It’s frustratingly simple, the dialogue over-explains everything and while there are a few solid moments of suspense, there’s too much dead air in-between.

It's a study in deception, and as told by filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"), it's a disturbing and sad one.

As revisionist as it might aspire to be, Never Grow Old is rife with clichés, Cusack’s philosophical villain one of the most conspicuous.

The heist movie has a long pedigree, and while Finding Steve McQueen is no "Le Cercle Rouge" or "Rififi" (or even "Reservoir Dogs"), Johnson keeps the tone light, vivacious, almost slapstick at times. This is a smart choice.

I often rolled my eyes at the kitschy, broad humor that Knife+Heart director Yann Gonzalzez (who co-wrote the film with Cristiano Mangione) sometimes used to characterize his sexually active queer characters.

Does Girl work as a film? No. It does not.

Elba’s skills as a helmer are not yet as refined as his considerable acting chops, but his firsthand knowledge of London’s Hackney borough gives the film a lived-in feeling, a sense of intimacy that registers onscreen in both quiet and violent moments.

The Eyes of Orson Welles doesn't rank with the best Welles scholarship, mainly because it's too overreaching and disorganized, and commits itself to central creative decisions that increasingly come to seem misguided.

This one works overtime, shifting gears repeatedly without once providing enough substance for the viewer to engage.

The result is a listlessly soapy melodrama, save for a little bit of modern-day nudity and bloodshed, could have been churned out 60-70 years ago and then gone largely forgotten in the ensuing decades.

It is tempting to dismiss this story as “sick-lit” but director Justin Baldoni balances the compelling specifics of CF with the larger questions we all face about creating meaning in a world of uncertainty and loss. And he does it with two gifted and appealing young stars, especially Richardson.

Appearances from aliens are sparse in co-writer/director Rupert Wyatt's movie. Thrills of almost any kind, on the other hand, are completely absent.

So much of the needlessly complicated and rules-driven action inside the park plays like wasted motion, visually as well as narratively speaking.

The Mustang becomes an emotional powerhouse in its final act.

Like his prior film, 2015’s “Mountains May Depart,” this new picture from master Jia Zhangke is a three-part drama spanning decades. To this critic Ash is Purest White is a much more successful attempt at depicting a changing China through the lives of not-quite-tragic characters and their sufferings.

Sadly, the film doesn’t live up to the depth of the music that seems to have inspired its existence.

An impressive team comes together in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the heist thriller Triple Frontier, but the results are frustratingly uneven.

Benjamin never quite replicates that creepy feeling of being alone in a dangerous place, resulting in a film that needs some dirt under its nails and to get under our skin to be effective. It simply never is.

What makes The Highwaymen particularly disappointing is that two solid pieces of character work get buried in the filmmaking.

Korine’s visual gifts are on full display, capturing both the opulence of Florida and its scuzzy side in a way that finds beauty in both.

It’s been a long time since there’s been a rom-com with two stars as straight-up likable and easy to root for as Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron are here.

Like “The Shining,” there are a number of different ways to interpret Jordan Peele’s excellent new horror movie, Us. Every image seems to be a clue for what’s about to happen or a stand-in for something outside the main story of a family in danger. Peele’s film, which he directed, wrote and produced, will likely reward audiences on multiple viewings, each visit revealing a new secret, showing you something you missed before in a new light.

By the end of the film, we don’t really gain any new moral clarity about what it means to confront a world where might makes right, and we are left with the discomforting idea that the only thing ultimately protecting women from violence is a good man with a gun.

It would have been interesting to see a better version of a working class “Eat Pray Love” or “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” that swaps thrilling destinations outside the U.S. for a bus ticket somewhere in the States to reconnect with who you are. Juanita feels like an approximation of this experience.

Inflate its profundity, and you’re part of the joke; Dismiss its pleasures and layers, and you’ll miss a strange and sometimes rewarding experience.

J.K. Simmons does not speak a word in I’m Not Here, but his performance is eloquent, anguished, and moving.

Yet, love and beauty remain a constant source of minute, if not fleeting, pleasure. It is not a cure-all in the way it would be in a Disney princess fantasy, but it is enough to sustain existence in spite of its high risk and low reward ratio.

In part shocking and gentle while trekking between chaotic and serene extremes, Black Mother is a fresh piece of work in both how it progresses and how it's assembled like a scrapbook of remembrances.

Panahi can’t help but flaunt optimism wherever he sees it — he lets it rise above it all despite the odds.

In some moments, Gloria Bell is almost an exact recreation of the original, in shot construction and edit choices, even in dialogue (the script was co-written by Alice Johnson Boher and Lelio), but there's enough freshness in the approach that makes "Gloria" a unique experience, funny and a little bit messy. The mess feels real.

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.

A stunningly drab take on the life and legacy of a photographer who merged pornography with grace, Mapplethorpe doesn’t have an artistic signature of its own, so much as a name it doesn’t live up to.

A thoughtful and dynamic blend of genres, Benedikt Erlingsson’s contemporary environmental fable Woman At War continually thrills with a side of laughs.

A movie steeped in the traditions of film noir, and its narrative will become complicated very quickly. Winterbottom, who also wrote and co-produced the movie, creates a story about gorgeous people committing crimes and double-crossing each other, where no one is innocent.

Castañeda and Van Damme's scene-stealing performances don't significantly improve writer/director Lior Geller's frequent reliance on racial stereotypes and gangster movie cliches.

From the looks of it, Huppert had a grand time playing the title character in Greta, a film that could have been released in the era of MTV veejays and VCRs.

It's magnificent and unique, an adrenaline shot of wonder and skill.

Watching all of those clips drove home how dance cinematography like this is mostly — and sadly — a lost art.

I cop to laughing out loud numerous times, and I was captivated by Vianne’s big “what’s good for the goose” style speech at the end. If “A Madea Family Funeral” is indeed the final “Hallelu-YUHRR” for Madea, it’s not that shabby an exit.

It is daring, riveting, and the first great movie of 2019.

Director/co-writer Chris Dowling infuses his sports drama with a grungy sense of place, making Run the Race feel a bit like a Christian version of “Friday Night Lights.”

As competently put together as this movie is, it imparted to me no sense of a higher calling, and thus left me unmoved.

So while the subject of “Prosecuting Evil” is a 4-star one that should be taught in more schools, the sometimes-dry and often-repetitive film about it is a 3-star one.

It's worth seeking out no matter how much trouble you have to go to, because it's special: assured but modest, full of surprises. It doesn't go the way you expect it to, and yet in retrospect each move seems inevitable, like the incremental fulfillment of a prophecy.

The final chapter of the “How to Train Your Dragon” saga is visually stunning and emotionally satisfying, with a conclusion that may leave the parents in the audience a little tearful.

A week after seeing The Wandering Earth, I'm still marveling at how good it is. I can't think of another recent computer-graphics-driven blockbuster that left me feeling this giddy because of its creators' can-do spirit and consummate attention to detail.

I can’t recommend Mega Time Squad but it does have a few things going for it.

Here is a movie that wants to traffic in Coen Brothers-style nihilism yet lacks any of their storytelling skill.

A marvelously kooky, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny buddy comedy.

Such is the nature of this movie. It’s like a series of charcoal sketches with marginalia; there are unexpected mini-flashbacks, and even a visualization of a poem. Hong’s free style isn’t showy; there’s a stillness holding the film together at all times.

Both sprawling and intimate, it tells a story dealing with life, love, friendship, mortality and, yes, AIDS, in a manner that is relentlessly and deliberately unsentimental in tone but which nevertheless proves to be quite affecting.

One of the intense pleasures of Ruben Brandt, Collector (astonishingly, it is Krstić’s first feature) is how it suggests that theft (i.e. "collecting") is the only way to manage obsession.

The visual bonanza cooked up by Rodriguez, cinematographer Bill Pope and editors Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein is enough to power through any narrative bumps with quickly paced action and bleak, yet colorful, imagery.

Isn’t It Romantic tries to have its red velvet cupcake and eat it too, and though it’s tasty and enjoyable while you’re watching it, you’ll realize how hungry you are for something heartier soon after you’ve come down from your sugar high.

If you can fend off the recurring bores of Happy Death Day 2U, Landon and Lobdell have some chuckles reserved up their sleeves.

The screenwriters’ way of describing this world’s fall from grace due to the lures of money and luxury has the power and inevitability of classic tragedy. It could be Greek or Shakespearean, though it is palpably modern and Colombian.

Despite being well shot, confidently written, and acted with a surfeit of commitment by most of its cast (Mendelsohn, who not for the first time reminded me uncomfortably of Trivago pitchman Tim Williams, is director Forrest’s ex-husband), I found the world it presented both smugly insular and overfamiliar.

To be honest, the film does not exactly make a convincing case for the idea of Berlin as a hub of passion, or really for its existence as a movie.

Still: the cold half (ie: the important half) of Lords of Chaos is so ugly and mean-spirited that I couldn't really enjoy the other parts of the film that work, not even Rory Culkin's fantastic lead performance, or the on-screen chemistry that he shares with supporting actress Sky Ferreira (as photographer/love interest Ann-Marit).

Religion can provide some solace, but it can also complicate matters. Science can explain the natural processes, but even then, it cannot account for every detail in every situation. To Dust is about those contradictions and, in the end, about the ultimate one: that, to some questions, the only logical and spiritual answer is that there isn't one — except whatever we make of it.

This is a very bad movie that manages to be as insulting as it is stupid.

Darren Lynn Bousman's St. Agatha goes so full-bore into the scary nun trope it's practically nunsploitation, and the mood he establishes — the look and feel of the claustrophobic "convent in the film — launches St. Agatha into a weirdo plane of phantasmagorical psychological and physical torment.

The Prodigy doesn't work because Buhler's scenario is too predictable to be involving and McCarthy's direction is too indecisive to be gripping. One of these two problems might have been surmountable, but both, at the same time, is lethal.

I suppose there are some who will get off on this movie’s competence and uber-sincerity, but I found the premise one or two bridges too far. Sam Elliott junkies, too, are sure to be delighted.

Far stronger than its lackluster buzz from Cannes suggested, this film is yet another testament to Farhadi’s genius in mining immense power from silence and stillness.

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.

We don’t need funky tea to know what Ali is thinking; we just need Henson, who makes us care.

While it’s a lot of fun, it isn’t as consistently clever or thrilling as its predecessor.

The Unicorn marks the actor and musician’s second time in the director’s chair, and it is an endearing symphony of misread cues, fumbling advances and accidental epiphanies. The stunted growth of modern day thirty-somethings is well-worn subject matter, yet Schwartzman — being a member of the generation himself — approaches it from an empathetic and refreshingly nonjudgmental perspective.

Superficial, dull.

The script is very sparse. It feels like an outline, a general idea rather than an actual filled-out story. Because of this, there's a slightly belabored quality to the film. We see where it's going. We see how it's going to go.

It is also something decidedly novel: a wildly original art-house comedy.

Piercing, the latest horror film by music video helmer turned feature horror writer/director Nicolas Pesce, is more frustrating than it is actually bad. Because Piercing, an adaptation of Ryu Murakami's novel of the same name, succeeds as a darkly comic provocation. I think. Sort of?

Then comes another scene nonsensical scene, and another, and another, each seemingly disconnected from the scene that preceded it. Plot, logic, continuity, become even more meaningless than they were already, which is saying something. It's as if the movie itself has lost its mind. And it was at that point, dear reader, that the reviewer fell in love with the movie.

Though Overgård spends a lot of time alone with his thoughts, Arctic lacks what makes for the best movies of its ilk: it does not inspire much imagination concerning what our hero might do first if he does get back home.

The Mexican film now has a Hollywood remake, one that adds new elements to the story but is less coherent in its message.

Even though Fighting with My Family is undoubtedly about branding the WWE as a fantasy factory, its biggest strength is in its wit and surprisingly big heart, celebrating underdogs who rumble for what they love.

Romano’s performance in Paddleton is an incredible work of humor. He creates a character capable of annoying anyone who’s just met him. Many of the movie’s funniest moments allow Romano to play this awkward being to his full, cringe-inducing potential.

Throughout its majestic 188-minute running time, there is a profound sum of self-negotiation in Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree; a slow-burning and unexpectedly humorous character study as reflective and impenetrable as anything in Ceylan’s filmography.

This is a story that errs toward the familiar instead of embracing strangeness, its freaky kid becoming the distraction when you just want more time with the hole in the ground.

Most modern sports movies feel a few years behind the story—purposefully nostalgic for a feel-good, motivational story. High Flying Bird feels like a product of the 2018-19 NBA season, which may not have a lockout but is dealing with the same issues.

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.

Ejiofor’s movie eloquently harnesses all these customary elements and yields them into an irresistible family film that plays like a brand-new “October Sky” with an urgent human-interest dimension at its heart.

A gross, stupid and relentlessly ugly film from start to finish, this may not be the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of Netflix Originals but nothing else worthy of that title immediately springs to mind.

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.

The result invites confusion and ultimately indifference on the viewer’s part. When one character makes a joking reference to Alec Guinness’ brilliant Ealing comedy “The Lavender Hill Mob” the comparison does this film no favors.

Caveats aside, this is, in my estimation, a typically stimulating but opaque and deliberately frustrating late-period Godard film, good but not great, distinguished primarily by the fact that it's the first Godard film to use no actors at all.

Terrible and insane, and will surely end up being one of the worst films of 2019. But it’s also such a wildly ambitious roller coaster ride that it must be experienced, preferably with friends, to laugh together at its cheesy dialogue, over-the-top performances and multiple, major plot twists.

Cornish's gift for working with child actors is still apparent, as is his knack for dynamic action set pieces. The Kid Who Would Be King is not, in that sense, everything that it could have been. But it is fun where it counts and that's realistically what matters most.

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.

Broad themes like staunch hope, and vital human connection, become cheap sentiments, vanishing into air. “IO” isn’t science fiction storytelling distilled so much as it is vaporized.

Regardless of its missteps, Grossman’s film should be seen as a necessary introduction to a multitude of stories warranting greater analysis.

For a movie that is supposedly about the consequences of absentee fathers, it sure has little of importance to say about the families they desert. The Moon deserves better symbolism.

Whittaker’s performance finds a balance between the tragic and comic scenarios her character experiences.

Close is aces when it's watching its star move through the world, silently checking everyone and everything out, hiding her mental math until it's time to kill some dudes. The action is frenzied but comprehensible, brutal but not wantonly sadistic.

While Chappelle neatly outlines the tragic events caused by his spiritually bruised protagonist, it’s hard to stay engaged with his philosophical query that divides arguments into distinct rights and wrongs early on, and only asks shallow questions.

There’s a truly ambitious film buried in Glass, and I do mean buried. The problem is that Shyamalan can’t find the story, allowing his narrative to meander, never gaining the momentum it needs to work.

Much stranger than fiction, and yet it tells a story that makes perfect sense in the age of influencers and the general need to be seen.