With a surprising amount of side laughs and an isolated, elaborately decorated chamber in the woods full of opportunities, Villains sets an intriguing stage for a quartet of skilled performers, all clearly enjoying the chance to fly their freak flags to comical effect.

Although the characters tend to lean heavily on caricature, Rodriguez, Wise, and Snow seem to have plenty of chemistry with each other.

The makings are all there for a fascinating character study, which Stowaway more closely resembles than a sci-fi thriller. But the fact that we know so little about these people beyond a few basic traits makes it difficult for us to feel as emotionally invested as we should in their fate.

While this may read like only a mild recommendation for most readers, it is a hearty one for genre fans. We are lucky enough to be in a very strong era for horror, and I have a feeling Singer is going to be a major part of it.

It’s worth noting that The Cat and the Moon is almost two hours long — Wolff could have easily cut it to 85 minutes and achieved the same tone and emotional peaks, but this movie is specifically meant to exemplify passion.

The movie is a lot of fun and masters a pleasingly detached yet sardonic tone early on, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have a lot more to offer after that, aside from a growing human menagerie of admittedly lively characters and a philosophical through line that’s pretty worn out—something like, “Humans are the real monsters.”

If “Triangle of Sadness” falls short of greatness, it lives comfortably on the tier of goodness, even as it unpacks such bad, bad behavior.

This is the kind of solid, grown-up drama we don’t see very often anymore. In a world of superhero blockbusters, this low-key throwback of a Western is the stuff of timeless cinema, but it may as well be a unicorn.

Batkid Begins brims with subjects who come in with their own enthusiasm, color, and comedy.

Director Steve Gomer approaches dire and potentially devastating situations in understated fashion, allowing the purity of their prevailing humanity to shine through.

Half-nifty, half-cheesy.

Just bloody eye and ear candy.

With "Maria," about the final days of the iconic American-Greek soprano Maria Callas, Larraín turns his "historic women" movies into a near-perfect trilogy, giving us a stunning conclusion to his series.

Hello, My Name is Doris is like a beacon of beckoning human warmth just waiting to be cherished.

For all its ferocious focus, this is a relatively quiet movie that embraces its smallness.

Split is more lean and taut in its narrative and pace than we’ve seen from Shyamalan lately.

The violence is pretty graphic, and some of it is played for laughs, which would be distasteful if the laughs didn’t actually land. Oh well. Sometimes you enjoy a movie, and you don’t feel good about it in the morning.

Phantasm, gnarly as it could get, always had an impish side, just as the monumental power of AC/DC is leavened by the sight of its elfin lead guitarist in a schoolboy uniform. Meander has no such sense of fun. But it offers some newish sights and shocks.

Despite its lyrical presentation, the film’s lingering ideas are straightforward and sentimental, arguably even self-serving. Our political divide can be bridged only by those who take the time to see each other, and who approach such patient acts of observation from a place of genuine compassion, concludes the filmmaker who set out to prove as much in the first place.

Mayor Pete has a compelling subject, but it's most gripping when it’s trying to secure your curiosity, not just your future vote.

The best feature of Alpha is its imagery, which is absolutely stunning in IMAX. Hughes, his cinematographer Martin Gschlacht and the visual effects team create a world that is as beautiful as it is dangerous, often framing the characters in the center of a vast, almost endless landscape.

This is a story that errs toward the familiar instead of embracing strangeness, its freaky kid becoming the distraction when you just want more time with the hole in the ground.

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.

There's a propulsive force to every scene in "Scoop," with Sam propelling us forward as she stalks across lobbies and down hallways in her thigh-high boots.

The documentary This Changes Everything synthesizes all that data along with interviews from a truly mind-boggling array of A-listers both in front of and behind the camera to create a damning portrait of Hollywood’s systematic sexism and discrimination. In between, we see clips from both movies and television that illustrate the film’s points in amusing and often striking ways.

What “Scream 7” should have or at least could have been, “Faces of Death” effectively digs deeper into the themes that the Ghostface franchise has only been flirting with recently, particularly the impact of becoming not just numb to online violence but weaponized by it.

I cop to not being a fan of Lynn Shelton’s work. Her films fall apart in their third acts. Rather than simply crumble as they have in her prior work, the third act of Laggies implodes in grand fashion, spewing contrivances, bad clichés and an ending that is simply unforgivable.

Amanda Kramer’s “By Design” is an oddball, almost-love story that has more to say about human dejection and desire than a lot of more conventional tales.