Many of the film's backdrops are admittedly breathtaking, yet the foregrounded people never seem to be actually populating them. The character animation is so flat and uninspired that it causes Dilili and her fellow humans to resemble stickers grafted onto postcards, with the subtle use of shadows and reflections doing little to add dimension.

You may realize there’s not much to Harpoon as it sails off into the sunset, but that’s OK. This is one of those movies where the journey truly is the destination.

This should be a haunting, claustrophobic nightmare, but Natali over-complicates the source material — just like his characters, our reasons for investing in what happens next get lost in the fields.

Most of the movie is conveyed through point of view, which is especially fitting because the central character is hearing-impaired. Wesley is a careful, thoughtful observer of the world around him, and this movie challenges us to look as closely as he does. Every frame is filled with significant, illuminating details.

This is an old-fashioned hybrid of a thriller and a coming-of-age narrative that explodes when a fortune gets dropped into it. Think of it as an adolescent “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” with echoes of '80s adventure classics like "The Goonies" and "Stand by Me."

It weaves every detail — whether provided by an on-camera witness, a document, a drawing, a painting or a photograph — around that set of intertwined arguments, which are too complex to explain in this review, but come across powerfully by the time the credits roll.

Alternately sad, violent, and dryly funny.

For better and for worse, Bliss truly makes you feel as if you, too, are suffering from a narcotic-induced, hallucinatory freak-out—one that leaves you physically exhausted, mentally spent and ultimately wondering what the hell just happened to you.

Though it has a tight course of events and is spiked with a few surprises, First Love is far more impressive for how it collides its many characters than what it ever feels for them.

Scheinert smartly does not hammer home these themes, or sum things up with a monologue about what we've all learned. We haven't learned anything except ... if you find yourself in Zeke and Earl's situation, do exactly the opposite, start to finish.

Most true crime fans know that the real stories that have enraptured them in film and television are much crueler and grosser than their fictionalized counterpart. If Akin’s goal is merely to pull away that curtain, it ultimately feels like a hollow unveiling.

An odd film like this needs a charismatic anchor in its lead role to keep it from losing its human connection and Boyd Holbrook just can’t muster the energy to do that. It’s a strangely flat, unengaging performance that doesn't match the ambition of the overall piece.

The results are mixed cinematically — crisply lensed by Marcel Zyskind, the Florida-set film looks like an average episode of “Veep,” which Morris has directing credits on. And the laughs are pretty sparse, too, despite a non-stop flow of zingers.

In his mind, Cohn was still the hero of his own story. And we get the impression from this film that, right up to the bitter, agonized end, he was engaged in an internal battle to justify himself to himself, and to the world.

Kapadia's film shows us that for better or worse, Maradona's loyalty was always to the game, and that, as much as his skill on the field, deserved more loyalty from the fans.

There’s a lot of crunch and dazzle here. While the overall tone is pitched to a teen demographic, the creative energy and the execution on display is consistently engaging.

An incoherent blob.

Britt-Marie Was Here is based on a novel by Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove), whose themes often include cranky people who isolate themselves and community sports that bring people together. Thankfully, he and director Tuva Novotny keep the characters astringent and his tone wry, so it never gets cuddly or cloying.

A strong sense of style and a promising premise are undone in a film that never quite figures out how to write itself out of its corner.

Loro feels like the work of a more mature artist. Sorrentino knows exactly who his Berlusconi is, and, with the help of Servillo — who delivers a characteristically impressive performance — manages to make the former Prime Minister’s total lack of introspection seem ironically revealing. Ecco Silvio: pathetic, alone, indestructible.

It’s antagonistic comedy that’s brilliantly designed so that nobody actually gets hurt.

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.

Imagine “Office Space” with forgettable characters and nothing to say about this next bleak phase of the business world.

It works. It really works. It's goodhearted and clever, and it knows when to end.

The title is perhaps the cleverest thing about it.

By virtue of its subject, Always in Season is going to be a very hard sit for many, but this film should be seen. It is an unflinching look at how the racial sins of the past remain flowing through the arteries of the present day.

This is rare, nuanced storytelling, anchored by one of Brad Pitt’s career-best performances and remarkable technical elements on every level. It’s a special film.

What Hawley has delivered is a garden variety bad movie, proving the TV wunderkind of “Fargo” and “Legion” was not quite ready for the big screen.