It may not meet the high watermark of the brothers’ first outing, but “Bring Her Back” is still quite the wild ride and shows the pair still have plenty of spooky tricks up their bloody sleeves.

Armstrong’s version of tech-bro bantering is a lot more literate and zingy than actual tech-bro bantering would be, otherwise the picture would be rather a bore. After a while, it begins to evanesce, like ice-breath does in the mountain air.

Your enjoyment of “Tornado” depends on how much you want to root for thinly drawn characters who don’t look strong enough to carry an entire movie. They can and they can’t, depending on how patient you’re feeling.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a romantic comedy for the quiet, thoughtful lovers who yearn for the sincerity of the past.

Ghost Trail is an intimate study of trauma that plays with the gripping suspense of a globetrotting spy thriller.

The movie is so relentless in its desire to pull everything together and not leave any threads dangling that it sprints through scenes where you might’ve wanted it to linger, rushes through the final tournament, and rarely gives any character or subplot its full attention.

When future generations of media scholars need an example of a work that gathered up and displayed with peerless skill all of the techniques yet devised for a new medium—in this case, second-screen entertainment, which superficially resembles cinema or television, but is meant not to make any demands on anybody—”Fountain of Youth” might be the work that they they name-check.

If the characters aren’t three-dimensional and the plot is so predictable it creaks into motion by the five-minute mark. you haven’t done the work necessary to pull in your audience. You’ve got to give us something to hang our cowboy hats on.

The Surrender accomplishes a lot with a sketch-sized story and matching compositional agility and precision. It’s short (less than 90 minutes!) and sweet and the best kind of upsetting.

Bathed in darkness and warm tones, “The New Boy” feels like a classic melodrama with modern sensibilities.

Problem is, this doesn’t reinvent the formula as much as follows it by rote, which makes it an enormous step down.

Children new to the story will enjoy some gross-out humor, slapstick naughtiness, and the reassuring theme that families of all kinds, including those we choose, can be devoted to the idea of ohana.

It’s an efficient, clever genre mash-up that works because of how well Byrne blocks its action, employs an old-fashioned score, and directs his actors to visceral performances.

Similar to Lee’s public persona, “Highest 2 Lowest” is a chaos agent of a movie, the kind of lavish, unpredictable crime thriller that zips when you expect it to zoom.

Roger Ebert famously described cinema as a machine that generates empathy. This movie is that machine: a relentless engine field by idealism and craft.

It’s not just about the divisiveness of 2020; it’s designed to be divisive itself in 2025. To that end, even if you hate it, it’s kind of done its job.

Buoyed by a traditionally spectacular ensemble, The Phoenician Scheme feels unlikely to be anyone’s favorite Wes Anderson flick, but it’s so easy to like that it’s equally difficult to hate it.

While the autobiographical elements are incredibly light, there’s enough humility here to make the viewer surrender to the film’s melodic charms.

There are laughs aplenty, even as “Sister Midnight” begins to lose creative steam, with the wheels falling off, and the further it falls into the repetitive macabre. But Apte remains the glue holding it all together as the film imagines its prototype of the monstrous feminine.

The setting is more than a century ago, but the longing for love and the struggle for intimacy are universally human.

Somehow, Yamanaka finds a balance for her complicated character to navigate her tantrums and tender moments.

Love remains distinct, given its unsparing view of people as flawed and not very sure of themselves.

By taking itself so seriously, “Final Reckoning” loses the cheeky ingredient in the recipe. It’s less fun, and that’s truly disappointing for a series that has given us some of the most exhilarating setpieces in action history.

Hurry Up Tomorrow takes its star’s caterwauling about how hard it is to be famous and heartbroken for granted, and expects its audience to roll with every self-inflicted wound. It’s vapid, meandering, and insistent on its own profundity as a tale of an artist reckoning with fame.

It’s a tour-de-force of voluptuously bloody slapstick that knows that we know how these movies work.

This is a quiet classic. Every choice is just right.

At heart, Caught By the Tides is an experimental romantic drama, though that makes it sound unapproachable and a little gimmicky. It’s neither, thankfully, and that’s largely thanks to Jia’s typical focus on the material signs of time’s relentless passage.

Mamet’s stark existentialism comes to a shudder-inducing yet mordantly satisfying head in this expertly rendered picture. The text might not be vintage Mamet, but it’s a real meal.