While the lessons of “The Choral” feel applicable to our present moment, Hytner is careful to ground its story in a richly realized setting of a different era.

It’s in exploring the iconography of the hotel that the documentary shines the brightest. Van Elmbt and Duverdier are clearly well-versed in the works that were created on the grounds, or by former residents, and do their best to imbue their film with the same timeless cool that pulses through them.

Although Sisters on Track has some gaps in its narrative that seem as if certain chunks of the girls’ lives were compressed or skipped over, it's most impactful when offering a thoughtful analysis of the rapidity with which children grow, adapt, and change.

Novel enough to be worth the price of admission, but you'll think twice before getting back in line for a second visit.

Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud is the type of genre movie that makes many of its bizarre choices just for the sake of seeing if it can all work. But whether you find the film to be ambitious, or just some stunt screenwriting, it's intriguing to watch an audacious filmmaker try to keep midnight-ready movies unpredictable, even if that means a sincere but silly mash-up of WWII dogfights, gremlin chaos, and feminism in action such as this.

There’s no denying Hill’s instinct for identifying the heart of a dramatic scene and turning the volume of the storytelling down low enough for us to hear it beating.

Strickland’s film is a daring, atmosphere-soaked piece of kink hypnotherapy that pays explicit homage to the films of Franco, down to the casting of former Franco regular, formidable femme Monica Swinn, in a sinister role.

Overall, Concrete Utopia is more ambitious than its execution, but nonetheless sustains its suspense with an emotional journey into the depths of what scarcity can do to humanity.

The movie is sleek, smart, and reasonably thorough, and it offers the enticement of never-before-seen home movies provided by Armstrong's family. But it can't really stand out from the flood of material released to cash in on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, because it arrives on the heels of two daring ones, Damien Chazelle's "First Man" and Todd Douglas Miller's "Apollo 11."

The compact documentary is ultimately more an exercise for the filmmakers than it is a truly rewarding cinematic experience for the audience.

The Exorcist: Believer is a pretty good movie that's so stuffed with characters and not-quite-developed ideas that you may come away from it thinking about what it could have been instead.

Hall and Martin do their considerable best, but Rae's April is the far more interesting character.

The movie is, indeed, the tragedy of a ridiculous man. On the other hand, he does manage a maneuver by which his heirs avoid the estate tax. How ridiculous is that?

Zaror is clearly a skilled athlete, but what's more intriguing is how we can see him, as the Redeemer, planning his next move on the fly. It's not simply an explosion of violence. It's a precise burn.

Even when the movie's not working, its style fascinates. That "not working" part is a deal breaker, though — and it has little to do with Luhrmann's stylistic gambits, and everything to do with his inability to reconcile them with an urge to play things straight.

For all of its breezy charm, what makes “Guernsey” an often frustrating experience is the fact that the story uncovered by Juliet is exceedingly more interesting than the one she finds herself confined within.

Thankfully, it’s Kirby’s performance that makes Pieces of a Woman memorable.

An ambitious black comedy that never goes far enough.

Chasing Ghosts has a great idea in showcasing as much of Traylor’s work as possible, and next to the creations of other Black artists, but its talking head presentation is fairly didactic.

Even if it's not that funny, Detective Chinatown 2 proves to be snappy and persistent, complementing its bright color palette and energy with basic goals to alternate between silly, dark and slightly clever.

For the most part, the new “Bad Genius” doesn’t enhance more than it adds to its source material. It’s still a better-than-average redo, if only because it doesn’t break what never really needed fixing.

It’s substantial and thoughtful because of how Walt incarnates a very specific type of existential American dread — the depths of his self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy aren’t unlocked and explored until pretty deep into the story — and also because Cascella and Cordery have filled the script with supporting characters who are richly drawn enough to be the stars of their own film.

Co-written by Shawkat and Arteta, there is an unshakable theme in here about two artistic women trying to find their voice. It’s more of an issue that Duck Butter makes up what it wants to say as it goes along.

The Queen of My Dreams is a well-intentioned but tonally all-over-the-place look at how frustrating things can get when you’re a queer Muslim trying to live your best life.

Plemons brings such a fascinating energy to his character that he really holds the film together.

It’s an ambitious slice of micro-budget filmmaking that uses the canvas of isolated rural life to paint a relevant story about living in a world where violence threatens at every corner.

Frustratingly poised on the knife's-edge of "pretty good but not as good as you want it to be," the movie might've benefitted from a more leisurely but focused pace that would've allowed the characters to breathe more, and the legal and scientific concepts to be explained with greater clarity.

If These Walls Could Sing never feels as comprehensive as it could be about the subject. It operates as an addendum to better Beatles documentaries like "Eight Days a Week," "George Harrison: Living in the Material World," and "The Beatles Anthology," and that lack of an identity prevents McCartney's film from being a well-earned tribute to one of the world's iconic studios.