Working with a bigger production company on a film that feels more like anyone could have made it than their previous works drains “Hell Hole” lacks some of the DIY charm of the other flicks by Adams and Poser. Comparatively, it’s kind of a disappointment, despite having some undeniable positives that should make it an easy watch for horror heads.

Call Jane is about an important subject, but it's also a character study of one woman waking up, not just to her own strength, but to the fact that she's hidden in the suburbs for too long. It's time to help others. It's a very satisfying character arc.

Sometimes we just need a nice, cozy movie featuring a heartwarming true story and actors with British accents. And if Bill Nighy is one of them, well, that's just a bonus.

There aren’t many surprises here, because the bread crumbs that lead to the movie’s big finish are plentiful and very stale. Seriously, the plot twists in this movie are so obvious and unappetizing that you couldn’t miss them if you tried.

So much works so well for so long in “The Good House” that it’s frustrating when the film casts its eye elsewhere and begins paying way too much attention to the town’s peripheral figures.

If anything, the horror element of this horror movie is the weakest part, but Totally Killer is spry enough to remain enjoyable throughout.

Even with the excellent central performance by Karen Gillan, playing a "dual" role—herself and her own copy—Dual makes for a strangely tepid viewing experience. Deeper exploration is not on the table.

The sheer filmmaking craft on display here shames almost any comparably budgeted superhero picture you can name.

What is scarier than an unexplainable, unidentifiable sound in the pitch-black woods, miles from civilization? Willow Creek makes the case that the answer is nothing.

The Summer Book is a haiku of a movie, conveying profound thoughts about time, memory, loss, and nature through a simplified, meditative, cinematic language of exquisite images and gentle music.

The first feature from the longtime music video director has a ton of style, and signals from the beginning her confident use of framing, texture and color.

The two leads are appealing, and the pace is brisk, but the movie never aspires to be more than a cookie-cutter creature feature — the kind of film that can be washed back with a pint and then forgotten in the morning.

While the wind goes out of its sails a few times along the way, this is a ravishingly photographed, old-fashioned man-against-the-elements adventure epic propelled by human-scaled heroics.

If you are hungry for dazzling eye candy and don’t mind a less-than-meaty narrative, this might please your palate.

Early on, Alex Brendemuhl gives a quietly unnerving performance as Mengele, a polite and meticulously dressed gentleman living in 1960 Patagonia.

Ultimately, the spirit of “Love, Brooklyn” is tenderness. It is both a love letter and a sympathy card: an acknowledgement that growing up sometimes means letting go, embracing the changes that come with time, and that loving someone does not always mean holding on to them.

A Jazzman’s Blues proves that when Perry applies himself in a particular fashion, his work can stand entirely on its own.

Young Woman and the Sea doesn’t reinvent the genre in any way, but it keeps us engrossed for every strenuous stroke.

American Dharma is a frustratingly hollow look at Bannon that is ultimately so benign in its portrayal of the man that it comes closer to an example of fan service than a full takedown.

Despite a few good scenes and ideas, and a final ten minutes that will be affecting for anyone who lived through the aftermath of the attacks on New York, the end product often feels like a standard-issue high concept romantic comedy with scaffolding of 9/11 solemnity built around it.

It’s a traditional thriller with a twist, subverting genre roles and presenting a very specific kind of sociopath, one whose brain was broken by trauma. It’s not perfect but it offers a quick-paced escapism that makes me wonder what Gandhi might do with more time and money.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is a soulful, bloodied cry for control.

With its cast of extremely likable performers, the perfect summer-in-the-city backdrop—in this case, New York — and a soundtrack stuffed with catchy, well-produced hits, Begin Again makes for easy-breezy entertainment.

This is not a film for everyone by a long shot. Still, those willing to take a chance and embrace it on its own very distinct and occasionally deranged terms are likely to find themselves agreeing with the ultimate assessment of Mirren, who once described it as “an irresistible mix of art and genitals.”

Narratively disjointed but drumming with earnest yearning, directors Jonathan Vinel’s and Caroline Poggi’s queer romantic thriller “Eat the Night” understands the lived-in comforts of a virtual space when compared to the horrors of the outside world.

Zany and zippy as you’d expect, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water remains true to the surrealism of its animated television roots.

Suffused with plenty of gross-out, phantasmagoric body horror but short on actual spine-tingling scares, the handsomely-produced Amulet asserts Garai more as a gifted genre stylist than a savvy storyteller.

Somehow what comes close to dissolving into heartbreaking tragedy instead offers the merest whiff of hope for the future. As Neill’s seen-it-all Walter says when all hell begins to break loose, “Everyone’s got a story like this … it’s as old as the hills.” If only said tale were told with a bit more consistency.

The film resonates with deeper messages: the damage done by gentrification, the abyss between the haves and the have-nots, the poor treatment of workers by elites. You don't expect a romcom to explore these issues. But The Valet does. It works.

This is funny to a point, but the problem with “Stress Positions” is that said point arrives about halfway through. The runtime that remains gets overloaded with too many plot threads, characters, and repeated punchlines, Hammel essentially turning the proceedings into a failed exercise in Blake Edwards-style farce.

A near-future dystopia that navigates a fractured society hours away from collapse, Michel Franco’s New Order is a relentless and blood-soaked study of social injustice, gripping to watch despite its graphic and escalating brutality. Sadly, it’s also one that only vaguely engages with the need for prosperity for all.

And the source of inspiration here is an affable role model, brought to life by “Stranger Things” actor Noah Schnapp with plenty of zest and believable innocence.

It's satisfying, for the most part—a solid romantic comedy with sharp dialogue, amusing characters, a soundtrack of well-worn feel-good hits, and a few surprises up its sleeve. Its only major flaw is an inability to imagine the bosses as richly as the leads.

For the most part, Stay Awake stays low-key and believable, particularly when the actors are moving through real-world locations while living their lives.

When a movie loves its characters and story as much as this one, and dedicates every aspect of filmmaking and performance to doing them justice, and consistently puts virtuosity in service of meaning, the result conjures a feeling that's close to what you experience when someone you adore has a great and richly deserved success, and you're privileged to be able to witness it and cheer them on.

Control Freak is a film so raw, messy, and sincere that it seems to have been torn from the bodies of the people who made it.

Putting on display the day-to-day reckonings of Palestinian life under violent Israeli occupation, Nabulsi’s film touches the heart but loses grip on the mind as it journeys to juggle more subplots than its hands can handle.

It’s almost too pretty in a self-consciously artful way, and that overriding aesthetic suffocates the underlying truth of the lead actors’ performances.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a return to form for director Tim Burton only in the sense that, like Burton early in his career, it’s not interested in form except at the immediate level of the image and the scene. It’s an overstuffed toy bag of a movie: every minute or two, the director digs into the bag and produces a new toy.

Entertaining in spots, obvious and irritating in others, with a one-note schticky performance from Christopher Waltz as Walter, Big Eyes is a strangely conventional entry in Tim Burton's filmography.

Goodrich is the type of rewatchable adult-minded comedy that feels like a welcome sight.

Black Sea looks so gorgeous and moves with such muscular grace that you might forget, or never imagine, that it's a relatively small action movie.

Director Matthew López makes an impressive feature debut with Red, White & Royal Blue, a love story that skillfully blends the familiar beats of a classic movie romance with the distinctive details of two of the world’s most public young men trying to keep their relationship private.

The gloomy turns in her film accumulate to such an extreme outcome in the end that you inevitably start raising your eyebrows to the contrived narrative. In that, Sadie shares its protagonist’s most defining attribute — a frustratingly manipulative nature.

The major problem with That Summer is the inescapable fact that it only barely qualifies as a movie.

The Children Act is perhaps a bit stilted in the overt way it sometimes attempts to spell out its arguments. But director Richard Eyre’s film still poses sophisticated questions around family, religion, marriage, law and the delicate boundaries that can or cannot be crossed in each institution.

The monsters are brilliantly designed and skillfully animated (except for a few shots where Kong looks a tad cartoony), and the army of visual and sound effects artists convince you that that these CGI titans live and breathe and weigh hundreds of tons.

I can't imagine anyone who liked the show not enjoying this film, even though the first half is stronger than the second, which spirals into a frenzy of double- and triple-crossing that's less engaging than watching the characters reconnect, awkwardly but with feeling.

A tidy and nasty and often effective thriller that doesn’t quite blossom into full horror.

As far as coming-of-age musicals go, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie sends a charming, feel-good message of self-acceptance.

Even if this movie doesn’t achieve a great epiphany at the end of the darkest route, it offers a great showcase for Gallner in particular.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is laid-back and funny but ultimately whiffs on its swings too many times to make a lasting impression.

It’s a fairly predictable thriller with few emotional moments apart from anxiety, and even fewer revelations.

A mediocre film that's unaware of the poor choices it's making is much harder to watch than a bad film that relishes its stupidity and poor taste. At least the second kind of film can be fun.

Leone continues to grow as a filmmaker—and there’s something interesting about watching that unfold throughout the franchise. But his screenwriting continues to let him down, jumbling his concepts with shallow mythology, atrocious dialogue, and ridiculous padding, leading to another film in this series that pushes over two hours. I’m still rooting for Leone to figure it out, but it’s not in this one.

The film does a good job conveying the excitement generated by that band as a live act, especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But though it produced some remarkable music, Cream’s success was short-lived.

The problem, though, is that we never get enough sense of Paz's interior life to judge this movie as anything other than a comeback story about a nice guy who got knocked out by the cosmos and hauled himself up.

The Swimmers is about a cause much bigger than the Olympics and is told on a personal scale that makes the issue accessible and unforgettable.

Like "Cat People", The Banshee Chapter is both elegant and terrifying.

Still, the funny lady is better at zinging quips than defining her Socialist agenda.

What is most unexpected about Permission is its sense of poignancy and tenderness. In its own way, it's quite heartbreaking.

Brandon Dermer's I'm Totally Fine is a funny and charming movie, with two entertaining performances from Jillian Bell and Natalie Morales at its center, but where it really works is in its understanding of grief, and how grief can turn someone's world—and mind—upside down.

It's an intriguing idea for a film, I suppose, but it proves to be pretty much all setup with precious little follow-through. Not even the good performances from the two leads can make the whole thing work.

Through cinematographer Mark Schwartzbard’s lens, The Photograph feels like a gentle throwback to romantic movies that left their audiences in good spirits as they filed out of the theater.

The Lesson, directed by Alice Troughton from a script by Alex MacKeith, aspires to be high-toned but only gets to the peak of a cliché slag heap.

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.

Dunham displays a remarkable skill when it comes to using limited space, trapping his characters in a warehouse on a life-changing night and watching the insecurities that they have shrouded in macho masculinity come bubbling to the surface.

Sadly, the concept only takes “Fall” so high, and the execution, including some ineffective acting, editing, and other technical choices, makes this a misfire. It doesn’t exactly crash to Earth as much as drift off into the forgettable air of film history.

Funny Boy falters when trying to link together the personal and political, making for a well-intentioned film that never delivers much depth.

While I remain disappointed that the sequel gives me a subdued Gru and an uneven pace, I keep remembering things about Despicable Me 2 that make me smile. For every meh moment, there's almost 2 well-conceived gags or lines.

There’s enough here in the sheer wealth of material that fans of Peterson’s or jazz could find this documentary worth the runtime. But it’s unfortunate that Avrich and his team were not able to shape this material into an overall stronger narrative.

The always-engaging Renate Reinsve delivers yet again (as does talented co-star Ellen Dorrit Petersen). However, “Armand” is a frustrating, over-long movie that starts with an intriguing premise and then starts fighting it almost immediately.

It’s a confident, engaging film, undone by some narrative sag in the middle but worth seeing for its opening and closing acts.

It's Glass who gives Visitors something like a structure, alternating between long, contemplative stretches and moments of ecstatic grandeur, like the crowd of sports fans who erupt in (extreme slow-motion) joy at some victory.

Ultimately, it’s an entertaining dramedy with strong performances from Deutch and the quickly-rising-star Mia Isaac (also excellent in the recent “Don’t Make Me Go”), but is too often willing to poke fun at easy targets instead of really asking why people lie for popularity or how we turn survivors of extreme violence into celebrities.

The violence is pretty graphic, and some of it is played for laughs, which would be distasteful if the laughs didn’t actually land. Oh well. Sometimes you enjoy a movie, and you don’t feel good about it in the morning.

We come to it with high expectations and it is especially disappointing that this movie never comes together.

Jagged rides the wave of that excitement, but avoids opportunities to explore deeper below the surface.

There’s a lot of good awkward fun to be had as the viewer simultaneously laughs at Otto’s expense and hopefully commiserates a bit with him.

This Louis Theroux-starring film belongs to the Michael Moore school of docu-making, in which much hinges on the personal viewpoint and observational wit of the on-camera investigator.

Even though half of her screen time consists of her being seen but not heard, Garner has a consistent crispness; her character is simultaneously transparent and slightly enigmatic.

A very good film, but only if you're willing to inevitably submit to its anarchic sensibility.

It's an extremely effective context for this particular story, told with no nostalgia, lots of humor, and a cast of really watchable characters. They are "types," for sure, but the types are given room to breathe. It's a sensitive and interesting film.

Ip Man 4: The Finale is apparently going to be the last time Yen dons the familiar black cassock to play Ip Man, and Yip orchestrates a fittingly spectacular finish to the saga.

Murphy refuses to look back in anger. The man remains optimistic, even when discussing death. With Murphy’s 2019 return to “SNL” serving as the joyous finale, “Being Eddie” presents an Eddie Murphy who seeks to entertain (on his own terms, of course) as long as he’s still got air in his lungs.

An enjoyable cast, including movie-stealing work from Jodie Comer, holds it all together, but one can still see just enough glitches in this matrix to wish it was better.

The film's best asset, and the thing that elevates it above the 1986 version, is how well it is cast.

An arty tribute to violent, sensuous, over-the-top Euro-trash pulp fiction.

It’s an undeniably haunting piece of work, a story that’s out of place and time in a world that’s like our own but not quite. Rod Serling would have dug it.

Jenny Slate and Charlie Day deserve better than “I Want You Back,” a leaden rom-com that gives them a shot at being funny, charming, and sweet, only to squander it scene by scene.

Sly is a frustratingly unrealized work, always hovering on the edge of real insight but rarely jumping into it.

Great actors Ben Mendelsohn and Rooney Mara do their best to elevate the frustrating Una, but their director doesn’t seem to understand what he has in these two performers, constantly pulling back from their raw emotion and complex characters.

The movie is not interested in wrapping things up via a “smash the mirror” epiphany. It’s to Oliver’s credit that he’s taken a more tough-minded than easily cathartic approach. And Ansel Elgort’s wonderful performance does appropriate honor to the ambiguity the movie is trucking in.

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.

Match has enough meaty and engaging character material to effectively sidestep the very theatrical contrivance of its plot premise, which does have a great deal of potential for reversal and counter reversal and indeed takes full advantage of that potential.

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.

The way Philippe organizes the hundreds of clips provides more startling and exhilarating moments per minute than most movies about movies can muster, although I can’t say that aficionados of ostensibly realistic cinema aren't going to be too thrilled. Which is too bad, because among the many things this picture captures is how the fanciful worlds of “Oz” and Lynch illuminate the pain and splendor of the world we have to inhabit once we leave the magic realm of cinema.

The Sounding impresses more with its majestic and ageless feel than its vague ideas around the human mind.