While the mood is that of a gentle and affectionate comedy, the film makes some extremely sharp points about fanaticism, sexism masked as holiness, and tolerance among the faithful.

What resonates most potently are the scenes of the 1972 trial.

If all I saw was the first half, I would have given it a shrug and left in a semi-foul mood. But the whole is greater for being two parts in this case, making me glad that I have finally lost my Hong Sang-soo virginity.

Similar to how Pixar’s Coco paid tribute to Mexican culture, Encanto holds many nods to its Colombian roots, from the use of flowers and animals specific to the regions to crafting songs that incorporated their respective countries’ musical palette.

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.

What’s lacking from the film is any substantial exploration of the Constitution itself, and the democratic laws that would’ve made it a game-changer in Zimbabwe, had any of them been put into effect.

The absolute ending of Some Velvet Morning is a stunner, one that is sure to irk and awe viewers in equal measure (I’m in the latter camp). LaBute may not be saying anything novel about constricting gender roles and the cynical ways in which we sell ourselves out, but he is saying it in his signature, provocative style.

I'm No Longer Here (“Ya no estoy aqui”) is one of those Netflix movies you’ll wish you’d watched on the big screen. The film from Mexico City-born writer/director Fernando Frias de le Parra is so gorgeously shot and offers such a rich sense of place that it’s always visually compelling, even when the narrative tends to sag a bit.

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

The best feature of Alpha is its imagery, which is absolutely stunning in IMAX. Hughes, his cinematographer Martin Gschlacht and the visual effects team create a world that is as beautiful as it is dangerous, often framing the characters in the center of a vast, almost endless landscape.

What stands out the most about Poe’s second feature is the director’s exquisite taste. Every single design element, from the bisexual lighting to the camera a delivery person uses to take a photo of Celestina, is carefully selected as part of a harmonious overall aesthetic.

It’s worth noting that The Cat and the Moon is almost two hours long — Wolff could have easily cut it to 85 minutes and achieved the same tone and emotional peaks, but this movie is specifically meant to exemplify passion.

Dior and I won’t tell you much about Simons’ personal life, or his family, or where he lives, or why he does this, which ultimately makes it difficult to connect with him. (Interestingly, a little online research reveals, he started out as a furniture designer.)

This is not a film for children, but the camerawork and the emotional undercurrents most often evoke the physical viewpoint, level of understanding and sensory processes of a child. We as adults must deduce the film’s most crucial pieces of information as they fly over Frida’s head.

It’s “Avatar” meets “Fantastic Voyage,” and it also looks really good on a big screen thanks to Disney’s many, many talented animators. With their help, “Strange World” breezes through a checklist of formulaic plot points and canned emotional revelations with enough style and sensitivity to make it work.

A welcome surprise for sports cinema, The Phenom handles itself like Robert Redford's "Ordinary People" when exploring the psychology of a Lebron James or Johnny Manziel-like sports sensation.

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.

On an intuitive, sensual level, “Mothering Sunday” is intoxicating. As a story with plot and characters, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

As exceptional as the acting in the picture is, and it is wonderful — Whitaker and Keitel are as inventive and surprising as they’ve been in years, and the supporting roles played by the likes of Ellen Burstyn and Stan Carp are well-sketched — it can’t entirely lift the movie from the rut it has all but plowed into by the end credits.

All it takes is one breathtaking shot near the conclusion of A Tale of Love and Darkness, when the aged Amos stares helplessly at his troubled mother through a pane of glass coated with teary rivulets of rain, to know Portman has an artistic vision worth sharing and developing.

One of the most spectacular and frustrating mixed bags of the superhero blockbuster era, The Flash is simultaneously thoughtful and clueless, challenging and pandering. It features some of the best digital FX work I've seen and some of the worst.

As in another autobiographical memory movie about schoolboys, Louis Malle’s “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” Armageddon Time is the story of childhood innocence as remembered with regret and a sense of responsibility, with adult recognition of history’s vilest bigotries and injustices.

Thanks to all this brittle emotion, Hvistendahl’s film is absorbing, even captivating at times. But it moves at a pace that can be charitably described as “measured.”

Corbijn keeps the action of A Most Wanted Man at arms length or greater, never finding the heart of the piece despite mostly solid performances and strong production values.

The end product is true to the spirit of the franchise while pushing its self-aware humor and fourth wall-breaks until it all seems like the result of a dare: how big can we make the air quotes around “sincerity” while still tugging on heartstrings?

Enemy, Villeneuve's latest, differs from the earlier works not only in being set in Canada, but also in offering a story that's ostensibly less concerned with painful real-life struggles than with dream-like subjective perplexities.

I did find myself wishing that all films this narratively misguided were so directorially sure-footed. Makes getting through them a lot less painful.

It’s a low-key trippy sci-fi movie about booty calls with an unwieldy space squid, but I wish I could say it was much more than that.

The film loads itself down with two different plots, one cliched, one new and fresh. This makes "Ezra" a sometimes frustrating watch, but there's a lot here to recommend.

There's a sweetness to this story that reflects Adam Sandler’s real-life love for his family.

Once this self-consciously campy fairy tale stops trying so hard to emulate every high-school comedy and TV show from the past 30 years and relaxes into a stream of clever repartee and amusing situations, it eventually offers enough LOL opportunities to deserve a passing grade.

Pure evil meets unshakable faith in Katrin Gebbe's torturous Nothing Bad Can Happen, a film that begins as a meditation on human behavior and belief but crosses the line into pure sadism.

Unfortunately, Nuclear Nation is slow going, and given the uniqueness of the documentation and the importance of its message, it deserves to be more compelling than it is.

Ansari struggles as a writer when he tries to make the movie into a commentary on the widening economic rift of the 2020s, and he truly rushes the ending in a way that feels a bit unearned, but there’s so much to like about the four stars of this movie that it’s a really tough flick to hate.

The harder the film tries, the more one feels pulled along rather than effortlessly transported.

Lamb is empathetic and untrustworthy, haunting but often unpersuasive. In the end it's hard to say what the film's point is. But it lingers in the mind.

Titely’s feature debut does an admirable job condensing the show into a powerful hour-and-change saga.

Buried beneath this melodrama—but shining through nearly enough to justify a look — one can see the film that could have been, as anchored by great performances and emotional truth. It’s just lost in the fog.

Primed to be this June’s Horror Movie of the Month, The Boogeyman is packed with familiar beats and little personality, the horror equivalent of a rising music star making a fan-friendly Christmas album as their biggest project yet.

A film like The Invisibles is part of bearing "precise witness." We clearly need reminders, and constant ones, of the end result of "otherizing" an entire group of people.

So why does Captain Marvel feel like a bit of a disappointment? It’s fine and often quite funny. It fits securely within the MCU but also functions sufficiently as a stand-alone entity. But the character, and the tremendous actress playing her in Oscar-winner Brie Larson, deserved more than fine.

Agenda-driven films make for dreary viewing and Infidel is never dreary. Aided by excellent performances across the board by its international cast, "Infidel" works best when it's an old-fashioned thriller.

Pullman is always great to watch, the Montana landscapes are gorgeously captured by cinematographer David McFarland, and there are a couple of action set pieces that spark.

It’s a wildly inconsistent film, sometimes disappointingly clunky and as superficial as the world it’s mocking, but it’s also an ambitious piece of work with unforgettable imagery and an ace ensemble.

Entanglement is gleefully weird at times, but it could’ve been a whole lot weirder.

Whatever the flaws, The Music of Strangers does provide enough enticements to make it worth a sit, if only to see Mr. Rogers greet Ma in an old TV clip.

It’s refreshing to see an account of a famous food guy who doesn’t wallow in his own character defects.

More than anything else, Mekas' footage gives a glimpse of the fascinating aura that Tiny Tim projected.

The Champagne experience is a particular one, and even if you don’t imbibe this movie can give you an appreciation for what makes it special.

The Iron Claw inadvertently shares a lot in common with the professional wrestling world it depicts. A lot of energy and passion clearly went into it, and there’s a drive to entertain and thrill, but it ultimately ends up feeling empty and superficial.

A twisty, Hitchcockian thriller mixed with trippy moments of magical realism. And if that doesn’t sound on paper like it would work, well, it does. And it doesn’t.

All in all, it’s stupid fun, done with enough panache that its thin story and sometimes too-glib attitude doesn’t hurt it too much.

Despite the sense sometimes that Moselle isn’t driving “Wolfpack” in the way needed to make it truly work, she undeniably finds some beautiful moments in the trajectory of the Angulos, although they are sometimes so fleeting as to frustrate when they aren’t further developed.

This is a safe, sometimes synthetic story of two people in pretty settings finding a way to overcome their history and connect to one another, the beats all scheduled as conventionally as in the interchangeable comfort food movies on the Hallmark Channel.

An engaging and accessible look at one of the most important figures in cinema.

Harris, as always, imbues his characters with a wearied conviction, which goes a long way towards making Stan feel a bit more layered than the feel-good Ned Flanders type the script saddles him with.

American Fiction trips over its own feet in its final act, stumbling between daydream sequences and multiple storylines before finding a final, underwhelming resolution. But the attentive lens that the film devotes to its concept and themes is what will be remembered.

Neither character talks all that much, but both actors project complex intelligence and consistent emotional acuity.

This film doesn’t rumble through its 156-minute runtime; it flies by. And though “F1” has little to say about the sport’s past, present, or future, the propulsive ride it engineers isn’t a wasted diversion.

She is an engaging guide, humorous and honest, cynical and wise, with that same sense of innocent joy in her own fame that translated into in photos.

[Baumbach's] collaboration with Gerwig has a freshness that may or not owe something to first-blush romance but that renders this bittersweet comedy occasionally inspired, frequently charming and always watchable.

Human error—or uncertainty—is the biggest source of tension in this movie, and it goes a long way towards making this sequel (a little) more than the sum of its flashy parts. You may not need another Escape Room, but this new one is good enough to leave you wanting more.

Abrams and his screenwriters (Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof) are so obsessed with acknowledging and then futzing around with what we already know about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and company that the movie doesn’t breathe.

Maria by Callas offers a new side to her legend, one that was also vulnerable, smart but also lonely, a fate that sometimes befalls headstrong women.

The Empty Man draws comparisons to junky studio fare like “The Bye Bye Man” and “Slender Man” but this is a far more ambitious and accomplished piece of work than its reputation.

Surprisingly, Bad Boys For Life is nowhere near as bad as its opening day schedule would indicate. It is the best of the three films, offering in some odd ways a corrective to the prior installments. Unlike the original, this one finds some depth in its female characters.

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.

It’s a little too “Garden State” in places, but Johnson smartly puts a grim enough layer on their dynamic to avoid turning the whole thing into a treacly rom-com.

There’s a great—or maybe just better—drama somewhere in the pre-WWII Japanese period drama Wife of a Spy, a low-simmering psychological thriller about Satoko Fukahara (Yu Aoi) and her mysterious husband Yusaku (Issey Takahashi).

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.

I want to recommend Nelson's film in spite of how misconceived it is simply because it asks interesting questions, albeit in some of the most banal ways imaginable.

A twisted genre experiment that plays with sexuality, classic genre tropes, and general lunacy, it’s half a movie, but it’s so committed to its rebellious tone that it makes for a hell of a half.

Even if it’s all a bit too tidy, this documentary about Kaepernick is valuable for reminding viewers how far we still have to go.

It is ridiculously lurid trash from start to finish and anyone trying to argue otherwise is as crazy as its central character. However, while its aim may be low throughout, it at least comes close to consistently hitting its targets.

Ultimately, The Woman in the Window offers a lot of build-up, a lot of possibility. But the revelation of what’s truly going on here is anticlimactic—the equivalent of closing the curtains and turning away from the window with a disappointed sigh.

Blue Bayou is sunk, on occasion, by its own symbolism, and how it wields said symbols. It's not enough to use a symbol visually, and let the audience put two and two together. A character needs to have a long monologue where they explain the symbol and pontificate on how the symbol is relevant to the circumstances.

Yes, some of it looks cheaply made and a few too many of the jokes will thud for parents and children, but it’s such a big-hearted film in every scene.

McCarthy is aggressive and foul-mouthed while Sarandon is sensible and laid-back. And they’re clearly destined for trouble, which leads to solid if scattered laughs.

There are a lot of promising ideas here, but none are developed so much that this remake feels essential.

Despite making the case that celebrities are complex human beings just like the rest of us, this documentary lacks a human touch.

It’s the kind of movie where text will appear on the screen as a character reads an article explaining what’s going on in the plot, the kind of solid programmer that takes its audience for a slick and satisfying ride without challenging them too much.

However heartfelt and keenly observed this pessimism is, it becomes monotonous.

Depression is such a personal, intangible, mystifying phenomenon. Signe Baumane tries to make sense of it in unexpected fashion — through colorful animation and dark humor — with Rocks in My Pockets.

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.

Doin’ It is more of a fling than one for the books, but it’s a fun one, nonetheless.

Thunderbolts is an odd duck of a superhero flick, one that almost leans into the skid of the MCU, and, by doing so, might actually straighten it out. It can’t quite shake loose of the consistent problems in the MCU’s recent output (turn a light on!). Still, it challenges blockbuster fans in unexpected ways, presenting them with richer acting than we’ve seen in these films in some time and, perhaps most shockingly, a final act that’s emotionally grounded instead of just “CGI things go boom.”

Within these oversaturated times for comic book movies, Madame Web is blissfully breezy in its pacing, which helps make it a more enjoyable watch than some of the super-serious, end-of-the-world fare we often see.

Blackout is nothing new, or even essential, but it mostly works anyway thanks to Fessenden and his cast’s impressive collaboration.

It's the kind of movie where, if you saw it when you were 14, you'd see it ten or twenty more times, and be inspired to check out books from the library, maybe memorize some poetry.

Whether or not Blanco is able to save his factory, Bardem is able to navigate the narrative missteps surrounding him and ultimately make "The Good Boss" worth a look.

Heart alone does not a good film make.

Geraldine Viswanathan has been steadily working her way through the coming-of-age subgenre, on her way to becoming a star. In the open-hearted romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery, the charismatic whirlwind of an actress is vivacious and lovable.

People Places Things treats its characters a lot messier than most romantic comedies, which makes it delightful at times. It also makes it disappointing when the film falls into the same traps that plague romantic comedies.

There are some decent ideas for a comedy in Blockers, and some very funny scenes from a cast with rock-solid comic timing, but the movie was either rewritten one too many times or one too few.

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.

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

The film’s good intentions are evident, but its assemblage of experts and statistics is more lecture than movie. There is too much focus on families of comfortable or better means and too little focus on the impact that these conflicts have on the other members of the family.

Plenty watchable and inspired from a visual standpoint, The Nowhere Inn is a less refined and less provocative relative of Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, Brady Corbet's Vox Lux, or Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine.