Screenwriter Jim Beggarly deftly combines believable characters with a solid narrative structure.

Gariépy reveals very little about her character’s state of mind in these moments, and this ambiguity is what makes “Red Rooms” so intriguing.

Anchored by three of the best performances in a very long time and a graceful script from Jacobs himself, this is one of the finest films of the year, a movie that moves me so much that I can get emotional just thinking about it. Because it’s not just a showcase for powerhouse acting at its finest. Because it feels true in ways that movies about death are rarely allowed to be.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a return to form for director Tim Burton only in the sense that, like Burton early in his career, it’s not interested in form except at the immediate level of the image and the scene. It’s an overstuffed toy bag of a movie: every minute or two, the director digs into the bag and produces a new toy.

This is neither a trifle nor a truly Major Motion Picture; it’s an entertainment maybe in the sense that Graham Greene used the term. But one needn’t be so hifalutin about the matter.

Most of all, Rebel Ridge is just a reminder of how thrilling it can be to see a genre piece with this level of artistry.

Williams’ playful, genre-bending music that mixes post-soul cool with skater sensibilities is probably more than a live-action narrative could contain. In the hands of director Morgan Neville, however, the story of Williams’ life lacks specificity and substance.

We could use much more insight into what made [Reagan] “the great communicator,” but this movie is a poor communicator about the history and the man.

The interviews are the best part of the film, which lacks the sleek, focused, concentrated quality of the best Merchant Ivory movies but succeeds on its own terms as sort of a “hangout” movie, non-fiction division.

The Deliverance would have worked just fine if it had functioned solely as a domestic drama infused with the thorny, real-world issues of addiction, poverty and racism.

It is another advocacy film without answers, pretending that the mere act of bringing awareness to a problem solves it.

As the saying goes, inside of me are two wolves: one wishes “Out Come the Wolves” dared to explore the wounded masculinity and murderous love triangle of its first half, while the other wonders if that’d be any better or more interesting than the bone-cracking, arrow-shooting carnage of its second.

Seeking Mavis Beacon is utterly creative, a documentary that reflects the state of the Internet as it stands, and as it turns a mirror on its makers.

Consistently boring in a manner that almost feels defiant, “Slingshot” plays as a shallow COVID lockdown allegory for most of its runtime, before insultingly spiraling off the rails. It feels like a movie that hates its characters. And hates you too.

Watching Harris and Dormer create this event together is why I love going to the movies. In that elegant, horrible townhouse, anything could happen. And anything does.

Here is a film that is so awful in so many ways that at one point, it includes a clip from the notoriously dreadful “The Emoji Movie” and you begin to worry that that film’s reputation might be tarnished by association.

While spending time in one of the most captivating cities in the world is enticing, the main reason to check this out is one of the best performances in the career of Liev Schreiber.

Good Bad Things is an intimate, small story about the gigantic issue that challenges and terrifies us all: the collision between the desperate need to be seen and loved and the fear that what people might see will repel rather than attract them.

There are shootouts, a car chase, some heroics and some hard life lessons—but this film isn’t breaking new ground on either the action or socio-political front.

Parents with young children who hope this is a sweet and inspiring film about an underdog Little League team will find that there is too little baseball and too much about a family confronting a devastating loss. Those who are more interested in the story of the adults will find there is too much baseball. Steee-rike.

It’s simultaneously a parody of American middle-class notions of contentment yet at the same time a disarmingly sweet and sincere endorsement of it.

The filmmakers do what they can to compensate for their unlikely hero’s prevailing lack of charm and agency, but not even the combined forces of Lloyd Dobler and the Fab Four can bring a spike of joy to this DOA period drama.

Blink Twice sucker punches the audience with its sexual violence and then fails to find intelligence or dexterity in its handling of it or any of the themes running adjacent.

Between the eye-catching period details and the warmth of the performances, you want to wrap your arms around “The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat.” But this is a film that seems intent on pushing you away through its ludicrous plotting.

Working with a bigger production company on a film that feels more like anyone could have made it than their previous works drains “Hell Hole” lacks some of the DIY charm of the other flicks by Adams and Poser. Comparatively, it’s kind of a disappointment, despite having some undeniable positives that should make it an easy watch for horror heads.

There’s a core sweetness to “Between the Temples” that shines through. Gently but firmly, the film insists upon the miraculous nature of all the meandering paths we end up taking: in search of our lives, without a clue where we’re going, toward those who’ll give us meaning.

Strange Darling, J.T. Mollner’s self-consciously edgy gotcha of a serial-killer thriller, is so high on its own cleverness that it never stops to think about what it’s actually saying.

It's the kind of movie where, if you saw it when you were 14, you'd see it ten or twenty more times, and be inspired to check out books from the library, maybe memorize some poetry.