A typical biopic buoyed by its unrelenting hilarity, its affection for its subject and commitment to the time and place it is set. And yet, something still nags at me about its lead performance. Don’t get me wrong, Murphy is very, very good, and on the basis of this, I’d love to see him tackle Pryor next. I just buy him more as Rudy Ray Moore than I do as Dolemite.

By the time Margo finally announces that she’s ready to leave, I was eager to gather my things and join her in escaping this would-be comedy.

3 from Hell has moments of abject horror, but fans of Zombie’s autumnal provocations will be rewarded with his most earnest and laid back nightmare yet.

Can You Keep a Secret? doesn’t elicit warm laughs so much as heavy sighs, even though the film has some zippiness — there’s a slapstick spirit to the movie that doesn’t shine because the jokes are plain, the couple is tough to root for, and the general tension behind this weird situation is on the lazier side of rom-com premises.

Half-nifty, half-cheesy.

If you’re a maven or even vaguely curious there’s a lot of production value to be derived here. The human story that the filmmakers want to drape over their atmosphere, though, never quite connects.

Fessenden’s prickly sense of humanism makes a considerable difference in Depraved, his engrossing take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and maybe his best movie to date.

It isn’t until deep into “Moonlight Sonata” that you start to realize how many patterns Brodsky has woven into the fabric of this tale.

For me, One Cut of the Dead is good enough. It sometimes surprised me while I waited for a payoff that Ueda basically delivered, even if he and his collaborators never made me involuntarily leave my seat.

A fascinating and sometimes frustrating film.

Hustlers as a whole is a blast.

A wonderful ensemble, a brilliant director, and a genius screenwriter all get together for The Laundromat, a film they clearly took very seriously, but that they never figured out how to make entertaining to an audience.

Chained for Life is more than a polemic. There's a free-floating absurdist mood established, humorous and self-referential, allowing space for the audience to not just feel, but think. This is no small feat.

If Tartt’s book is about grief and the sudden trauma that can derail a life’s trajectory, Crowley’s film feels like it doesn’t understand either of those things at all, merely using them as exploitative decoration on a beautiful but shockingly hollow experience.

With remarkable grace and compassion for his characters, Baumbach portrays divorce as a great equalizer, turning us into versions of ourselves we didn’t expect to become.

It’s far from the disaster it could have been given the tonal tightrope it walks, but it’s also closer to a misfire than we all hoped it would be. Believe it or not, the “Hitler Comedy” plays it too safe.

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is one of the most purely entertaining films in years. It is the work of a cinematic magician, one who keeps you so focused on what the left hand is doing that you miss the right. And, in this case, it’s not just a wildly fun mystery to unravel but a scathing bit of social commentary about where America is in 2019.

It sometimes feels Scrooge-like to come down on a sweet and simple film like this one, but kids can get bored too. And they will here.

A film that feels like a sumptuous beach read on a lazy sunny afternoon.

This movie’s dry, facts-first approach does not have the capacity to pull it off.

Waves is unexpectedly ambitious and confident, the work of a filmmaker in complete control of his talents and using them to challenge himself. This is a deeper and more profound film than your average character drama, a masterpiece that’s hard to walk away from without checking your own grievances and grief. The ripple effect continues.

It’s a deeply personal and very moving film, anchored by the best work of Antonio Banderas’ career.

Parasite is unquestionably one of the best films of the year. Just trust me on this one.

"Unnecessary Roughness” is a more apt title for the scuzzy serial killer procedural Night Hunter.

By the time Edie and Jonny make it to the top, we can almost see their souls expand to the farthest reaches of the truly spectacular vista.

As Danica, the head witch, draped in a bright-red gown with matching lipstick, Rebecca Romjin gives a very perverse and funny performance, all icy intimidation and glamorous power.

With a running time clocking in just over two hours, Promise at Dawn often plays like a truncated miniseries, with scenes moving along too quickly for their emotional peaks and valleys to reach their fullest expression.

This is the kind of film that explains itself too early and then has nowhere to go except into rote, B-picture thrills.