The tone of the film is a little lukewarm, and the visuals aren’t the most thrilling, but there’s a very welcome absence of condescension and sentimentality that is often used in the portrayal of elderly people on film, particularly when they engage in activities not typically associated with their age.

Writer-director Angus MacLachlan’s “A Little Prayer,” about a family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is like a beautiful hand-wrought sculpture that’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Making it bigger would not have made it better. It’s perfect just as it is.

As the film trudges toward its conclusion, it’s one frustrating scene after another like that. And by the end, you’ll realize the clever opening title sequence was probably the best part of all.

This is a good movie. But it seems to be at odds with itself. And if you think back over how the story was set up and how it built towards its final section, you may conclude that it doesn’t quite play fair.

For all five hours, Loktev’s camera is positioned close to her subjects, much like a friend in the same room, lending the project an intimacy and empathy that it would have otherwise lacked. And the length allows us to really get to know these people, feeling their frustration and their tension. It becomes our own. We don’t just see it. We feel it in our bones.

As the film progresses, Russell’s grasp of the subtle can sometimes get away from him; while “Lurker” doesn’t lapse fully into violent thriller territory, the stakes of each one of Matthew’s calculations grow larger and larger to the point where the script sometimes gets away from the filmmaker’s otherwise impeccable sense of control.

Cinematographer Mathias Herndl shows us that Floreana is not a postcard-pretty island paradise. Still, a harsh and unyielding setting, and Hans Zimmer’s score evokes increasing uneasiness as the story builds to a climax of violence and chaos.

Vibrant, silly, and unwaveringly vulnerable, “Pools” is an invigorating party movie whose non-stop reverie uplifts its protagonist’s downcast spirit.

Billed as “an unromantic comedy,” Covino’s is a film that recalls comedies of the ‘70s in its willingness to allow its quartet of lead characters to be horny, problematic, and generally idiotic.

Director Kate Beecroft’s Sundance darling “East of Wall” is a stunning portrait of the American West.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of “Dongji Rescue” is how it begins as a fact-based yet formulaic story of meek, simple folk overcoming their oppressors and doing what’s right. Then, halfway through, it becomes a chaotic, bloodthirsty tale of vengeance that borrows heavily from the Mel Gibson School of War-Movie Filmmaking.

There are some great ideas in “We Strangers,” particularly in how it explores the emotional labor inherent in domestic work, as well as some thoroughly committed performances by Howell-Baptiste, Dizzia, and Goldberg. However, those promising elements nevertheless settle into a sporadic, muted climax that ends up feeling more perfunctory than satisfying.

With the added threads of female-specific and child celebrity woven through, “Trust” had the potential to be not just thrilling but thoughtful. Yet with an unfocused eye and clumsy pen, it falls way short of the mark.

As a whole, “What We Hide” has the feeling of an old after-school special, a melodramatic lesson about a topical issue.

Ultimately, “Eenie Meanie” is a collection of clichés in search of an actual movie. Too often, Shawn Simmons mistakes profanity for toughness and violent outbursts for plot, trapping us with what is mostly a bunch of loathsome idiots for 94 minutes without the craft of a Tarantino or the visual acumen of a Wright to make it worth the captivity.

Ultimately, it feels like Cognetti has lost sight of what people loved about the first movie.

Lasse Hallström‘s latest film, The Map That Leads to You, has the makings of a Gen Z “Before Sunset” meets “Eat Pray Love,” but unfortunately, it also has the depth of a mediocre beach read weepy. That is to say, I enjoyed it as I watched, but it has had no lasting effect on my memory or, even worse, my heart.

This is a fun movie if you love the band, and maybe even if you’ve never heard of them before. The interviews are thought-provoking, funny, and moving; the filmmaking is superb, and the music kicks ass.

Here, the filmmakers know exactly what kind of movie their audience wants and have a better-than-average plan to deliver it. You say you want more bromantic chemistry, over-the-top action, and flamboyant, logic-defying plot twists? “War 2” delivers all of that.

It’s beautifully constructed and executed, with a lead character who reveals new biographical and emotional layers to us with each new scene, and a backup cast stocked with small-scale underworld types.

The film is blessed with a fairly strong cast and while it isn’t nearly enough to make it succeed as a whole, whatever degree that certain scenes do work are almost entirely due to their efforts.

Went Up the Hill doesn’t just explore grief, it expresses it.

Structurally sound while at the same time lacking anything you could call a “plot,” “Suspended Time” invites you to listen in your own life to that which is often neglected or unheard.

At its best, “Boys Go to Jupiter” has the bustling energy of those ensemble comedy-dramas about communities of oddballs that Robert Altman and Hal Ashby used to make, in which even minor characters are so exquisitely original they could be the lead of their own movie.

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

Jimmy & Stiggs is a slick wallow into a cranked-up, self-destructive headspace that frequently over-compensates for what it lacks in plot and character development with sheer vigor and volume alone.

In fits and spurts, it casts quite the campy, thrilling spell.

The biggest problem with “Nobody 2” is that the surprise factor is gone, and nothing has taken its place. The wow of seeing a generally comedic actor like Bob Odenkirk go John Wick in the fun 2021 sleeper hit isn’t there anymore.

Desperation destroys comic timing, and this thing is drenched in the flop sweat of a stand-up comedian who knows he’s losing his audience.

Give me a silly movie that knows it’s dumb on a hot summer day every year. This isn’t that. It’s so much dumber than it thinks it is.

It’s certainly a portrait of matrimony and pregnancy, though one that should never, ever be screened in a Lamaze class.

If you loved the 2003 “Freaky Friday,” you’ll probably enjoy “Freakier Friday,” for the simple reason that it’s more or less the same movie, but with new characters added to the existing cast, and more complicated plot mechanics. Way more complicated. This is “Freaky Friday” to the fourth power.

Jean Dujardin, who’s best known here for a still-controversial performance in Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist,” is utterly flawless as Picquart, maintaining proper military bearing even as he begins to seethe with indignation.

The film was originally titled “North Star.” Yet, despite a few moments of connection and insight, that is precisely what this story is missing.

It’s a deeply personal film, a life story told by the people who knew and loved Jeff. It hums with the emotion and vibrancy of Buckley’s music.

Hinging on the nitpicking anxieties of the true crime genre, “Strange Harvest” maintains an air of abject horror, even if its penchant for ease nudges focus out of the way.

The Occupant is a strangely frustrating movie. It stays engaging through the sheer force of a committed performance that anchors every single scene of the film, but it’s also so hard to get your arms around narratively (or even thematically) that it pushes you away.

It’s a shaggy hangout film where McCartney and Wonder are dimwitted adversaries who spend their days getting high, insulting one another, and eating veggie dinners. In short, it’s incredibly fun.

In the end, [Cregger] wants to take you on a ride, and so he’s got to provide both hills and valleys, producing a horror film that’s equally hilarious and chilling.

The writer-director’s sharp script examines the many ways that the pain of grief can manifest, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and how it can fracture relationships if you let it. But his film is not all dark. It’s edited with a delightful humor, often landing a laugh with a quick cut or sly pan.

The Pickup is as generic and forgettable as its title suggests: a bland action-comedy that will surely end up being one of the year’s worst movies, if only for the egregious way it squanders its talented cast.

Overall, there’s a timeless quality to the best jokes in “The Naked Gun” that makes them feel of a piece with the lines in the original without being direct copies. They don’t all work, but there are so many of them packed into this film’s blissfully short runtime (under 85 minutes) that every one that lands with a thud is followed by one that connects.

It’s a disturbing, sometimes beautiful film that, by the end, is disquieting for all the wrong reasons.

A tight, restrained, worthwhile first feature from a cast and crew whose next jaunt into the woods will surely worth sharpening our teeth for.

The film takes a while to find its sea legs and peters out a bit in its big finish sequence, but sticks the landing in the final scene. The whole thing is a little uneven, but it avoids sentimentality, perhaps the biggest trap in material involving a child.

Saying that it makes these concepts “fun” or “accessible” is an overstatement, as “Harvest” can feel interminable even when a viewer is engaged with its ideas. But it does bring them to vivid, even bawdy, life.

If nothing else, “Architecton” challenges viewers to examine the structures that shape so much of our lives and behavior in a new light and imagine the possibilities of a future where architecture endures not just the test of time relative to human existence, but in communion with nature and life in perpetuity.

The couple doesn’t quite light up the screen with their chemistry, and the writing feels much too basic, given these are meant to be characters in a literature degree program. Thankfully, there are moments of levity, a number of cross-cultural jokes, and supporting characters to lighten the mood.

Eventually, though, the whole effort feels chaotic, crammed as it is with uninspired pop culture references and way, way too many fart jokes, even for a movie aimed at kids.

While “Souleymane’s Story” throws many roadblocks in this Guinean man’s way, it’s pretty clear where we’re heading. And while that predictability does slightly undermine the weightiness of the journey, the ending, a cathartic revelation, is granted immeasurable pathos due to Sangaré’s overwhelming openness as an actor.

Rest assured, finding out whether an on-screen couple have what it takes has rarely felt this cutting, and, ultimately, this rewarding.

Happy Gilmore makes par through the strength of its sheer stupid energy and the game efforts of Sandler and his 50 or so co-stars.

It has a lot of the flaws that are common to super-low-budget movies produced outside of the system, such as it is, including hit-and-miss performances and a look that falls somewhere between a “Saturday Night Live” short and a student film.

Written and directed by Giovanni Tortorici, “Diciannove,” which means “nineteen” in Italian, plumbs the depths of young adulthood in that strange transition year, from the dizzying highs of feeling invincible on the dance floor to realizing just how much about the world you still have to learn.

Folktales suggests that finding the threads connecting us to our collective past is work of great healing and rejuvenation.

It’s not often you find a film that’s so artless, it feels like one big joke. But “The Home,” James DeMonaco’s silly octogenarian horror flick, is about as hopeless as you can get.

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’s a deeply human experience to long for someone who’s unavailable and to treasure a love that’s true but can’t last. “Oh, Hi!” ruminates on this to somber yet entertaining effect.

The primary struggle of Chernov’s documentary is that it leans into the impersonal in an attempt at devastation. It can’t rely on the men as the crutch of the film’s emotion.

The problem is that the sociopolitical underpinnings of “Ick” feel relatively shallow and borderline sadistic, leaving viewers with a hollow “Blob” riff with too little to hold onto regarding character, setting, or even horror.

There’s nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it. So it’s too bad that “Four Letters of Love” is nothing like a good Irish movie with some edge to it.

Kaufman keeps things moving at a brisk pace and delivers the sort of cheesy dialogue and story beats that you should expect from this dorky, but serviceable genre exercise. He’s a better action filmmaker than he is a straight-up dramatist, as you can unfortunately tell in scenes where the protagonists struggle to emote through visually and emotionally flat dialogue scenes.

Despite some solid low-budget make-up work and decent central performances, “Monster Island” doesn’t have enough meat on its bones, somehow feeling narratively inert even at just 83 minutes.

This is a solid, intelligent, occasionally inspired comic book movie that delivers most of what a popular audience demands from the genre (including interstellar voyages and massively scaled action sequences) plus a little bit more.

Life After is a powerful movie that examines the political and social structures that surround and control people with disabilities, and comes to a conclusion that will spark many arguments.

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?

This is more “Reservoir Dogs” than “Ringu.” But whatever box one wants to place it in, it’s a reminder of Kurosawa’s remarkable skill with pacing and plotting, delivering a brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real.

Drowning Dry holds you at arm’s length, but I found it more moving—and unsettling—because of that.

Unicorns, directed by Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd, doesn’t reinvent the romance genre. Still, it overcomes any rote storytelling by gifting viewers fully fleshed-out and realized characters who color between—and sometimes outside—the lines of their archetypes.

Elegiac in tone, melancholic in style, and documentarian in spirit, Simpson thoughtfully captures the micro preoccupations of the film’s characters, against the understatedly political macro backdrop of our shifting and worsening climate.

The spirit of religious promise that Perione’s film introduces goes quizzically betrayed. What ensues becomes an attempted campy teen thriller, but without the tension or reward.

The Banished, about a grieving woman’s search for her missing brother, sometimes feels like a compendium of modern horror movie clichés. That doesn’t always matter, since the movie is thick enough with dread to work despite its distracting familiarity.

While there are several problems with the film as a whole, perhaps the central one is that there are long stretches where viewers are expected to take the concept at least somewhat seriously, which proves impossible.

The message about never confusing kindness with weakness is a valuable life lesson and a reminder of why the Smurfs are so enduringly beloved.

There’s just so much missing, including logic.

Admittedly, the logistics of filming a Tyler Perry film with Perry performing multiple roles is not what most viewers will be thinking about. But there’s little else to recommend it except for the performances.

[Costa's] outsider perspective gives no warmth of familiarity, only the startling realization of what they have accomplished so far and what remains ahead for a democracy trying to regain its footing.

A meeting of “Leave No Trace” and “Hell or High Water,” “Sovereign” is a thought provoking political work whose sympathetic eye is given focus by its potent cast.

Daniela Forever, Nacho Vigalondo’s first film since his excellent “Colossal,” eight years ago, is a baffling disappointment, a sci-fi mindbender with echoes of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Inception,” but no idea what to do with its many ideas or what it’s ultimately trying to say.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is inherently bound by its white perspective, but at the same time, it would simply be a different story if not through Bobo’s eyes.

Kermani deserves credit for expanding on Hill’s story, which has a great premise, but not much else going for it.

Juan Pablo Di Pace’s movie about memory, longing, time, and family is like a set of Russian nesting Matryoshka dolls.

The sobering note on which the movie ends recalls a stone-cold classic from a sadly long-gone era of moviemaking. The homage actually functions as a token of this movie’s integrity and heartfelt sadness.

Wild Diamond doesn’t judge or look down on its main character and doesn’t try to control how we view her. This is a welcome rarity.

It’s frustrating, then, to see such high-concept potential, some decent production design, and a couple of game leads fall victim to a mystery that unfolds with thudding obviousness.

We’re left with a mid-level take on Superman that, at times, will remind you of the 1978 version, but doesn’t quite match it for pure pop entertainment value.

We could all use a little distraction these days, and there are worse ways to spend the time than in the company of an engrossing erotic thriller. Unfortunately, “Pretty Thing” isn’t one of them. Between stilted conversations, murky cinematography, and the story’s intimate partner violence, the film is distracting in an unpleasant way.

There’s nothing in “Ice Road: Vengeance” that isn’t in any given Redbox/Saban Films Neeson actioner you’ve seen in the last dozen years, and you’ll at least get to the good stuff quicker there.

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.

Goldberg acknowledges that the film’s power is in its exclusive cast sharing their personal experiences. But his film fails to realize that it, too, is a player in platforming an already undefeated beast.

Despite its flaws, Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print reminds us that authenticity is essential in acquiring and retaining acceptance and relevance, a message we need to hear now more than ever.

A slow build of suspense steadies the pacing, allowing the audience to piece together the puzzle alongside the characters.

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.

These characters possessed far more soul in the prior film: they walked through every scene with centuries of baggage and loss; they spoke of times gone by with wonder and awe; they cared for one another. None of that is present here.

All in all, it’s heartening to hear a major figure in American political history talking about the future as if it might actually happen.

These moments remind us of the mindless summertime excitement the “Jurassic” movies have long provided, albeit with diminishing returns. But that giant footprint just isn’t as imposing as it used to be.

Victor’s offbeat film may not resonate with everyone, but their approach to this story and its heavy topic is impressive. It feels refreshing to see characters discuss this taboo topic without making it the defining focus of their lives.

Serra’s meticulous shooting and cutting relate to phenomenology; that is, it delivers an account of subjective experience. It implies that Rey’s “personality” is superfluous to his being.