While Puzzle adheres to a bit of a formula in depicting her character’s path of self-discovery, it’s filled with vivid details and lovely grace notes along the way.

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.

The film as a whole just never quite overcomes the inherent familiarity of its premise to become its own unique thing. Those looking for a story equal to Cranston’s contributions to it are liable to come away from it feeling slightly disappointed.

The overwhelming positivity in this footage is illuminating and encouraging, yet also more than a touch puzzling, raising questions of precisely where this intolerance hibernates when cameras aren’t around to support such devastating legislation.

In spite of its icy backdrop, the part home-invasion chiller, part murder-mystery Till Death could prove to be the actual summer movie you’ve been craving for a while: undemanding, a little silly, but a thoroughly engrossing and handsomely paced edge-of-your seat experience all the same.

Make no mistake: the planes are the stars of this production, and as hard as the filmmakers try to reassure us that there are human stories going on as well, the precision flying and all the training and practice that allow it to exist are what everyone paid to see, and the movie never forgets it.

Unfortunately, Mary Poppins Returns falls quite short of being practically perfect in every way. The cast puts on a good show, but very little can be done to salvage the forgettable numbers by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and dance routines that already look dated.

It’s all inspiring stuff, to be sure—and often so dramatic that it’s hard to imagine it really could have happened, even though it did.

Dog Man, based on Dav Pilkey’s popular series of graphic novels for kids, is sublimely silly, a mixture of comedy, action, and heart, all done with such high spirits it seems effortless.

The main appeal here is the chance to spend time in the company of superb actors who all wear their characters as comfortably as an old silk robe.

It tells a not-especially-interesting story about a not-especially-interesting couple from two different worlds that goes on and on before reaching its not-especially-interesting conclusion.

It is incredibly difficult to love an addict. Not only does their addiction continuously define the dynamic of your relationship, but they are like a drowning man, able to take you down with them as they flail their arms and fight for air. Rarely has a film captured this better than Marja-Lewis Ryan’s 6 Balloons.

The Surrender accomplishes a lot with a sketch-sized story and matching compositional agility and precision. It’s short (less than 90 minutes!) and sweet and the best kind of upsetting.

What begins in lively and vibrant fashion as the title would suggest gets bogged down in a literal and figurative swamp in Vivo.

Yoshiura’s film resonates with the fantastic visions that we’ve come to hope for in the best Japanese animation. When the flat character design, two-dimensional villains, and unengaging narrative counter-act that, it falls flat. Like its two lead characters, it is of two worlds.

The movie’s cast members all seem to understand their assignments, which makes even the sketchiest material seem more robust. There’s also more technical polish, as well as a general knack for comic timing, than you might expect from a remake of “The Toxic Avenger.”

The documentary is pushed mostly by a maudlin reverence from director Gianfranco Rosi, whose collaging approach does not produce the meditative experience it desires.

If there’s a note of reflexive nostalgia in the proceedings, that inevitably has to do not just with the man at the film’s center but with the era that produced him, a time when magazine and print journalism could take writers and make instant celebrities and hugely influential cultural figures out of them. That day is long gone, but Radical Wolfe makes a strong case that it’s well worth remembering.

There’s a considerable amount of catharsis in They Call Us Monsters, but it is bittersweet at best.

Unlike Hannah, this movie has a great relationship with its appendage—it knows when to use it for gross-out body horror humor or a bit of drama that cuts to the core.

Scafidi’s movie appropriately reflects its director’s neurotic need to show all the different ways you can think about Argento and his art.

A low-key and intelligent character study, Miss Stevens doesn’t escape from its indie-film commonplaces often enough to become really distinctive, but it has enough conscientiousness about its people that it doesn’t let the commonplaces fester into movie-sinking clichés.

This movie is a classic of silliness—no ifs, ands, or butts.

A strong, creative addition to the crowded coming-of-age genre.

Rogue One is a letdown in other areas, and there are creative decisions so ill-conceived they take you out of the story. But somehow these aren't enough to sink the movie, which manages to succeed as both super-nerdy fan service and the first entry since the 1977 original that will satisfy people who have never seen a "Star Wars" film.

Summer of 85 plays like a bad parody of movies like Love Story and Summer of ’42, stories where some undeserving male learns a valuable lesson from a love affair and death.

It would be reductive to call it a “girlboss” story, but it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to, either.

For a movie about two people who loved each other so deeply, they risked losing everything to be together—their families, homes, even their countries — A United Kingdom plays it frustratingly safe.

I cannot lie, though. As cranky as much of the movie made me, Pastoll, Blaney, and especially Bolger all contrive to deliver as satisfying a climax and dénouement to this saga as one could hope for. So there is that.

Goofy, over-earnest, and just good enough where it counts, Kalki 2898 AD outdistances its competition simply by digging deeper than expected into its patchy lore’s rich melodramatic turf.

Co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917”), Wright’s Last Night in Soho is funny and chaotic, slick and stylish, and falls apart in its confounding second half.

The scenes of wretched debauchery pile up, and in a film only 88 minutes long it's a tough slog. It's difficult to perceive what story is actually being told. There's a lot to look at, colors, light, drugs and nudity, and much of it looks really good. But there's nothing else to latch onto.

Tigertail floats back and forth between the present and the past, an effective device that creates comparisons, often painful, between Pin-Jiu's hopes as a young man and the disappointments and hardships of the years following.

This is an impressive piece of work that deploys low-budget filmmaking techniques with cleverness.

For this team and their coach, the long game is about whatever it takes to play and get on track to a championship, even if that means smiling at insults and swallowing their pride when the competition cheats. Ultimately, though, it's not about golf but about dedication, resilience, and the joy of finding you can do better than your dreams.

Paddington in Peru is pleasurable mainly for its just-hanging-out-with-friends vibe, which it wears with quiet grace.

One thing’s for sure: In Staying Vertical, every character has sex on the brain, all the time.

Stevens slowly and subtly unpacks that heady, provocative conceit with care and in a way that makes his directorial debut feel like the arrival of a major new talent.

I’ve seen Ismael’s Ghosts twice, and both times I got the feeling that I was missing something. The film feels very personal, as if writer/director Arnaud Desplechin were sorting out his thoughts, processes and demons onscreen.

The movie adaptation is typically described in articles and on streaming platforms as an "erotic thriller" or simply "a thriller." But as is so often the case with Denis' films, that's a misleading way to characterize, or even think about, what's actually onscreen, which is more of a vibe than a story, and all the more fascinating because of that choice.

This is one overstuffed horror movie recipe, with a dash of “The Exorcist” and a spritz of “Ghost” among its tasty ingredients.

Daniels delights in his actors, all of whom accept the challenge of bringing something true and vibrant to their various sketchily written characters with the enthusiasm of celebrity competition-show contestants.

The End We Start From is down-to-earth, beautifully conceived and thoughtful, a shrewd piece of filmmaking in support of the story’s thematic preoccupations, particularly motherhood.

While The Boy Behind the Door runs out of steam a bit in the third act, it’s mostly a tight, well-paced thriller with terrific central performances from a couple of young actors with bright futures ahead of them—once they get out of here, that is.

With a tender spirit, gorgeous Tulum locations, and a poetic, dialogue-driven calmness, Pritzker’s “Ex-Husbands” is a surprising delight, astute and humorous about humans that both lived a long life and are just starting out their adventure. It’s a movie that looks back and moves forward, with grace and wisdom.

Garcia and Estefan and all of our feelings about weddings bring so much warmth and good humor to the movie that it calls for a "yes" on the RSVP.

Based on the book by Suzanne Allain, who also wrote the script, Mr. Malcolm’s List feels as choreographed as a dance, and that becomes a large part of its welcoming ease across two hours.

It is a good thing these actors are charming enough that they aren’t too hampered by a long string of fish-out-of-water gags.

The most important thing Polina does—and it is testament, again, to the involvement of Preljocaj, a man who has devoted his life to dance—is that it shows that the everyday life of an artist is not made up of catharsis and accomplishment, triumphs and breakthroughs. Those moments only come after years of hard work, of failing and trying again.

Rhys Darby is perfectly cast as the wholesome, dopey time traveler in Relax, I’m From the Future, a sci-fi comedy with a modest sense of humor but tangled message to share with humankind.

Audiences are likely to see this film as more resigned to the inevitability of permanent conflict than providing any insight in how to move away from it.

It is a remarkably likable comedy about two good guys still trying to find their place in the world that’s anchored by genuinely sweet beliefs about the importance of friendship, honesty, and, most of all, music. Be excellent to each other, dudes. It still matters.

A visually impressive mix of hand-drawn and CGI animation with basic action-adventure elements that are always viscerally satisfying thanks to Hosoda's apparent warts-and-all love for humanity.

American Made may be superficially a condemnation of the hypocritical American impulse to take drug suppliers' money with one hand and chastise users with the other. But it's mostly a sensational, sub-"Wolf of Wall Street"-style true crime story that attempts to seduce you, then abandon you.

This is the farthest thing in the cinematic firmament from a world-changer you can imagine, but as an evening’s entertainment, it’ll more than do.

Hearts Beat Loud could use more urgency in the telling, more sense of what is at stake for the characters.

It becomes something heartfelt yet funny—a truly hard balance to strike—but Drunk Bus pulls through for our enjoyment.

It is somewhat refreshing to witness a May-December romance from an older female perspective and both leads pour their hearts into their roles.

Though some elements read forcedly wedged in for thematic potency, “Plainclothes” feels seductively alive when Lucas and Andrew are alone together—either under the warm lights of the movie theater, where their shadows betray them, or as their hands touch the other’s body inside a lonely greenhouse.

It’s that graceful humanity that keeps Last Flag Flying from descending into melodrama. It dips a few too many times to stand with the filmmaker’s best work, and a few asides into “wacky old person behavior” are regrettable, but this is another solid dramedy from one of our best working filmmakers.

As loud and in-your-face as these developments are presented, they're amount to a shabby collection of Blumhouse-lite scenes that would be a parody if it weren’t so dull.

If the director’s spell has taken hold as presumably intended, by the time the most outlandish touches appear, one has already surrendered to its visceral, chaotic allure.

Crater might be too dark on a thematic level for some tweens, but the light it brings into the genre makes Alvarez’s film a soul-stirring escapade, one that introduces young audiences to ways to reform the fractured world they call home.

Rounding doesn’t quite make its own case, in terms of the symbolism it throws into the mix, but as a portrayal of a man falling apart from overwhelming stress it works quite well.

The Conjuring 2 doesn’t live up to the films that inspired it (or the original) not because of the filmmaking laziness we so often see in horror (especially sequels), but almost because Wan and company are having too much fun to streamline their film.

If it were possible to splice the DNA of William Faulkner and John Cassavetes, the resulting progeny might produce a film like Roberto Minervini’s The Other Side, an immersive, almost harrowingly naturalistic plunge into the lives of marginal Louisianans obsessed with guns, drugs and belligerent resentments.

Indeed, compared to many Sokurov films, this one has an enlivening paradoxicality: it's morbid but upbeat, grim yet rapturous.

While this is one of the better “V/H/S” anthologies of late, I can’t but wonder if they shouldn’t take two years to make the next one.

A jumbled, fitfully amusing, occasionally fascinating effort, but one that shows promise even when it's stumbling over its ambition and falling prey to some of the same stereotypes about "red" and "blue" (or reactionary and progressive) America that it keeps intimating that Americans need to get beyond.

It’s not an unenjoyable ride, but there’s a lingering sense that it could have been made a bit more fun and campy along the way.

Toni Collette radiates smarts, humor and a world-weary cool in Lucky Them.

If you want to see cats chasing people in packs, falling over themselves to descend stairwells, and jump up trees to swipe at disposable human protagonists--you will probably enjoy Roar.

Unfortunately, the film gets derailed by tonal inconsistencies and a clichéd plot that undermines the strength of its memorable outlier sections.

Just the Two of Us is not clever, self-important, or stylistically overt. This is a story, well told.

An engrossing and often thrilling spy drama, and a tribute to this courageous and diverse group of women.

A tight, twisty script, meaningful stakes, a top director (Darren Aronofsky), and an A-plus cast have delivered a satisfyingly sharp thriller, “Caught Stealing.”

As the saying goes, I may not know art, but I know what I like. I like this movie.

Swanberg finds a pleasingly low-key tone throughout the film, which (blissfully) is especially true during the kinds of moments that usually are played for wacky laughs in pregnancy comedies.

The story itself is so absurd and is told with enough surprises and dry humor that it’s constantly engaging.

By this time in his life, Fischer (who was Jewish) was already into the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that marred his public persona long after his days in the sports limelight had waned. While Zwick and company do nothing to explain this bizarre mania, Pawn Sacrifice definitely conjures the feeling of it, thanks in large part to the movie's greatest asset: Maguire's edgy, charismatic performance.

The viewer might strap themselves in for some life lessons. “Driving Madeleine” does serve them up, sure, but the film, written and directed by Christian Carion, is a lot more than a sentimental journey.

Ron’s Gone Wrong is an indictment of the invasive, insidious tactics of Big Tech, and of the ways we relinquish a little more of our privacy with every click and view.

The film that Memphis most reminds me of is Bruce Weber's "Let's Get Lost," a meandering, ostentatiously gorgeous black-and-white documentary about Chet Baker.

The documentary is a hollow experience, emotionally stifled by its plotless nature and lack of any visual edge.

Kill Your Darlings presents a minor prelude to a major literary movement.

The stakes are higher because this is the end—It really is this time!—but the first hour or so of returning director Francis Lawrence’s film is legitimately nap-inducing.

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.

It is never a good situation when a subtitled foreign release is highly dependent on words to get its point across—especially when those words are supposed to make you laugh.

Some viewers may find all the walking and talking tedious, evidence of a film spinning its wheels. But these are the best sections of Naz & Maalik.

An intoxicating kiddie cocktail for young-at-heart adults, inspired by a Disney fairy tale based on fact: the making of "Mary Poppins."

This “Beauty” presents a far more inclusive view of the world. One that is awash with a sense of hope and connection that we desperately need right now. If you desire an entertaining escape from reality right about now, be my guest.

There’s enough interesting, raw material in Ivory Tower to consider but one wishes it was shaped into something more cohesive and pointed in its attack and approach.

Seeing how freakishly gifted he is and watching his ascendance is a thrill, and Cantor keeps the pacing moving crisply.

The sporadic magic of The Polka King largely comes from its casting, and the hammy performances that follow.

I wish the film withheld more information from its audience to raise the overall tension but it’s a solid genre pic, made so primarily by two entirely committed performances from its talented leads.

Gorehounds need not worry that a movie called Deathgasm plays it safe. This is a defiantly, well, metal movie.

This is one of Scott’s best-directed movies and one of his most entertaining overall, partly because he’s working in a genre, the science fiction spectacle, that he does better than anyone since Stanley Kubrick, but also because he seems to be approaching it almost entirely in terms of visceral impact and emotion—as symphony of fire and blood, poetry and schlock.

For all of its breezy charm, what makes “Guernsey” an often frustrating experience is the fact that the story uncovered by Juliet is exceedingly more interesting than the one she finds herself confined within.