The Blackening is an unapologetically Black comedy through and through. It maintains its wit and bite to the very end, boastfully serving audiences a hilarious film we didn’t know we needed.

Deadstream ultimately treats Shawn’s efforts to recapture internet celebrity status as the setup to one long barrage of goofy, gross-out punchlines, rather than the stuff of any insightful character study.

Affleck's acting style has always been understated to the point of barely existing. It's why he was riveting in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” in particular. Affleck drifts, he floats through dialogue, he doesn't have words at his easy disposal. This works well for him here.

This is an uncommonly smart, well-made and ultimately touching meditation on grief, revenge and the ordinary perils of adolescence that should resonate strongly with adults and thoughtful teenagers alike.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle is a flashy, frenetic, and thoroughly entertaining action anime that delivers on both a visual and emotional level.

You’ve seen this movie before. You’ve seen it in the past month, actually: It was called “The Hollars,” directed by and starring John Krasinski. But while that film hit every clichéd note you’d expect, despite its good intentions and great ensemble cast, Other People breathes new life into the formulaic, dark comedy about death.

The film is an onslaught, sometimes silly, sometimes profound, but always riveting and emotional, and dazzlingly sure of itself.

Ned Rifle, the final chapter in a strange trilogy with “Henry Fool” and “Fay Grim”, is a movie about damaged people coming to terms with their damage by turning to others. And it’s Hal Hartley’s best movie in years.

It shines through just enough to warrant a look but not quite enough to elevate this into the memorable experience it could have been.

A work of exceptional, undeniable craft, but it’s also a movie that’s meant to stick to you a little bit.

While “Night Call” delivers in the thriller department of the narrative, it stumbles when trying to tackle the politics of the day.

It is true that no movie can tell the full story of a man’s life. But movies like this one can tell us something important about our own.

Meandering around complex spiritual inklings more than it makes a coherent statement out of them, "The Righteous" manages to impress with its curious demeanor even when its overwrought ideas don’t add up to an articulate whole in the aftermath.

If you long for the gritty charms of mid-‘90s indie cinema in general and “Trainspotting” specifically, T2 Trainspotting gives you exactly that. And by “exactly,” we really do mean “exactly.”

This is the End finds a balanced tone most horror comedies fail to deliver. Grossout humor melds easily with grossout horror, sometimes at the same moment.

My Old School straddles that middle-ground as well, speculating as to the inner workings of a troubled mind but more often settling for the familiar, picaresque pleasures of a great yarn colorfully retold.

The movie is so much more nuanced and bold than the first wave of outrage charged. With Cuties, Doucouré announces herself as a director with a keen visual style who’s unafraid to explore these cultural and social tensions.

The China Hustle is not interested in offering a crumb of hope, thereby enabling the frustration it will inevitably arouse in viewers to dissolve into apathy once the credits roll.

Whatever its shortcomings, “Magician” accomplishes quite a bit as a corrective, and it also gives one an hour and a half in the company of Orson Welles. That in and of itself is worth at least a three-star rating.

Green and McBride are playing with some interesting themes and there’s a female empowerment story of trauma here that’s interesting (but underdeveloped), but do you know the biggest sin of the new “Halloween”? It’s just not scary. And that’s one thing you could never say about the original.

A passionate documentary with a lot of valuable information to impart, and a laudable humanist agenda to push. Unfortunately, it’s also not a particularly good movie. In fact, at certain points it can be an actively annoying one.

Parched is a filmmaker’s attempt to understand how and why these women continue to live.

If you’re hoping to see a production just like the one that would have been done in 1596, this ain’t it. But Mott’s version is a hell of a good time in its own right.

Unfortunately, The Stanford Prison Experiment is a dramatization, and no matter how much it may adhere to the well-documented specifics of Zimbardo’s work, it is a massive failure.

Elegant, cold-to-the-touch blend of drama and gothic horror.

The Armstrong story is fascinating. That someone could get away with such a huge lie in plain sight is terrifying.

In the end, it feels like Morano didn’t trust her actors quite enough to be the conduits of emotion, falling back on too many filmmaking and screenwriting tropes that hamper the realism of their work.

If they gave Oscars for bringing underwritten characters to life, Hathaway and Galitzine would be contenders.

It’s a full cast of rising young stars, like Stranger Things before it, and Fear Street gives that palpable sense of having fun while hanging out with them, but worrying that one of them might abruptly die.

More than just your standard horror/comedy, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is a tonal balancing act, a movie that doesn’t go for laughs or horror as much as weave various tones and styles through its excellent script. I thought Cummings was a talent to watch after “Thunder Road,” and now I’m sure of it.

However chronologically jumbled, Victim/Suspect prevails with its many episodes of de Leon’s incisive reporting and dedication, and the insight we get from legal and policing experts about how this cycle continues.

Despite an overall unsatisfying resolution to these inquiries, the ideas that the film prompts, coupled with Foster’s nuanced performance, make for a compelling enough character study.

The reason I’m rating this movie higher than I would otherwise, is Christopher Walken. His commitment to making Caleb as thoroughly unlikable as humanly possible yields a character who’s kind of terrifyingly off-putting even when his words and actions are ineffectual. A piece of acting alchemy of which only few are capable. I can’t imagine how powerful it might have been in a better movie.

While Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven throbbed with purposeful vitality, pictures such as Robin Hood and 1492: Conquest of Paradise seemed to lack much of a reason for being. Scott’s The Last Duel may not be perfect but it never exhibits such inertia.

Wholly engaging from its first frame to its last, Rosenwald stands as an exemplary testament to the change that can occur when wealth, power and influence are utilized for the good of humanity.

Invention is a unique collaboration between director Stephens and actress Hernandez that melds fact, fiction, and commentary all in one tribute to an estranged family member. As the movie progresses, there are moments where reality and fiction blur together.

Slash/Back gains its greater power with its entertaining narrative of these Inuit heroes warding off invaders, trying to save their home while earning a deeper pride in that very place and its people. It’s sincerely sweet and entertaining, and its impact is felt even more as the black alien blood starts to fly.

Were it not for Byrne’s endearingly optimistic performance, most of the charm of Juliet, Naked would be swept away.

For a story of a guy who’s willing to get messy for the first time in years, it’s an overly clean piece of screenwriting, one that too often lets its A-list star play ideas instead of a character. But there’s enough to like here to forgive a film whose ambition exceeds its reach, both in some of those ideas and a flawless supporting cast, especially another fantastic turn from Adam Sandler.

Psycho Goreman isn’t clever or lively enough to be more than fitfully fun, especially given how much time is spent mocking generic, but painstakingly recreated plot contrivances.

The movie is pedantic, humorless, dry — all of the things that, as it happens, “The Searchers” is not.

Byun ultimately pulls too many punches, but Kill Boksoon remains impressive, if only for its unexpected sensitivity and considerable emotional range.

Writer/directors Hannah Marks and Joey Power have made an intimate little drama that feels fresh because the diagnosis turns the usual love story upside down.

Allow the tongue-in-cheek “Fresh” to satisfy your appetite for a generous helping of heartening sisterhood and eradicate your cravings for a juicy burger, possibly forever.

At only 24, Joris-Peyrafitte shows confidence and talent beyond his years, with an artful eye for imagery and a truthful ear for dialogue.

The movie also falls back on a lot of boogity-boogity docu-clichés. Skittery editing, ironic music cues, that sort of thing.

While it doesn’t measure up to some of the director’s greatest such as “In Darkness” and “Washington Square,” Spoor makes an unmistakable political statement nonetheless, with Holland’s lens capturing the heart and soul of the animals some of the film’s despicable characters cruelly disregard.

Annette is an exhilarating and exuberant experience.

Clarke, who has skillfully brought other complex and compromised males to life in “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Mudbound,” is wholly convincing both physically and vocally as the surviving Kennedy brother. One wishes that the movie itself allowed him more performing room than it does.

Casta and Garrel generate wary warmth as a couple rediscovering each other, while Depp and Engel provide the comedic ballast.

This is a film fueled by writing and performance. Writer Micah Bloomberg’s script ingeniously incorporates the movie’s themes into its structure, and Qualley and Abbott—but especially Qualley—playfully keep the audience guessing throughout.

The Homestretch invites you to empathize with its subjects, to worry with them, to laugh with them, to worry about them. It’s engaging and compelling viewing.

The film is, though, a fascinating account of a man who plays a role in order to hide the reality of his life.

The Christmas-themed home-invasion movie Better Watch Out starts out as one kind of unpleasant, then switches gears to a higher level of unearned nastiness.

This is an ambitious and enlightening documentary, filled with wisdom and asking great questions, some of which may never have a satisfying answer.

The problem with this frustrating, formless movie is that Davidson’s leading man simply isn’t that interesting, and the film that should chart his trajectory ends up stolen by the people around him. Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Pamela Adlon, Bel Powley, Steve Buscemi — I wanted to follow each of them to their own movies and leave this disappointing one behind.

The result is a film that feels deeply personal, and not always in a good way. It’s a film that can’t help but feel a little like an invasion of privacy.

Drop Dead City marshals a tremendous amount of information and footage, moving at a swift clip with the help of well-chosen interview snippets and deftly cut montages.

A meeting of “Leave No Trace” and “Hell or High Water,” “Sovereign” is a thought provoking political work whose sympathetic eye is given focus by its potent cast.

Shortcomings is a wickedly funny, absorbing character study and solo feature directorial debut by actor Randall Park (“Fresh off the Boat”). In the hands of Park, Adrian Tomine's graphic novel (adapted here by Tomine) finds cutting new dimensions in the miserabilism of an unabashed assh*le.

It inadvertently puts Hawke in the position of having to carry a film that's more of a series of half-formed notions, some intriguing, others ill-advised, and a few verging perilously close to cute.

The Great Hack will be catnip for data wonks and mathematicians, but I sense its desired purpose is to be a cautionary tale for the general viewer. I think it’s a tad too long and a bit too wishy-washy when it should be angrier, but I was fascinated by it for a very specific personal reason.

While Stuber’s film acknowledges the soul-sucking nature of these colorless environs — at times, the enormous yet empty aisles resemble a ripe setting of an after-hours zombie apocalypse — the filmmaker loves his characters so much that he can’t help but prioritize their humanity that rises above the surface of it all.

Hinging on the nitpicking anxieties of the true crime genre, “Strange Harvest” maintains an air of abject horror, even if its penchant for ease nudges focus out of the way.

You feel you are running alongside the characters, trying to catch up with them on their journeys forward.

Haupt’s film moves along agreeably enough for a while, and the intercutting between the film’s real-life subjects, now at an advanced age, and their dramatized adventures almost 60 years ago, convincingly creates a rooting interest.

Strains to be a psychological thriller but its length (102 minutes) dissipates the tension that should be taut and compressed.

Southwest of Salem has an investigative questioning bent, but it is always clear in its attitudes about the four co-defendants. It is a powerful act of advocacy. It's hard to look at these events in any light other than that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place.

Unfortunately, Lucy Walker's Buena Vista Social Club: Adios plays more like a well-intentioned but unsatisfying addendum to Wenders' movie and Cooder's recording.

While A Master Builder never really catches fire as a film, it is still more or less worth watching.

The Green Prince gets its power from the back-and-forth of listening to each side tell its story, and from the moment the two sides converge in a final, very different collaboration in the United States.

The result is a sprawling urban drama with eruptions of violence.

It’s been a long time since there’s been a rom-com with two stars as straight-up likable and easy to root for as Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron are here.

The result is a movie that ambles and takes its time, never revealing where it's going.

Freaky is a fun, frisky, and nostalgic ride that delivers laughs, various inventively bloody kills, and on occasion, even some 21st-century-appropriate observations on gender norms and sexuality. Just don’t expect to be surprised a great deal by it.

Parts of it aren’t perfect, but that’s also kind of its charm in that it feels like a family film made by flesh-and-blood people in an era when computers are doing so much of the work. Even when “The Legend of Ochi” stumbles, it does so in a way that’s almost sweet.

Like Lee Daniels' hit TV drama “Empire,” Furious 7 is stuffed with situations that require go-for-broke absurdity, but even Daniels and his nighttime soap predecessor Aaron Spelling would pause before attempting the level of “get the f—k outta here!” style shenanigans director James Wan and writer Chris Morgan employ.

One of the film’s advantages over the book is that it brings in the testimonies of many other people — from friends and fellow ex-hustlers to Hollywood historians and insiders — all of whom support Scotty’s veracity while adding additional perspectives of their own.

The failure of The Wanting Mare is in how superficial its world building is, and how unexplored its greatest questions remain. Technically, the film’s use of visual effects is unquestionably impressive, but all that CGI is in service of a narrative so underdeveloped that its 88-minute run-time sometimes feels like an eternity.

An irresistibly gory science-fiction melodrama, is B-movie schlock done right.

Archive is a somewhat unwieldy sci-fi thriller to get into. The plot twists are many, and so are the cliches.

Making his directorial debut, Hsu clearly has an eye for striking imagery, and Detention is filled with moments of shuddering, abstract beauty. But his ghost story never quite materializes from its uncanny ether.

The quiet character-based scenes are often mesmerizing, as are the dreamy sequences where time seems to stand still. When the plot makes its demands, the spell is broken.

What elevates it and makes it special is the attention it pays to local geography and atmosphere, the mundane aspects of working-class Northeastern U.S. life, and the culturally super-specific types of people you'll find in that environment

Ultimately, “The Surfer” proves to be not much more than an audience endurance test that offers up plenty of upsetting imagery and moments of emotional torment but never quite manages to make them pay off.

The result is an occasionally strange, occasionally brutal and occasionally lovely work that goes up on the shelf with "The Ocean of Helena Lee" and "Girlhood" as one of the more impressive coming-of-age tales of recent times.

Ma is more about its visuals than anything else.

While it has a personal touch of a love letter, this documentary is nonetheless the work of compassionate filmmakers who know any adventure when they see one.

“Vol. 2” avoids many of the flaws of the first movie, and does several things notably better. It’s fun, clever and a great kick-off to the summer movie season.

While the results inevitably pale in comparison to "The French Connection" — which could be said about virtually every other film currently in release — they do make for an above-average work that offers viewers a new perspective on a familiar story.

This is a musical movie, not just because it features musical numbers. It weaves its spell not merely by what it does, but how it moves, and what it chooses to say or not say, and when it decides to proceed to the next scene.

For Philippe Garrel, the film is a family affair in more than one sense. As it happens, son Louis is playing a character based on his own grandfather, who left Philippe’s mom for another woman. Perhaps making Jealousy thus comprised a bit of group therapy for the Garrels, and no doubt it would have cheaper than psychoanalysis for all concerned.

The Paper Tigers is still very much a martial arts movie that ends with a late-night rooftop fight, and then a celebratory dim sum meal. But if you already like this sort of lightweight crowdpleaser, you’re bound to find something worthwhile here.

As movies about misanthropic outsider artists with medical issues go, “Don’t Worry” doesn’t come close to the superb “American Splendor” with Paul Giamatti as the irascible Harvey Pekar.

Yen Tan’s “All That We Love” is a quiet drama that’s surprisingly moving yet gentle, giving a well-known comedian a complex role to prove herself. And in this case, Margaret Cho defies expectations, bucking the caustic and bombastic persona we’ve grown used to seeing her bring to the screen for an on-screen performance that’s almost soft-spoken, a woman who genuinely feels lost among life’s many changes.

My one real gripe with Stewart’s script is that it doesn’t make clear that Bahari (according to his own account), though admitting to “media espionage,” did not name names, i.e. implicate reformist leaders, fellow journalists or others, as his captors wanted him to.

By taking itself so seriously, “Final Reckoning” loses the cheeky ingredient in the recipe. It’s less fun, and that’s truly disappointing for a series that has given us some of the most exhilarating setpieces in action history.

The film's poetry is like the close-up of the clenched fist that Rowland uses to introduce us to his character study — there’s a thoughtfulness behind the tight fingers, maybe even a broken soul, but its expression is that of a blunt object.