaborators keep their movie’s plot focused on feats of action-adventure heroism.

In the end, Jung_E feels like a movie made by an undeniably talented director who just didn’t have quite enough ideas here even to fill a 99-minute runtime.

If the delightfully nutty “M3GAN” was a cautionary tale about the perils of relying too heavily on technology, “Missing” ends up being a celebration of its possibilities.

When You Finish Saving the World floats uncertainly on the edge of satire. This is a big problem. Satire can't be uncertain. Satire needs a sharp bite. When You Finish Saving the World is toothless by comparison.

Kendrick’s performance is one of the strongest aspects of “Alice, Darling.” Under Nighy’s direction, they create an emotional portrait of someone on the verge of being lost to a warped distortion of love but who realizes they were surrounded by the real thing the entire time.

In keeping with our current “poptimistic” age, “Kids Vs. Aliens” keeps the aggressive neon splatter, but loses the cynicism—a choice that, for all the F-bombs and fake blood, makes it a surprisingly pure film.

While the first hour of “New Gods: Yang Jian” is about as attractive as it is surreal, the back half only works if you care about the destinies of its undistinguished protagonists.

After Love is not an accurate description. Love does not end in this story any more than the anguish of loss. Instead, it is about characters who find that a broken heart is open to empathy and learn to recognize that what connects us is so much more than what divides us.

Did I like The Seven Faces of Jane? I love the idea of it, I love that it exists, and I'm not sure how much I can ultimately say for or against it, considering that everything good and bad is baked into the methods that the performers and filmmakers committed to.

This is a strange film all around, distractible and full of Olympic-level tonal gambits. Viewers’ mileage will vary. Wildly.

There's not much wrong with this film on paper—there's just something wrong with the execution.

Alice Diop understands how silence, when allowed to exist, vibrates with echoes, and it is these echoes that are trying to speak to us. They have a lot to say. "Saint Omer" shows us how to listen.

Plane rushes through its emotional and explosive beats so that it can get to the next crisis without having to fill out the previous one, and it wildly skims on the good stuff in the process.

While this remix of "House Party" may leave some nostalgic for the original, it smartly doesn't try to copy the first film. However, it does stay true to the first version's celebration of friendship.

Director and co-writer Sarah Adina Smith offers some inspired moments and laughs here and there, but too often, running bits simply don’t pay off.

It spends too much time in some of its beats—there’s a stronger, tighter version that’s more disquieting by not wearing out its welcome at 100 minutes—and a couple of loud jump scares are misplaced in a film that generally avoids that crutch, but this is a major debut from a filmmaker who is willing to tell horror stories in a way that's both different for the genre and yet also like something we’ve all experienced before.

It takes a moment for the action to start—about 38 minutes—but once it does, this otherwise generic thriller’s flimsy relevance and unusual pacing not only seem more forgivable but maybe even sneakily clever.

In his bleak film, Guðmundsson combines the kitchen sink drama of growing up in a cycle of violence and/or poverty and the magical realism of teenage fever dreams, with mixed results.

As aww-inspiring as the human and dog moments in the movie are, it is the human encounters along the search that are the heart of the film.

Ultimately, my problem with so many religious horror films like “The Offering” is that they’re insulated in a way that makes them more often boring than terrifying, willing to let a languid pace try to set the mood instead of actual plotting.

The Devil Conspiracy is nuttier than the proverbial fruitcake and twice as difficult to swallow, regardless of where you reside on the theological spectrum.

The sole redeeming quality in this 85-minute swill resides in the makeup and practical effects, which rely on viscous blood and gnarly props that make the kills hard to stomach.

Higuchi and Anno not only deliver the genre movie goods but also deftly preserve their title character’s sugary purity. Rather than gigantify what was always juvenile material, Shin Ultraman allows the iconic character to retain his original shape and proportions. You and your dad are gonna love the new Ultraman movie.

The plot does have a few weak points and dangling threads, and the PG-13 rating ensures that the violence is tamped down before it can reach its full bloody potential...But the tongue-in-cheek tone is so consistent that M3gan is a hoot anyway.

Amid tableaus of sundrenched landscapes, Simón’s instinct for eliciting naturalistic performances—displayed in her feature debut “Summer 1993"—marries a remarkably stealth narrative structure that lets us into the lives of these people, collectively and individually.

The Western may not be entirely dead yet, but The Old Way is not exactly doing it any favors.

Gottlieb (the director) uses a very light touch throughout. This is a family affair.

A Man Called Otto isn’t exactly as philosophical as “About Schmidt” or as socially conscious as “I, Daniel Blake,” two films that occasionally hit similar notes. But it’s nevertheless a wholesome crowd-pleaser for your next family gathering.

Bill Nighy is a fun, uninhibited actor, but there's an abashed, melancholy quality to him that hasn't been fully explored until Living, a drama about a senior citizen reckoning with his life.

Sarah Polley's trust in the material—and her actors—allows for the performances to flourish, and the performances drive the story along with the barrage of words.

This is a moving drama about people pushed together by fate who end up not merely helping each other survive but elevate through an increasingly harsh world.

The sumptuous settings, elegiac tone, and Krieps' layered performance bring us into the world of this woman caught between the expectations of her culture and her own desires.

It’s only after the supposedly central mystery is solved that The Pale Blue Eye fully commits to its actual business, serving up in full a tale of loss and wrong-headed resolution. Bale’s characterization, subtle and slightly enigmatic throughout, here blooms. And eventually sears.

It may not come together as smoothly as the best feel-good movies of its kind, but there's an unwieldy charm to Joyride that makes the trip memorable.

No Bears is a picture that’s in keeping with his recent work—circumstances deemed that it just had to be—but one that breaks away from it in ways that yield a work of, yes, astonishment.

The indelible, unmatched voice of Houston may live on, but I Wanna Dance with Somebody lacks the ingredients of what made Houston a force that permanently altered every person who truly heard her.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is as spry and light on its feet as its titular feline.

While the points where Wildcat goes beyond simply being a feel-good nature documentary and delves into Harry’s mental health struggles are honest, they raise more questions than they answer.

A great score, a talented ensemble, and expert cinematography—all are undeniable here. And yet there are narrative elements of Babylon that feel hollow from the very beginning and only get more so as Chazelle tries to inject some manipulative lessons into the final scenes.

It's a portrait of a hard-drinking, charismatic, obnoxious self-styled rebel who was his own worst enemy but whose brilliance and tenacity allowed him to thrive in an industry that wouldn't ordinarily have any use for someone like him.

What interactions are “real” and what is imagined or symbolic is left to us to sort through, or just to decide it does not matter. Each moment is presented to us with vibrance and wit.

Although this is all presented by Diễm with no judgment, it’s hard to watch such young girls be so blithe about a tradition that robs them of their autonomy.

If These Walls Could Sing never feels as comprehensive as it could be about the subject. It operates as an addendum to better Beatles documentaries like "Eight Days a Week," "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," and "The Beatles Anthology," and that lack of an identity prevents McCartney's film from being a well-earned tribute to one of the world's iconic studios.

Watching The Apology, one gets the sense that Locke and her team got to tell the exact story they wanted to and on their terms. Their drama has unusual integrity since it's (mostly) not about canned answers to complex questions.

The compact documentary is ultimately more an exercise for the filmmakers than it is a truly rewarding cinematic experience for the audience.

Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away.

The Whale is an abhorrent film, but it also features excellent performances.

Empire of Light never entirely coheres, but it's worth seeing for the power of Colman's lead performance and the expertly judged backup acting.

This is a nice film. A sweet film. A film you can watch with your mother-in-law.

Overlong at a mere 87 minutes, there's nothing timeless or elegant about this flop entirely composed of elements derived from much better films.

This is a movie that observes Sharpton; it does not try to explain him or measure his impact. Those who are not already aware of his history may find it superficial or confusing.

It’s a plodding, vague fantasy about the way things could be that gets interrupted by a rote chase/body count pic.

A parody only by legal definition, The Mean One has no teeth as a naughty comedy or gory horror.

Throughout To the End, there is a clear sense of urgency to the call for action.

Retrograde is about many things, but it's really about the faces. The cameras linger on the faces, allowing the expressions of suffering, tension, nerves, and desperation, to take root.

It may go against its ethos to deem del Toro's Pinocchio an impeccable masterpiece, even if that's an adequate description, but know that if the art of making movies resembles magic, this is one of its greatest incantations.

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power utilizes impactful interviews and captivating archival footage to demonstrate the county's culture and history as a representation of its importance in the Black Power movement.

What makes Chase Joynt’s first solo outing as a feature director, Framing Agnes, such essential viewing is the extent to which it sheds new light on the legacy of trans Americans from the past century and beyond, whose voices are only just beginning to emerge from the vault of obscurity.

Baumbach's adaptation of White Noise unpacks these complex themes with a playful spirit for about 90 minutes before the writer/director arguably loses his grip on the more serious material in the final act. Still, there's more than enough to like here when it comes to the unexpected blend of an author and filmmaker who one wouldn't necessarily consider matches.

Israelis call the events of 1948 The War for Independence, while Palestinians call it Nabka, or The Catastrophe. It's hard to imagine how the two could be reconciled, and "Tantura" doesn't try. It has its hands full just trying to establish what happened, and encouraging participants and beneficiaries into accepting what it meant.

The third film from writer/director Travis Stevens (“Jakob’s Wife,” “Girl on the Third Floor”) is forged in fire and blood, taking his eye for striking visuals and elevating it to psychedelic new heights.

The Eternal Daughter feels like a first draft, or a sketch to be filled in later. This is perhaps reflected in onscreen Julie's struggles to even write an outline. Hogg's outlines, though, are more interesting than other people's finished products. There's always so much to think about.

Indeed, the director of “99 Homes” and “The White Tiger” has proven a driving interest in telling stories that shine a light on injustice and cruelty. But here, the result suggests he’s dipping his toe into these enormous subjects rather than getting his arms around them in a smart and satisfying way.

It's a Russian nesting doll of a bio-doc, a piece about family as much as it is filmmaking because the two are inextricable for its subject.

A largely tedious cinematic lump of coal that unsuccessfully tries to stretch its one-joke premise out to 101 minutes in a tonally uneven attempt to position itself as a new alternative holiday classic.