It's better than OK, and a few elements sing; but overall it frustrates. Its delights come from its willingness to depart from formula, but formula still rules it.

Austere and old-fashioned almost to a fault, The Railway Man offers tastefully safe treatment of a horrific subject.

Both the source material and the man reading it are legendary. And that inherent cool factor in Extraordinary Tales carries the final product a very long way, although its shortcomings do sometimes force me to wonder if it could have been a masterpiece instead of a mere curiosity.

If Torn Hearts had pushed itself a little harder, it could have ascended into camp heaven, and maybe become a cult classic. As it stands, it’s an unapologetically high-femme distraction that’s better than your average Lifetime thriller.

Its makers know all too well how to fully exploit the power of a catchy pop song.

The frustration with Lizzie is that a lot of it works, but the style - elegant, hushed, and period-appropriate - acts as a damper on all the fraught possibilities. Lizzie is at war with its own impulses. You can sense there's a sexy overheated melodrama in there, yearning to burst free of its corset stays.

This is a movie that observes Sharpton; it does not try to explain him or measure his impact. Those who are not already aware of his history may find it superficial or confusing.

Cooper doesn’t try to tie neat bows either. He allows this superstar to be flawed and damaged, but not in a cheap melodramatic way, in a relatable way that actually gives you strength to find a reason to believe in seeking help. Springsteen becomes as raw and as frank as the characters in his songs.

It’s a mid-budget riff on “Bullet Train,” after all—but meet it on its altitude, and it’s a bloody, funny good time.

This is subtly acted by both leads, especially when the characters fall silent and you see shades of doubt and sadness flicker across their faces.

Stiepleman’s affection for his aunt and license as an insider are palpable as he gently, perhaps too gently, teases her seriousness of purpose, her discipline, and her legendarily awful cooking.

Run All Night is proof that quality action films don’t really need to reinvent the wheel each time out as long as they make it spin this smoothly.

As with most comedies that throw everything out there (and throw common sense out the window) to get laughs, some bits and pieces don’t land. But the Lesters thankfully cram in enough ghettofabulous gags to keep me continuously giggling.

It's for-horror-nuts-only, but if you can see it with a rowdy crowd, Dead Snow 2 will appreciate exponentially.

There is a welcome sense of familiarity in Bridget Jones's Baby — but also of the fresh and au courant.

While Suntan is more than just a tale about an older man becoming involved with a younger woman, it's unfortunately not as profound when it later claims to be a statement on the movie you think you're watching.

Only fitfully entertaining or illuminating.

It's more of an affectionate spoof on 1980's "summer camp" slasher films.

While Yu doesn’t always balance the zany physical comedy and earnest family drama she aims for, and D’Angelo’s script is packed with far too many threads, the film works largely thanks to the irrepressible charm of star Sandra Oh.

The Pact starts off on an intriguing note and has some moments when it does work (especially the ones involving Grete), but while it's theoretically filled with dark psychological underpinnings, it seems oddly reticent to deal with them in any significant way.

Despite its lack of originality, as well as its lackadaisical storytelling and world building, it satisfies in that amiably weird way that only a "Cars" film can.

When this well-cast dramedy allows its characters to breathe and simply exist, it highlights Levy’s future strengths as a filmmaker, making it a promising launch for the Emmy winner into the film world, even as I hope he trusts his actors (and his audience) more in future projects.

It's more fulfilling to the soul than appetite, but the indulgence — if not the brief escape — is an inestimable perk.

The Dead Lands doesn't add up to much, but it is always on the verge of becoming more than just a bed time story for guys that wish "Braveheart" had a biceps-kissing baby with "Ong Bak."

The end result is itself not especially intriguing.

Despite its unabashed fondness for clichés and tired tropes, Shot Caller mostly succeeds in its aims because of Waugh’s sober, matter-of-fact approach to the material.

As the pandemic is still raging at this moment, it's obviously too early to tell whether "Together" is one for the ages or another one from that time. It's alternately brilliant and amateurish—a four-star acting masterclass at its best and a two-star ripped-from-the-headlines botch at its worst. Split the difference and you'll arrive at something like a holistic consideration.

The movie’s half-hearted jokes, on frustrated women artists and their blind male collaborators, tend to be one-note and thankfully besides the point. But if you adjust your expectations, you’re more likely to accept Lux Aeterna as a vigorously realized doodle.

What I saw was a racially suspect disaster and another exploitation of Black pain for cheap, lazy thrills. Good Madam is a bad movie.

In Jakob’s Wife, the classic vampire theme is looped into an insightful and often very funny commentary on marriage and the limitations placed on women.

[Borgli's] mealy-mouthed timidity in addressing genuinely controversial and provocative subjects, especially those that require a radical kind of empathy, not only renders his supposedly edgy provocations dull. It also makes one wonder if he’s at all interested in women as people.

It's not a complicated narrative, possibly because the movie’s designed for younger viewers. But the conception of “Drifting Home” is so stunted that its only memorable thing is its untapped potential.

For non-French audiences (or those not well versed in world politics), many references and soundbytes can soar over the head, but “The President’s Wife” is most concerned with uplifting its lead lady in all her schemes, sarcasm, and competence, and this it does well.

A slight, but very satisfying, and at times, surprisingly moving, documentary.

My Zoe dares to lead with its feelings, and that fearlessness provides a striking spectacle itself.

McDonagh’s film is well-crafted throughout but ultimately has nothing fresh or insightful to say about the ugliness of white privilege.

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.

It's possible to filter out the irritating aspects and enjoy the movie as a raucous, often brilliantly assembled spectacle. But we shouldn't have to. The fact that we do makes an otherwise hugely impressive sequel feel small-minded.

The movie is inescapably lifelessness, unintentionally dumbing itself down while desperately hoping to be profound.

A tepid situation comedy in indie drama drag, "The Black Sea" lacks a sense of urgency beyond a few moments of canned tension between Khalid and Georgi (Stoyo Mirkov), a haughty Bulgarian fisherman.

Kim’s Video reaches so hard for quirky profundity that it falls on its face. It’s a real shame because there’s an interesting story buried in this frustrating film.

The performers continue to exhibit those qualities forty years after the fact, reuniting in the evocative, sometimes puzzling, and sometimes moving Valley of Love.

Director Ruth Paxton puts you on edge from the beginning in “A Banquet,” and holds that unsettling mood throughout. But because the sound design is so vivid and Paxton’s eye for disturbing detail is so creative, it’s even more frustrating that the payoff is so unsatisfying.

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.

The trouble here is a lack of texture and urgency.

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

I Love My Dad is the kind of story that doesn’t overthink what makes it so laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s a whole lot of ugly, extremely human things going on each time its comedy makes you cover your eyes.

The result is both a madcap success on its own bizarre terms and an informative distillation of each auteur's sensibility.

It’s the simplicity of the story combined with the excellence of the filmmaking—again, often deceptively simple—that makes it work.

If a well-intentioned, occasionally funny, often moving yet nonetheless flawed "womance."

It's been some years since Jolie did an action movie, and she carries the center of Those Who Wish Me Dead. Unfortunately, it's a film with no real center.

An outrageously dull documentary.

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.

This is the rare film written, directed and edited by women.

Ballerina is a halfway decent action movie that will suffer because it lives in the massive shadow of John Wick, one of the best modern franchises.

Co-written by Ferrara and Christ Zois, who also wrote the Ferrara films Welcome to New York, The Blackout and New Rose Hotel, this picture can be described best as minimalist pretentiousness, a lot of angst and suffering with no particular place to go.

As social commentary, Joker is pernicious garbage. But besides the wacky pleasures of Phoenix’s performance, it also displays some major movie studio core competencies, in a not dissimilar way to what “A Star Is Born” presented last year.

After the forced bursts of energy, nightmarish dream sequences, and a strained bit of self-absolution recede, you soon realize that writer/director Niclas Larsson’s “Mother, Couch,” a morose, nonsensical family drama is about as interesting as the lint between the cushions.

Lurie is especially good at the narrative and character elements of the practice and game scenes, using them to move the story forward and build to the kind of resolution we look for in underdog sports stories with compelling emotional stakes.

In terms of underwater worlds, once you’ve been to Pandora, you can never go anywhere else. But the fictional Caribbean island where The Little Mermaid takes place is certainly a pleasant escape.

It isn’t necessarily bad, per se, and it contains just enough in the way of intriguing elements to more or less hold one’s interest for its running time. However, Next Exit never shifts into a higher dramatic gear at any point, and it concludes on a note that is more than a bit unsatisfying.

As in Almodóvar’s films, the heightened use of color and settings is stunning, and the filmmakers are not afraid to express passionate emotion. That creates movie magic.

Everything about the romantic comedy What If is cute. Utterly cute. Undeniably cute. Uber–duber cute.

All My Puny Sorrows has all the elements to pack a devastating punch, but there's no real sense of urgency. It's like people are just marking time, like the end has already been determined, it's just a matter of resigning oneself to the inevitable.

Ride is a film overstuffed with themes, ideas, and characters, but it works because it's made with the kind of urgency that comes from a filmmaker who has to tell this story and get it out on celluloid right now, or they'll bust.

The movie might just make people associate bullying with a hollow, tedious endeavor that lacks any satisfaction.

This movie is progressive intentionally, but not formally, and the difference between its creators’ themes and consideration is unfortunately glaring.

While “Superior” has a rich style and a couple of intriguing ideas, it ultimately doesn’t add up to much, leaving you with the feeling that you’re watching an inferior homage.

While the autobiographical elements are incredibly light, there’s enough humility here to make the viewer surrender to the film’s melodic charms.

The Banker remains only serviceable.

Aggressively mediocre, Netflix’s “The Monkey King” takes no risks and offers too little humor, heart, or action to entertain all but the youngest in the family.

There's no denying that Cruella is stylish and kinetic, with a nasty edge that's unusual for a recent Disney live-action feature. But it's also exhausting, disorganized, and frustratingly inert, considering how hard it works to assure you that it's thrilling and cheeky.

What Happens Later doesn't reach the heights of Ryan’s beloved romantic comedies, but its sweet comforts might be just the ticket if you’re looking for laughter-through-tears on the couch on a Sunday afternoon.

In the end, these films are perfect for a streaming service, bite-sized jolts of genre entertainment that aren’t ever long enough to be truly annoying, even when they’re not working. And while I think they could be more refined, I admire the go-for-broke DIY nature of these shorts and their quirky charms. Even when they’re this pissed off.

It’s tempting to knock Primate for its dumb characters and contrived plotting, and for the various hoops it throws its characters through to get to the goods. And make no mistake, this script and its inhabitants are rock stupid, to the point where you might want to yell warnings at the screen. It’s an instinct that, frankly, I don’t get; don’t you want these people to get killed off in increasingly grotty ways?

Roach is a director who can do stylish, clever compositions when it suits him, as demonstrated in his flamboyantly silly “Austin Powers” movies. But you wouldn’t know it from this film, which prizes information delivery over visual pizzazz to such a degree that it often feels more like a pilot for an HBO comedy series than something that can only be properly appreciated on a big screen.

It helps a great deal to have a wickedly fun ensemble ready to play this murderous game, led once again by a physical, engaged, immediate performance from Samara Weaving.

While Salomé isn’t anything but a mainstream director, he’s a good one, keeping the movie percolating up to its crowd-pleasing finale and coda.

Berk and Olsen accomplish a formidable action-comedy, one that puts their horror roots in neon lights and sense of humor on equal display.

The movie does pretty well as a treatment of identity and selfhood in a social landscape that grows increasingly alienating as it becomes more transparent. But it somehow fails to wholly satisfy.

Burial has a hard enough core, both in terms of its central premise and its pulpy tropes, that for about 30 minutes, it almost works as a decent B-movie, right before it unceremoniously falls apart.

When the film focuses on the wine-making process, in the progression from vine to bottle, it's a fascinating and detailed look at a very specific subculture.

The Glorias is consistently a visual treat, as you’d expect from Taymor.

I’ve always liked Reynolds for the most part, but he does his best work yet here in Satrapi’s odd, pitch-black comedy about a man who talks to his dog and cat. And they talk back.

This is a likable, funny diversion, and sometimes more than that.

So vague is the picture about the meaning of the artworks it presents that they proved to be of little interest to me, until I researched them afterward. Far more compelling is Beuys himself, with his signature hat, haunted gaze and outspoken belief that art can be a vehicle for communication.

Moonshot is the kind of movie that’s frustrating because of what makes it endearing—there’s so much that makes you wish it were more original. No rom-com set in space should feel this ordinary.

The movie doesn’t quite make it to two hours, but my patience was tried pretty much any point at which the movie went a long stretch without a song.

An earnest and considerate examination of two people falling in love, but the movie lacks certainty when handling these characters separately.

Directed by Rod Blackhurst from a script by David Ebeltoft, it tells you what kind of movie it is from its gruesome opening image and continues in that mode for another hour and forty-five minutes. It's anchored to a lead performance by Scoot McNairy that ranks with the best of classic neo-noir.

The problem is that Uta Briesewitz’s “American Sweatshop” doesn’t quite have the courage to really follow through on its ambitious and timely concept.

Playing Banks over the course of more than a decade, Hodge consistently makes the movie compelling, even when it veers toward a safe, faith-based uplift.

The film is well-made and well-acted, but it merely suggests depth rather than actually having it.

Baskin does what many horror films try and fail to do: it makes you feel like you're a passive prisoner/spectator, watching as an especially vivid nightmare unfolds.

Tackles the tricky topic of gender dysphoria with sensitivity and grace.

The truth is that pacing often trumps realism, and The Accountant 2 just doesn’t build enough momentum.

Engrossing and a little moving. And Isaac is a very winning and effective messenger of Peter Malkin’s heroism and humanity.

I applaud whoever thought of casting Jennifer Beals as Sam’s mother, the lone grown-up who has any real impact.