Despite claiming otherwise in its marketing, this doc still wants to uphold her as the rock n’ roll goddess of the headlines rather than as a person on her own terms.

Marks’ “Turtles All the Way Down” shines with John Green’s trademark whimsy. It’s a charming, delightful YA romance that doesn’t bind itself to the sole enjoyment of its target market.

If they gave Oscars for bringing underwritten characters to life, Hathaway and Galitzine would be contenders.

Titely’s feature debut does an admirable job condensing the show into a powerful hour-and-change saga.

Jane Schoenbrun’s second narrative feature is a gnawing search for belonging in the static spaces between analog pixels.

Evil Does Not Exist is something different, starting out as a character study cum eco parable and morphing into an enigmatic nightmare.

The makers of “Boy Kills World” don’t trust their audience enough to let us just feel a feeling, nor do they encourage their enthusiastic cast members enough to deliver fully-developed performances.

Vanicek’s first feature is an impressive debut, driven by an energetic fright, turning a worn-down apartment complex into a catacomb of spider webs, moving shadows and blocked escapes.

Joanna Arnow’s second feature is a symphony of ambient embarrassment, whose movements are structured around the various men with whom the protagonist, Ann (Arnow), has relationships of varying length and ambivalence. Within these movements, Arnow hits uncomfortable notes that range from cutting corporate indignities to the ritualized abjection of erotic humiliation.

The scariest thing about “Humane” is how genuinely believable its nightmare vision ends up being. However, the film’s micro approach to a macro crisis never connects because we’re never given a reason to care about these specific people.

Unsung Hero could have used more of such emotional honesty. But it ultimately must deliver a broad uplift that’s palatable for the whole family, so it tends to skim the surface.

Terrestrial Verses, one of the most brilliant and provocative films to emerge from Iran recently, has qualities that link it to both the modernist formal traditions of post-1979 Iranian cinema and the more recent trend of social and political asperities aimed at the authoritarian repressiveness of the Islamic Republic.

Omen excellently captures the feelings of both cultural and generational alienation. In script and performance, there is never a moment of certainty.

Art College 1994 is unassumingly sweet because it’s about young people and their eternal quest for freedom and self-expression, mostly inside their own navels.

There are so many ways to go wrong with this story, which we are told was inspired by an unidentified real father and son. Writer/director Uberto Pasolini does not let that happen, relying on the most ordinary details to take on greater and greater weight.

Common Ground is a well-meaning PSA that waters down the complex history, practices, and systems of American industrial agriculture into something palatable for audiences looking to feel good about the bleak future of this dying planet without actually having to do any hard learning, thinking, or direct action.

The reason the film works as well as it does is because of how completely Henaine and his team immerse us in Santiago’s journey.

Minhal Baig’s “We Grown Now” is a film masterfully tied to the emotive potential of place.

More is often less in “Rebel Moon—Part 2: The Scargiver,” not only when it comes to the movie’s sweaty, vein-activating performances, but also its over-exaggerated and under-choreographed action scenes.

Directed by Rod Blackhurst from a script by David Ebeltoft, it tells you what kind of movie it is from its gruesome opening image and continues in that mode for another hour and forty-five minutes. It's anchored to a lead performance by Scoot McNairy that ranks with the best of classic neo-noir.

It’s Bruneau who makes you realize how great “Dusk for a Hitman” could have been if only it had some extra shine, but who also allows you to be content that St-Jean’s crime movie is merely a sturdy installment in the genre.

This is funny to a point, but the problem with “Stress Positions” is that said point arrives about halfway through. The runtime that remains gets overloaded with too many plot threads, characters, and repeated punchlines, Hammel essentially turning the proceedings into a failed exercise in Blake Edwards-style farce.

It is a compelling story, and the film is a combination of spectacular scenery, arduous exertion, inspiring pep talks, adolescent rebellion, emotional confrontations, and lessons learned by both the teenagers and their leader.

While the action and suspense set pieces are executed with typical Ritchie bravura, the movie falls flat a lot of the time in between.

This is such a worthwhile story that we can’t look away, and Nélisse is so engaging that we don’t want to.

A strange and memorable but not entirely successful film, "Sweet Dreams" turns colonialism into a source of pitch-black slapstick comedy.

Like the title that goes on a bit longer than it needs to, the filmmakers here have a habit of underlining and emphasizing elements of their story that would have been more powerful without a more subtle approach. But this is still a remarkably moving piece of work, a documentary that understands that a diner can’t save your life, but that doesn’t make it any less essential to it.

It’s that assured blending of emotions that makes “LaRoy, Texas” a sturdy tonal journey—a film enamored with those living on the fringes of respectability—that bodes well for whatever freewheeling story Atkinson hopes to tell next.