The Swerve is the opposite of comforting.

Thankfully, there’s enough affection and charm in the movie’s first half to keep Teenage Badass running on fumes most of the way home.

The entire story takes place in and around a spectacular house with curiously sterile interiors that are more like the setting of a magazine ad for expensive liquor than a home real people live in. The bigger problem is that the world of the characters is not fully inhabited either.

Lost Girls and Love Hotels is too vapid to work as a psychological drama, too silly to work as a passionate romance, and too tepid to work as a sexy guilty pleasure.

Alone gives us little reason to care if our hero makes it out alive, but I have to give credit where it’s due: Jessica isn’t written as some damsel in distress. Though she does make a questionable choice or two, she’s more crafty and engaged than a standard victim.

Agenda-driven films make for dreary viewing and Infidel is never dreary. Aided by excellent performances across the board by its international cast, "Infidel" works best when it's an old-fashioned thriller.

Writer-director Sean Durkin ("Martha Marcy May Marlene") has delivered a nearly perfect film here — the cinematic equivalent of of those substantial, long-but-not-too-long short stories that says everything about its subject without actually saying everything.

The viewer is not only a fly on the wall at this party, they are also on the dance floor being carried along as the music moves them.

But the true strength of Residue is in its images. Gerima finds a poetic grace in his framing while forcing you to focus on unexpected things.

While Antebellum is dazzling to the eyes, it also leaves an icky taste in your mouth in its leering, exploitative depiction of violent, slavery movie tropes.

While I rather doubt that co-writer/director Yuval Adler pitched his new picture as “'Death and the Maiden' meets ‘Leave it to Beaver,’” that sure is what he ended up with, conceptually at least.

The various praiseworthy elements of The Devil All the Time ultimately override the feeling that they aren’t quite cohering into a great movie overall.

Textured in ways that family entertainment is rarely allowed to be and even more visually ambitious that the other Cartoon Saloon films, this is a special movie.

From the beginning of Ammonite, writer/director Francis Lee trusts his lead performer to convey an incredible amount without dialogue. And that trust pays off in one of the best performances of Kate Winslet’s career.

A movie that finds poetry in the story of a seemingly average woman. It is a gorgeous film that’s alternately dreamlike in the way it captures the beauty of this country and grounded in its story about the kind of person we don’t usually see in movies. I love everything about it.

At some point, the movie forgets comedy and dwells on cruel calamity. It almost makes one wish García Bernal could reboot it, with a more polished text.

Our Time Machine leaves you wanting a whole lot more, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Rich in impulsive sensuality and knowing humor, the film captivates even as it stumbles through too many subplots. It’s a tad convoluted but never dull.

I Am Woman is a start in the right direction. However, based on this film you might think that the most interesting thing about Reddy is that she married her manager who then got addicted to cocaine. It's a frustratingly shallow approach to a singer who deserves better.

All In: The Fight For Democracy is a valuable public service wrapped in an educational, informative and engaging documentary.

For all the nostalgia that comes with seeing David pop in a VHS tape, the movie’s time period allows Stevenson to focus our attention on the horror emitting from just one screen.

Geraldine Viswanathan has been steadily working her way through the coming-of-age subgenre, on her way to becoming a star. In the open-hearted romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery, the charismatic whirlwind of an actress is vivacious and lovable.

No one expects The Babysitter: Killer Queen to be anything other than your basic escapist entertainment, but it fails even at this modest goal. It's a defiantly stupid movie, with references so bizarrely dated that it verges on fascinating.

The movie is so much more nuanced and bold than the first wave of outrage charged. With Cuties, Doucouré announces herself as a director with a keen visual style who’s unafraid to explore these cultural and social tensions.

The film's solid grounding in friendship and comic teamwork carries the day. Unpregnant becomes more affecting as it goes along thanks to the sincere, committed, and mostly unaffected lead performances by Richardson and Ferreira.

Expect to be moved to tears during this reflective film as clear-eyed as Souza’s photo books, reliving the memories of dignity that once piloted the country and often pondering, “How could we have gone from this to Trump?”

David Byrne’s American Utopia is a joyous expression of art, empathy, and compassion.

It’s a fun soulful documentary that’s rarely ever invasive, depicting the type of statesman we’re sorely missing today.