Christine, centered on a riveting and at times unbearably emotional performance by Rebecca Hall, attempts to give a three-dimensional and respectful-yet-honest portrait of a complex woman. Sometimes the film is successful in this, sometimes it's not.

Shirin in Love blends tangy romantic comedy and tart social satire into a cinematic cocktail that's pleasingly off-beat, warm-spirited and knowing.

Good intentions do count even if the outcome is not perfect.

While the lessons of “The Choral” feel applicable to our present moment, Hytner is careful to ground its story in a richly realized setting of a different era.

It’s in exploring the iconography of the hotel that the documentary shines the brightest. Van Elmbt and Duverdier are clearly well-versed in the works that were created on the grounds, or by former residents, and do their best to imbue their film with the same timeless cool that pulses through them.

Although Sisters on Track has some gaps in its narrative that seem as if certain chunks of the girls’ lives were compressed or skipped over, it's most impactful when offering a thoughtful analysis of the rapidity with which children grow, adapt, and change.

Novel enough to be worth the price of admission, but you'll think twice before getting back in line for a second visit.

Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud is the type of genre movie that makes many of its bizarre choices just for the sake of seeing if it can all work. But whether you find the film to be ambitious, or just some stunt screenwriting, it's intriguing to watch an audacious filmmaker try to keep midnight-ready movies unpredictable, even if that means a sincere but silly mash-up of WWII dogfights, gremlin chaos, and feminism in action such as this.

There’s no denying Hill’s instinct for identifying the heart of a dramatic scene and turning the volume of the storytelling down low enough for us to hear it beating.

Strickland’s film is a daring, atmosphere-soaked piece of kink hypnotherapy that pays explicit homage to the films of Franco, down to the casting of former Franco regular, formidable femme Monica Swinn, in a sinister role.

Overall, Concrete Utopia is more ambitious than its execution, but nonetheless sustains its suspense with an emotional journey into the depths of what scarcity can do to humanity.

The movie is sleek, smart, and reasonably thorough, and it offers the enticement of never-before-seen home movies provided by Armstrong's family. But it can't really stand out from the flood of material released to cash in on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, because it arrives on the heels of two daring ones, Damien Chazelle's "First Man" and Todd Douglas Miller's "Apollo 11."

The compact documentary is ultimately more an exercise for the filmmakers than it is a truly rewarding cinematic experience for the audience.

The Exorcist: Believer is a pretty good movie that's so stuffed with characters and not-quite-developed ideas that you may come away from it thinking about what it could have been instead.

Hall and Martin do their considerable best, but Rae's April is the far more interesting character.

The movie is, indeed, the tragedy of a ridiculous man. On the other hand, he does manage a maneuver by which his heirs avoid the estate tax. How ridiculous is that?

Zaror is clearly a skilled athlete, but what's more intriguing is how we can see him, as the Redeemer, planning his next move on the fly. It's not simply an explosion of violence. It's a precise burn.

Even when the movie's not working, its style fascinates. That "not working" part is a deal breaker, though — and it has little to do with Luhrmann's stylistic gambits, and everything to do with his inability to reconcile them with an urge to play things straight.

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.

Thankfully, it’s Kirby’s performance that makes Pieces of a Woman memorable.

An ambitious black comedy that never goes far enough.

Chasing Ghosts has a great idea in showcasing as much of Traylor’s work as possible, and next to the creations of other Black artists, but its talking head presentation is fairly didactic.

Even if it's not that funny, Detective Chinatown 2 proves to be snappy and persistent, complementing its bright color palette and energy with basic goals to alternate between silly, dark and slightly clever.

For the most part, the new “Bad Genius” doesn’t enhance more than it adds to its source material. It’s still a better-than-average redo, if only because it doesn’t break what never really needed fixing.

It’s substantial and thoughtful because of how Walt incarnates a very specific type of existential American dread — the depths of his self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy aren’t unlocked and explored until pretty deep into the story — and also because Cascella and Cordery have filled the script with supporting characters who are richly drawn enough to be the stars of their own film.

Co-written by Shawkat and Arteta, there is an unshakable theme in here about two artistic women trying to find their voice. It’s more of an issue that Duck Butter makes up what it wants to say as it goes along.

The Queen of My Dreams is a well-intentioned but tonally all-over-the-place look at how frustrating things can get when you’re a queer Muslim trying to live your best life.

Plemons brings such a fascinating energy to his character that he really holds the film together.

It’s an ambitious slice of micro-budget filmmaking that uses the canvas of isolated rural life to paint a relevant story about living in a world where violence threatens at every corner.

Frustratingly poised on the knife's-edge of "pretty good but not as good as you want it to be," the movie might've benefitted from a more leisurely but focused pace that would've allowed the characters to breathe more, and the legal and scientific concepts to be explained with greater clarity.

If These Walls Could Sing never feels as comprehensive as it could be about the subject. It operates as an addendum to better Beatles documentaries like "Eight Days a Week," "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," and "The Beatles Anthology," and that lack of an identity prevents McCartney's film from being a well-earned tribute to one of the world's iconic studios.

Ultimately, Viceroy’s House might be worth a visit just for certain tasty details, such as how Lady Edwina and her adult daughter greedily scarf down the chicken meant for the family dog without shame after having their palates dulled by wartime rationing.

This ABCs of Death is, either as a result of a surfeit of artistic freedom or just my own narrower-than-the-producers’ strictures of taste, as much of a hit-and-miss affair as the first, which came out in 2012.

The one humanizing slice of Cake that is tolerable is Claire’s relationship with her Mexican housekeeper, Silvana (the terrific Adrianna Barraza, who was Oscar-nominated for 2006’s “Babel”).

Don’t expect to go into writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s sixth feature Her Smell, a suffocating plunge into a female musician’s deteriorating world, and come out with calm instead of chaos.

A lack of ambition, just-off comic timing, and inferior world-building keep this bird from flying, despite there being just enough bits that work to make it worth a look, especially if you forget who made it.

A lot of this is figuratively and literally standup material, with the interview subjects framed head-to-toe in front of bright, primary-colored backdrops, and keeping things as light as possible.

The movie never delivers on its considerable promise because it's always in such a hurry to get to the next action scene.

Possessor is humorless, start to finish. Its energy is ponderous and glum, and the provocative ideas are not given a chance to really take on a life of their own. Still, there's much here that is imaginative and fresh.

At the very least, The Bad Guys encourages kids not to judge a book by its cover—and maybe even read an actual book about these characters afterward.

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.

The Fate of the Furious distinctly drops the level of quality in this series for the first time this decade.

I Came By is undeniably well-composed and entertaining enough for its missteps to be overlooked most of the time. Yes, it’s a rewrite short of greatness, but Bonneville makes it worth a visit even if its final needle drop over the credits is indicative of its shallowness.

It’s nice to see that the Muscles from Brussels is not only self-aware, but also sharp enough whenever he has to take a baby step or two beyond his own shadow.

Schmaltzy yet sincere, “Elio,” the latest from Pixar, is as predictable as they come but as tender as they can get.

This movie promises dancing, and it delivers.

One interesting fact that comes out of Gameau’s self-abusing ordeal is that even though he has been eating the same number of daily calories—a normal 2,300—as he did before, he has packed on 15 pounds mostly around his waist.

What a singularly weird, gross tale this turned out to be.

After all the thrills, chills, and jumped up machinery in both big and little films these days, there's not too much that can shake us up; show me something I can't get anywhere else, like Jug Face's rare joyful hillbilly dance sequence, with heels-tapping and spoons clanking.

Suki Waterhouse does her best with what she’s given. But still. The movie’s commonplaces don’t serve its singular subject—love him or hate him—all that well.

It’s a film that struggles to maintain its nightmare grip on the viewer as the repetition becomes more numbing than entrancing.

One can see the craftsmanship and skill with actors that Assayas has honed for the last three decades in the film’s best moments, even if it adds up to something of a disappointment when compared to the majority of his filmography.

Outlaw Posse doesn’t quite work in the end but there are enough moments of note scattered throughout it to let you forget that from time to time.

It is well-intentioned, conscientious and competent in its filmmaking craft.

It's a portrait of a hard-drinking, charismatic, obnoxious self-styled rebel who was his own worst enemy but whose brilliance and tenacity allowed him to thrive in an industry that wouldn't ordinarily have any use for someone like him.

The cranky old-coot humor between Studi and Cox is a welcome break, and there could have been more of it.

Cats suffers from a problem common in contemporary filmed musicals. The musical doesn't trust the audience, doesn't trust that the dancing in and of itself is exciting enough to hold our interest.

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.

Champs is a documentary that wants to say something sociological about the sweet science of boxing. In this regard, it has an undeniable power.

It’s the kind of movie that might not be as charming if you’ve seen 100 vampire movies, but if you’re also curious about bloodsucker tropes, and the real-life world that surrounds its lead character, it has just enough of a soul.

It’s Bruneau who makes you realize how great “Dusk for a Hitman” could have been if only it had some extra shine, but who also allows you to be content that St-Jean’s crime movie is merely a sturdy installment in the genre.

Although it’s stuffed with many cliches, The Aeronauts can feel like a rather enjoyable bit of historical fantasy.

Pacino dials down the manic, wide-eyed “Hoo-ah!” that has defined his screen presence over the past couple decades, and often rendered the Method master a parody of himself.

Nelson pulls off something strangely lovely and generous on the whole, a clear-eyed film with something to say on the kinds of lives many would rather not talk about.

For all of its wondrous world-building and trippy effects, Doctor Strange isn’t the evolutionary step forward for Marvel that it needs to be storytelling-wise. Underneath all of its improvements, the core narrative is something we’ve seen countless times.

The story of “Shayda” is moving, though ordinary. The spectrum of emotion is captured, from tension to joy to despair, but the way the film moves through them is plain at best and bland at worst.

Most of this is interesting enough, although a little too self-congratulatory at times, but A LEGO Brickumentary never really goes much deeper than that.

As is, “Bunnylovr” feels like a stone skipped across the surface of a pond; we could go deeper, but instead we choose to skim the surface. It’s a glossy, moody surface, mind, but surface nonetheless.

There’s trash, and then there’s good trash. Unforgettable falls into the latter category. Slick, glossy and radiating juicy villainy, it knows exactly what kind of movie it is and goes for it with giddy abandon.

Eventually it becomes a half-baked, sci-fi horror flick, and even a bit of a drama. Like “I Feel Pretty,” it uses its high-concept premise to explore notions of feminine power, at least superficially — and similarly, its execution ends up being problematic.

Coming Home in the Dark settles into the memory as a mesmerizing missed opportunity at worst, a promise of future classics at best.

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.

Siva rarely challenges his charming ensemble cast to step outside of their comfort zones, but he and his collaborators still deliver a lot of what you might want from an action-musical about a pack of murderous, but righteous pirates.

"Stanleyville" is part Stanford Prison Experiment and part MTV's "The Real World." It's part Milgram experiment and part "Squid Game."

At its best, it plays like a wry critique of this unexpectedly lucrative period of Neeson's career, and a borderline-spoof of the genre as a whole.

Iron Man 3 builds on the first film's political cynicism by suggesting that politicians and arms dealers dream up foreign policy crises to consolidate power and make money, but it doesn't develop this notion in detail, because if it did, the audience would tune out.

Hanks does his considerable best with Finch’s revelations and confrontations, but the writing lets him down.

Gleefully high-concept and defiantly low-budget two-hander.

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 Escape of Prisoner 614 is (at first, at least) an amiable comedic shaggy dog story in which inept law enforcement meets corrupt law enforcement.

If anything, the picture is a touch too benign for its own good, though it does earn enough laughs to warrant a recommendation, at least in its first third.

The script tries to do way too much, but the film also moved me quite deeply a couple of times, mostly in the scenes between father and son.

An unabashedly adult drama and a steadfastly old-fashioned one.

Rourke, who comes to the film industry from the theater, has an eye for pageantry and staging that make even dull conversations about power struggles feel lively.

If you’re a big booster of any of the lead actors (I’m something of a Cannavale partisan myself), this will be worth your time.

Sick of Myself works as well as it does due to Kujath Thorp’s charismatic performance.

The point of it all being that history and poetry are not possible without personified antimonies, real or imagined. Neruda does not make this point in any particularly convincing way, despite excellent performances by Luis Gnecco as the title character, a stolid Gael Garcia Bernal as his pursuer, and Mercedes Morán as Delia.

Equals goes for the Vulcan solution, and while the movie feels a bit thin and padded as a feature, it believes in itself completely, and there are moments when the sincerity of the lead actors and the director's addiction to the narcotics of Kristen Stewart's eyes, lips, neck and hands puts the whole concept over the top.

The film is essentially one long joke about a dick, with various gags built into that concept, as if it wants to be the movie that says the word “dick” more than any production with roots to the Judd Apatow family tree. It might just be the winner of that designation, or at the very least, it deserves some type of special achievement award.

At least with its wide scope, Maya Angelou and Still I Rise shows that her time on Earth was about more than being an author, poet, civil rights activist, a mother, a dancer, a singer, a film director, producer, journalist and much more. Her life was poetry itself.

A well-cast, well-made, well-acted drama that you will probably forget about soon after you’ve seen it.

The Bluff exemplifies a very enjoyable type of nostalgia-bait, even if it’s never as good as its elevator pitch.

What’s interesting about Rock Dog is just how very unapologetically a kid’s movie it is.

You wish the material were more consistent for these two. Some moments are screechy, others aren't deeply emotional enough. The in-between moments in which LaMarque hits just the right note can be charming, though, and they promise better things to come.

Basically watchable.

Blonde abuses and exploits Marilyn Monroe all over again, the way so many men did over the cultural icon’s tragic, too-short life.

The number of important, enduring 1960s and early ‘70s songs that a group of studio musicians known as The Wrecking Crew brought to life is staggering.

Devon Terrell's performance as Barry is warming, always leading with empathy and a genuine smile, contemplative whenever not sharing his thoughts.