Shuffle is admirable work from Flaherty, shining a light on the greed that mostly fuels these so-called wellness centers and the addicts who, unfortunately, get strung along. But I couldn’t help thinking he was biting off more than he could chew.

While I can't exactly recommend seeing Jigsaw, I can tell you that it's fun to watch. I just don't think it's the kind of fun the filmmakers' planned.

While it hardly breaks new ground, The Man Who Sold His Skin still manages to be a breezy watch, with an assured filmmaker gently steering it through a rough-around-the-edges tale.

Hancock’s film is not revolutionary nor particularly thoughtful past the outline of its concept. Regardless, it’s an enjoyable romp in the sci-fi horror sphere.

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.

There are some disappointing choices in the film's directing, but Castillo's performance should make a lot of those easy to overlook for anyone who stumbles upon this one in their streaming algorithm.

I wish the long-gestating dream had resulted in a better film. I don’t want to read too much into things that I only know second or third hand, but in a sense Peterloo shows the pitfalls of the dream project.

Even with the world-building and direction making for an immersive experience, at times the script gets tangled in its own complexity and “The Kitchen” bites off more than it can chew.

Honour, for good and bad, is nowhere near as gruesome and downbeat as its subject might suggest.

Despite an overall unsatisfying resolution to these inquiries, the ideas that the film prompts, coupled with Foster’s nuanced performance, make for a compelling enough character study.

As a metaphor for the soft coercion of traditional gender roles, it works, although the theme is secondary to the twists in writer-director BT Meza’s sci-fi/horror hybrid.

The film is often entertaining, with some nice touches and compelling moments.

Olds’ poem about her parents concludes: “Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.” That is what Bellingham does here, in a brutal film about brutality. With its very tamped-down emotion, Bellingham's decision not to attempt insight or empathy is the most telling display of the consequences of his story.

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.”

Despicable Me 4 won't win any prizes, but if you like this kind of thing, you'll like this thing. I laughed. The dumber and more random the jokes, the harder I laughed. The kids I saw it with laughed harder.

Despite being well shot, confidently written, and acted with a surfeit of commitment by most of its cast (Mendelsohn, who not for the first time reminded me uncomfortably of Trivago pitchman Tim Williams, is director Forrest’s ex-husband), I found the world it presented both smugly insular and overfamiliar.

Hippie-swooning temptations aside, I remained tethered to The Marijuana Conspiracy thanks to the excellent performances by the actresses playing the main roles. They transcend their thinly-drawn characterizations and display the convincing level of camaraderie shared by a group who have gone through trouble together and emerged victorious at the end.

This documentary directed by Lydia Tenaglia is a conspicuously imperfect movie that turns more compelling after trying your patience, then yields a final half-hour that’s as engrossing as a finely-wrought suspense drama.

Some of the choices strain credulity and the biggest name in the piece, Josh Hutcherson, feels miscast, but this is a film that kept me uncertain of what would happen next and affirms Gan as an interesting young filmmaker to watch.

The movie expects you to just roll with all this stuff. Or slither. Sometimes you can’t. But when the film escapes the confinement tank of its numerous hand-me-down cliches, you’re happy to follow the water trail to see where it leads.

It might be kind of tedious, kind of sloppy, and mostly silly, but you could never accuse Dangerous Lies of false advertising. The new Netflix thriller, directed by Michael M. Scott, is practically designed for rainy day viewers who initially laugh at the title, and that’s not a bad thing.

Byun ultimately pulls too many punches, but Kill Boksoon remains impressive, if only for its unexpected sensitivity and considerable emotional range.

Despite what the title suggests, Wonderstruck represents a rare disappointment from master filmmaker Todd Haynes.

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.

As They Made Us is clearly a personal debut effort for Bialik, but she shows enough confidence behind the camera to make you curious about whatever other stories she has to tell.

While "Elevation" may never rise above its genre trappings or escape the shadow of its influences, it never stoops so low as to be mindlessly vapid. Simply executed at ninety minutes, it's escapism of the highest order, offering perils at a screen's distance of safety.

Oftentimes, that didacticism gets in the way of the picture’s aims, with clunky metaphors and treacly microbudget indie quirks. But a couple of scenes, and some strong performances, make it ultimately worth the sit.

With a combination of power and grace, Julianne Moore elevates Still Alice above its made-for-cable-television trappings, and delivers one of the more memorable performances of her career.