The overabundance of CGI is one of the bigger problems with Midway because, far too often, it feels like you’re watching a video game or an F/X highlight reel.

The best thing about Flanagan’s film by some stretch is the work by Rebecca Ferguson. The director of “Gerald’s Game” and “Hush” proves again to be a very capable filmmaker when it comes to directing actresses, getting Ferguson’s career-best work to date.

All these “what incredible irony!” moments are designed to…well, I’m not quite sure. The movie’s final line, an appropriation of the dying words of a black man killed by police, is an exploitative and cheap reversal that legitimately addresses precisely nothing.

The look of buried terror and resentment in Hawke's eyes tells the deeper story. Still, Adopt a Highway wanders ("Ella" is just the first chapter) and the redemption narrative isn't so much heavy-handed as it is super-imposed.

Unless you are a L.S. Lowry fan of the highest order, the only reason to sit through Mrs. Lowry & Son is to watch actors as strong as Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave going toe-to-toe for 90 minutes.

American Dharma is a frustratingly hollow look at Bannon that is ultimately so benign in its portrayal of the man that it comes closer to an example of fan service than a full takedown.

This might not be the optimal film to tribute an American hero who’s long been neglected on our screens, but Erivo’s performance might very well become a definitive one, synonymous with Tubman. And that’s not a bad place to start by any measure.

Harrill, who wrote and directed the film, isn’t as interested in the supernatural elements in the film as he is with the story’s few players. There’s a lot of room for emotions to breathe and wash over its characters, but never does it tip over into excess.

Hamilton deserves better. So do the other strong women who make up the film’s trio of warriors, fighting to protect each other and all of humanity from technological destruction. Again.

Lean, sincere, impassioned filmmaking, yet it fails to leave as much of an impression as it clearly wants to.

The World is Full of Secrets concerns text more than anything else — not the visuals within filmmaking or performance, but the stories being told. As an experiment with the sensory experience of film storytelling, it backfires. To best engage Swon's massive amounts of text, you’re better off closing your eyes.

The most surprising thing about director/writer/star Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn is how drastically it departs from its source.

The overwhelming positivity in this footage is illuminating and encouraging, yet also more than a touch puzzling, raising questions of precisely where this intolerance hibernates when cameras aren’t around to support such devastating legislation.

Portals is something of a bait-and-switch. While the concept suggests mind-bending alternate-reality stuff, the not terribly cerebral reality of the movie offers more in the line of eyeball-gouging, blood-spurting, face-melting shock horror.

It’s worth noting that The Cat and the Moon is almost two hours long — Wolff could have easily cut it to 85 minutes and achieved the same tone and emotional peaks, but this movie is specifically meant to exemplify passion.

It’s easy to see why even Blum wanted to forget The Gallows: Act II. It may be his company’s worst film.

Paradise Hills wants so badly to be a sci-fi movie with a message for right now — perhaps to tap into the feminist anger out there now or to cash in on the interest in women filmmakers — but it feels like a rushed draft. There are a few good ideas, a few good twists at the end but not enough to make up for the rookie mistakes that undercut its potential.

But the movie is, for all its accomplishment, sketchy, tentative. And there’s something about the conception of Yoav that smacks of self-aggrandizement.

It may seem ironic that a movie about electrifying the United States should ultimately be so tedious and forgettable, but such is the state of the delayed and troubled drama The Current War: Director’s Cut.

Countdown pretty much fails on every level that a horror film possibly can — the characters are uninteresting dullards, the story is idiotic, and the scares are nonexistent.

Stevens slowly and subtly unpacks that heady, provocative conceit with care and in a way that makes his directorial debut feel like the arrival of a major new talent.

Black and Blue is a B-movie through and through — and that’s actually a compliment.

A lovely companion piece to the latest album from the legendary musician, a gorgeous, introspective journey into the very concept of the American conscience.

For fans of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Mountaintop is pretty much a must-see—it gives them a chance to see their heroes at work in a raw and unfiltered manner, and the fact that the Colorado album is Young’s strongest collection of new songs since Psychedelic Pill is certainly a sweetener to the deal. Those who cannot stand their sound, on the other hand, are not likely to be won over.

God is destined to forever be a complicated subject for most mortals, yet there’s no question this film has made me a believer in the boundless artistic potential of its creator.

Sure, I was never bored, but this movie makes zero sense, and contains some shockingly bad filmmaking, acting, writing ... pretty much everything. It is remarkably grisly and violent, containing a body count that tops the double digits, and almost all of the victims of its quality kills see their insides before they die.

It is lively, fast paced, charming and funny, and it showcases an especially delightful comic performance from Belgian and French cinema stalwart Olivier Gourmet.

The end of Eli subverts the majority of Eli, making it kind of like a cheap game. It’s not as damaging as the ridiculous final scene of “Fractured,” but I was left with a similar bad taste in my mouth.