Based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, Paul Ireland’s Measure for Measure is filled with drama, although perhaps not the kind you’d expect from the Bard. No, this is a modern-day adaptation—one grappling with xenophobia, drug addiction, and gun violence. There are no period costumes here, but there’s a stone-faced Hugo Weaving to make up for it.

There are some very funny bits here, but unfortunately the concept takes too long getting off the ground, leaving the first three-quarters of the movie floating in limbo, waiting for it to all make sense.

Loosely based on the graphic novel Une Nuit de Pleine lune, The Owners doesn’t feel new or groundbreaking by any measure. Still, this increasingly bizarre film is grisly and absurd in all the right, self-aware ways; qualities that the comparable (and far superior) “Don’t Breathe” also possessed as another recent horror film that turned the tables against its lowlife aggressors.

I am always game for a movie that makes me reckon with my personal feelings and biases, and I’m glad this one exists because representation will always speak volumes. If nothing else, Critical Thinking reminds you what a chess player can look like.

The trip to a remote farmhouse is just the narrative skeleton on which Kaufman hangs arguably his most challenging film to date, a piece that verges on Lynchian in its surreal register, moving back and forth between reality and a dreamlike commentary on connection, although there may be even less of the former than it first appears.

It’s steeped in traditional cultural locales and details, yet feels bracingly modern with the help of dazzling special effects and innovative action sequences.

Love, Guaranteed is the kind of movie you leave on the TV because you’re lying on the couch with a cold, and the remote control has fallen off the blanket onto the rug, and you don’t feel like going to the trouble to reach down, grab it and change the channel.

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.

For however quaint and sporadically quirky it is, The Mole Agent is an earnest look at old age, and a community full of people just like Sergio.

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.

The Garden Left Behind works best as a message movie, not for the community it’s set in but for everyone else.

Rather than massage the ego of its progressive target audience, this film stares back at us with a piercingly critical gaze.

A tedious and only occasionally amusing comedic riff on “The Purge” franchise.

Worst of all, the pacing here is just off, leading to a film that drags even at 90 minutes. If the cold doesn’t kill you, the boredom will.

Even for a movie about a theatrical sport, focused around an actor who wants to learn what it's like to wrestle for real, You Cannot Kill David Arquette rings far too much like a vanity project.

A general lack of urgency are the main things holding Get Duked! back from being as good as it is promising.

“Copperfield” is a grand, long novel, and in reducing it to 120 minute scale, Iannucci has hewn it to something almost anecdotal.

Fatima is told simply but emotionally, prioritizing the sensorial reality of the children's world and the people inhabiting it. This devotion to the "real" makes the holy vision palpable and plausible.

Much of Matthias & Maxime is pedestrian to the extreme, and there is a general lack of character development across the board, but the way Dolan chooses to frame things, the visual choices he makes, the way he revels unashamed in the big-ness of the emotions, makes it an entertaining ride.

“A complete and utter love affair with your blackness.” That’s how one of the interviewees in this incredibly enjoyable documentary describes the tenor of Soul! a U.S. public television arts and chat show that ran from 1968 to 1973. Mr. Soul!, as the title indicates, is not just about the show, but about the visionary that created it and, a little reluctantly, hosted it, Ellis Haizlip.

The bodies of the competitors are photographed to emphasize their strength, their power, and their unquestionable beauty; classical Greek-style statues modeled after the athletes frame the chapters of the film.

It is a remarkably likable comedy about two good guys still trying to find their place in the world that’s anchored by genuinely sweet beliefs about the importance of friendship, honesty, and, most of all, music. Be excellent to each other, dudes. It still matters.

A sharp, funny, and bizarrely responsible documentary about an amusement park in Vernon, New Jersey.

If Tenet can be a hard movie to engage with emotionally or even comprehend narratively, that doesn't take away from its craftsmanship on a technical level. It’s an impressive film simply to experience, bombarding the viewer with bombastic sound design and gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema.

Lingua Franca isn’t a screed. Far from it. Sandoval pulls us in gently with long, single takes which are often static, immersing us in the quiet rhythms of the lived-in environment she’s created within the Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin, is one of the most deeply personal films of his long and brilliant career, I am not just indulging in a bit of critical hyperbole.

It inadvertently puts Hawke in the position of having to carry a film that's more of a series of half-formed notions, some intriguing, others ill-advised, and a few verging perilously close to cute.

A sweet but ineffective comedy that cashes in on drag culture’s new mainstream fame. While the movie brings up a handful of important topics, the way it handles issues like drug addiction and physical abuse ultimately feel superficial and hollow. Fortunately, a few sparkling performances salvage the show from becoming too maudlin.