Confounding. But not without its thrills.

Can a film be too much and not enough at the same time? This is the conundrum of Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II," a movie bursting with just enough spectacle to keep it from being boring but, when you try to get anything out of it thematically, slips through your fingers like the sand in a warrior's hands.

Similar to other disaster flicks, this film worms through oddball characters, takes interest in the disintegration of society, and the tension that arises from disparate people pushed to survive with each other. But Leave the World Behind struggles where it matters most, fashioning real stakes to accompany the turmoil.

Slash/Back gains its greater power with its entertaining narrative of these Inuit heroes warding off invaders, trying to save their home while earning a deeper pride in that very place and its people. It’s sincerely sweet and entertaining, and its impact is felt even more as the black alien blood starts to fly.

The movie’s quirky setting pays off dividends where you least expect them. At such moments, the movie’s humanism finally seems unforced, and everything is the better for that.

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.

Is it a must-see? No—the middle hour is fun, in that patented easygoing "Ant-Man" way.

In surveying this setting, one might think Almost There is a documentary about impoverished, elderly folks who have sadly fallen through the cracks in the system. Instead, it’s an uncomfortable journey through the later life of an artist, a warts-and-all look at the filmmakers’ process that fails to get past its most troublesome wart.

Clarke, who has skillfully brought other complex and compromised males to life in “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Mudbound,” is wholly convincing both physically and vocally as the surviving Kennedy brother. One wishes that the movie itself allowed him more performing room than it does.

Bears also features nearly wall-to-wall voiceover, but this time it comes courtesy of John C. Reilly. His inherently likable, goofy sweetness shines through, making the material, um, bearable, if you will.

Empire of Light never entirely coheres, but it's worth seeing for the power of Colman's lead performance and the expertly judged backup acting.

Panahi’s latest act of defiance is entirely commendable on a number of levels, but I regret to say that from my own perspective, Taxi is the weakest of the films he’s made since he was enjoined from making them.

The Burning Sea may ultimately be too uptight for its own good, but there’s enough here to satisfy disaster aficionados who’ve already been here before and only really want to root for more of the same.

Until her plight becomes emotionally engaging during the film's creepy finale 20-30 minutes, watching Most Beautiful Island is an unproductively unpleasant experience.

Heavier Trip mostly ambles from one formulaic twist to the next, never really straying far from conventional situations or familiar characterizations.

While “Cleaner” may not be one of the most refined action movies this year, it has a bit more to offer than most, especially when it comes to Campbell’s thoughtful direction and Ridley’s committed performance.

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

As an actor, John Turturro is a stalwart, alert, engaging character player. As a writer/director, he’s one of the quirkiest, hit-and-miss narrative moviemakers around.

Although Robin's Wish is ultimately unwilling or unable to really grapple with the emotions of the people left behind after suicide, it is a compassionate film that will bring information about Williams' condition to a wide audience.

I did my homework and watched the original "RED." It was just as stupid as this movie, yet I liked it a little more.

Studio 666 is the kind of broad horror-comedy that could certainly stand to be a little scarier, a little funnier, and more clever overall. But then again, no other horror-comedy stars rock band the Foo Fighters as themselves, which is the main pull for this special Foovie event.

From an outsider's perspective, however, as poetic and otherworldly as War Pony can be, the reality of its people never feels real.

A movie as dumb and bloody as a slab of meat, but with Momoa playing an emotionally vulnerable logger who you also believe would throw an ax at someone's face.

For a movie about two people who loved each other so deeply, they risked losing everything to be together—their families, homes, even their countries — A United Kingdom plays it frustratingly safe.

It's often painful, and not in a good way; it's painful because of the roads it doesn't explore, the shortcuts it takes, and the special pleading it can't stop itself from indulging in.

Some of it is so predictable you could set your watch by it, but there is a welcome (and surprising) layer of complexity running through the film that makes it a little bit more than your standard fare. The likable and funny ensemble helps too.

It’s one of those films that may be overly reliant on jump scares when you tally them all up, but I’d by lying if I didn’t admit that a few of them legitimately made me jump.

The Meaning of Hitler never quite reconciles its central concern of whether continuing to talk about Hitler is an inherently compromised pursuit, and that uneasiness feels like an unintentional capitulation for an otherwise well-intentioned project.

Tim Fehlbaum’s The Colony has many ideas about the future, and while not all of them quite stick together, there’s a few interesting aesthetic and narrative choices to make it something of a curiosity. There’s enough going on to capture your notice for brief stints before trailing off into dense plot details or well-worn sci-fi tropes.

The film's hazing scenes evoke the boot camp sequences in "Full Metal Jacket" but without the merciless coldness, because the film's hero, Brad (newcomer Ben Schnetzer, in a career-making star turn) desperately wants to belong to the organization.

An admirable attempt at presenting a difficult subject that suffers from an eventual pileup of melodramatic happenstances.

The actors bring a great deal of humanity to keep a wobbly script from going too far off balance.

The film’s inherent emotional power is undermined by the visual and narrative murkiness of its storytelling, including a gotcha twist at the end that has nowhere near the weight of the themes it's trying to explore.

I can’t say this is the best film you will see all year, but I can assure you won’t see another one like it again for a long time.

Its perpetual commentary on the mainstreaming of queerness remains at odds with its very desire to tell its story within the Hollywood system.

The movie builds up enough steam, and has a sufficient supply of jolts, to make Old Man stick to the ribs at least a little by the time it’s over.

Gorehounds need not worry that a movie called Deathgasm plays it safe. This is a defiantly, well, metal movie.

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.

In the end Foxcatcher proves impossible to embrace because of fundamental miscalculations in performance, direction and makeup, along with a certain clumsiness in the way that it tries to use its profoundly sad story to make some kind of grand statement about American values, or the lack thereof.

The first Malick film I’ve watched where the dots never came together to form a legible image.

By turns daffy and dazzling, awkward and artful, Journey to the West takes an ancient tale and gives it contemporary flair.

The star turn, and the only major element in Bewakoofiyaan that transcends the by-the-numbers assembly line rom-com, is Rishi Kapoor.

Sometimes I Think About Dying feels like it needs one more "act" to complete its arc. It's an unfinished bridge. The film attempts an eventual catharsis, but there's just not enough information to get us across the river. We're left hanging.

While “Eleanor the Great” never quite recovers from the moral issue at its center, Squibb’s lively performance makes it memorable.

It’s a brutal slog of a film, admirable in its fearlessness in terms of dark subject matter, but the brutality doesn’t feel worth it in the end.

Armie Hammer’s Will is definitely hollow at the core. Like a lot of protagonists of horror films, it is his overall weakness as a human being that makes him so vulnerable to the nightmare that unfolds in his life.

The passion for the food, the dream, and each other that fueled the beginning of the story is less vibrant when the details are revealed.

The film is constantly undercutting its own ability to generate any real suspense because whenever one of the stories begins to generate any real head of steam, viewers are jerked into another one and the whole process starts over again.

No matter how feverishly Gilliam directs and no matter how enthusiastically his actors act, the whole thing remains too, er, theoretical.

For most of its 80-minute length, The Pearl Button meditates lyrically on water and its effects on humankind. Then it makes a sharp turn into evoking the horrors of the Pinochet regime, a transition that feels awkward and rather forced, diluting the film’s ultimate impact.

The film's promising setup and excellent cast are let down by a script so forgettable that even to try to summarize it is to feel it dissolve from memory.

Problem is, every time the movie gets near an authentic emotion, it barely pauses before making a run to the next Katy Perry song cue. (Seriously, both “Roar” and “Firework” are featured herein.) Given the care that the adult and teen actors invested in trying to honor their real-life counterparts, this feels lazy. If you like Katy Perry songs that much, you may feel differently.

This is a corny, civic-minded "Stand and Deliver" clone that stars martial artist Donnie Yen as Mr. Chen, a generically tough-but-fair teacher who gives hope to a classroom full of would-be high school drop-outs.

It’s always a thrill to think you’re seeing one movie, only to find out that someone is working overtime to offer you a second, different one, and that’s what Vesely does when treating ghosts as an impassioned metaphor for gentrification, and refocusing his monster mash around what makes a true ally.

Although the title is confounding and perhaps the movie’s worst misstep, it’s Byrne’s digitized and stilted delivery that earns the biggest laughs.

It's a pity, then, that Gorman's direction isn't always this razor sharp as there is a current of mordant humor throughout Williams' script that could easily have made this whole affair a pitch-black comedy.

The battle scenes are grand, the martial arts fights are fleet and impressive, and the romantic drama is taken seriously enough. It’s a bit of a headache, but “Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants” still has its cornball charms.

A good ride for the most part, but not much more than a ride; still, genre fans will be keeping their eye out for whatever Lovering does next, with good reason.

Thoroughly grisly and mostly entertaining, “The Mortuary Collection” is a satisfying choice for the spooky season.

Written and directed by Mikko Mäkelä, “Sebastian” plays like a cautionary tale about toxic ambition.

Allen’s direction, with Vittorio Storaro lensing, is typically fluid. If you’re at all inclined to view this movie, you’ll find it’s very easy to take in.

This is not a film for everyone by a long shot. Still, those willing to take a chance and embrace it on its own very distinct and occasionally deranged terms are likely to find themselves agreeing with the ultimate assessment of Mirren, who once described it as “an irresistible mix of art and genitals.”

There’s a compelling cinematic story here, perhaps, but Ricciarelli’s movie is too diffused and scattered and, especially in its first hour, too reliant on commonplaces.

There are enough interesting ideas and at least two confident performances holding A Quiet Place: Day One together, even if it sometimes feels like a first draft of a richer, more complex final film.

Although it's undeniably well-made, it lacks the kind of energy that might have helped make it truly come alive, and seem like more than a historical reenactment.

It’s What’s Inside is a fun jaunt through the dynamics of a friend group and the interiorities of its members, even as it sanitizes its potential.

Through Cobb, we take an alarming and up-to-date look into the life of any average contemporary teenager that grows up and establishes a voice mostly online, struggling to close the gap between the real and virtual. It’s that performance that elevates a film that often rings to be less than the sum of its parts.

It could hit harder, however, were its impact not diluted by the overly long runtime and uneven tone. For a movie that undercuts itself for its own amusement, however, intermittently successful is pretty good.

As unnecessary prequels go, Solo: A Star Wars Story isn't bad. It's not great, either, though—and despite spirited performances, knockabout humor, and a few surprising or rousing bits, there's something a bit too programmed about the whole thing.

Older audiences are likely to find the film less amusing than risible.

While moviegoers desperate to see anything that doesn’t involve a superhero may be willing to overlook its shortcomings, others will undoubtedly be disappointed to find that it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts.

An absorbing coming-of-age drama that suddenly, pointlessly self-destructs with an onslaught of cheap ironies and overkill.

The cumulative effect is draining; you’ll walk out of the theater with the feeling that you, too, have gone to war – and an appreciation for those who are brave enough to do so themselves.

The opening party represents what is best about the movie: it's pure mayhem and it's entirely silly.

This reasonably engaging picture is being pushed as a kind of diversity-prioritizing indie comedy as opposed to the YA film it really is, for reasons not entirely clear to me.

There's a lot here that feels insufficiently shaped or fitfully realized, but at the same time, there's a lot to like. It's the Platonic ideal of a mixed bag. The newness of the new parts counterbalances the ineffectiveness of the stuff that seemingly every fantasy blockbuster does, and that this one doesn't do well.

What are the odds that a second group of people would be foolish enough to break into Stephen Lang’s home to try and steal something valuable to him? That’s the unlikely premise of Don’t Breathe 2, which can’t quite match the novelty and thrills of the surprise-hit 2016 original.

If you want to see cats chasing people in packs, falling over themselves to descend stairwells, and jump up trees to swipe at disposable human protagonists--you will probably enjoy Roar.

Maggie’s Plan almost isn’t screwball enough. The characters must undergo some introspection, as well, and striking a balance between those two dynamics proves challenging.

Scott’s soapy epic—his second cinematic outing this year after the superior (and also partly campy) “The Last Duel”—isn’t exactly a bore, thanks to a number of its actors (like Leto) unafraid to lean into the film’s kitschy tone as well as some fearless moments—like one sensationally go-for-broke sex scene—that meet them at that amplified level.

Sadly, despite a compelling lead and strong craft behind the camera—the color palette, in shades of lavender, pink, teal, and gray, is capably chosen and very of the moment—Smile is diminished by the sheer fact that it’s not as fresh a concept as it might seem.

Children of the Sea is consequently yet another animated fantasy based on hackneyed tropes, like sprite-like martyrs, the guiding hands of fate, and vague nostalgia for a pre-technological past.

The plot seems sillier the more one mulls it over, yet it’s a testament to the film that we’re not preoccupied with questions of probability for the duration of its running time.

Is it a compliment or a slam to say that "Sundown" could be the saddest "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode ever?

The insights offered from the almost two-dozen show biz luminaries are not always commonplace, and Gottfried is always an interesting screen presence, even when he’s far removed from his persona.

Turbo is just strange and lively enough to make you wish it were better.

That the stars of the show are none other than the esteemed Richard Griffiths and Richard E. Grant in invaluable cameo roles and that they end up provoking some of the biggest laughs of the movie demonstrates why Curtis is a comedy genius.

Hemsworth’s character has more action movie clichés than Carter’s got liver pills.

Little Boxes doesn’t manage to summon as much unique insight into prejudice as screenwriter Annie Howell and director Ron Meyer probably expected to achieve. But what keeps their movie watchable is that Lynskey, Ellis and Jackson are completely believable as a loving family unit.

Even if Coogler doesn’t know where to end his movie, it’s tempting to be swept up in his expansive vision, if only because his intent is so firm.

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.

The resulting V/H/S/94 falls victim to the traditional unevenness that is common to anthology horror but with more hits than misses, and a general air of unhinged joy for the genre that these films often lack.

The picture begins vanishing from the memory the instant that its final credits roll, and its laid back attitude suggest it's fine with that.

If you’re a Herzog diehard, “Theater of Thought” offers plenty of new material to chew on, just as ol’ Werner does his consonants. But for most, the questions regarding the nature of reality and the ways our brain interprets it may not be the most insightful, save for how it affects Herzog’s understanding of his artistry.

Yuasa's adaptation of Furukawa’s book is half-thrilling and half-underwhelming.

It it will be refreshing when filmmakers stop going back to the well and begin to make newer observations about young women, making these stories feel more unique. In the meantime, “Summer of 69” is a fun, chill time.

While it doesn’t measure up to some of the director’s greatest such as “In Darkness” and “Washington Square,” Spoor makes an unmistakable political statement nonetheless, with Holland’s lens capturing the heart and soul of the animals some of the film’s despicable characters cruelly disregard.

Clare Lewins' new documentary I Am Ali is a great introduction to the boxer, activist and super-celebrity if you don't know much about him. It doesn't break any new ground, not does it claim to, but it's likable and reasonably thorough.