Although it’s stuffed with many cliches, The Aeronauts can feel like a rather enjoyable bit of historical fantasy.

Strickland frequently tests viewers’ patience, but his off-putting sensibility is powerful enough to make In Fabric as mesmerizing as its subject: salesmanship as a sinister, inescapable form of hypnosis.

It’s a delicate drama that flourishes through the liberating power of art, where a hopeful yet consuming love affair sparks between two young women amid patriarchal customs, and stays concealed in their hearts both because of and in spite of it.

Overall, the film is superbly acted and a lot of fun to watch, which I suppose is not enough hardcore critical substance to hang three and a half stars on, but there you go.

I didn't come out of this one feeling depressed or even particularly sad, more reflective. The sheer breadth and depth of this series creates its own sort of poetry, one that's strangely indistinguishable from journalism.

There’s a significant difference in quality between the mediocre scenario (and dialogue) and thrilling production design (and direction) in White Snake.

Queen & Slim is not interested in "neutral tints" either. Or "understatement." I appreciated the "big mood" of it all, even in those sequences that don't quite work. I responded strongly to the film's sense of scope and scale. The "rhetoric" of Queen & Slim reverberates with anger and love and mourning.

Once in a while you encounter a piece that seems like a premeditated farewell — a conscious summing-up of the life and work — whether or not it was intended that way. Varda by Agnès, a combination autobiography and career survey overseen by the filmmaker, is that kind of movie.

In the end, Shooting the Mafia is about recognizing Battaglia as a woman of immense bravery and unflappable individuality. She has seen a great deal of sadness in the world, and captured it in a way that combines art, journalism, and activism. “Shooting the Mafia” aptly conveys Battaglia's many layers, while exemplifying the power in not looking away.

Following the ordinary beats of a teen’s everyday life, writer/director Minhal Baig’s gentle and attentive sophomore feature Hala possesses something inherently extraordinary by just being about a young, female Muslim-American.

Filmed over the course of three years and clocking in just over 70 minutes (minus credits), When Lambs Become Lions is a triumph of shrewdly economical storytelling on the part of Kasbe and his co-editors Frederick Shanahan and Caitlyn Greene.

As with Morgan Neville's documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?", the tears may flow freely due to nostalgia or from some subjects hitting too close to home, but A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood fits as a companion piece. Where the documentary offers a more complex view of the man in the red sweater and tennis shoes, Heller’s movie is more about the cultural impression Rogers left behind.

It’s this kind of mindful direction and editing that helps make 21 Bridges one of the most entertaining and thoughtful American policiers in recent memory.

At its most controlled and insinuating, Dark Waters is reminiscent of paranoid thrillers from the 1970s like "The Parallax View" and "Chinatown," where you know going in that you're going to see a story about how profoundly bad things are, thanks to corporate influence over government as well as the economy, but the extent of the corruption is still shocking.

Director Eva Orner makes her story both about the predator and the victims, and delivers an appropriately cut-and-dry case that Bikram more than deserves that third title. But she connects these sensibilities with an approach that too often feels like an info dump, instead of a gripping mediation on the larger themes and harrowing stories that inspired it.

Frozen II is funny, exciting, sad, romantic, and silly. It has great songs and a hilarious recap of the first movie, and then it is all of that all over again.

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.

Is the human brain built to absorb so much of "the world"? How do we filter anything? Matt Wolf's new documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, is an interesting meditation on these ideas, as well as a character study of a fascinating news-junkie with a mission.

Landsman’s film is enraging for all the right reasons, and more than a few wrong ones as well. It comes off as more of a puff piece than an exposé.

Warrior Queen is not the first movie about this subject to be helmed by a woman — “Manikarnika” was co-directed by star Kangana Ranaut — nor does it feature a stand-out performance like those other movies do (Ranaut is very good in “Manikarnika”). So while I suppose you could do worse than The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, I know you could do better.

The cooking scenes comprise the best moments in this episodic film.

It takes great effort to find what interested director Wash Westmoreland and company in the source material in the first place, but it feels like a project that reaffirms something I’ve long argued: just because something works in one medium doesn’t mean it will in another.

As a whole, The Good Liar is not quite good enough to deserve the comparisons to the works of Alfred Hitchcock it's clearly aiming for, though it is just good enough to suggest what Hitchcock himself might have done with it on a second pass.

It’s certainly like nothing else you’ll see this year.

The Report is also surprisingly free of tension, given the subject matter; if you’re going to experience any anxiety, it’ll probably come from a sense of worry over whether all of this is going to be on the final exam.

In watching so many films in a given week, month, or year, it’s rare to find one that sustains its thrills throughout its runtime, matches its gorgeous imagery with a compelling story, and defies easy categorization. Mati Diop’s haunting narrative feature debut Atlantics is one such movie. It’s unlike few other movies you’ll see this year or possibly this decade.

Of course, the clothes are great: racks of shimmery, sequined knockouts and rows of fierce pumps. And it wouldn’t be a “Charlie’s Angels” adventure without a variety of wild costumes for the ladies to don for their undercover assignments as well as an assortment of high-tech gadgets.

Damon is superb in the kind of role he excels at: a man of integrity who gets steered off the path and is subsequently righted. Lest all of this sound heavy, I should assure you that Ford v Ferrari is exactly as fun, maybe even more fun, than its well-put-together trailer makes it out to be.