The true measure of a good tale is in the telling, and writer-director Noah Buschel spins his yarn in an unexpected, ultimately satisfying fashion.

Alexander Payne's Downsizing starts with an intriguing "What if?...", the launch-pad of all good sci-fi stories, and very quickly devolves into a bland story about a nondescript khaki-wearing guy who learns to care about the less-fortunate.

Comedy being what it is, your mileage may vary, but for me the pure candy-colored exuberant silliness of Barb and Star didn't just make me laugh. It provided solace, too.

That heartfelt element translates into the benevolence of the adults in this film—Perlman is especially big-hearted, no surprise there—not to mention Tsang’s obvious affection for her troubled protagonist. Together, they imbue “Marvelous and the Black Hole” with enough warmth to overcome its practical limitations. Talk about a sleight of hand trick.

The Lost King gets sidetracked. Still, it's a great story!

Basically, Cam is one of the most entertainingly inappropriate guardians for impressionable youths since Auntie Mame.

The film doesn't burden pinball machines with more meaning than they can stand. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is strictly low stakes. This is part of its knowing charm.

Miles Ahead is a film of ugly, bold bravado.

It doesn't take long to realize that writer-director David Ayer has spent more time adding flesh to his battlefield sequence than he has in fleshing out the screenplay. The end result, while technically impressive, is a dramatically bloodless affair, despite the gallons of gore on display.

To the Bone isn't all that interested in the actual treatment of the condition, even though the majority of the film takes place in a treatment program. The film also gets hugely distracted by a romantic sub-plot, a sub-plot that is pushy and awkward from the jump.

Though it’s still not entirely successful, I’m glad this version exists. Coppola’s restoration has turned a hot mess into a noble failure.

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.

Vivarium isn’t a fun watch, and not just because it’s generally claustrophobic and insistently bleak.

Coming Through the Rye may be the closest we’ll ever get cinematically to the novel. And in being so far away from it, it’s close enough.

A film that keeps changing direction so often that it's almost a miracle the filmmakers don't give us tonal and narrative whiplash.

Marks’ “Turtles All the Way Down” shines with John Green’s trademark whimsy. It’s a charming, delightful YA romance that doesn’t bind itself to the sole enjoyment of its target market.

This is Everett's first film as a director, and there are times when it shows. But what he brings to the table - as a director, writer, and actor - is his intuitive "take" on Oscar Wilde and the performance alone makes this riveting and revelatory viewing.

It’s delightful and almost miraculous the way this movie manages to work as a comic heist picture on a huge scale, and with a comic science-fiction picture blended into it…while managing to cohere to the whole, you know, Marvel thing.

Cora Bora, written by Rhianon Jones and directed by Hannah Pearl Utt, is designed to showcase Stalter's signature brand of absurd irony.

The problem is, for all its surface intelligence, "Mockingjay, Part 1" has little depth, and that sometimes makes it much more frustrating than a more knowingly shallow and silly movie might have been.

In my view, it’s one of the most genuinely, and valuably, patriotic films any American has ever made.

What does all of this add up to? Damned if I know. But it's fun to see a film that plays by its own rules to such a degree that any comparison to anything else falls apart.

Even when Big Time Adolescence starts to become ordinary, it always has a freshness from its on-screen talent, and from the promise of Orley’s directorial eye.

I started longing for a relationship comedy/drama with some real bite and observation to it, and fondly remembering the 2009 German film "Everyone Else," directed by Maren Ade.

Watching his Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 is to see a director who knows how to balance corporate need with personal blockbuster filmmaking. Mostly.

We can never quite settle into the connection to the couple because while it makes it indisputably clear, despite some claims of Photoshopping, that they really do scale the tallest and most iconic structures in the world, there is a discomfiting artificiality to the storytelling.

It feels a wee bit padded even at a brisk 96 minutes (it’s tough to do “deadpan” in a comedy and not have it come off as merely slow) and has trouble staying on the right side of too-cutesy. But it sustains an innocent storybook tone throughout, thanks mainly to strong performances from its lead actors, Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher, and lush images of the New Zealand countryside.

Stanfield is a true movie star, radiating decency even as the character's shell hardens.