Although he’s playing a man of letters, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers swans around the film’s settings with a pout that suggests that he’s waiting for his cue to sing “Please allow me to introduce myself.”

Every once in a while there is a bright spot, most notably a scene with Gary Sinise as a sympathetic bartender and JoBeth Williams as a fragile barfly.

It’s a simple, stripped-down premise that transcends cultural specificity.

The depictions of degradation and sadism are arguably accurate, yes. But they’re executed in a context that’s almost entirely free of meaningfully specific historical detail, to the extent that one comes to suspect this movie of commodifying human suffering.

For the most part, Buffalo Boys is a decent folk tale, despite Lee and Wiluan's periodic application of "Game of Thrones"-style sensationalism.

Touch Me Not is definitely abstract and intellectualized, although I didn't find it exploitative. But so much of the film left me cold, even bored.

This may all sound too shameless and syrupy, but to its credit, A Dog’s Way Home scratches the surface of something I, as a pit bull obsessive, have never seen a “dog movie” do.

Truly dreadful...Replicas is completely ludicrous on a dozen or so levels, but it depressingly avoids the camp or style needed to make an implausible story work as pure entertainment. We’ll go with your goofy story, filmmakers, if you give us a cinematic reason to do so. Replicas never does. Not even remotely.

It’s a hollow replica of its source material.

With its balance of exuberant humor and rigorous insight, Bathtubs Over Broadway provides as stellar an education for the uninformed as Siegel’s “The Bathrooms Are Coming!”

Stories like this one remind us that we need to find a way to cope with the random and the unknowable.

But even with its all-around noble dramatic intent, particularly from Butler, the film struggles to leave a mark.

An astonishing directorial debut.

What’s perhaps most interesting about director Jen McGowan’s film is how much she rescues it from that dreadful opening act, although she can’t quite get it back to something worth recommending, largely due to a major flaw that grows more prominent in contrast as the film gets better.

A sometimes diverting, but overly familiar series of set pieces in search of a good melodrama.

This movie doesn’t work well as an edifying documentary, but it might go over well with anyone who wants to follow its unconvincing conspiracy-theory-like logic (apparently, genetic research is bad because it's "playing God" and is partly underfunded and overseen by the Chinese government and cocky American scientists!).

This film succeeds because it knows how to strike the right balance between laugh-out-loud comedy and quiet, effective drama. The clichés are there, but its heart beats loud enough for us to embrace and forgive them.

So excruciatingly awful that you have to wonder what it was, other than their paychecks, that could have possessed the cast and crew to keep coming back each day, when it must have been obvious from the first day of shooting that the project was the most hopeless of cases imaginable.

A cross between "Ocean's 11" and "The Expendables." American Renegades is also not nearly as fun as that sounds.

This is a pretty rote story, and many of the plot points beggar belief, but Kusama's flourishes help somewhat to elevate the material into something more meditative, a character study of a woman in ruins.

The words that keep ringing in my head regarding Adam McKay’s Vice are courtesy of the bard: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Between Worlds is also, unfortunately, a weird "Twin Peaks" homage, complete with industrial band ohGr's not-so-industrial, "Twin Peaks"-y score and "Twin Peaks"-like theme during the opening credits sequence (performed by "Twin Peaks" composer Angelo Badalamenti, no less).

A mishmash that has as much of an identity crisis as its name-switching, past-hiding, resume-inflating main character. Perhaps there is a clue in the credits, where we learn that Lopez is the producer as well as the star. As is so often the case, here that means that the movie is more about what would be fun for Lopez to do than what would be fun for the audience to watch.

There's not only nothing new here, there's nothing convincing either. And if I'm supposed to judge Bumblebee based on how well it succeeds at what it tries to do (rather than what came before it), it's still not very good.

As for those special effects, they are vivid, colorful, convincing. They aren’t quite so good that you don’t notice the WWII fantasy scenarios enacted therein are clichéd constructions reenacted in high heels.

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.

Aquaman is as concerned with scientific accuracy as “SpongeBob Squarepants.” And that’s one of many reasons why I like it.

Unfortunately, Mary Poppins Returns falls quite short of being practically perfect in every way. The cast puts on a good show, but very little can be done to salvage the forgettable numbers by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and dance routines that already look dated.

The film finds von Trier wrestling with the claims of misogyny and misanthropy that have followed him his entire career, but not in the way you’d expect. If anything, he leans into both, daring you to look into the abyss with him as he interrogates his own dark side and banishes himself to the underworld.

An aching film on such exquisite pains of impossible love, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War concurrently swells your heart and breaks it, just like the sore memory of a lover that drifted away from your life, or an intensely craved kiss that never was.

A massive, imposing work of non-fiction filmmaking that demands attention despite also being the sort of artwork that doesn't really need any of our attention to be great. Like a monolith, this thing just is. It also just happens to be great, sometimes despite and sometimes because of its mega-sized breadth and scope.

This Quake delivers with skill. The build-up to the disaster nicely intensifies with a feeling of dread, and some of the subtlest early effects are the most powerful.

There is an undeniable neorealist quality to Labaki’s work, bringing to mind not only the first half of Garth Davis’ "Lion," but also the likes of Vittorio De Sica’s "Shoeshine" and Sean Baker’s "The Florida Project" (even though it falls short of the artistic command of these titles).

It's a simple thing but if it's not the first film to show World War I taking place under heavenly blue skies it certainly feels like it is. The odd clarity is a horrible but absolutely necessary gift from Jackson and Walsh to these men.

But it looks great, right? Not really. Directed by Christian Rivers, a longtime art director for Jackson, the overall look asks the question, “are you sick of Steampunk yet,” and for me, yeah.

All the pieces would seem to be in place—on paper at least—for a rich and gripping grown-up drama. So why does the result feel so elusive and unsatisfying?

Most of its strength emerges from a well-directed ensemble, one able to convey the high concept of a nightmarish situation without losing their relatable humanity.

Those not on the Deadpool bandwagon already will probably not be converted by this version and those who are fans may find it to be a vaguely interesting curio they'll watch once.

It would seem like an impossible feat, but somehow, directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman have breathed thrilling new life into the comic book movie. The way they play with tone, form and texture is constantly inventive and giddily alive.

Not much has changed for people of color, which probably wouldn’t surprise the author. And yet, he’d demand we not give up. This film powerfully conveys that message. The struggle is real, but so is the joy. We live, we laugh, we love and we die. But we are not gone. Our story continues, carried onward by our storytellers.

While Nona does eventually reward audience members with stark drama grounded in a daily nightmare, it risks cheating itself of its full impact, pretending for most of its running time to be a fairytale it certainly is not.

Not all tearful screaming sessions translate well from the page to the screen, and this is an excruciating example of overkill.

A gentle low-key comedy.

Throughout Clara’s Ghost you can’t help but think that you’re watching a quaint home video that would appeal to the members of the subject family only — the unnecessary square aspect ratio certainly doesn’t help with the amateurish feel of the whole thing.

Amid all the jaw-dropping tales of bullying behavior, there is a constant and almost mordant acknowledgement of the one thing that Ailes was scarily right about: that no public official will ever again be elected “without the skillful use of television.”

There’s a makeover montage in Dumplin’, and it’s a lulu. It is overseen by drag queens who specialize in doing Dolly Parton, and it doesn’t get any more extra than that. Like so much in this film, this makeover comes with a refreshingly smart, funny, wise, and warmhearted twist.

Hedges’ film is stronger in its first half, when it’s an understated character drama, than in its second half, when it morphs into a contrived crime thriller. But the performances remain uniformly strong and hold the story together, even as it threatens to spin out of control.

The film is an onslaught, sometimes silly, sometimes profound, but always riveting and emotional, and dazzlingly sure of itself.

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.

So listless and dry that the only jolt of electricity I experienced was when the screener blew up seven minutes before the end. The half hour I spent fighting with the Magnolia Pictures website was more suspenseful and interesting than anything I saw in their product.

A sharply crafted drama that has elements of noirish suspense, the Danish-Swedish coproduction, which is distinguished by exceptionally fine performances by its three leading actors, offers an incisive, penetrating look at the psychological disorientation and dilemmas of people caught between cultures.

The makers of The Possession of Hannah Grace clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty — and mostly scare-free — horror film ends up being.

DriverX is worse than just one of the year’s most vapid movies, it’s an out-and-out nightmare of late-stage capitalism.

The movie's promise collapses under the weight of inconsistent characters and a generic, cliché-ridden plot.

The action/competition scenes have some dynamism, but the overall look of the film is unimaginative.

Wu takes an observational, matter of fact stance to these different lives and this overall enterprise, reminiscent of how Kyoko Miyake took us through the looking glass of Japan’s idol culture in “Tokyo Idols,” another doc on a similar sociological beat that would make for a great double feature or essay.

I dislike much of Mirai because most of the film's Kun-centric scenes (which take up 90% of the movie) are split between the character's un-imaginative daydreams and his full-blast fits.

It isn’t a bad movie as much as a dead one, never managing to click in the way all involved presumably hoped it would.

It’s one of those rare horror movies to leave you with good holiday cheer.

At a daunting 188 minutes long, Never Look Away takes its time, doesn't force its themes. Like one of those novels that follows a family through multiple generations, Never Look Away follows Kurt from Dresden, to Düsseldorf, to Berlin.

Easily among this year’s finest films and laced with an unapologetic social message, Happy As Lazzaro dares one to imagine a reality where each individual would task themselves to be as selfless and morally whole as its main protagonist. If only.

The whole movie feels oddly stranded and dramatically inert, despite the obvious passion that went into making it.

This is an ambitious and enlightening documentary, filled with wisdom and asking great questions, some of which may never have a satisfying answer.

The Great Buddha+ is one of those movies that's much more rewarding to think about than it is to watch.

There are some interesting things going on, and some insight into New York's economic hierarchy, but the film veers off into a hard-to-believe crime heist, and, ultimately, none of it really hangs together.

Watching young men become militarized is one of those gut-churning documentary topics. And yet the main subject of Of Fathers and Sons would argue that this is the only path to freedom and to happiness. The best parts of Talal Derki’s award-winning film not only seek to understand that but to reason with it.

This film about an exemplary woman, made by women, is as much a pleasure as it is a lesson.

For the bulk of Shoplifters, Kore-eda works in a beautiful register that feels both detailed and genuine at the same time. We get to know these characters so deeply, watching them all at their jobs.

Unless you’ve a vested interest in New York City or, like me, you were born and bred within its confines or in its neighboring shadows, The World Before Your Feet may seem like a hard pass for you. But this well-made and intriguing documentary isn’t about New York so much as it is about an unusual idea seen to fruition.

The Christmas Chronicles keeps getting in its own way with a patched-together story, raggedy tone, thinly imagined characters, and weak humor (Santa explains that he doesn’t really say, “Ho Ho Ho” — that’s fake news).

You could build a suspension bridge over the gap between what Robin Hood could have been and what it is. Its hero is credible as a man who wants to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but the storytelling is so impoverished that the message can't stick.

Ralph Breaks the Internet dares to encourage kids to not only be themselves but allow their friends to be true to their wants and needs as well. Your friend doesn’t have to be exactly like you to be your friend. It’s a message that’s very well-threaded through an entertaining, clever ride.

The devil figure is Federico (Riccardo Scamarcio, last seen in "John Wick: Chapter Two"). He's eloquent, charming, faintly sinister man who, as Bryan points out, seems to magically appear in their lives at moments of crisis.

Even if this unique absurdist has not exactly been your cup of tea previously, he might finally win you over with this deliciously “Dangerous Liaisons”-esque and thoroughly female-driven period film, co-written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara.

It’s commendable that the film is committed to the character-based world building evident in the first “Creed.” With this sequel, however, the Creed franchise seems destined to travel the same road the Rocky franchise did; the intensely personal and original vision of its creator is slowly being corrupted by the seductive demons of fan service.

The fact is that as good as Plummer and McDermott are here, Ford ultimately writes himself into a corner that requires actions in the final act that don’t ring true.

There’s a big meaning to all of this, and yet the movie can’t eloquently express it, even though the metaphor is in the title.

The film's Gerber-bland back half is plenty bad, but the first half of Speed Kills features some of the year's worst filmmaking.

The movie is not interested in wrapping things up via a “smash the mirror” epiphany. It’s to Oliver’s credit that he’s taken a more tough-minded than easily cathartic approach. And Ansel Elgort’s wonderful performance does appropriate honor to the ambiguity the movie is trucking in.

It’s an impressionistic film, concerned more with the atmosphere around genius than explaining it away.

This is the kind of clever jolt to the system we want from horror thrillers — an unexpected commentary on today’s society burrowing its way through an intense story.

Jinn holds several beautiful elements, especially in its central mother-daughter story.

An empathetic examination of the traditional lifeline of a tight-knit community, threatened to be torn apart by an inevitable wave of capitalist takeover.

Damned if it doesn’t work beautifully for nearly the entirety of its two hour-plus running time. Green Book is the kind of old-fashioned filmmaking big studios just don’t offer anymore. It’s glossy and zippy, gliding along the surface of deeply emotional, complex issues while dipping down into them just enough to give us a taste of some actual substance.

A movie with good intentions but is uneven in tone, leaving me with mixed feelings. It felt like the speech was preempting any criticism with sentimentality. The uneasiness continued in the film’s wild swings between tragedy and goofy comedy.

A big-budget, holiday-timed blockbuster about…racism, which may not exactly be the joyful, escapist entertainment families are looking for this time of year.

The women are all compelling though never too-polished storytellers. Whether they succumb to the horror of what they're describing and start to cry or remain stoic throughout becomes part of the experience of hearing the tale.

This film is a powerful love letter to the Black Church, offering a soul-shaking introduction for the unfamiliar and a grandmotherly yank of the arm for those who know—it drags you from the theater straight into the pews.

McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.

Infinite Football is as casual as a conversation with a stranger that ends up going for more than hour — the kind where just by being attentive and sporadically asking questions, you take away someone’s life story, and understand the one passion they could talk about on end.

The two couples in this film are so annoying that I did not just want them to break up with each other; I wanted to find a way to break up with the movie, or perhaps scrape it off my shoe.

One of several reasons River Runs Red is such a resentment-generating movie is that it takes a vitally serious subject and makes such a relentlessly dumb hash of it.

The film is best when it doesn't take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, for the most part it takes itself very seriously.

Although the film’s premise is based on a true story, Luis Ortega’s El Angel is not a faithful biopic. Somehow, the facts are darker than their fictional counterparts.

A thoughtfully feminist spin on “Pretty Woman,” this film is not.

I know that this type of culinary experience is in fashion nowadays, but I’m a fat guy who can’t muster much excitement for a $160 meal I can fit in my navel.

Fidell trusts the dynamic between her two main actors, and allows them a lot of leeway. The conversations have a fresh and improvisational quality. Best of all, she leaves space for the unexpected and the random.

So much time and energy put into something that, try as I might, I could only muster interest in sporadically. All of this well-meaning effort to waste on a film that never finds the right tone to connect with viewers. It takes a lot to make a movie like Outlaw King, even if it provides so little.