Through Cobb, we take an alarming and up-to-date look into the life of any average contemporary teenager that grows up and establishes a voice mostly online, struggling to close the gap between the real and virtual. It’s that performance that elevates a film that often rings to be less than the sum of its parts.

Even with the excellent central performance by Karen Gillan, playing a "dual" role—herself and her own copy—Dual makes for a strangely tepid viewing experience. Deeper exploration is not on the table.

This Italian import's title may make it sound like either a kids movie or a cooking documentary, but it proves to be a wild and compelling work that simultaneously evokes the influence of such disparate filmmakers as Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, and Sergio Leone (not to mention a dash of “Broadway Danny Rose”-era Woody Allen) while still coming across as a fresh and unique cinematic vision.

How can we be interested if the movie we’re watching is as unimpressed with itself as we are?

The Cellar doesn't even need to be a smarter or even more faithful homage. All it needs to be is a little more of something—energetic, gross, thoughtful ... something!—to make it compelling enough to withstand comparisons to its many generic precedents.

At least until its bonkers final act, Choose or Die consistently fails to fulfill on the truly hallucinatory promise of its premise. Without that, it’s a choice that’s ultimately forgettable.

These “Fantastic Beasts” movies are just not good. They’re extremely OK, but never truly inspiring or transporting.

Father Stu understood how to connect to skeptics and non-believers. Instead of reaching a broader audience, Wahlberg and Gibson preach to the choir.

Eggers’ brand of psychological shock is bolder here than his prior works and potent in bursts, but barely works on boldness alone.

By the end of Arnold’s lyrical passion project, one feels genuinely connected to Luma and her likes, deeply concerned about their wellbeing amid the grueling circumstances they are obligated to dwell in.

Bay’s latest, Ambulance, is a thick, juicy, hilariously overwrought, gloriously stupid steak upon which the vulgar auteurists of the world can feast.

It's an intriguing idea for a film, I suppose, but it proves to be pretty much all setup with precious little follow-through. Not even the good performances from the two leads can make the whole thing work.

My own taste runs to different modes of poetic cinema, but I credit The Girl and the Spider for the seemingly paradoxical clarity of its mysterious vision.

My soul rejected what I was seeing. My response was: What in the Uncanny Valley is going on here?

Pathological behavior seems to be the main subject of the bitter Ukrainian satire Donbass, an unpleasant, but as-advertised slice of life drama set in the title region, an embattled territory in Eastern Ukraine.

The film may be cinematic comfort food, but its creators do earn our trust and nail all the essential beats they need to along the way.

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.

Looking as if it was often shot in complete darkness or something like it, Agent Game is murky nonsense that aspires to get by on what it considers to be a trenchant cynicism about geopolitical chess.

It is over-plotted, with three different storylines mixing comedy and adventure.

Chin and Vasarhelyi make a solid case for why space exploration should continue, and the benefits we could reap from it, provided it doesn’t keep our heads perpetually lost in the clouds.

Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off shines brightest when it resembles something like the Alex Honnold free-climbing documentary "Free Solo," honing in on Hawk's episodes of hard-earned failure, of slamming his body to the ground countless times and getting back on the board.

A film like Linklater's brings you inside the consciousness of a person whose perceptions of the world are simultaneously constrained and curious, and open to new experiences.

The film is best in its embrace of the random, its moments when the talented and funny cast goof off with each other, responding to one another's eccentricities.

You Won’t Be Alone announces the arrival of a fierce new genre talent, an inventive stylist and an unapologetic interrogator of mankind with something worthwhile to say.

The problem is that writer J.P. Davis and director Tarik Saleh seem afraid to do anything interesting or unexpected once they have their pieces in place.

The director carries out his ultimately banal aims with commendable dispatch, and it’s always interesting to see Moreno play a character who’s not a living saint.

Gagarine plays like a mournful lament for a community that banded together during hard times before being separated and scattered to the winds, leaving no trace of its communal existence behind.

There are two good reasons to watch “Better Nate Than Ever.” First, it is smart, fun, and funny, a great movie to share with the family. Second, becoming a Rueby Wood fan right now will make sure you will not miss a moment from a performer who is already a master of comedy, drama, singing, and dancing.