We may find ourselves agreeing with the skeptical podcasters and journalists who see Johnson as a kook or a crafty snake oil salesman who persuades gullible people that they have a problem and he has the answer.

Some genre-affirming twists and tropes throughout hint at a sharper genre parody that happens to be about a sympathetic young heroine. This isn’t that kind of movie. Sometimes, it just looks like something better.

Shields’ story is inspiring, beyond the training montage, the matches and medals, and the pep talks from Crutchfield. The film has a spacious generosity toward all of its characters, even Shields’ parents, reflecting her commitment to her family and community, as deep as her focus on winning boxing matches.

Los Frikis is a complicated movie with good intentions and the goal of sharing underreported stories from the island. I want that too, but I found Los Frikis too saccharine given its somber topic. Perhaps its harder edged critiques were softened for international audiences, but I would have preferred the film more thoroughly wrestle with the emotional, political, and social complexities at its center.

Even at its most traumatic, Santosh gives viewers plenty to consider.

Vermiglio, about the lives of villagers in the mid-century Italian Alps near the end of World War II, is the rare movie set in the past that seems attuned to the consciousness of the time it depicts.

“Don’t Look Up” told a story while jackhammering its message, but “2073” plunges its audience right into police violence and terror with little thought in the sci-fi aspect of the narrative. It’s merely the aluminum foil to deliver the filmmaker’s thesis.

You won’t see another music biopic quite like “Better Man,” regardless of your level of familiarity with its subject. There’s a surfeit of charm here that helps sell the nonsensical gimmick.

Built on a foundation of comedy that comes from the silent era, “Vengeance Most Fowl” is just beautifully structured, a perfect rhythm of plotting and humor that works for all ages.

Babygirl is a high-wire act. It’s a small miracle the film works as well as it does.

Overall, Our Little Secret is a fun, mostly family friendly Christmas screwball comedy with Lohan working in the comedic mode she does best.

Once Carrey’s frenetic performances kick into gear, he gets to take this movie to incredibly strange places, ensuring that it will probably work for the adults in the audience as well as the little kids who dragged them there.

The Count of Monte Cristo is an energetic, entertaining treat, full of noble heroes, fair maidens, evil villains, duels at dawn, and swashbuckling sword fights.

Quiet yet moving, “The Room Next Door” is a heartfelt meditation on friendship, grief, and death.

The Brutalist is a work that incorporates well-known world history into two of the definitive forms of expression of the 20th century in architecture and filmmaking, becoming a commentary on both capitalism and art.

Mufasa never quite bursts free of the constraints placed upon it, but those constraints never stop it from moving, or from being moving. It has a signature, rendered with a steady hand.

The personal doc can often feel stifling and self-congratulatory; Tavel makes it feel personal and disarming, an earnest and sincere attempt to understand herself through the father she never got to know, and the big, plastic box of wires that might bring him closer, even if just a little bit.

It’s a bit too long and a lot too silly, but most people won’t care. And in a year with almost no even-modestly-good holiday offerings (sorry to the two “Red One” fans), this might be the best Christmas movie of the year.

What we’re seeing in “September 5” is the birth of live news as entertainment. It’s the opening salvo in a long and sadly successful war against journalistic ethics and ideals that would lead to the current pathetic conditions of cable and Internet “news,” which consist largely of “takes” rather than original reporting.

Anderson’s accomplishment here defies easy comparison. It’s not a comeback. It’s a beginning.

A ghastly imitation of the franchise’s better films, a Ringwraith who possesses the frame and contours of something breathing but is ultimately hollow.

Particularly at a time when women’s rights are in jeopardy here in the United States and around the world, “Dirty Angels” represents a blown opportunity to say something meaningful amid the mayhem.

As a screenwriter, Kerr has a deep understanding of her characters and the complex dynamics of the relationship between Ben and Beth.

If you’re a Herzog diehard, “Theater of Thought” offers plenty of new material to chew on, just as ol’ Werner does his consonants. But for most, the questions regarding the nature of reality and the ways our brain interprets it may not be the most insightful, save for how it affects Herzog’s understanding of his artistry.

Sony’s latest Spidey yarn is a charmless stinker that’s only well-polished enough to make you resent the stench.

Whether one looks at it as a summation statement from an artist taking stock of their life and work at the end of their career or as another one of the brief cinematic diversions that he has taken on in between his feature projects, “It’s Not Me” is a reminder that Leos Carax is one of the most fascinating and formally interesting filmmakers working in the world today.

Like its subject has done so many times in his six-decade career, this one exceeds expectations.

While "Oh, Canada" has moments of mordant humor, its ultimate mode is the elegiac.