There’s more to the Oasis story than what we see here, even if this does capture that historic moment when two brothers from Manchester fronted the biggest band in the world.

A Compassionate Spy is strongest in digging into the archives to give audiences who might not know this cultural history a real feel for what was happening.

The best An Inconvenient Sequel can offer is the formidable image of Gore, nearly 70, refusing to stand down. It's inspiring, but even the filmmakers have to know it's not enough. I was moved by the movie, and then I stepped outside and looked at my phone.

While Dosch’s work is ever-changing but always accessible, Polunin never comes close to matching her acting ability, which ultimately leaves “Simple Passion” lacking.

It is such an old-fashioned action film that it practically plays like a discarded Chuck Norris script, just with some modern gender politics and social issues in play (although someone like Cynthia Rothrock could have easily headlined almost exactly the same film in the ‘80s).

Clumsy in its second act with its humdrum dialogue wedged between an alluring first act and a hasty third act. With such a ripe opportunity to explore the contentious relationship between our ability to fabricate both art and love, the film is a seductive noir that, as a whole, comes up empty.

There are a few brilliantly realized moments, the acting is mostly strong despite the weak script (Affleck and Cavill are both superb—Affleck unexpectedly so), and there's enough mythic raw material sunk deep in every scene that you can piece together a classic in your mind if you're feeling charitable; but if you aren't, “Batman v. Superman” will seem like a missed opportunity.

It shines through just enough to warrant a look but not quite enough to elevate this into the memorable experience it could have been.

The script fails to find depth in some of its most crucial characters, and sometimes feels performatively intense, but the Oscar winner for “Oppenheimer” shines throughout, adding subtlety and grace in places other actors would have ignored.

It is nonetheless a very well-mounted film, with outstanding contributions in Alvarado’s cinematography and Eric Andrew Kuhn’s subtly expressive score.

In the days where we’re all cooped up at home, there are certainly worse things you could do than settling in front of this pleasant film and its upbeat musical tracks (original music by Hit Boy) with a positive attitude and a smooth bottle of wine. It will go down easy.

You don’t have to be a Green Day fan to find this movie interesting, but you’ll definitely be more inherently invested in it if you are.

The film's relentlessly quirky style of comedy is consequently very self-conscious. Every joke in Ping Pong Summer is a variation on a theme: 1985 was the most awkward time to be alive.

For better and for worse, Joshy believably creates the sensation of a low-key weekend hang with a bunch of bros. You probably wouldn’t want to spend that much time with these people yourself, but at least they’re never boring.

I can only recommend “Don’t Turn Out the Lights” so much, mostly because the characterizations and the dialogue are so cliched and unlovable that it’s often hard to enjoy all the twists and turns that Fickman (“Race to Witch Mountain”) tiptoes past throughout this diverting Choose Your Own Adventure genre exercise.

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

While the documentary has the feel of a scrappy passion project, the message itself remains powerful. Given the chaotic times, There’s Something in the Water also serves as a stark reminder that not all governments have their citizens’ best interests at heart.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose work as the villain in Enemies Closer is the only reason to see this film.

As for the a capella performances, there is something a little prefab and not as organic as those in the first film.

Though it has a tight course of events and is spiked with a few surprises, First Love is far more impressive for how it collides its many characters than what it ever feels for them.

Dashcam succeeds as a barrage of icky stimuli that may go great with a rowdy audience.

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.

Hypnotic may not be clever or energetic enough to keep your mind from wandering, but it is charming in its own stumbling way.

The process of discovery that Evan goes through to get closer to Louise is what makes Spring special. But what Evan discovers about Louise feels like an after-thought that frustratingly overwhelms the film once it gets to where it's going.

At its best not in its scenes of men acting like children or the beats that feel more written than organic but in its most believable scenes of joyful, male friendship in between the broad humor and melodrama. I just wish there were more of them.

The fury of Osborne’s performance, nonetheless, keeps “Mārama” a worthy anti-colonialist statement that harnesses the symbolic virtues of genre cinema for its understandably virulent tone.

Watching The Lure is a bit like having manic depression—the thrilling high points are just as relentless as the crushing low-tide ebbs.

Entertaining in spots, obvious and irritating in others, with a one-note schticky performance from Christopher Waltz as Walter, Big Eyes is a strangely conventional entry in Tim Burton's filmography.

Looking Through Water wants to tell us about the importance of uncluttered connections to the natural world and to each other, but too often it ignores its own advice.

There’s a resemblance here to both the story and the movie adaptation of the story told in “The Perfect Storm.” The characters involved are making a good faith effort—but good faith efforts by humans can only go so far.

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

The film is not so much tone-deaf as old-fashioned, emerging from a more innocent time (say, three weeks ago) when "politics as usual" actually had some meaning.

Realistically, Overlord is a simple mechanism to deliver squib packs and swear words, a function that the film's creators accomplish despite their otherwise unremarkable story's choppy pacing and general humorlessness.

Tucci is wonderful, but Timlin comes close to eating him up almost as thoroughly as her character does his.

Hearts Beat Loud could use more urgency in the telling, more sense of what is at stake for the characters.

Like most Netflix movies, no matter what The Mother would be a perfectly serviceable thing to have on in the background while you tidied the living room or answered emails on your phone. The spy-movie setup is generic enough to follow while doing something else, and the villains’ motivations are only as specific as the plot needs them to be, which is to say not very specific at all.

It’s not always clear what the movie is trying to say, but even its misfires are more interesting than most because of what Reeder and her stars bring to their characters.

Egoyan has always delved right into fraught familial ties without shying away from ugliness, and “Seven Veils” is perhaps his most overt exploration of familial trauma.

Párvulos remains a largely successful, if sometimes too idiosyncratic, take on the zombie story. The creature prosthetics remain grisly fun, and even among the washed-out cinematography, the blood thrums with crimson terror in one gory sequence after another.

Kaufman keeps things moving at a brisk pace and delivers the sort of cheesy dialogue and story beats that you should expect from this dorky, but serviceable genre exercise. He’s a better action filmmaker than he is a straight-up dramatist, as you can unfortunately tell in scenes where the protagonists struggle to emote through visually and emotionally flat dialogue scenes.

Under Paris has some ecological messaging and commentary on the political games that cost lives, but it’s mostly about sharks and swimmers. And that works in any language.

Baahubali: The Epic may not deliver a better edit or experience, but it does highlight what was already great, especially once it settles into a groove following a ten-minute intermission break. By that point, most of the cuts have already been made, leaving the leisurely pageantry of Rajamouli’s regal milestone to speak for itself and at its own preferred volume, too.

The story is simple — too simple, in fact — and some of its more intriguing elements could use further developing, but the presence of Huppert makes Souvenir well worth a look.

As a date-night viewing option for this weekend, this nearly all-sung autopsy of a failed marriage would pretty much qualify as a Valentine’s Day massacre.

Conners’ first narrative feature is a rocky start but not without some promising notes.

A melodrama with an interesting trick in its tail, but I don’t think that director Garcia pulls the trick off as well as she might have. The movie is sumptuously shot by Christophe Beaucarne; every frame is robustly picturesque. But the story could have used a little less “Under the Tuscan Sun” and a little more “All That Heaven Allows.”

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.

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.

Ready Player One is at once familiar in its fabric and forward thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI. It’s an ambitious mix that can be thrilling while it lasts, and yet it fails to linger for long afterward, leaving you wondering what its point is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom.

By no means watch this if you’re looking for a nourishing cinematic experience. But if your idea of a cozy rom-com is an old Hugh Grant one, this has some cine-comfort-food-carbs for you.

Coming in under 90 minutes and with little narrative fat, “Zero” is a worthy successor to “Saloum,” a reminder of a rising talent on the international action scene who blends his knowledge of his homeland with a deep appreciation of the history of action filmmaking.

While this is one of the better “V/H/S” anthologies of late, I can’t but wonder if they shouldn’t take two years to make the next one.

Using its hyperactive nature to disguise how there’s not much going on, “Mutant Mayhem” is a pretty shallow venture thematically. Having said that, it also has undeniably strong visuals and enough creative voice work to make it tolerable on a hot August day when families need an air-conditioned theater for a few hours.

None of these characters or their stories is nearly as engaging as the movie’s many gonzo action sequences, though.

Sadly, the film crashes when it decides to offer some sane explanations and connect dots that didn’t really need to be connected. There’s a much stronger version of “Old” that ends more ambiguously, allowing viewers to leave the theatre playing around with themes instead of unpacking exactly what was going on.

Roper, who came up directing music videos, shapes a post-heist getaway between four unscrupulous criminals, all strangers until they get to know each other far too well, with surprising style and panache. It’s a shame, then, that all that table-setting (and a quartet of riveting performances) gives way to agonizingly cheap turns by the end.

The movie gives pretty good showbiz lore but not much depth.

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.

It’s a film whose tranquility and humility sometimes work against it, even in those moments where it overcorrects with didacticism.

Baena is obviously having fun presenting the familiar tropes and then subverting them, but these pieces don't really fit together, nor do they lead to a satisfying conclusion.

Co-directors and writers Billy Bryk and “Stranger Things” star Finn Wolfhard pay homage to ‘80s body count pics with a sappy but likable coming-of-age comedy about a group of summer camp counselors who are stalked and slayed by a masked killer.

Swartzwelder, going for “thoughtful,” instead achieves “glacial.” A romance wants to sweep viewers up, not bog them down. Still, Old Fashioned is both unusual and intelligent enough that, despite it not being entirely MY cup of tea, I’m hoping that it’ll succeed at doing at least a little more than addressing the converted.

Park coats the big heart he has for these people with warm LA lens flares, and finds energy from sharp cuts and wall-to-wall music. It’s the performances that prove to be spotty, with flat line-readings all around and displays of emotions that struggle to reach from the script to the audience.

Lane, still an incandescent knockout at 52, continues to pull off expressing sensuality and sexiness better than most actresses of any age.

Not the type of Iraq soldier film one may expect. It does present intricate experiences of PTSD, but does so with distance.

Grudge Match belongs to a fast-growing genre I'll call "Senior Citizen Action Porn," or SCAP. Proud members of SCAP include "Red" and its sequel, "Red 2," the "Expendables" series, and the best of the 2013 crop, Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Last Stand."

I suspect people want to be distracted by something that makes them stand up and cheer. “Beast” serves that purpose well-enough.

The scratchy, VHS-quality visuals and cheesy graphics of the film’s opening suggest that we shouldn’t take any of this too seriously, but rather enjoy the lo-fi, ‘80s nostalgia trip. And a scrappy, underdog enthusiasm is unmistakable throughout.

Director and co-writer (with Boris Yutsin) Atsuko Hirayanagi has a knack for staging scenes in a way that makes them intriguingly uncomfortable, but that doesn’t succeed in elevating Oh Lucy! from some of its more commonplace features.

The strength of Mid90s lies in its small observations about a very tight sub-culture, and what that sub-culture provided its most devoted adherents.

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.

Yoshiura’s film resonates with the fantastic visions that we’ve come to hope for in the best Japanese animation. When the flat character design, two-dimensional villains, and unengaging narrative counter-act that, it falls flat. Like its two lead characters, it is of two worlds.

It's a mixed bag overall — hence my star rating — but it's worth seeing nonetheless, largely because of the explicitly Russian qualities its sustains.

We’re left with a mid-level take on Superman that, at times, will remind you of the 1978 version, but doesn’t quite match it for pure pop entertainment value.

Malevolent is far from perfect — it kind of sabotages a solid first hour with a clunky, tone-changing climax more likely to leave you queasy than scared — but it’s still better than A) a lot of theatrically-released horror films and B) a lot of Netflix original films.

While it has some good performances and noble intentions, it doesn't really bring anything new to the conversation and ultimately fails to give viewers any compelling reason to wade through all the bleakness and misery that it has to offer.

It’s not just about the divisiveness of 2020; it’s designed to be divisive itself in 2025. To that end, even if you hate it, it’s kind of done its job.

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.

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.

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 film gets teasingly close to bringing up some hefty conversations about women in the music business, but in the end, those notes stay flat, playing more like a melody that doesn’t stick around for long.

It’s all pretty effective but in the end, somehow empty. Not to make an unfair comparison to a classic, but the movie “Deliverance” actually followed through on all of the themes that its storyline suggested, while in Backcountry, we end up with a storyline in which all but the most elemental stuff winds up as window dressing.

An enjoyable cast, including movie-stealing work from Jodie Comer, holds it all together, but one can still see just enough glitches in this matrix to wish it was better.

Bloodsucking Bastards doesn’t quite hit all of the marks it needed to in order to wholeheartedly recommend, but it is often surprisingly clever and funnier than most horror-comedies of the last two decades.

As a comedic confrontation with the inevitability of aging and death, it’s no “Jackass Forever.” But it’s funny and a wee bit poignant, and the main trio has the good taste not to ask us to feel too deeply about three guys whose chief appeal is that they’re miserable and petty and witheringly sarcastic and don’t try to hide it.

Despite its shortcomings, “Saturday Night” works as a crowd pleaser for those who watched Chevy Chase take command of the Weekend Update desk, John Belushi tear up a stage with his intensity, or Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner crack up the audience with their absurd characters.

The French farce aspect of the film is its true heartbeat. These characters are not really serious people, and it is difficult to take any of them seriously. That’s fine, it gives Three Night Stand its special lunatic edge.

For this viewer, the formal element and the narrative never quite cohered, and I wound up admiring the movie for its ambition while unsatisfied with its achievement.

It’s a nightmare parable about mortality, grief, faith, and the fragility of the flesh, made by one of the most fascinating filmmaking teams in American cinema, the Adams-Poser family.

The dual nature of “Babi Yar. Context” as both an essay movie and a cut-up historic document might create an uneasy tension with viewers who would like to know more about whatever they’re looking at. If nothing else, Loznitsa succeeds at being upsetting.

Hooper’s latest is tasteful and restrained to a fault. It is easier to admire than love.

Audiences are likely to see this film as more resigned to the inevitability of permanent conflict than providing any insight in how to move away from it.

Bertolucci is indeed a master, and Me and You evidences numerous thematic connections to his earlier work as well as constant proof of his distinctive gifts as a stylist.

The Moment is something different, a big swing into the mockumentary genre satirizing the pressures of pop stardom and the struggle for creative control. It doesn’t always work, but Charli xcx, as ever, throws a wild party.

Sidney works more as an explainer for why Sidney Poitier remains such an important figure in American history—not just Hollywood history—than it does as a warts-and-all biography of Sidney the man.

Nighy is, of course, exceptional in fleshing out what could have been merely a set of irascible tics and traits. And the Andersonisms, while not particularly exhilarating, are not thematically inapt. But this is a film best consumed by those who don’t mind “slight.”

It’s a biopic about one of the most brilliant people in the history of the planet, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking – a man famous for thinking in boldly innovative ways – yet his story is told in the safest and most conventional method imaginable.

The most galling thing about Transcendence, though, isn't its inability to get a handle on what, if anything, it wants to say about the enormous changes happening to the human race, it's the movie's ending, which seems calculated to reassure us that everything's going to be fine as long as the right people are in charge, especially if they're good looking.