It’s interesting to witness the encounter and hear the thoughts of young people from such a bitterly divided land.

Being a mom is hard, a universal truism that "Nightbitch" explores in ways that are occasionally inspired but mostly blunt and banal.

Despite the familiar settings and tropes in director Sammi Cohen’s debut feature film, Crush feels refreshingly contemporary.

The end product is true to the spirit of the franchise while pushing its self-aware humor and fourth wall-breaks until it all seems like the result of a dare: how big can we make the air quotes around “sincerity” while still tugging on heartstrings?

Zephyr-light and plenty zany, Michael Duignan’s “The Paragon” serves up space-time shenanigans with a smile on its face, in a manner quaintly reminiscent of sci-fi and fantasy B-movies from a bygone era—think “Krull,” “Flash Gordon,” and “Masters of the Universe”—when stilted action sequences, preposterous plots, and kitschy costume design added up to mad spectacles of cheesy, cornball grandeur.

Co-stars Will Smith and Margot Robbie remain consistently charismatic, even once the script for this heist caper collapses in a punishing pile of its own twists and double-crosses.

Despite the care put into the story and its heavy themes, Live Cargo has no emotional impact.

The smart script is brave enough to venture beyond yesterday’s fleeting Twitter fodder for its pop-cultural references. As a result, Paper Towns might be the only movie to ever pay tribute to Walt Whitman’s poetry, Woody Guthrie’s music and the empowering theme song from the “Pokemon” cartoon series.

Its lively finale is heartening, given the patience that Laaksonen was obliged to exercise before he could live his life out in the open. But the insights of the movie are too scant for much of a real impression to take hold of the viewer.

If anything, the picture is a touch too benign for its own good, though it does earn enough laughs to warrant a recommendation, at least in its first third.

Antibirth is novel, mysterious, and sometimes even dangerous enough to suck you in if you surrender to its confrontational, avant garde style.

The challenge for the sequel to a beloved film is maintaining enough of the original to make the fans happy without being too repetitive or confusing newcomers, and Hocus Pocus 2 gets that just right.

Hyena is such a nasty and brutish item that even the hardiest of moviegoers may find themselves repulsed by some of the sights that Johnson has in store.

This is the kind of piece that needs to move 100MPH from first scene to last for you to overlook its flaws. It slows down for too long to recommend the ride.

Everything in 1BR is over-exposed, often literally thanks to the movie’s basic camera set-ups and general emphasis on naturally and/or harshly front-lit close-ups, or medium shots of brown stucco walls.

There are compensatory pleasures. The supporting performances are above and beyond, and Glen is so likable and so believable as a decent man pushed too far that if this film does well, he might be in line to have a late-in-life career renaissance in another of the senior action flicks that have become ubiquitous.

Frustratingly poised on the knife's-edge of "pretty good but not as good as you want it to be," the movie might've benefitted from a more leisurely but focused pace that would've allowed the characters to breathe more, and the legal and scientific concepts to be explained with greater clarity.

The Fate of the Furious distinctly drops the level of quality in this series for the first time this decade.

If I wanted to read my way through a film that features words dancing around the screen as if they were waltzing Post-Its, I would have sat through a foreign movie with subtitles instead.

Little Accidents is quietly earnest, handsomely produced, and too dramatically inert and dogged by the commonplace to make much of an impact beyond conveying the dreariness (as opposed to the dread) of life in a coal-mining town.

A high-concept animated film about animals with superpowers is brought to vibrant, endearing life by the superpowers behind the scenes: lively voice talent from an all-star cast, a script that is smart, exciting, and very funny, and, above all, the ability to tap into one of humanity’s deepest emotions, our love for our pets and theirs for us.

Decoding Annie Parker is not a movie to which this critic can give a favorable review. I’d feel more like a heel about it if the movie hadn’t actually irritated me to the extent that it did.

Zippy and zany, cute and cuddly, Storks manages to balance wild humor with winning heart—for the most part.

The aftertaste of this madcap escapade is unexpectedly sweet and romantic thanks to its unapologetic commitment to womanly smarts and pleasures.

What’s really wrong with Richard is that he’s a boring monster.

Quickly and convincingly, it becomes its own funny and fast-paced phenomenon with its own modern-day charm.

Loro feels like the work of a more mature artist. Sorrentino knows exactly who his Berlusconi is, and, with the help of Servillo — who delivers a characteristically impressive performance — manages to make the former Prime Minister’s total lack of introspection seem ironically revealing. Ecco Silvio: pathetic, alone, indestructible.

The costume design from Jane Petrie creates a timeless elegance. And Pfeiffer’s performance only becomes richer as her character reveals the kindness that’s been buried within her cool, stylish persona all this time.

Unfortunately, Afflicted is as emotionally involving as a really accomplished special-effects sizzle reel.

It's executed with such passion that it holds together better than you might expect.

I was also so disturbed by this film that I felt I had to rewatch certain scenes just to confirm that the emotional exhaustion I experienced while watching it wasn't just a personal preference, but rather a problem I had with what Iwai and his collaborators do in the film.

Four Latinx-themed horror segments of variable quality are sandwiched between a modestly amusing wrap-around story about a haunted traveler, simply called “The Traveler.” It’s not enough, despite some amusing performances and effects-driven thrills.

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.

It captures so well the insanity of the contradictions we–particularly women–have to live into daily.

The period spy thriller The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is only intermittently engaging and amusing, and those portions of the movie that succeed are also frustrating. Because they’re cushioned by enervated, conceptually befuddled, and sometimes outright indifferent stuff.

Miss Julie is a rather strange experience, with its consistently static medium shots of the three actors, as they roar their lines at one another. But it has an undeniable power.

It’s relentless in its depiction of the slapstick-infused shenanigans that will keep the little ones entranced in their seats.

Critics have a habit of calling movies tonally inconsistent, but this should now be the textbook example, a film that veers wildly from war movie to character drama to satire to history piece to a blended gray of nothing.

The signal virtue of For No Good Reason, a documentary about Steadman, is that it puts a lot of that work up on the big screen to galvanic effect.

What it really is is a screwball comedy with a black-hearted center, an energy extremely difficult to capture and maintain, but Healy—as actor and as director—manages to do so.

Despite being played by two charismatic and more-than-capable actors, the title characters never click in the way they need to. They're too cool and vague for the volcanic story they enact.

Rather than a how-sweet-to-be-a-lout story that turns semi-cautionary, Filth attempts to depict genuine madness.

As exceptional as the acting in the picture is, and it is wonderful — Whitaker and Keitel are as inventive and surprising as they’ve been in years, and the supporting roles played by the likes of Ellen Burstyn and Stan Carp are well-sketched — it can’t entirely lift the movie from the rut it has all but plowed into by the end credits.

Chin and Vasarhelyi make a solid case for why space exploration should continue, and the benefits we could reap from it, provided it doesn’t keep our heads perpetually lost in the clouds.

It is a movie for golf enthusiasts, pure and simple.

A decent first half and solid voice work throughout succumbs to total chaos for the second half and the realization that there’s almost no actual artistic intent here. No story, no character, no world-building, no design. It’s all bright colors and loud noises. You’d think we’d evolved beyond that by now.

Even as it’s spinning through enjoyably goofy action set pieces, most of them enlivened greatly by a fun performance from Jason Momoa, there’s a desperate familiarity to the entirety of “Fast X” that makes it feel more like reheated leftovers than this series has before.

The movie is a mess, but it's a rich mess. It has weight. It matters.

It’s as if Bertino the director knows that Bertino the writer hasn’t done quite enough to engender audience interest in Polly’s plight so he seeks to pummel the audience into terror instead of drawing them in.

Betsy Brandt gives a compelling performance as the title character whose spirit is slowly breaking, a woman of the arts faced with a painful and personal manifestation of ambiguity.

Boss Level compensates for its overstuffed scenario and relentless derivativeness—actually, it makes you stop caring about its relentless derivativeness—with concentrated fast pacing and breakneck action.

Vampire stories can be so rote that it’s noticeable when the rules are even slightly changed, and that's when Boys from County Hell shows a little spark. But this is more the clear case of a horror movie that forgets to have fun.

It’s only after the supposedly central mystery is solved that The Pale Blue Eye fully commits to its actual business, serving up in full a tale of loss and wrong-headed resolution. Bale’s characterization, subtle and slightly enigmatic throughout, here blooms. And eventually sears.

The result is a disappointing, shambling piece of melancholy with a few interesting scenes here and there that never cohere in such a way that allows the legendary actor to disappear into the character.

This plot sounds like “The Beguiled,” right? Trust me, this movie is NOTHING like “The Beguiled,” For one thing, it’s not nearly as plot-driven.

Irons is the gawky one. His Hardy is a socially inept bachelor who is ill-suited to the role of nurturing mentor and father figure.

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.

There’s no compelling evidence onscreen that the huddled masses that the script is so concerned with are truly moved and edified by watching Ben’s rebellious acts and anti-capitalist slogans on TV, or if he’s just their latest shiny object of distraction.

While casting Glover as a reluctant everyman takes admirable chutzpah, there’s not much to “Mr. K” beyond its second-hand surrealism and strained counter-mythmaking.

What this Netflix original lacks in narrative originality, it makes up for through a game voice cast, a wonderfully realized world, and a surprisingly dark spin on its story.

Unlike a lot of comedians working these days, Iglesias is not particularly aggressive or vulgar--at least not as seen here--and the material that he covers is not particularly edgy or radical.

Alexandre Moors’ film is also so lacking in anything new or compelling to say — either emotional or political — about its subject that it ends up a rather dispiriting slog of a movie.

Joy doesn’t work entirely, and the structure set up so clearly in the opening sequence is dropped early on for no apparent reason, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t get carried away at the story of a mop sweeping the nation. It’s a lunatic “Mildred Pierce," without the murder.

Harris, as always, imbues his characters with a wearied conviction, which goes a long way towards making Stan feel a bit more layered than the feel-good Ned Flanders type the script saddles him with.

Add to this a “What Are The Odds?” plot twist that’s so preposterous it’s practically offensive and you have a movie that seems fit to go off the rails. And yet. Arterton, Mbatha-Raw, and the child actors — Lucas Bond as Frank and Dixie Egerickx as his school chum Edie — bring such commitment and integrity to their characterizations that one is inclined not just to hang in there but to root for them all.

What Hammond and Markiewicz are most gifted at is cinematography. I’d gladly watch this film’s entire B-roll again just to bask in the gorgeous Mexican landscapes and vivid snapshots of the cities, outdoor markets and parking lots where various matches occur.

Thankfully, Jodo’s latest is also way too weird to be hagiographic. It’s indulgent, absurd, frustrating, and more than a little gross. It’s also idiosyncratic and funny enough, and in ways that Jodo’s fans will probably love.

One interesting fact that comes out of Gameau’s self-abusing ordeal is that even though he has been eating the same number of daily calories—a normal 2,300—as he did before, he has packed on 15 pounds mostly around his waist.

Only worthwhile storytellers could take an elevator pitch like this one (the last two people on Earth) and produce long-lasting curiosity about its inherent beauty and horror.

Will Smith’s performance as Omalu is lovely: small-scaled, precise, imbued with righteousness but not tritely pious.

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.

This doesn’t just go sideways. It goes in several directions at once, often in ways that are nearly impossible to follow, but it really comes down to how much you enjoy the challenge.

In the days since, I have found myself thinking about these characters at unexpected moments. Maybe the film, like its characters, just needs a little time to grow on you.

The drama Dom Hemingway explores involves a vicious lout finding a form of redemption, and while that's an all-too conventional scenario, Shepard's movie plays it out in a brisk, inventive fashion and delivers a moviegoing experience that's almost equal parts stingingly sharp and genuinely sweet.

There are plenty of flaws in Spaceman. Mulligan’s character is underwritten . . . The overall tone might also be too sleepy, too introspective and despondent to some’s liking. But I just love Sandler in this register.

The turgid revenge thriller The Foreigner is an all-around lousy movie.

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed has a fairly standard talking head and archive video approach, but it has an inspired variation on the common documentary storytelling method of animation or art.

A trip recommended strictly for Almodóvar's hard-core fans. Throughout the movie, I wished not so much for the plane to land, as for the movie to finally take off.

All it takes is one breathtaking shot near the conclusion of A Tale of Love and Darkness, when the aged Amos stares helplessly at his troubled mother through a pane of glass coated with teary rivulets of rain, to know Portman has an artistic vision worth sharing and developing.

What could have been a powerful, timely, and potentially funny meditation on the grieving process is instead a work that's about as thin and flavorless as a gum wrapper.

This is an inspirational movie in the broadest sense. You have to squint a lot to see the true story within it, but it's there.

Picture This is a rom-com that’s more effective as com than rom, with several big laughs and a thoroughly winning lead performance from Simone Ashley.

The guerrilla-style approach is ambitious. The access is incredible. The film itself, however, is less so.

The most striking and curious aspect of Man of Steel is the way it minimizes and even shuts out women.

The best thing about Emily is that she’s played by Evanna Lynch. Lynch, who played the charmingly abstracted Luna Lovegood in some of the Harry Potter pictures, has grown into a young woman who looks like a rougher-edged Saoirse Ronan.

The great value of Christian Duguay’s A Bag of Marbles is the degree to which it makes such a barbaric and bewildering chapter in human history comprehensible for young audiences.

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.

Drunktown's Finest shows a filmmaker struggling to find her voice. It's a whisper here, but we can hear it.

Anchoring it all is the ever-great Moss, who is also a co-producer on the picture. The actress is always heartbreakingly good playing character forced to endure a lot of humiliation, and in this scenario, she gets it coming and going. She illuminates the serious mess that this farce is about, underneath it all.

It’s clear that the irrepressibly charming Sedgwick and Bacon love to share the screen, and it is an absolute joy to watch their effortless chemistry. I just wish it were in a better picture.

American Fable is ambitious, maybe too much so sometimes, but there's an intense pleasure in the boldness of the film's style, its confidence in what it is about.

Branciforte's writing lacks the nuance to take its absurd concept seriously, so it awkwardly injects comedy.

With a movie like “Offseason,” you can tell that the filmmaker knows what the usual benchmarks for a “good movie” are—something you can’t say for all B-movie directors—and Keating does achieve them in some aspects of the production. That’s what makes it so confounding when other elements don’t live up to those standards.

Hunt has some excellent bang-bang escapism, but it's ultimately too shallow to recommend.

You always get the sense that you are watching a screenplay’s first draft that never got the fleshing-out that it clearly needed to make it stand out, either from a dramatic or emotional standpoint.

It’s hard to feel freely when you are constantly and loudly reminded by every aspect of the movie that you are supposed to feel things.

While the action and suspense set pieces are executed with typical Ritchie bravura, the movie falls flat a lot of the time in between.

Aunt May is such a delectable force that the audience waits with baited breath to see if she’ll do what we’d expect from an auntie. And she always does; her consistency is the warmest form of comfort.