Familiar, even universal issues of growing up, identity, and intimacy are presented with a lyrical, dreamlike tone.

The thing that makes the film stand out is the way it shows artists relating to each other and to their work. It's rare to see a movie about creative people that accurately captures the way they'll size each other up on first meeting and then, once they've determined that the other person is serious, proceed immediately to the sharing of influences and the granular discussion of theory and technique. [2021 Director's Cut]

As a team, Seligman and Sennott share a spot-on sense of comedic timing, knowing just when to throw in the next cutting remark, eye roll, or fake smile. They hit bullseye each and every time, all the way to the credits.

This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is a searing epitaph for Mary Twala, a veteran performer at the peak of her absorbing presence. And it is a radical international breakthrough for Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, a filmmaker who uses potential philosophical expressions to ask tough questions about the ravaged history of Africa.

The Unholy is not designed to be deep, but since glimmers of depth are present, the lack of follow-up makes this a disappointing watch.

While it hardly breaks new ground, The Man Who Sold His Skin still manages to be a breezy watch, with an assured filmmaker gently steering it through a rough-around-the-edges tale.

The director's gifted collaborators sometimes perk up this listless parable, but never enough to sell its second-hand fatalism.

Back and forth The Oak Room goes, without ever building the tension it ostensibly seeks. Instead, it meanders from tale to tale, and the writing isn’t sharp or specific enough to sustain this kind of complex framework.

There’s a largely automatic nature to this informative documentary; much of what unfolds here is depressingly prototypical.

The film initially pretends to have some sensitivity about mental illness, but blatantly trivializes it and uses it as a crutch upon which to hang the villain’s increasingly maniacal actions.

While I admit I would have preferred a documentary about the people who have passed this tradition down from generation to generation, director Ricky Staub’s fictional feature serves as a worthwhile introduction.

With visual precision and remarkable intimacy, Hannah Olson's documentary The Last Cruise recalls the harrowing 40-day quarantine aboard the Princess Diamond cruise ship at the outset of the pandemic.

It’s unfortunate that the finished tribute doesn’t quite come together, and the tension between needing a compelling narrative and paying respects to bands whose music changes our lives never gets resolved.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a crowd-pleasing, smash-'em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in "The Tree of Life" had been subcontracted to the makers of "Yellow Submarine."

Bad Trip knows how to stir things up, and its funniest scenes often involve real people getting in the mix, tested by the brilliant skills of André, Howery, and Haddish.

This isn't an unwatchable movie, just an underachieving and forgettable one, and somehow that's more irritating than a disastrous swing for the fences would've been.

So many documentaries cut away from performances, thinking we only want a glimpse of it to get the gist before shuttling on to the next thing. What a joy to be given the space to settle in and let Tina take you where she wants you to go.

Horror movies don’t have to make a lick of sense as long as they get under your skin, engage in some intriguing myth making, gross you out, or simply terrify you. The Toll tries to do several of these, failing so badly that you may be angry at yourself for watching it.

The whole experience feels like a generic inventory of recognizable tropes—the possessed child, the creepy old woman, the deeply-concerned priests, and the Ouija board are all here. Except, the cumulative fear bizarrely fizzles before it reaches something significant or emotionally meaningful.

It's less effective in the run-with-a-gun scenes, as is the acting and the writing, which all fall off sharply in the final third. The issues of individual, cultural, and national loyalty—and when and how to respond to aggressive actions by other nations—are relegated to the background of some weak chase scenes and plot twists.

The Vault is not, in other words, just derivative—it’s also flabby and bland.

After a year with too few action movies because of the shelving of the blockbuster, Nobody gives viewers an adrenalin rush that almost feels new again.

The jumbled narrative structure allows for a couple of a-ha revelations, but it mostly creates a distance for the viewer. And yet despite these flaws, the artistry on display in Violation is undeniable.

Rose Plays Julie is very controlled in its style: this control reaps huge rewards.

There’s a surreal, dreamlike quality throughout, with bursts of violence and bad behavior. But while Grabinski certainly deserves credit for his ambition, the juggling act he’s attempting gets away from him, and Happily ultimately ends up being more frustrating than dazzling.

When progress stops feeling like progress is what Da-Rin captures in The Fever, and fantastic lead actor Regis Myrupu is a conduit for a calamity that builds and builds.

And when the movie’s over, nothing is resolved that the filmmakers didn’t side-step or reduce to a few unconvincing symbols of hope for a more equitable future. You might like Enforcement if that’s a line you already want to buy; there’s otherwise not much here to change your mind.

It’s a dull, overly familiar affair that really only reminds one that Depp should have segued nicely into old man roles if his personal life and on-set behavior hadn’t derailed his trajectory.

Here, the effects are purposely on the cheap (they will make you giggle) and the acting is deliberately over the top. Once you accept these quirks, there's some blood-spattered pleasure to be had with Slaxx and its amusing twist on a survive-the-night slasher.

Though there’s nothing new or transformative here, The Courier stays afloat due to the acting by Buckley, Cumberbatch, and Ninidze.

The unique approach mostly works, although it does leave a few questions unanswered regarding a case that’s kind of still unfolding. Most of all, Smith succeeds by capturing how this isn’t a case about an individual or the many parents who worked with him to cheat the system, but how the system itself is deeply broken.

It's so bombastic that it makes "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice" seem modest.

Asili experiments with cinematic form as he considers “inheritance” as legacy, heritage, and tradition, resulting in an engrossing, challenging film that allures and confronts you in equal measure.

It is an entertaining, family-friendly romp with wish-fulfilling yeses, extended comic mayhem, and satisfying consequences.

Although Trust gets off to a shaky start, once the players are introduced and the flirty game’s afoot, it’s a mostly fun ride.

The pacing is sluggish, the script is crammed with both incomprehensible technical gobbledygook and lazy, sexist jokes, and the visual effects are laughably cheesy. My kid could make a more dazzling space movie on his iPad.

Unfortunately, many of the most compelling elements of Still Life in Lodz are bogged down by distracting filmmaking flourishes.

While Own the Room succeeds at offering a captivating look at its incredible subjects, it also avoids more complicated questions about how we can best support young people and help them achieve their dreams.

Burns doesn’t delve into Sarah’s emotional psyche as deeply as one craves throughout Come True. The somewhat maddening twist ending—more a copout than genuinely earned—excuses some of that misstep, but only artificially so.

[A] well-intentioned but only partly satisfying film.

How can a movie this visually glossy be so devastatingly uninteresting and dull?

Lo wants to make a point, obviously, but I came out of this picture with some questions. And I also thought of an observation made by the music critic Robert Christgau, a metaphorical point addressing a type of artistic preciousness: “If I found a cat trapped in a washing machine, I wouldn't set up a recording studio there—I'd just open the door.”

My Salinger Year sometimes drags and falters with questionable tonal shifts. But it’s never a complete waste of time to witness a young woman grow into her voice on her own terms, especially when her canvas is this cinematic.

Not all the pieces of Boogie fit neatly together, but it’s a film about a family that doesn’t fit inside the box of a standard inspirational immigrant story.

Boss Level compensates for its overstuffed scenario and relentless derivativeness—actually, it makes you stop caring about its relentless derivativeness—with concentrated fast pacing and breakneck action.

Thankfully, despite its creators’ general fussiness, The Truffle Hunters is good enough, if only because guys like Carlo and Angelo are more charming than they are eccentric.

Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? is a razor-sharp incrimination of failed foreign policies from around the world embedded in a deeply humanist and moving character study of the kind of person that these policies leave behind.

Coming 2 America is like attending your high school reunion: You’ll enjoy seeing the familiar faces of those with whom you once shared such fond experiences, but then you’ll realize that the nostalgia of that past is far more fulfilling than the harsher realities of the present.

For all that goes into making a movie—the prolific Dupieux wrote, directed, shot, and edited this one as with his previous films—the impulsive, scattered storytelling here almost feels like an unrewarding and contrarian statement to such hard labor.

The crime comedy Pixie dissolves in the mind as you're watching it. You've seen it before. And the "it" you've seen before is the most derivative version of "it."

Once you're immersed, it's a powerful experience that lingers in the mind long after the film's many disappointments have started to fade.

Stretched out to 90 minutes in Sponge on the Run, the pacing lags, the goofiness sags, and you discover over time that there’s not much holding these antics together.

Lucky indulges in all of the horror movie "tropes" but it does so with a purpose.

Moxie doesn't have the satirical bite of, say, Mean Girls, nor does it have a particularly punk rock energy, but Poehler does an admirable job keeping things moving.

Nearly every scene in Sophie Jones is either meditative or combative in some way, and Barr nails the flickering, shifting, visceral emotions of adolescence.

What’s most rewarding about curator Sam Abbas’ short film collection, Erēmīta (Anthologies), is in how it magnifies the ways in which all of us, regardless of where we live, have become intrinsically connected by the challenges of this unprecedented era.

The documentary's best material, other than the archival stuff, comes in how it flirts with an analysis of Wallace’s musical inspirations like his Jamaican background and what he took from a jazz musician who lived down the street. Sadly, there’s too little of that, and too many rhymes that we’ve heard before.

It's an ambitious family film that will work for all ages, and one that never talks down to its audience while presenting them with an entertaining, thought-provoking story. It also contains some of the most striking imagery Disney has ever produced, dropping its characters in a world that feels both classic and new at the same time.

I admire the intentions behind Cherry. I even admire the Russos' desire to "do one for themselves" after directing so many films in a corporate-driven context. But Cherry warrants a simpler down-and-dirty approach.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday is so misguided that it's hard to know where to start griping about it. It wallows in cruelty, misery, and degradation without providing insight into the historical personages who are so thoughtfully depicted by its cast.

My Zoe dares to lead with its feelings, and that fearlessness provides a striking spectacle itself.

What makes The Vigil so frustrating is that it feels like a product and not a reflection of its subject’s identity crisis.

In a lot of ways, Crisis is a classic example of a movie that wants to be a little bit of everything, only to add up to a much lesser version of something you keep waiting to see.

Even taken simply as a deliberately formless freak-out, the kind that used to turn up regularly back in the heyday of the midnight movie circuit, Tyger Tyger proves to be little more than a tedious bore.

A few sequences of classic T&J comedy aren’t nearly enough to make up for the dull plotting and flat characters in this soulless product, one that will fail equally for adults who grew up on Tom and Jerry, and their kids who have never heard of these characters.

We’re seeing a then-17-year-old Eilish change her style, come into her own and demand control of her image, right down to directing her own music videos. We’re watching the birth of a star, an exhilarating and sometimes excruciating experience.

It’s some of the absolute best work of Hopkins’ lengthy and storied career.

To see him wrestle with his own past, the pressure of a whole country’s dreams, and the relief of making them come true, is occasionally riveting, but it’s also what makes Pelé all the more a missed opportunity for a sharper portrait.

The detached, bemused tone that sustains the film for so long eventually gives way to actual feelings—to its detriment—as this dark comedy steadily turns just plain dark.

An engrossing and frequently extraordinary feature.

Coupled with the talents of cinematographer Ludovica Isidori and music by Rob Rusli, Ford’s Test Pattern is an engrossing human drama, one that examines the intersections and inequalities between race, gender, and healthcare in a poignant and powerful way.

Edward Hall’s new adaptation of Noël Coward’s play Blithe Spirit is so aggressively un-funny it might make audiences unfamiliar with the script's successful track record wonder why it was ever a success in the first place.

A promising but self-thwarting movie like this is more depressing than an outright bad or dumb film.

Though curiously charming, Jumbo behaves like love at first sight that doesn’t think about the consequences of the ardent now or the larger, long-term picture.

Writer/director Tiller Russell doesn't directly ask us to take a side in Silk Road, a dramatization of the creation and downfall of the eponymous darknet website. But the implications of which side the filmmaker wants us to lean toward are strong—and feel a bit disingenuous.

Body Brokers was clearly made with good intentions, but while it might still fill you with anger towards the predatory aspects of the rehabilitation industry, you'll also be upset that the script is not nearly as great as it could have been.

Neither as sweet or profound as the fanciful American indies like Ghost World that clearly inspired it, nor all that insightful in its interpretation of a single mother’s universal struggles, Bagnold Summer is sadly a forgettable film, often too ironically close to being the kind of bore its central character Daniel’s accidental summer in the English suburbs threatens to be.

Hovannisian's documentary would be much more convincing if he picked a single aspect of Tankian’s activism—or composing, or personality—and considered it in greater detail.

The superhero power of this movie comes from its endearingly offbeat characters, goofy humor, and gentle insights about finding optimism even when things go wrong.

Shook, about an influencer being tormented by a mysterious caller, takes the bait on making a movie about such social media vanity, but its touch-and-go terror hardly offers commentary or cleverness.

The filmmaker does a phenomenal job of setting up this world in a natural-seeming way, smuggling mountains of pertinent fact into conversations that pretend to be banal.

Whatever it is going for, it does not get there. Poorly written, directed, performed, and edited, "Bad Cupid" is a Bad Movie.

Yan’s debut as a writer/director is a mostly sturdily constructed, and deftly edited, series of “meanwhiles,” a sprawling narrative of loosely and closely connected people whose lives intertwine in a variety of ways.

Willy’s Wonderland feels like a movie conceived during a drinking game. A few people had a few too many after a few rough days and dared each other to come up with the most ridiculous concept they could get produced.

You long for something evocative and warm throughout The World to Come, only to leave it with a minor shiver.

To the credit of The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, the film knows its pop-culture touchstones (Groundhog Day and Time Bandits) and acknowledges the influence those Harold Ramis and Terry Gilliam classics have on its YA story. That doesn’t make the film particularly unique, but at least it makes The Map of Tiny Perfect Things honest.

The playful “will they or won’t they” dynamic has kept the series moving since Lara Jean first learned that Peter received her love letter. Even if it seems like it's wearing a bit thin by the events in Always and Forever, the affectionate energy between stars Condor and Centineo keeps the sparks flying.

The costume design from Jane Petrie creates a timeless elegance. And Pfeiffer’s performance only becomes richer as her character reveals the kindness that’s been buried within her cool, stylish persona all this time.

The Mauritanian fails to humanize the story it’s telling, never coming off as something more challenging or interesting than a superficial, manipulative accounting of true events.

Comedy being what it is, your mileage may vary, but for me the pure candy-colored exuberant silliness of Barb and Star didn't just make me laugh. It provided solace, too.

There's nothing fun about panning a feature by a first-time director, especially when it seems to come from a place of good intentions, but Music, a musical fantasy drama about an autistic teen, is bad. Mystifyingly bad. Verging on "What were they thinking?" bad.

Written and directed by Robin Lutz, this is a rare feature that takes the trouble not just to understand its subject and communicate his significance, but find ways to actually show us, visually, how his style evolved, and the principles behind that evolution.

The first 25 minutes of Malcolm & Marie are a strong, standalone short film. They’re mostly sharply written and Zendaya and Washington add what feels like history between the lines. I was totally with it. But I'm not convinced we learn anything more in the following 80 minutes that we didn't in the first 25.

This is not the kind of film you put on during a holiday when you want something that the extended family can relax and enjoy. This is bitter, sharp stuff, verging on the Paul Schrader film Affliction but without the murder plot.

Little Fish would have left a lingering, wistful feeling under ordinary circumstances. Debuting during a pandemic, however, adds a layer of poignancy to this story of a worldwide virus that causes memory loss, creating loneliness and isolation for both its victims and their loved ones.

The beats play in a suspense thriller’s register, creating a heightened tension that is often unnerving. We are living the story through the eyes of a lover desperate to reconnect with her beloved, and her feelings of desperation, concern and fear bleed directly into the frame.

Bliss is far more kooky and tedious than it is good, and it's so confusing that even the movie's sense of humor is a question mark.

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.